UKBouldering.com
the shizzle => shootin' the shit => Topic started by: TobyD on January 03, 2020, 07:51:10 am
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It seems somewhat odd that Dominic Cummings in his blog criticised the civil service for too many public school bluffers and Oxbridge humanities graduates; does he not realise he could be referring to most of the current cabinet, most of all, his boss?
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Interested to know what the Labour members on here make of the candidates for leadership, who's got the best chance of leading them back to some semblance of electability?
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Interested to know what the Labour members on here make of the candidates for leadership, who's got the best chance of leading them back to some semblance of electability?
I'll bite :)
This is a brain dump of a response so quite raw but...
Very early days - and I've not heard many of them talk yet. Starmer is clearly a front runner - and I think would perform very well in PMQ's etc... I like him. But - not sure he's different enough (white late middle aged male) - and there are some good alternatives. RLB comes across well - but her tag of the 'continuity candidate' doesnt chime well with me. I heard Lisa Nandy on the radio on Sunday and she came across very very well to me...
I really don't want a shouty man adressing a rally type leader. We have a posh shouty man as PM.
Note - theres nothing in my response about policies - to me its its more about character and that they are not factional like JC was.
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Note - theres nothing in my response about policies - to me its its more about character and that they are not factional like JC was.
How does that fit with R Long-Bailey? Much the same, but with more subtlety, surely?
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Note - theres nothing in my response about policies - to me its its more about character and that they are not factional like JC was.
How does that fit with R Long-Bailey? Much the same, but with more subtlety, surely?
Yeah, from what I've heard/read thats correct about what I think. A younger, female, better communicating JC. She's not one I would vote for.
Lewis, Thornberry are both non-starters IMHO..
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Am not a member of Labour but did vote for them and have considered being a member.
Personally it’s a bit too early to tell who is best. Although I agree that Starmer would likely do well with PMQs and being interviewed on Radio4 etc. I think this is an important component of being a political leader these days.
Generally I would like someone with similar policies (but possibly slightly less left wing eg a bit less nationalisation - am thinking of the 2017 manifesto) but with no baggage and better at communicating with the media etc
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I think Long-Bailey has blown it a bit leaving it so late to set out her stall. Starmer in particular has stolen a march on her.
A few weeks ago my choice would have been Thornberry but I am leaning towards Starmer. It isn't a great look voting for the only man with a realistic chance of winning the leadership but I wouldn't be in favour of Long-Bailey as I don't think shes experienced enough or has properly considered the result of the election. I think Phillips will gain ground but I can't stand her; all self promotion and slagging off the leadership over the last few years. By contrast the Tories kept their traps largely shut and that kind of unity really helps I think.
So as it stands I would vote for Starmer I think. I take TT's point about him being a metro white male but I can see him going down well with Middle England (being a sir always helps...) and on the Today programme as previously mentioned. Rayner would definitely be my pick as Deputy, I think shes streets ahead of Long Bailey and a large part of me thinks she should be running for the top job.
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Interesting replies, I feel that if RLB is picked, they've as good as lost the next election based on her adherence to the Corbyn line, and not even addressing anti-Semitism. I like Jess Phillips, but I think she's probably too honest and not quite suited to leadership, at least yet. Starmer and Thornberry are the most experienced and professional politicians, but I fear that many of the electorate might not vote for them.
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Perhaps worth thinking about who didn’t vote for Labour? Where it was personality rather than policy, I think Starmer is miles in front appealing to middle England and those who simply wanted to have confidence in the leadership.
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Perhaps worth thinking about who didn’t vote for Labour? Where it was personality rather than policy, I think Starmer is miles in front appealing to middle England and those who simply wanted to have confidence in the leadership.
I'd probably agree, in that he has more widespread appeal than Thornberry. Sort of a shame as she always sounds very well up on her brief, is good at the dispatch box, she'd probably be a very good leader but I fear she would have little chance of getting there.
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Today's PMQs was perhaps the first time I've heard Corbyn ask some pertinent questions and not just read out letters about buses or something. He's probably relieved that noone expects him to talk about brexit anymore. BJ didn't seem to have an answer for whether killing foreign leaders in a sovereign country might have contravened international law, or whether he'd withdraw UK troops from Iraq if the Iraqi government asked him to.
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BJ didn't seem to have an answer for whether killing foreign leaders in a sovereign country might have contravened international law, or whether he'd withdraw UK troops from Iraq if the Iraqi government asked him to.
I expect this is something we’ll have to get used to over the next 12 weeks. He’s rarely, if ever, engaged properly with any serious line of questioning and yesterday’s PMQs was no different. Hopefully this will change with a new opposition leader but I’m not holding my breath.
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It's because he doesn't have a clue. Not like he has had a job as Foreign Secretary or anything in the past where he may have had experience of dealing with things like this..
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Yes, I probably should have said I hope he’s forced to engage by a new opposition leader (a more forensic one). And also that he might one day turn up to a select committee hearing.
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BJ didn't seem to have an answer for whether killing foreign leaders in a sovereign country might have contravened international law, or whether he'd withdraw UK troops from Iraq if the Iraqi government asked him to.
I expect this is something we’ll have to get used to over the next 12 weeks. He’s rarely, if ever, engaged properly with any serious line of questioning and yesterday’s PMQs was no different. Hopefully this will change with a new opposition leader but I’m not holding my breath.
Yes, I'd agree, my biggest concern about this government is their diligence in trying to avoid any scrutiny whatsoever, from boycotting Today, delaying the appointment of select committees, changing the lobby reporting system, avoiding PMQs... Added to the fact that Cummings wants to appoint lots of mavericks, all of whom agree with him, and neuter the civil service.
It's because he doesn't have a clue. Not like he has had a job as Foreign Secretary or anything in the past where he may have had experience of dealing with things like this..
I'm not sure if he doesn't know or doesn't care. I think the latter is more likely. I don't think BJ is a fool, but I do suspect he is already mainly concerned with hanging onto his majority, and knows that most people don't really know or much care about foreign policy. Not a fool, but he comes across as a cynical and rather unpleasant person.
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I'm not a Labour member and it doesn't look like he has much of a chance, but Clive Lewis has been speaking a lot of sense about electoral reform and PR.
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Electoral Reform won't happen while those who decide on it benefit from it.
Nick Clegg sold his soul to gamble all on it, and lost. Can't see it changing any time soon.
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Funnily enough, Labour pretty much are proportionally represented based on their results in the election: 32.2% of the vote, 31% of the MPs. PR being a Labour policy though would be make it a much more likely proposition than being just a Lib Dem/Green policy. I agree that it's unlikely to happen soon, but that doesn't mean that it shouldn't.
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Electoral Reform won't happen while those who decide on it benefit from it.
Agreed. But I don't think Labour benefit from it any more. With the changed political landscape in Scotland and the latest constituency boundary changes, FPTP only serves one party and that is the Conservatives. It doesn't even serve the SNP; there is no point having a disproportionate number of MPs in a system that delivers a sweeping majority to another party ensuring that all of your MPs can be ignored.
I don't expect there to be any shift in Labour policy on electoral reform because I think many of them have their heads in the sand regarding how bleak their electoral prospects are.
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I don't expect there to be any shift in Labour policy on electoral reform because I think many of them have their heads in the sand regarding how bleak their electoral prospects are.
Perhaps, but many don't. I'm not a particular fan of hers but Lisa Nandy had explicitly said that the party needs to change in a massive way or it will die. I think Jess Phillips has said similar things.
RLB saying she'd give Corbyn 10/10 for leadership is ridiculous.
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It might be ridiculous but it's probably genuine. The left of Labour seems blind to the problem. Corbyn could have been a reforming and successful leader if he had been more honest about his relative political position in the party and sacrificed some movement of the party to the left for keeping the party unified and pragmatic (especially in its attraction to swing voters). Unfortunately that wasn't in him. In particular, an overcomplicated unrealistic looking manifesto, telling ex Labour swing voters what they needed, when those voters thought very differently, wasn't ever going to end well. In effect Labour had abandoned the northern working class swing vote and too many of the progressive voting UK majority distrusted JC so much (and thought so little about the worse alternative) that by not voting tactically they gifted Boris his big majority.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_United_Kingdom_general_election
The 2017 results, despite the tory landslide victory, really do show a progressive majority......non progressives were: 43.6 % voting conservative, 2% Brexit and 1.3 % others....on the progressive side: Labour (32.2) plus Lib Dem (11.6) plus SNP (3.9) plus Green (2.7) was 51.4%, with 1.7% other progressives. The exit polls also show a demographic in youth and education levels support for progressive agendas that is good news for the future of progressive parties (unless you believe the bs that well educated young progressives mostly become right wing when they get old). When Maggie won her second term, political pundits were saying Labour could never win a majority in England again; and then came the hubris, scandals and Blair. This current tory Parliamentary party looks to me to be the most right wing and craven ever, way more so than under Maggie when the 'wets' still had significant power. All the new tory PMs this century have said they will support the common people and yet distribution of wealth and fairness of treatment for the poorer in society just gets worse and worse. Boris is a contender for the biggest liar ever in the history of the PM role and his lies will come back to harm him, as in any hard brexit people will suffer when the economy takes a hit (and even if his latest 'one nation' spin turns out to be real: for a soft brexit we are marginally poorer rule followers with no place at the rule making table); also after 10 years of tory governments much of the public sector is on its knees and requires more money than he has available.
Hence, after some hard times, there is plenty of hope for the future of Labour, especially if it can rediscover some of the centre left attraction it had until a decade ago.
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It might be ridiculous but it's probably genuine. The left of Labour seems blind to the problem...
Hence, after some hard times, there is plenty of hope for the future of Labour, especially if it can rediscover some of the centre left attraction it had until a decade ago.
If they can leave the intensely factional hard left very much on the periphery. Recent reports that McDonnell and Abbot are supporting Burgon for deputy are concerning; Angela Rayner is clearly far more capable and media friendly. Richard Burgon always sounds as though he's ranting from a rather uninformed perspective.
I really hope they can sort themselves out at least to present a credible opposition for a start. I think that references to 2017 as any kind of success are denying the basic reality that Labour still lost, to an absolutely appalling car crash of a conservative campaign and a deeply unpopular leader.
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Burgon on the prospect of a 2019 election and Labour's 'success' in 2017:
https://youtu.be/9MHNbwE2Sb0?t=90 (https://youtu.be/9MHNbwE2Sb0?t=90)
KB: The polls say you won't win
RB : The polls said we wouldn't win last time
KB: You didn't
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If the hard left keep retaining power in Labour, I just think it means another party will fill the gap. The tory party have destroyed their breadth of appeal by claiming an impossible unicorn brexit and making rash promises and in doing so expelled the best in their parliamentary party. Progressive numbers in the population look to grow and at some point enough of those well educated middle class progressive voters (currently too often blaming and insulting northern working class voters for voting tory), will get their act together and vote tactically properly. I'm particularly gutted for Vernon Coaker, a sensible Labour moderate who lost his seat by less than 700 votes due to more than 3000 voters voting Lib Dem and Green in my next door constituency, Gedling.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gedling_(UK_Parliament_constituency)
Apologies as my eyesight let me down typing in the numbers on the calculation above... progressive voters are the same total but the 2019 sum for the 4 main progressive partys adds up to just over half ( 50.4%).
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Burgon on the prospect of a 2019 election and Labour's 'success' in 2017:
https://youtu.be/9MHNbwE2Sb0?t=90 (https://youtu.be/9MHNbwE2Sb0?t=90)
KB: The polls say you won't win
RB : The polls said we wouldn't win last time
KB: You didn't
I watched the video there and this came up in the suggestions afterwards. A bit more politics 2015 than 2020, but it was refreshing to see two people with very different views being civil and nice to each other.
https://youtu.be/fMQLSkM1_sU
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Burgon on the prospect of a 2019 election and Labour's 'success' in 2017:
https://youtu.be/9MHNbwE2Sb0?t=90 (https://youtu.be/9MHNbwE2Sb0?t=90)
Burgon insists he never said Zionism is the enemy of peace:
https://video.twimg.com/ext_tw_video/1118058819928711168/pu/vid/1280x720/A3ChpyjOtXcfj8tf.mp4?tag=8 (https://video.twimg.com/ext_tw_video/1118058819928711168/pu/vid/1280x720/A3ChpyjOtXcfj8tf.mp4?tag=8)
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Just read a summary of the PM's responses to BBC interview this morning. A nice roll call of a few recycled lies from his campaign, not saying anything about anything that might be mildly controversial, and the absolutely risible assertion that the middle east is a safer place after the recent assassination and aftermath.
The latter is so most depressingly inaccurate and bone headed thing I've seen uttered recently by any political leader who isn't Trump.
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Every response he gave was basically a summary of the arguments for and against.
The only thing he had an opinion on was the fucking Big Ben chimes.
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The only thing he had an opinion on was the fucking Big Ben chimes.
Yup, this is going to be the next five years, bread and circuses to keep the proles entertained while Priti, Dom and Dom get on with fucking the country with free market libertarianism.
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I find Priti to be rather alarming.
Completely bonkers.
Not the most nuanced analysis, but...
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My survival strategy:
laa laa laa laa laa nothings happening.
Repeat above for five years.
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My survival strategy:
laa laa laa laa laa nothings happening.
Repeat above for five years.
At least we don't live in China and Huawei are monitoring all of our thoughts and arresting people for pre crimes because they control our infrastructure. O wait...
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My survival strategy:
laa laa laa laa laa nothings happening.
Repeat above for five years.
At least we don't live in China and Huawei are monitoring all of our thoughts and arresting people for pre crimes because they control our infrastructure. O wait...
La la la la la la la.....
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My survival strategy:
laa laa laa laa laa nothings happening.
Repeat above for five years.
At least we don't live in China and Huawei are monitoring all of our thoughts and arresting people for pre crimes because they control our infrastructure. O wait...
La la la la la la la.....
You want to watch out for that sort of talk, they have re-education camps for that. You'll have to listen to Brexit church bells for hours at full volume whilst being water boarded
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I've seen the lie of the land - and joined the brexit commissars group. I'm waiting for YODEL to deliver my braid and epilettes as I type.
The excitement is palpable.
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Interesting replies, I feel that if RLB is picked, they've as good as lost the next election based on her adherence to the Corbyn line, and not even addressing anti-Semitism.
It loos like Wrong- Daily could well win it, the PLP only selects the candidates and they've got it wrong on the last 4 occasions IIRC. According to a Survation Poll of members she's got the numbers, even with Starmer getting a raft of 2nd prefs won't be enough. 34% remained undecided though so perhaps that could be enough.
Maomentum have apparently said tonight that they'll back RLB but that could be more about they're own survival rather than anything else, if they're not connected to an individual then what are they?
The one question I haven't seen asked is; What would happen if the new leader goes into an election with the kind of unpopularity figures that Corbyn had? Is there a plan to step aside?
RLB and Burgon are the only 2 who haven't been savaged by the Left, even Rayner, once the RLB dream team, has been done for voting for Burnham in 2015, even though no-one, least of all Corbyn thought he'd win.
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Re Labour leadership, having heard Lisa Nandy interviewed by Nick Robinson on political thinking, I think she'd be an excellent leader. Far more impressed by her than any other candidates so far, though I feel more naturally inclined to go for Starmer or Jess Phillips, Lisa Nandy sounds like she actually has plans and a real vision, as well as coming across as very human and down to earth.
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I thought this was good, and rightly excoriates the Labour membership:
https://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2020/01/will-keir-starmer-be-labours-hero-of-retreat/
Naturally the people who should read and reflect on this probably won’t. But there you go.
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I thought this was good, and rightly excoriates the Labour membership:
https://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2020/01/will-keir-starmer-be-labours-hero-of-retreat/
Naturally the people who should read and reflect on this probably won’t. But there you go.
Its alright - though to be fair - its hard to NOT exoriate the labour party / membership over whats happened in the last 4-5 years!
Personally I'd like Nandy to get the job - but I don't think she'll get it...
Meanwhile, now Royal silly season is ending its nearly Brexit day...
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I thought this was good, and rightly excoriates the Labour membership:
https://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2020/01/will-keir-starmer-be-labours-hero-of-retreat/
Naturally the people who should read and reflect on this probably won’t. But there you go.
I think its a bit much to compare the fallout from the election to the aftermath of Franco, the USSR and apartheid. That kind of pointless comparison helps nobody. The piece contends that if there was any justice, Phillips would be winning. I don't agree with this; her performance and subsequent rapid withdrawal suggests to me that her skills are basically mouthing off from the backbenches. Much like Corbyn himself, you could argue. She is beloved by a certain kind of centre left commentator and Sunday Times magazine columnist by literally no one else!
I'm torn between Nandy and Starmer. She sounds good on the radio and says all the right things but I feel like Starmer will appeal to Middle England a lot better. I think if I was voting tomorrow I would go for Starmer but plenty of time for that to change.
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I'm torn between Nandy and Starmer. She sounds good on the radio and says all the right things but I feel like Starmer will appeal to Middle England a lot better. I think if I was voting tomorrow I would go for Starmer but plenty of time for that to change.
Lisa Nandy did a pretty good job of putting Piers Morgan in his place. On Nick Robinson's podcast she discusses her considerable enthusiasm for Britney Spears; what better recommendation could you want for a politician?
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I thought this was good, and rightly excoriates the Labour membership:
https://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2020/01/will-keir-starmer-be-labours-hero-of-retreat/
Naturally the people who should read and reflect on this probably won’t. But there you go.
Its alright - though to be fair - its hard to NOT exoriate the labour party / membership over whats happened in the last 4-5 years!
Yet in a recent poll, Labour members apparently cited Corbyn as their favourite leader of the last century, and Blair as the least.
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A neat analogy for this years decision making on Brexit, HS2, Huawei
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Boris Johnson may have given his strongest hint yet that he intends for HS2 to go ahead after telling a 10-year-old interviewer that the way forward was to “keep digging”.
The only thing he seems to have missed is prefixing keep digging with "we are knee deep in this shit so might as well...."
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Yet in a recent poll, Labour members apparently cited Corbyn as their favourite leader of the last century, and Blair as the least.
With Ed Miliband a close second and a quarter of members polled not knowing who Clement Atlee was...
It shows how much the party membership has changed in the last few years I think. It's entirely possible the party as it stands might not be willing or even see the need to change direction.
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That's really sad for me given I see Atlee's post war government as the most important and transformative we have ever had.
At a tangent .....and with the context of the BBCs tactic of eviscirating it's own news output before Boris can get round to it ... there was an interesting piece on a media monster from the Grauniad.
https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2020/feb/02/good-morning-britain-piers-morgan-the-wake-up-call-we-deserve
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Yet in a recent poll, Labour members apparently cited Corbyn as their favourite leader of the last century, and Blair as the least.
With Ed Miliband a close second and a quarter of members polled not knowing who Clement Atlee was...
It shows how much the party membership has changed in the last few years I think. It's entirely possible the party as it stands might not be willing or even see the need to change direction.
It's very easy now to write off the labour party, the candidates for leader may have the genuinely new thinking necessary for them to not self destruct but seem unwilling to really voice it, too afraid to lose membership support.
I noticed an opinion article in the guardian, claiming that there is no evidence that left wing policies lost labour the election.
Do they not think that perhaps the election result was pretty compelling evidence? Or losing the last election as well? Or the implosion of most left wing parties across Europe over the last decade?
I'm not saying that a manifesto based on the same convictions couldn't win, but banging away with a socialist framework of thinking a century old is not going to fly. People who used to vote labour are very concerned about immigration, like it or not, and whether or not this is justified. Lecturing them about free movement isn't going to win votes, however much Labour may believe it. (NB I'm not saying that Labour should just echo Priti Patel or that I agree with this view, but that a different solution needs to be thought of)
Having said all that give it 6 months.... After the European election in May last year, the conservatives looked like they'd split up and never win again.
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No 10 trying to exclude journalists prompts a walk-out.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/feb/03/political-journalists-boycott-no-10-briefing-after-reporter-ban
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No 10 trying to exclude journalists prompts a walk-out.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/feb/03/political-journalists-boycott-no-10-briefing-after-reporter-ban
I've seen that reported as well. I think avoidance of scrutiny is the most distasteful and concerning single thing about this administration. I wonder which reporters still attended the briefing and didn't walk out?
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No 10 trying to exclude journalists prompts a walk-out.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/feb/03/political-journalists-boycott-no-10-briefing-after-reporter-ban
I've seen that reported as well. I think avoidance of scrutiny is the most distasteful and concerning single thing about this administration. I wonder which reporters still attended the briefing and didn't walk out?
I think I read that everyone left and the briefing didn’t go ahead
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As did I although another report I read suggested that only occurred due to the presence of the uninvited group with a similar briefing going ahead the previous week.
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Did anyone catch Priti Patel on counter terrorism?
Michael Spicer's take on it:
https://video.twimg.com/ext_tw_video/1224590517905784833/pu/vid/1280x720/0ezZBaPeg8INvWhJ.mp4
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Hes brilliant.
I notice that at this government's latest attempt at emulating an Orwellian dystopia, the foreign office have banned any words relating to Brexit, instead being encouraged to refer to Australian style relationships on trade etc, which don't really exist.
Just waiting for Johnson to start suggesting building a big beautiful wall to keep the Scots out.
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Oh he’s already suggested a bridge to Northern Ireland...
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Oh he’s already suggested a bridge to Northern Ireland...
Which also doesn't and wont exist. Talking of which, does Jacob Rees Mogg exist?
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A diverting deep dive on Dom's doctines.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/feb/06/inside-the-mind-of-dominic-cummings-brexit-boris-johnson-conservatives
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There was an interesting response from John Gummer (lord Deben) on Boris Johnson's performance on climate change. Almost verbatim, the ex conservative cabinet minister said that he needs to pull his finger out of his arse, and stop giving people money to build shit houses. Pithy. Owen Jones had answered first and been fairly critical as one might expect, and Gummer swiftly chastised him for not being critical enough. If only any of the current lot had principles like that.
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Oh he’s already suggested a bridge to Northern Ireland...
Which also doesn't and wont exist. Talking of which, does Jacob Rees Mogg exist?
It appears to still be "in planning"
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/feb/10/boris-johnson-northern-ireland-scotland-bridge-plan-being-actively-looked-into-no-10
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🤦♂️
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There is no question to which Boris Johnson doesn't think that the answer is to build something massive and very expensive
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https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/rise-of-germanys-far-right-is-a-warning-to-us-all-ghb56qlkn
As this is readable only by Times subscribers, it's an interesting look at how massive infrastructure investment in East Germany by the West after reunification has served only to depopulate the poorer areas, and create the environment within which the afd have risen to become a powerful force in German politics from being fringe thugs twenty five years ago. It suggests that this might be a lesson in how HS2 might not be the leveller that Johnson wants to sell it as.
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I am not a Times subscriber, but it seems self-evident to me that c£100billion would be better spent on regional transport networks, including bus services, rather than a single railway which adds to existing satisfactory infrastructure.
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The first steps in the tory reality of protecting our post brexit environment.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/feb/12/these-three-post-brexit-bills-bulldoze-a-hole-through-environmental-protections
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I am not a Times subscriber, but it seems self-evident to me that c£100billion would be better spent on regional transport networks, including bus services, rather than a single railway which adds to existing satisfactory infrastructure.
That's what most analysts say as well. However, they also all say if the money was taken out of HS2 it wouldn't go straight to local authorities. Rodger Boyes point is that Express train services to poorer areas in Germany and Italy has only hastened the departure of higher earners and industry from them to gravitate towards wealthier cities so it could be a net harm.
Personally I can't imagine I'd ever go out of Sheffield to somewhere near the M1 to get a slightly faster train to London, it only takes 2 hours at the moment anyway.
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RE HS2.
I buy the existing lines at capacity argument (if you've ever sat at a level crossing on the east coast line you'll know how often its used!) - but you could (I undersand) build the added capacity of HS2 at a lower (still 150mph though) speed for less than half the cost...
Living in Hull/Manchester - it strikes me the Liverpool <> Hull connection has to be in dire need of improvement/investment. ELectrifying Liverpool to Manchester made quite a difference (in speed and number of trains) but its daft that it takes an hour to get from Manchester to Leeds when its 30 miles as the crow flies...
Heres a geeky question for train fans out there: Where is the longest run of straight railway line in Western Europe?
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There was a good Briefing Room podcast on HS2 a few weeks ago. The consensus was basically that infrastructure spending is always way more than is forecast and the only reason its been such a big deal in the UK is precisely because we spend so little on infrastructure compared to anyone else.
HS2 is not really about speed, that is just a by product of building an additional line which will free up capacity on the existing network. As such the effects should be felt across the commuter network (once complete...) even if one isn't on an HS2 train.| The below piece is good (from 2018).
Separately, I had to get the train to work from Leeds for a few days while the van was in the garage. I was appalled at the widespread cancellations and overcrowding; and its been like that for years. Doing nothing is absolutely not an option and although obviously the money would be better spent directly on the North that would take another 5 years to get through various planning/review stages and even then might not happen.
I am quite clearly no fan of this appalling government but HS2 (and 3) has to be built and I'm glad they are doing so. Anything else would have been a dereliction of duty.
https://www.citymetric.com/transport/chaos-british-railways-case-yet-hs2-euston-west-coast-main-line-4236
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I don’t know what I think about HS2. I do know that BJ has a long history of making infrastructure choices on their ability to generate headlines over ‘girly swot’ reasons like cost-effectiveness. But you all knew that.
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Don't know what you mean..
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/aug/18/bridge-940m-bill-boris-johnsons-mayora-vanity-projects-garden-bridge-routemaster-bus
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There was a good Briefing Room podcast on HS2 a few weeks ago. The consensus was basically that infrastructure spending is always way more than is forecast and the only reason its been such a big deal in the UK is precisely because we spend so little on infrastructure compared to anyone else.
HS2 is not really about speed, that is just a by product of building an additional line which will free up capacity on the existing network. As such the effects should be felt across the commuter network (once complete...) even if one isn't on an HS2 train.| The below piece is good (from 2018).
Separately, I had to get the train to work from Leeds for a few days while the van was in the garage. I was appalled at the widespread cancellations and overcrowding; and its been like that for years. Doing nothing is absolutely not an option and although obviously the money would be better spent directly on the North that would take another 5 years to get through various planning/review stages and even then might not happen.
I am quite clearly no fan of this appalling government but HS2 (and 3) has to be built and I'm glad they are doing so. Anything else would have been a dereliction of duty.
https://www.citymetric.com/transport/chaos-british-railways-case-yet-hs2-euston-west-coast-main-line-4236
HS2 is a valid and complex debate and saying it "has to be built" is plain idiotic.
https://www.economicshelp.org/blog/3088/economics/pros-and-cons-of-high-speed-rail-hs2/
https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld201415/ldselect/ldeconaf/134/13410.htm
The cost is huge and the benefits vague and sometimes dubious and cheaper solutions (including the old Nottingham line) could have gained the same addtional north south capacity at a fraction of the cost. The high speed option doesn't anything like double capacity, it's a capaity red herring. Yet high speed does more than double the surrounding land take and massively reduces the possibility of going round valuable sites and increases consequence of accidents, attacks or just dealing with the plain old British weather.
My biggest concern is that it solves todays problems rather than those of a third to half of a century from now. Look how computing has changed in the last decades.. imagine the quality of cheap video conferencing that will be avilable. Imagine if port investment was made in the north to transport goods more locally, avoiding crossing the whole of England. Imagine that 100 billion invested in improved infrastructure in general away from the SE.
HS2 only just made the cut at its original cost predictions in terms of value for money. As things moved on the benefits were estimated as being just over £100 billion so a very questionable £2.3 gain for every pound spent in 2013, when the costs were around £50 billion.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/predicted-economic-benefits-of-hs2-are-falling-but-ministers-insist-it-will-revitalise-britain-s-8910657.html At £100billion + it makes no gain on the economic benefit predictions.
The irony of this is it was as much a New Labour political stunt as anything else https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-24661963
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I am not saying it isn't complex, far from it. I just don't see how massive infrastructure can be built without it damaging the environment to be honest. Its about mitigating these things as best we can. If this was a proposed new motorway I'd agree but its a public transport system and the UK is a significant distance behind every single other country I've caught a train in on that front.
If someone was suggesting giving the North £100bn to spend on upgrades to existing infrastructure then I would 100% be behind it. Unfortunately, they aren't, and even if HS2 was cancelled and some money set aside, it would take years for a plan to come together and even longer for it to be approved, by which time no doubt people (probably you and I!) would be picking holes in that too.
Video conferencing does not solve people's issues getting to work. Nor do port upgrades. As cars are phased out in urban centres public transport will become paramount and we are already late in upgrading it. As an aside, the Underground was considered an incredible waste of money when proposed and now is indispensable. I think these sort of projects will always require a leap of faith.
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I'm normally a massive fan of infrastructure spending. I supported HS1. My arguments against HS2 are that it is simply bad economics and the wrong kind of infrastructure (we need rail capacity that meets future needs and despite the government bullshit HS2 increases capacity less than cheaper alternatives and in a less green way). It's simply not logical to support one expensive thing with no clear economic benefit and massive ecological damage because you believe a cheaper and more beneficial and greener alternative might not happen. Even the review authors don't agree:
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2019/nov/12/co-author-of-leaked-hs2-reports-demands-his-name-is-removed.
The idea that £9 billion would be lost is also false. Given where we are now most of the line should be down-converted to standard high speed with major cost gains for little capacity change. The extra speed was always an ecologically threatening red herring compared to a conventional high speed line. At a stroke this would halve the land loss.
The realpolitik of this also stinks... the 16th hole trumps an ancient woodland.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/feb/12/woods-and-irons-winners-and-losers-in-the-path-of-hs2
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I have to say I think I agree with spidermonkey. HS2 looks like a reasonable pragmatic choice. I mainly disagree with what I suspect are Johnson's motives, in that he's probably already planning campaigning for 2025 a la Trump; and he wants a big legacy project, as well as being seen to get something done to distract from the likely considerable economic and quality of life impact of leaving the EU
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Large swathes of the (early) underground were built with private money. The developers also bought up countryside around the stops out of the city and then developed those and sold the houses to the new commuter class for ££££.
As for the timeliness - high speed rail is being heavily invested in - in developing nations such as China - where its seen as a long term viable alternative to air travel as well as reducing road traffic etc..
We (as a nation) are not helped by being very densely populated - making any option expensive.
No-one has answered my question though.... ;D
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Heres a geeky question for train fans out there: Where is the longest run of straight railway line in Western Europe?
Adler to Vorkuta. O hang on Western Europe? Germany?
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Yesterdays reshuffle debacle was certainly pretty interesting. It seems that Johnson has eliminated everyone who was left who had any significant experience in government (other than Michael Gove), so that hes left with a group of under-qualified "yes" people who won't threaten his own somewhat thin record of experience in national government.
The parallels with Donald Trump are becoming depressingly frequent. Johnson's slight ambiguous-ness on US food imports is I think a deliberate preparation for accepting imports and thus further putting the final nail in much of UK agriculture. I wonder whether much of his noisy infrastructure investment will go the same way as the wall: watered down and slowly sidelined in importance as it becomes more obvious that much of the intention is unrealistic. (i.e. that a fast train is going to 'level up' the country)
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The tories are heading the same way as the Republicans: craven support of an idiot leader who sacks anyone who questions or criticises.
The latest opinion today from The Guardian on HS2 level up.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/feb/15/hs2-boris-johnson-london-birmingham-north
I'm still amazed anyone can regard the inevitable £100+ billion spend (that won't produce any net economic gain on the governments own optimist figures) as pragmatic.
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The tories are heading the same way as the Republicans: craven support of an idiot leader who sacks anyone who questions or criticises.
I don't like Boris Johnson's direction of government and I suspect hes an unpleasant man, but I think it's wrong, and rather reductive to call him an idiot. That makes pretty much everyone in Labour an idiot too, since he totally handed it to them in the election. Johnson is a ruthless and persistent politician. Self interested, corrupt; possibly. Lacking any moral or ideological compass, I'd say yes, but not an idiot.
Unfortunately in both cases (the conservative party and the Republicans) they'll totally get away with it because there isn't an effective opposition. My guess is that the government will face more concerted opposition from disaffected backbenchers on it's own side for some time.
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Meanwhile an alternative way of thinking is thus...
There is/ was effective opposition but that kind of opposition is not ‘allowed’ to exist by the powers that be. By capitulating with the mainstream narrative and working within the limited parameters of ‘allowed’ for discussion this will always be the case. Those that continue to regurgitate this line are effectively shooting themselves in the foot if they truly believe in a fairer society and truly believe that climate change must be combatted immediately.
The empty term ‘effective opposition’ in this view means compromised opposition, for to have the approval of the powers that be and thus be deemed ‘effective’ requires the removal of values that don’t support the vested interests of those with power.
The hardest thing for anyone to admit is that they are being ‘led’, that there own thinking could possibly be affected by the information thrown at them. Ironically, many of those that deny this possibility would also suggest that those that voted for Brexit were manipulated in this way.
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The problem with your way of thinking there, Brutus, is that you've laid out your beliefs and stated that any contradiction to them must be false or corrupted in some way. This makes it impossible to argue with you, because no matter what argument or evidence is placed before you, it will be dismissed as in some way not valid. In a sense it's like watching the US creationists argue that fossils were placed by God to test us, or listen to flat-earthers who can easily ignore evidence that is contrary to their faith.
Perhaps we could ask, if Jeremy Corbyn's opposition was effective, what did he successfully oppose the Conservatives on? Which of their policies did he thwart? In what general elections did he win popular support?
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Effective politicians gain power. Ineffective ones don’t.
Corbyn is the most ineffective Labour politician since 1935. As they say in football, the table doesn’t lie.
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Although you've put it more eloquently than it is often argued, Brutus, this is basically conspiracy theory is if not? I think that conspiracy theories and blaming 'the media' are non-arguements of radically left and right sides of the spectrum. Although some find radicalism alluring most people in a broadly ( and I know very broadly) comfortable country to live in just want a quiet life. If things are really bad, you get revolution, but I'm thinking like Syria, the Yemen or Germany in the 1930s, not the UK now which has a lot wrong with it, but is basically okay.
An effective opposition would be able to integrate their ideology with a realistic approach to solving actual problems and making people's lives better, and argue this coherently. There is no intrinsic barrier to that being done.
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I hesitate to respond because I know I am out numbered but heh I have little to lose so I will attempt to address the above point by point. I suspect you fellows will get what you wish for in the coming months and we’ll see how it all plays out in due course.
The problem with your way of thinking there, Brutus, is that you've laid out your beliefs and stated that any contradiction to them must be false or corrupted in some way. This makes it impossible to argue with you, because no matter what argument or evidence is placed before you, it will be dismissed as in some way not valid.
I’d like to know how on earth you got here from my post and where exactly I stated that any contradiction is false or corrupted? I am suggesting that the effective opposition that you seek, is something you’ve been talked into and I am suggesting that opposition will be corrupted to broadly serve the interests of power and wealth (though a few more bones may be thrown to the poor). Effective politicians gain power. Ineffective ones don’t.
Quite a statement, depends what effect you’re looking for. Things are much more complex than this and I am sure you’re well aware of that.
Although you've put it more eloquently than it is often argued, Brutus, this is basically conspiracy theory is if not? I think that conspiracy theories and blaming 'the media' are non-arguements of radically left and right sides of the spectrum. Although some find radicalism alluring most people in a broadly ( and I know very broadly) comfortable country to live in just want a quiet life. If things are really bad, you get revolution, but I'm thinking like Syria, the Yemen or Germany in the 1930s, not the UK now which has a lot wrong with it, but is basically okay.
An effective opposition would be able to integrate their ideology with a realistic approach to solving actual problems and making people's lives better, and argue this coherently. There is no intrinsic barrier to that being done.
. It’s definitely not a conspiracy theory and suggesting such doesn’t address anything specifically. Things are not ‘basically OK’ for large sections of our society, I suspect that you have little or no contact with these groups, so could easily be drawn into this assumption. I will also suggest that implying that I or people like me are in anyway ‘radical’ is a falsehood that you have bought into.
I have very deliberately not included anything Corbyn related because I believe this is not to do with individuals. I am more interested in suggesting that our bastion of democracy isn’t functioning effectively and that our democracy is thoroughly corrupted. (It is evidential, that in recent times, In order to win an election the amount of cash behind you needs to be the most. In order to get the big money behind you, you will need to give something back). The fact that things were so close in 2017 is incredible given the disparity in financial backing.
I know that the things I am saying are probably largely predictable to you and likewise your responses are too. I often lurk here wishing someone would challenge the consensus and generally conclude if no one else does then I will. :). I doubt I can change your minds but if there are other lurkers around thinking the same at least they get to see an alternative.
I’d love to hear your thoughts on this gentlemen; If it is not possible to influence the thinking of the masses, to change outcomes of elections, for us to be fallible to propaganda and induced modes of thinking, what are organisations like Cambridge Analytica in existence for?
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I read and Andy Adonis quote earlier (I’ll find the article later, if I can), he said (something like) “for Labour, the last eleven elections have been: Loss, loss, loss, loss, Blair, Blair,Blair, loss, loss, loss, loss.”
Doesn’t seem like a very effective opposition.
Also, there are as many pro-Labour/Left leaning media outlets as there are right leaning. It’s simply that not enough people want what Labour is selling.
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Actually, that’s not the clearest refutation of your conspiracy Brutus.
~43% of the voters in 2019, chose the Cons.
~32% chose Lab.
Even discounting SNP voters, that left enough middle ground (just call that the Green and LD’s) to swing the election. I’d bet none of them were Sun/Telegraph/Mail/Express readers, but most were Guardian and Mirror readers. Trying to say that all of them were scared away from voting Labour by the evil oligarchs is a tad silly.
Labour, as always, shot themselves in the foot.
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Brutus, I object to you saying that I have no idea or contact with sectors of British society that don't have a comfortable life, I certainly do, I work in the community for the NHS and it's basically what I do for a job. My point is that it's not bad enough to force people to radical politics and revolution, whereas, for example life for a lot of Palestinian people or Iraqi people probably is.
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Brutus, you might change my mind if you put forward an effective argument.
When was there an effective opposition? Labour’s support for the very right wing project of Brexit has made it the handmaiden of a whole host of ills that have barely begun. It’s calamitous. There will be a reduction in standards across the board and the watering down of standards and protections will mean huge profits for the few and straitened circumstances for the many.
When a party achieves the exact opposite of what it pretends to and enables, rather than hinders, its political opposition, it’s egregious nonsense to describe it as effective.
With regards to blinkered thinking due to media influence, well sure, there is a lot of propaganda masquerading as information. The information we consume shapes our perceptions and habits of thought to a degree. Depending on the person, their biases and willingness to be critical, sometimes more, sometimes less. It’s a big issue in modern society as you rightly suggest.
To come up with suggestions about what political positions we are ‘allowed’ to adopt or even consider- I imagine TobyD had that comment in mind when he referred to conspiracy theories- seems a gross oversimplification. It’s nothing new; for as long as we have had democracy people try to influence the voters towards outcomes favourable to them. That’s the -often dark- business we call politics.
I don’t see that as an adequate defence of failure to gain power though. As OMM, observes, too few bought the package.
Edit -waffle removed.
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Brutus - I feel some of your pain on this - but think MrJ above is on the money...
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I guess that is where we differ. I take a Chomskian view that democracy is broken, essentially western social and political systems are now rigged such that they primarily serve the interests of wealthy, elite, powerful, big business etc.. to a lesser or greater degree but primarily this. The moment those interests are at risk of being challenged too far the flack starts flying. Hence, loss, loss, loss, Blair... In some ways I agree that Labour will only be in position to win, with backing of the system if we are prepared to engage with business and the likes of Murdoch as Blair did. Yes, we may then get better funding for public services etc. But at what cost? Illegal wars, further deregulation of the financial sector followed with crash and burn.? I’m personally not up for this kind of compromise and clearly I am not alone. So I guess that is partly why we are where we are.
Times are such that very soon we will need government globally to take decisions that could be unpopular with business, in the meantime I think it is fairly likely that we will have the ‘centrist’ version of the LP and we will be able to see how effective that is as opposition.
Toby apologies for my assumption, there are plenty of people here in dire situations, perhaps not enough or enough people that care to start a revolution but I would maintain that we’re not basically okay.
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How about something like:
Step 1: Labour win election on a moderate (by UK not world standards) socialist platform (moderate increases in benefits and public services expenditure, infrastructure spending etc.). Make a success of 5 years in government bringing genuine improvements to all across society.
Step 2: Campaign for next 5 years with a similar agenda, but a bit more of the same. Again show that small increases in taxes can be used to improve life for all in the country and that it’s not a zero sum game.
Step 3: By this point a decade of successful governing down the line, the labour govt. will have gradually moved to the Nordic model of social democracy without anyone really noticing, as everyone in the country has been reaping the rewards.
Step 4: Socialist paradise.
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:lol: Yes, please.
Essentially use Tory tactics, lie to gain power, get a big majority, then proceed to do wtf you want. Although having garnered support from big business/ Uber wealthy donors, there maybe some sort of backlash when they realise they’ve been shafted and will have to pay their taxes. I like the idea of beating them at their own game though.
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People in dire situations.. Stats for poverty are on the full fact site if you want to check. Any is too many, but according to the stats the numbers living in 'absolute poverty' have been on a general downward trend for a long time in the UK. At worst, by some measures the trend for absolute poverty in the UK has been flat for the last ten years, it hasn't increased as claimed by some. 'Relative poverty' has gone up in some age groups notably the young, but relative poverty seems to be a misleading stat.
That to me doesn't suggest a hugely corrupt system causing widespread deprivation, as depicted by those on the further left. It suggests an imperfect system, that works 'well-enough' so that most people aren't impacted by it enough to feel moved to elect a small, quiet, gentle grey-haired old man, apparently severely lacking in the sort of conventional leadership traits most of us are predisposed to (for good or bad) find inspiring, to entirely change the system. AKA if it ain't broke (enough) don't fix it.
Could a more socialist system along the nordic lines suggested above by teestub, work? Sure, with a charismatic-enough leader to showcase it and a group of inspiring people behind them to implement it. I'd be fine with that provided they didn't end up doing the leftist (and fascist) thing of persecuting anyone who disagreed with their ideology.
But Corbyn was an uninspiring individual leading an uninspiring political party, with an ideology that was a solution looking for a problem that a majority of people don't believe exists. Not enough at least to want to be bothered to let Corbyn and his band of ditherers do anything about it. You're almost insulting people's intelligence by suggesting they're wrong, but then again I can see why you might insult some people's intelligence..
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People in dire situations.. Stats for poverty are on the full fact site if you want to check. Any is too many, but according to the stats the numbers living in 'absolute poverty' have been on a general downward trend for a long time in the UK. At worst, by some measures the trend for absolute poverty in the UK has been flat for the last ten years, it hasn't increased as claimed by some. 'Relative poverty' has gone up in some age groups notably the young, but relative poverty seems to be a misleading stat.
That to me doesn't suggest a hugely corrupt system causing widespread deprivation, as depicted by those on the further left. It suggests an imperfect system, that works 'well-enough' so that most people aren't impacted by it enough to feel moved to elect a small, quiet, gentle grey-haired old man, apparently severely lacking in the sort of conventional leadership traits most of us are predisposed to (for good or bad) find inspiring, to entirely change the system. AKA if it ain't broke (enough) don't fix it.
Yes that's basically what I was saying. If things were really that bad, there'd be people blocking roads with burning tyres, rioting and willing to do almost anything to change their political system. See Hong Kong, the Middle East...
In reply to teestub & Brutus, surely all successful parties use a manifesto to get into office, and then wheel out their ideology once they've got a big majority. If Johnson had said that he was going to blow hundreds of billions on HS2 before the election, he'd probably have lost votes.
Teestub, yes that's basically what Labour should do, and fast.
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In reply to teestub & Brutus, surely all successful parties use a manifesto to get into office, and then wheel out their ideology once they've got a big majority. If Johnson had said that he was going to blow hundreds of billions on HS2 before the election, he'd probably have lost votes.
Teestub, yes that's basically what Labour should do, and fast.
Surely case and point for our democracy being completely dysfunctional, get elected do wtf you want without any accountability to the people that put you there. Standard response is ‘well the electorate can make their feelings known at the next election’ by electing another group of politicians that will do whatever they wish.
Entirely agree that poverty doesn’t affect enough voters to have an impact, requires compassion for others from those that are OK.
Pete.. Fullfact are shysters and chancers I personally wouldn’t trust any data coming from them.
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Bonkers.
Having regular opportunities to vote out politicians we don't like isn't democracy because.. (you don't like the outcome of people's choices and believe the people are wrong..?)
Your better alternative is.. (a left-wing dictatorship..?)
Fact-checking site is untrustworthy because.. (its conclusions sometimes conflict with your beliefs..?)
The world doesn't work as you wish it would. Doesn't mean its 'wrong'. Try China you might prefer it there.
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Yes that's basically what I was saying. If things were really that bad, there'd be people blocking roads with burning tyres, rioting and willing to do almost anything to change their political system. See Hong Kong, the Middle East...
I think that general dissatisfaction and anger is there among a lot of people (and will grow in the next 10-20yrs as the young continue to realise they no longer have the prospects of home ownership, decent wages and will be working long into their 80s).
But I also think it’s been masked by a) the worst affected generally being the disenfranchised who gave up on voting a long time ago, and b) Farage, Cummings et al in recent years successfully turning the country in on itself so instead of blaming the government people have just been squabbling among themselves. Classic divide and rule.
I do agree with Brutus that we’re trending to a broken democracy. The government is moving towards autocracy with its attempts to limit oversight by the media and judiciary. And social media has allowed outright lies and misinformation to be propagated by those with the money to pay for it.
It’s hard to have a functioning democracy when the masses are not presented with the truth.
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Yes that's basically what I was saying. If things were really that bad, there'd be people blocking roads with burning tyres, rioting and willing to do almost anything to change their political system. See Hong Kong, the Middle East...
I think that general dissatisfaction and anger is there among a lot of people (and will grow in the next 10-20yrs as the young continue to realise they no longer have the prospects of home ownership, decent wages and will be working long into their 80s).
But I also think it’s been masked by a) the worst affected generally being the disenfranchised who gave up on voting a long time ago, and b) Farage, Cummings et al in recent years successfully turning the country in on itself so instead of blaming the government people have just been squabbling among themselves. Classic divide and rule.
I do agree with Brutus that we’re trending to a broken democracy. The government is moving towards autocracy with its attempts to limit oversight by the media and judiciary. And social media has allowed outright lies and misinformation to be propagated by those with the money to pay for it.
It’s hard to have a functioning democracy when the masses are not presented with the truth.
A very reasonable post, and I wouldn't disagree. I think that Euroscepticism has been inserted as a proxy for dissatisfaction by a minority in Westminster and presented to a credulous nation as the answer to their ills.
This administration is showing signs of being profoundly undemocratic and I'm genuinely concerned about their growing restrictions on press freedom. However the point on broken democracy in how parties present themselves at elections I'd disagree with. In the last election, though I dislike them, the conservatives managed the media well, whereas Labour's media strategy was totally incoherent. The biased media argument doesn't really hold as even traditionally strongly left leaning publications couldn't support them. With people like Karie Murphy deciding that they should try to fight every seat in the country they had no chance. In any election you still need an organised strategy and intelligent allocation of available resources.
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Latest
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/feb/16/boris-johnson-bans-press-photographers-downing-street
I'm a social liberal and I agree with much of the basic thrust of what Brutus is saying. The mainstrem press has always been mostly biased against the left, so nothing new there. What is new are worrying signs that UK democracy is breaking up and getting worse fast. Many liberal obsessions, especially with how terrible Corbyn was, are a dangerous red herring when we are now under a popularist majority government very likely sleep-walking Britain into disaster. If the election went differently and Corbyn was running a minority government (he'd most likely have been forced to stand down) none of his socialist fantasy could ever have been enacted without centrist support from the other parties and even most of his own party. Despite a 6% majority of mostly well educated progressive voters in the UK, Boris was elected with this big majority and he now has a mandate to do what he wants. I really hope I'm wrong, but, if anything things are going downhill faster than even I expected. Many of the liberal minded are enjoying themselves seeing Cummings get defeated on HS2 but to me he is one of the last independant minded intelligent persons of power left in this government. On this point, Toby picked me up the use of "idiot", I maintain that Boris IS an "idiot leader" as his ego driven path is leading the country into trouble for the sake of maximising his power. The money is going down the toilet with the self harm of Brexit and the grandstanding on the HS2 white elephant. He is attacking press freedom on many fronts, mainstream public factual challenge of his huge lies is failing, he is leading us further away from old style cabinet concensus with a PM as a first among equals, and is damaging democracy, including attacking judicial limits. The signs for ecological and food standards outside the EU look much bleaker. I really, really hope I'm wrong and he turns out to be a Hesletine style leader in complete disguise (as he hinted at) but all indications are this one nation idea is just another big lie.
If people want some insight into those struggling in modern Britain, the BBC is showing a series at the moment on the future of Universal Credit.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episodes/m000f1xj/universal-credit-inside-the-welfare-state
A dehumanised policy hard to navigate even for healthy people of average intelligence in relatively stable situations (so pity those with complex lives, learning difficulties, disabilities, poor individual financial skills and addictions) and managed by an understaffed and undertrained workforce. The change programme is led by someone who comes across as as woefully inadequate for such a huge project. The aim is for more than 10% of our population to be on this if things go to plan.
I remember past UK riots... especially those in the mid 80s. If people think the young poor will behave themselves as they are screwed over by the state, they are deluded.
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Bonkers.
Having regular opportunities to vote out politicians we don't like isn't democracy because.. (you don't like the outcome of people's choices and believe the people are wrong..?)
Your better alternative is.. (a left-wing dictatorship..?)
Fact-checking site is untrustworthy because.. (its conclusions sometimes conflict with your beliefs..?)
The world doesn't work as you wish it would. Doesn't mean its 'wrong'. Try China you might prefer it there.
Bonkers?! Thanks.
You have misinterpreted. I wasn’t quibbling the idea of having elections. I was quibbling the fact that once politicians are elected they are largely unaccountable and do as they or their paymasters wish, part of the reason why many choose not to vote. Broken democracy.
Better system? Some ideas... End political donations, have people’s forums or members of public on select committees, end private sector funded lobbyists, anything to ensure that politicians remain accountable to the electorate once they have their seat.
This ‘fact checking site’ in particular, is untrustworthy because (like many or our politicians) of where it gets it’s money from.
I’m imagining saying to a group of children “This world is yours, it’s your future...’ ‘If it doesn’t work they way you wish it to work it doesn’t mean it’s wrong!’
As for the China comment, what you seem to be saying is as a citizen of this ‘democracy’ I can’t put forward different ideas or be critical of the status quo, if I don’t like it F off to China. Bonkers!
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Yeah come on Pete, Brutus needs to wait for the coronavirus to settle down at least.... :sick:
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You mean so-called coronavirus, which really is a US-sponsored black ops biological weapon? ::)
Brutus, why not just end private enterprise and have done with the source of all your perceived ills.
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This administration is showing signs of being profoundly undemocratic and I'm genuinely concerned about their growing restrictions on press freedom. However the point on broken democracy in how parties present themselves at elections I'd disagree with.
I see the two going hand in hand though. By controlling the media to an ever greater degree and therefore the narrative that is drip fed to the electorate for the next 4 years at least (a narrative based on plain untruths most of the time), weakening judicial oversight and generally avoiding any scrutiny it’s hard to imagine an effective opposition being mounted in coming elections in the face of that.
That’s not to say it’s impossible for Labour to win the next election (and I wholeheartedly agree that they had a strategy that was destined for failure regardless at this election) but by weighting the odds massively in favour of the incumbent administration by allowing them to control information to such a degree is to weaken democracy IMO and is in danger of breaking it.
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I think the social media angle is misleading.
There are numerous examples of very similar activities, delivering of misleading information through trite and deliberately selective snippets (memes, if you will) since both the dawn of the printing press and that of democracies (I’d argue, one begat the other; in fairly “literal” (sorry) sense).
Social media is just the latest delivery method. I’m not wholly convinced it is actually more pervasive or any more likely to “alter” an opinion, than a leaflet; both of which I’d characterise as “reinforcing” existing dispositions.
I don’t believe there has been a huge swing in numbers/voting splits amongst the population; post SM introduction, to indicate mass brain washing.
The middle ground swings. Ultimately the voters are split 50/50 Conservative to Progressive. (Pretty sure I’ve said that before and evidenced it). They always are. The key difference is that the progressive vote is split. It always is.
Statistically, mathematically, reducing the likelihood of a progressive government.
As history shows.
We’re all aware that Bojo’s “massive” majority is an artefact of the electoral system and not an accurate reflection of public sentiment. At least, anyone who can add up and has looked, must be aware.
So the brainwashing cabal, is a pretty thin and flimsy bogeyman.
Looking at the numbers.
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I think the key difference between social media and the print press of old or leaflets with misleading information is the degree to which the message can be micro-targeted for that particular individual.
With mass distribution of leaflets or newspaper articles the message is constrained by the fact that the same leaflet/article will be viewed many different demographics so they can’t be too offensive for fear of alienating one or other group. But with social media that’s not a concern. You could send contradictory messages directly to two members of the same family and get them both to vote for you.
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I think the key difference between social media and the print press of old or leaflets with misleading information is the degree to which the message can be micro-targeted for that particular individual.
This. The important issue isn’t how many voters you reach, it is which ones are influenced and current technology facilitates this with a previously unseen sophistication.
I’d concur with most of Offwidth’s points in his last post too.
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Meanwhile an alternative way of thinking is thus...
There is/ was effective opposition but that kind of opposition is not ‘allowed’ to exist by the powers that be. By capitulating with the mainstream narrative and working within the limited parameters of ‘allowed’ for discussion this will always be the case. Those that continue to regurgitate this line are effectively shooting themselves in the foot if they truly believe in a fairer society and truly believe that climate change must be combatted immediately.
The empty term ‘effective opposition’ in this view means compromised opposition, for to have the approval of the powers that be and thus be deemed ‘effective’ requires the removal of values that don’t support the vested interests of those with power.
The hardest thing for anyone to admit is that they are being ‘led’, that there own thinking could possibly be affected by the information thrown at them. Ironically, many of those that deny this possibility would also suggest that those that voted for Brexit were manipulated in this way.
The problem with this line of argument is essentially why have YOU seen through this to the reality beyond, whereas clearly I am still a misguided fool? In short, what makes you so damn special and insightful?
Why do I always feel such statements are not arguments intended to persuade me, but statements of faith designed to reassure the true believers? I mean, when one is reduced to saying things like:
Effective politicians gain power. Ineffective ones don’t.
Quite a statement, depends what effect you’re looking for. Things are much more complex than this and I am sure you’re well aware of that.
This is some gnostic/angels on the head of a pin stuff.
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I am the special one! 8)
Sean tbf your approach to me has been aggressive and dismissive from the off, that starting point is hard a place to gain any sort of understanding or hold any kind of sensible conversation from. I am as much a product of my own upbringing, my background, my education, my community, my peers, the information sources I use etc. as you or anyone else. My views aren’t an exception there are plenty of folk in the world that draw similar conclusions and share common ground with me. I choose to share my thoughts when you, previously, have effectively told me to shut up and go away because I refuse to be bullied into silence. I’m very willing to learn, to apologise when an apology is due, to discuss what I think openly and to accept criticism that is balanced and delivered with an element of care and empathy. Understanding that each and everyday we are all bombarded with information intended to affect our decision making is not the same as thinking that others are misguided fools. To be honest I don’t even know what is meant by ‘gnostic angels on pin heads’??
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I thought this was an interesting article.
BBC News - Do voters need therapy?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-51510106
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As a counterpoint try a John Naughton review of a new book on US online propaganda https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/feb/17/antisocial-how-online-extremists-broke-america-andrew-marantz-review.
In the end political argument becomes irrelevant if one side cheats as much as Trump and Boris have and the mainstrem media can do too little about it. The 'angry difference' is no longer a cognitive distortion about a one sided view of politics when it becomes serious concerns about bigger picture non-partisan issues like honesty, democracy and press freedom. In such a context the professor's discussion might even be another distracting liberal red herring.
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Effective politicians gain power. Ineffective ones don’t.
Quite a statement, depends what effect you’re looking for. Things are much more complex than this and I am sure you’re well aware of that.
This is a critical misunderstanding. All those things that you want, Brutus, can't come about without a Labour government. If Labour don't win elections (and they generally don't) it leaves us at the mercy of the Conservatives who are cruel and not afraid to mete out misery and punishment on those who are not like them. Most Conservative voters would not recognise these qualities in themselves, but that is what the people that they elect do.
Take a look at this literature that you get when you join the Labour party.
(https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/49543377413_36ea4e4a31_z.jpg)
Notice that all the amazing things that Labour have done have occurred when they are in power. Under Corbyn, Labour's achievements have been to increase membership of the party (this has made no difference whatsoever to the lives of the unfortunate people that you want to help), and losing the 2017 General Election by a smaller margin than they lost the previous General Election.
The exception to the rule that you need to be in government to effect change is if you can offer significant challenge to the incumbent government at the ballot box. This is what UKIP/BP did to the Conservatives. Labour under Corbyn have never offered any threat to the Tories.
No single person or group is ever going to get all of what they want unless they implement an autocracy. I'm afraid that if you want Labour to help people, you are going to have accept that they will need to compromise on the radical socialism in order to attract swing voters from the middle. If the membership of the party doesn't let them do that, they usher in continued Tory rule and all that goes with it.
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The power at any cost line argument can eventually end in absurdity. I'm currently watching my more progressive Democrat friends being lectured by moderates on social media about how they have to fall in line and vote for Michael Bloomberg if he's the nominee - "vote blue no matter who" as the saying goes. They have to do no such thing, especially if they are black or brown. Bloomberg is a republican with a record of deeply problematic policing as mayor of NYC. Saying that anything is better than Trump is based in a fatuous and complacent of reading of the situation, as if everything will go back to nice apple pie America if only we get rid of Trump. Fine if you're comfortably off and white and don't really have to think about or experience the deeply unequal and oppressive power structures that dominate American life. Get rid of only Trump, who is as much symptom as cause, and all of that is left in place.
The situation is not the same in Britain because of different systems of government and elections. Moreover, all of the current Labour Party leader candidates clearly belong somewhere in the Labour tent. But as I began by saying, taken to its extreme this line of argument can end up in being faced with having no choice but to vote for the marginally lesser of two evils. No wonder people resent being told they have to get in line.
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Indeed AP, I very much resent being told to get into line and am not alone amongst fellow LP activists.
1948. The creation of the NHS.. Clement Attlee was the prime minister to finally make it happen but it was the hard work and activism of socialists that laid the path which he followed to it’s conclusion. Attlee was smeared from all angles from within the Labour Party, of course by the Conservatives and consistently within the mainstream press. The timing may have been right but it was activism ‘on the ground’ that countered the negative publicity and brought the LP to power with a mandate that was portrayed as being very radical. The level of ‘infighting’, the smearing, the naysaying, the usual statements about socialists wanting to take your money etc. etc. was by all accounts next level. If he and his supporters had not stood firm there would be no NHS. Not a victory for the centrist movement at all.(Sound familiar?).
2016 membership surpassed half a million - Who was leading the party the largest political party in Western Europe? ( Watch what happens to membership if as is expected Starmer is elected leader.)
I agree that of course you can’t create change without having power but am arguing that the change we need will not be won through capitulation. Rather that the LP needs desperately to get savvy to counter the tirade and present it’s vision through propaganda to persuade the masses (an increasingly difficult mountain to climb in these times). Perhaps, as with Attlee we need the times to be right and maybe after 5 years of the nonsense we are about to endure they will be. I actually worry that in 5 years time a ‘centrist’ party in bed with the establishment won’t cut against the populism that exists.
WH As I have said above it is looking increasingly likely that you will have your wish and we will see how it plays out. I hope to goodness that you are able to say ‘I told you so’ to me but I am not holding my breath.
Radical socialism? Let’s have some specifics, which bits of our most recent manifesto do you think are radical?
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Indeed AP, I very much resent being told to get into line and am not alone amongst fellow LP activists.
I very much resent being told to get into line by Corbyn zealots - that seem to have taken over everything (or tried to) over the last 4 years.. I too am not alone amongst fellow LP members!
Its been three years of emporers new clothes - watching King Jezza prancing around naked and trying not to look too embarassed that I'm a member of the party he led. Good riddance - and I welcome change from the farce.
Sorry if this a bit raw for some - but his leadership has been an absolute fucking joke and a disaster for the party - and country.
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I hope I made clear that I do think the situations in the US and the UK are very different. I just wanted to point out the absurd position the Democrats might find themselves in. Corbyn, on the other hand, was obviously a very ineffective leader.
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I am baffled by this conviction that moving to the right would have gained Labour more votes.
There was a self-proclaimed 'centrist' party available and hardly anyone voted for them - sadly just enough to ensure a Tory victory.
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I am baffled by this conviction that moving to the right would have gained Labour more votes.
There was a self-proclaimed 'centrist' party available and hardly anyone voted for them - sadly just enough to ensure a Tory victory.
You think if Labour had made themselves appealing to the unnamed centrist party voters, they would have risked losing a load of votes on the left to the Socialist Party?
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No, although possibly to the greens, but something I heard a lot during the election campaign was "well things were no better when you lot were in power" so I suspect they might well have lost votes that way.
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I am baffled by this conviction that moving to the right would have gained Labour more votes.
There was a self-proclaimed 'centrist' party available and hardly anyone voted for them - sadly just enough to ensure a Tory victory.
They are always there.
The winning party is that which attracts enough to their side on the day.
Although, in actuality, should Labour win an election, what happens is that a percentage of Tories slip to the centrist party and a few on the left of that centrist party slip to Labour. The centrist % remains almost unchanged.
Labour cannot win without attracting some from the middle ground and, moreover, they cannot win unless the Tories lose to the centrist.
Do you imagine a significant number of Tories will up and vote Labour?
The fixed, are fixed. The swing voters, only swing so far.
The entire election process is determined by the centrists.
The fact that the LibDems were so weak this time, should have been good for Labour.
Labour were not able to persuade enough from the left of the LD’s, but the Tories kept enough on side. That’s all there was to it.
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The fact that the LibDems were so weak this time, should have been good for Labour.
Labour were not able to persuade enough from the left of the LD’s, but the Tories kept enough on side. That’s all there was to it.
Or the LDs were so weak because they had moved so far to the right as part of the coalition.
Or because there simply is no support anymore for the "centrist" politics that have brought both the environment and economy to the point of collapse - looking across Europe that would seem to be the case everywhere.
The pattern of voting you describe may well have gone away forever - looking at the UK results it looks rather as if the Tories have managed to persuade a small but significant number of Labour voters to switch sides in part of the country.
In other parts Labour has clearly managed to persuade Tories to switch the other way - they won in Putney FFS and probably would have taken Kensington if not for some dodgy websites pushing the LDs as the best "remain" option.
The party of the wealthy and privileged is losing in the wealthiest and most privileged areas in the country while winning elsewhere. Your L/R analysis is either outdated or oversimplistic.
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Radical socialism? Let’s have some specifics, which bits of our most recent manifesto do you think are radical?
Hi Brutus
I think this is a good question. Personally I thought that most of the recent manifesto was actually fine. I would have preferred less nationalisation and just generally less in there (similar to 2017 would be my preference) but overall I did not have a significant problem with the policies. Okay, I thought it very unlikely they could achieve everything and thought it was more of a wish list but in general that actual policies were not an issue for me. (disclaimer: I voted Labour but am not a Labour Party member).
I think it is perfectly possible not to have an issue with any of the actual policies and still think that Corbyn was a bad leader (in fact really terrible). I am not talking about how he was portrayed by the popular press: I am mainly thinking about how bad he was when being interviewed by the BBC on Radio4 and how crap he was in the debates against Johnson. Also I think about how he failed to stop anti-semitism being an issue and let this drag on for so long. The way the manifesto was presented was also an issue for me: despite being in favour of the majority of the policies it just can across as a desperate wish list - I can only imagine what it looked like to anyone less left leaning.
You may well disagree with this but I really think that there were abundant opportunities for him to perform well and bring people round and hold the conservative govt to account but at each turn he could not do it. The debates were a prime example of this where he really couldn’t cut through and skewer Johnson. I can only think what a field day Blair would have had in those debates...
Lastly I think it is also reasonable to accept that the job of a political leader is to win and be acceptable to the electorate. Corbyn simply came with too much baggage and too little political skill and stayed around too long. Possibly it would have been better if he had recognised his own weaknesses and moved aside for someone better suited once he had moved the party left (this is the one thing that I think has been good about his leadership).
Cheers
Dave
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The party of the wealthy and privileged is losing in the wealthiest and most privileged areas in the country while winning elsewhere. Your L/R analysis is either outdated or oversimplistic.
Looks like they still did pretty well in the Home Counties, Cotswolds etc. aren’t these the real areas of wealth and privilege, whereas the London boroughs have more mixed demographics and can therefore have more differing results?
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Fair point Davo. Given that the first time in our lifetime there was a politician that is willing to go against the grain and represent true socialist values as leader of LP, the enthusiasm for him is understandable. So do we shift to the right because the accepted view is the leader was no good?
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Fair point Davo. Given that the first time in our lifetime there was a politician that is willing to go against the grain and represent true socialist values as leader of LP, the enthusiasm for him is understandable. So do we shift to the right because the accepted view is the leader was no good?
Hi Brutus
Thanks for the message. No I would suggest that most of the policies are fine (possibly just go back to the 2017 manifesto or fairly close to that?) it is mostly about presentation and having a leader more suited to the actual job of being a leader of a large political party in the modern age. I personally think that with the right leader Labour would do very well.
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The party of the wealthy and privileged is losing in the wealthiest and most privileged areas in the country while winning elsewhere. Your L/R analysis is either outdated or oversimplistic.
Looks like they still did pretty well in the Home Counties, Cotswolds etc. aren’t these the real areas of wealth and privilege, whereas the London boroughs have more mixed demographics and can therefore have more differing results?
Very generally, I thought it was now taken that the more relevant trend is that metropolitan areas tend to have stuck with Labour, and the small towns and countryside have more or less stayed, or become Conservative.
I think that the whole left right thing is rather an outdated red herring since it fails to meaningfully distinguish between the more contentious political arguments now, rather than the ones of the last century. However you want to frame it, there are people broadly pro globalisation which tends to be allied with an enthusiasm for inclusivity and multiculturalism. There are others whose outlook focuses more on a sense of national identity and pride, and would say that they value community and hard work.
I'd argue that the story of the 2019 election was that people who were Labour voters in the 20th century aren't any more, as, for example, (generally) small town industrial areas in the Midlands and North aren't pro globalisation, or at least they're put off by strongly global policies, as it's often seen to harm communities.
The idea of the workers vs the landowners just doesn't really seem relevant any more. For a start data and ideas are worth more than land, and hardly anyone (on a national level) makes things like steel anymore. Our biggest manufacturing industry is cars, but it wont be in twenty of thirty years time.
In many ways its merely two different outlooks on how itd be best to try to improve the country, seeing the other side as some evil force just doesn't seem very helpful.
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The manifesto overreach in 2019, including its strung out delivery, must be considered in light of it being a futile attempt to keep the agenda off Brexit.
Labour's Brexit position was disastrous in terms of the way the media framed the election. Once Labour made the move towards remain, running it as a second referendum through FPTP (Two thirds of seats were Leave) was a masterstroke from the Tories and their media backers. It's what Theresa May wanted to do in 2017, but Labour's Brexit position then prevented the tactic from taking hold. I find it baffling that people believe Owen Smith, Yvette Cooper or Jess Phillips could have done better.
Labour were desperate not to have the election, but were bounced into it by the LDs and SNP. I suspect they knew they were fucked from the moment the election was called. I also think this would explain Corbyn's increased peevishness and general lack of enthusiasm compared to 2017 campaign.
Further to Toby's point about small towns. I would say that these areas, and therefore FPTP as a whole, are overly represented by propertied pensioners as younger working people tend to move to cities. So you essentially need a housing crash to change the government under our current system.
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No I would suggest that most of the policies are fine (possibly just go back to the 2017 manifesto or fairly close to that?) it is mostly about presentation and having a leader more suited to the actual job of being a leader of a large political party in the modern age. I personally think that with the right leader Labour would do very well.
Whether or not you think that the policies were fine depends on who you want to vote for you. With reference to my post above, if that's say Burnley or rural Derbyshire, they'll be put off by people talking about free movement, whereas students or metropolitan professionals in Sheffield or London will be all for it. I'm not saying that the people put off by free movement are xenophobic or anything close to it, but that there are things which they value more.
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Further to Toby's point about small towns. I would say that these areas, and therefore FPTP as a whole, are overly represented by propertied pensioners as younger working people tend to move to cities. So you essentially need a housing crash to change the government under our current system.
That's a good point. I wouldn't disagree, I can't see Labour winning the next two or three elections at the moment, barring the conservative government suffering an intrinsic or extrinsic cataclysm.
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Hi Toby
Not really sure I agree with that, I’m not actually convinced that policies are that important for the majority of the electorate. The difficulty that Labour had was mostly about presentation and Brexit. The tories has virtually no policies but just one clear and well presented message: “get Brexit done”.
I suspect that without Brexit and with a better leader Labour would have done fine with its manifesto.
Once Brexit is done and then next election comes round, as long as Labour have a better leader I think that many people who lent the conservatives their vote will swing back to Labour.
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Once Brexit is done and then next election comes round, as long as Labour have a better leader I think that many people who lent the conservatives their vote will swing back to Labour.
We'll have to agree to disagree about that, I think Labour's electoral problems run much, much deeper than that.
Given some of the moves made towards a distastefully illiberal form of governance by our current administration I wish that this were not the case.
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Credibility and the message.
People thought BJ (despite is numerous failings and bad qualities) was credible to 'get brexit done'
They didnt think JC was credible to do all the many many things that were promised in their manifesto.
The electorate are obviously happier with a bumbling Etonian mysoginistic racist than marxist terrorist supporting shouty man (taking the extreme perspectives of both descriptives)...
What a shit show that election really was - on all fronts.
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Once Brexit is done and then next election comes round, as long as Labour have a better leader I think that many people who lent the conservatives their vote will swing back to Labour.
We'll have to agree to disagree about that, I think Labour's electoral problems run much, much deeper than that.
Given some of the moves made towards a distastefully illiberal form of governance by our current administration I wish that this were not the case.
I don’t think Brexit will be ‘done’. It will be an unending process of negotiations- I doubt the implied sense of closure will be there for many.
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Hi Toby
I basically agree with TomTom. Credibility and message were what Labour down. What major difficulties do you see them facing?
In terms of Brexit being done. I agree that it will drag on for a long period but I don’t think it will cut through anymore or get much attention. The big thing was actually leaving, the rest is just negotiations and detail: I doubt anyone will be interested in that stuff, even though it obviously has huge consequences. In terms of elections and who to vote for I really think it won’t matter anymore and people will be back to voting on domestic issues.
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Hi Toby
Credibility and message were what Labour down. What major difficulties do you see them facing?
See my post above. Most Labour party members and MPs believe in things that their ex voters don't. Their priorities have become different, Labour are not just going to win back industrial towns. I think that Lisa Nandy realises this and is sort of trying to do something about it.
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Not really sure that is true. Most people in the industrial towns that voted for the conservatives pretty much did so for two reasons: Brexit and a dislike of Corbyn. Without those two issues I doubt many of those people will be voting Conservative again. Also most people still think the NHS is important, value public services etc and think that we need to fund these things better. These are things that Labour is strong on and should do well with.
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Also most people still think the NHS is important, value public services etc and think that we need to fund these things better. These are things that Labour is strong on and should do well with.
Except that the current government is driving a tank all over that lawn. Johnson knows that if he lies loudly and repeatedly about 40 hospitals and billions more buses, that people who are only half paying attention will forget it's a lie. I think that if Labour aren't very careful they could actually do even worse at the next election and be on their way to irrelevance. Ultimately we're both only guessing what might happen, and in many ways I'd rather share your optimism!
Labour's best hope is perhaps that the age which people go to being more likely to vote conservative from labour is now 51. Unfortunately as someone pointed out above population distribution means that this yields the conservatives more seats, and just leads to really high labour majorities in a few metropolitan areas.
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Sadly, I think you’re bang on with this Toby.
The only things I see that could bring Johnson down would be a gaffe of almighty proportions that even the greased piglet himself couldn’t talk his way out of (but given his Trumpian mastery of diversionary tactics up to now that seems unlikely).
Or alternatively, if the damage to the economy is so profound and catastrophic in the coming years that it’s undeniably a result of not only Brexit itself but also Johnson’s strategy in the post-Brexit trade negotiations. But given that a significant proportion of the media have thrown their weight behind supporting the Brexit project under Johnson I can’t see them being in a rush to pin the blame for any consequences on that and will instead, along with HMG, look to others to blame.
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Labour may need a new strategy other than the ‘wait for the government to fuck up again’ plan that’s been in operation for the last 4 years...
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I think they do need a new strategy, but personally I’m at a loss as to what that should be.
Similar to the situation with Trump across the water, in this post-truth age of politics it seems like Labour/the Democrats would need to engage in a race to the bottom of bigger and bigger lies and more bluster spouted from the mouth of a charlatan to be able to compete. Which is what depresses me most about the whole thing.
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The fact is, Labour were outflanked and missed their one chance to rescue themselves / limit damage.
The Brexit project was, and still is a carefully masterminded attempt to shift the electoral profile of the UK away from traditional party lines and more towards identity politics. The genius (if you will) of it was that its architects hit upon something that a) would resonate with Labour's base and draw them away, and that b) the leader of the opposition agreed with too
IMO the problem for Labour was, and still is, playing a 21st century game by 1980s rules. And in the same way that the Rush / Aldridge-era Liverpool team would be slaughtered by the current Sheffield United side, the result was inevitable.
My view is that Labour's one chance to prevent things happening came then the prospect of a "Remain Alliance" was on the cards, but through (I assume) a lack of genuine support for a full-throated Remain position amongst Corbyn et al, and the aforementioned stubborn adherence to party lines prevented this. We are now where we are.
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Hi Toby
Credibility and message were what Labour down. What major difficulties do you see them facing?
See my post above. Most Labour party members and MPs believe in things that their ex voters don't. Their priorities have become different, Labour are not just going to win back industrial towns. I think that Lisa Nandy realises this and is sort of trying to do something about it.
I agree with you on that but it's one hell of an oil tanker to turn. These older ex Labour voters are socially conservative and financially comfortable and won't change quickly, if at all. Hence I respect Lisa Nandy but I think the future of Labour has to be progressive and lies elsewhere, in pragmatic evidenced based social fairness that doesn't terrify social conservatives..
For all that Corbyn was a disaster he was around ten seats from a possiibility of forming a minority government in 2017 (Milliband was even closer two elections earlier) and history shows that huge swings are possible under FPTP: from Major to Blair. History also shows that Attlee faced as rabid fearmongering from the tory press as Corbyn did, yet he was elected and formed our modern state based on fairness. The proportion of votors with progressive views is currently a 6% majority (from the 2019 votes) and still increasing slowly, mainly as the new young voters are way better educated on average, than the old who die or become too decrepit to vote.
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Actually, Labour are a shoe-in for the next election.
At least as long as Priti Patel continues to campaign for them and increase their natural base...
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Hi Toby
Credibility and message were what Labour down. What major difficulties do you see them facing?
See my post above. Most Labour party members and MPs believe in things that their ex voters don't. Their priorities have become different, Labour are not just going to win back industrial towns. I think that Lisa Nandy realises this and is sort of trying to do something about it.
I agree with you on that but it's one hell of an oil tanker to turn. These older ex Labour voters are socially conservative and financially comfortable and won't change quickly, if at all. Hence I respect Lisa Nandy but I think the future of Labour has to be progressive and lies elsewhere, in pragmatic evidenced based social fairness that doesn't terrify social conservatives..
For all that Corbyn was a disaster he was around ten seats from a possiibility of forming a minority government in 2017 (Milliband was even closer two elections earlier) and history shows that huge swings are possible under FPTP: from Major to Blair. History also shows that Attlee faced as rabid fearmongering from the tory press as Corbyn did, yet he was elected and formed our modern state based on fairness. The proportion of votors with progressive views is currently a 6% majority (from the 2019 votes) and still increasing slowly, mainly as the new young voters are way better educated on average, than the old who die or become too decrepit to vote.
I think that your optimism is enviable, but too grounded in looking at the past. The people who switched from labour to conservative in 2019 aren't just going to fall back in line next time. As TTT said, Brexit, among other things has redefined politics not just here but in Europe and the USA. I think it's a really complicated mix of paranoia about migration, the financial crisis, various cultural issues and gender politics, how people feel about climate change and probably a lot more. Labour still seemed to believe last year that class was a determination of voting intention. The result showed how right that was.
A huge swing would be possible, but I really struggle to see how Labour are going to make themselves seem relevant again. I think that they need to redefine what the party stands for, and fast, or it'll expire.
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Actually, Labour are a shoe-in for the next election.
At least as long as Priti Patel continues to campaign for them and increase their natural base...
I don't know who is more unbelievably incompetent, Dominic Raab or Priti Patel.
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An interesting commentary on voting behaviour and immigration from Martin Kettle:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/feb/19/tory-points-based-immigration-low-skilled-workers-politics-economy?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Copy_to_clipboard
His thesis that the conservative party has ceased to be a conservative, business and economy party and has become a nationalist party I find convincing. It is somewhat depressing that left wing commentators seem to be largely consoling themselves with the fervent hope that the country is going to disappear down the toilet under this government. I can't say I'm immune to this feeling, but wishing disaster cannot be a good state of affairs.
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Priti Patel. let’s just not go there. It says something if Kay Burley can make her look stupid...
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Priti Patel. let’s just not go there. It says something if Kay Burley can make her look stupid...
I assume you’ve seen her recent “counter-terrorism offenders” interview.
Thick.As.Mince.
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Priti Patel. let’s just not go there. It says something if Kay Burley can make her look stupid...
I assume you’ve seen her recent “counter-terrorism offenders” interview.
Thick.As.Mince.
And let's not forget, a first class example that having to resign from cabinet in disgrace is no barrier to a swift and unscrutinised return. See also Liam Fox.
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Priti Patel. let’s just not go there. It says something if Kay Burley can make her look stupid...
I assume you’ve seen her recent “counter-terrorism offenders” interview.
Thick.As.Mince.
I'd certainly agree with criticism of the home secretary as incompetent, introducing unworkable or destructive policies, and a number of other things, but I feel that personalising criticism to things like 'thick' are a bit distasteful. Let's stick to talking about how politicians do their jobs rather than them personally.
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That’s why the word ‘look’ is there before the stupid,Toby.
(Hope I’ve got my commas correct!)
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That’s why the word ‘look’ is there before the stupid,Toby.
(Hope I’ve got my commas correct!)
I wasn't referring to your comment anyway, I would say that's a thoroughly reasonable assessment of her manner in interviews. If there was any justice she'd end up going after the recent bullying scandal
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And let's not forget, a first class example that having to resign from cabinet in disgrace is no barrier to a swift and unscrutinised return. See also Liam Fox.
And Gavin Williamson
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I'd certainly agree with criticism of the home secretary as incompetent, introducing unworkable or destructive policies, and a number of other things, but I feel that personalising criticism to things like 'thick' are a bit distasteful. Let's stick to talking about how politicians do their jobs rather than them personally.
Thick as mince is putting it politely! She is historically unworthy for such a position. I'm all for not personally slagging politicians (appearance, manner of speech etc) but cognitive function is fair game; she is manifestly not smart enough for the job. Consistently arguing for unworkable policies is evidence of that.
Old news but this video is a good example. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_DrsVhzbLzU
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What ever you might think of him in terms of like/dislike, Hislop is not someone to debate with;unless extremely (possibly to a superhuman degree) well prepared.
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Spidermonkey, I agree with your criticism of policy just not the label thick as mince. It's rather unlikely to be true, and it's not as if almost any member of the cabinet you care to mention doesn't have a ream of available incompetency with which to criticize them.
I can't remember the columnist who suggested it, but you have to wonder if Johnson didn't pick this lot to make sure no one made him look bad, because he's insecure about his own political performance.
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Fair points; I suppose its an interesting question at which point incompetence and stupidity become one and the same.
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I agree. In the context of the normal intellect and emotional intelligence associated with the role of Home Secretary (and PM) I do think Toby doest protest too much about the use of these adjectives.
Latest:
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/feb/21/priti-patel-storm-warning-civil-servant-david-normington-immigration
The US has led the way on this issue as they have had three fairly recent Presidents who deserve such labels. The first two were firont men for clever and devious ideological advisors and the latest seems totally out of control.
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Spidermonkey, I agree with your criticism of policy just not the label thick as mince. It's rather unlikely to be true, and it's not as if almost any member of the cabinet you care to mention doesn't have a ream of available incompetency with which to criticize them.
Toby, I agree with you regarding personal criticism based on looks, dress sense, mannerisms or other irrelevant attributes. But when people like Patel, who exudes a smug arrogance and belittles others (interviewers who ask tough questions, or now senior civil servants it seems) as a way to deflect from the fact that she’s so out of her depth in the role she’s in I think her low intelligence (relative to the position she holds) has relevance.
For what it’s worth, I think her opposite number in Labour is also on a similar intelligence level but at least she isn’t hostile, condescending and downright nasty when she’s floundering.
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I agree. In the context of the normal intellect and emotional intelligence associated with the role of Home Secretary (and PM) I do think Toby doest protest too much about the use of these adjectives.
Latest:
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/feb/21/priti-patel-storm-warning-civil-servant-david-normington-immigration
The US has led the way on this issue as they have had three fairly recent Presidents who deserve such labels. The first two were firont men for clever and devious ideological advisors and the latest seems totally out of control.
Or his chief advisor is called Vladimir.....
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If I might indulge myself just a little bit. For all of Patel's personal character faults, she does also look like her tears would turn into serpents when they hit the floor. She has a certain cold malevolence about her. I can only think that her views on capital punishment are borne of an earnest desire to sign some death warrants over her morning coffee. Perhaps they'd even let her come in on the weekends and pull the lever a few times? A girl's got to dream a little, no?
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What ever you might think of him in terms of like/dislike, Hislop is not someone to debate with;unless extremely (possibly to a superhuman degree) well prepared.
Like turning up to a gunfight armed with a knife.
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And let's not forget, a first class example that having to resign from cabinet in disgrace is no barrier to a swift and unscrutinised return. See also Liam Fox.
And Gavin Williamson
Ah yes, how could I forget him! Possibly because his turnaround from forced resignation to back-in-cabinet was so quick I didn't have enough time to get used to him being "disgraced".
All are publicly known to have been conducting themselves outside of government policy while serving in the cabinet, arguably in the service of foreign powers. Time was when this was an instant disqualification from public life. Now you only have to wait a few months and have the right mates. More grist to the argument that the press in this country is too right wing - imagine the pillorying Corbyn (or any Labour leader?) would get for rehabilitating these characters?
RE "Is Priti Patel thick-gate": A reminder of why she resigned - she went on a "private holiday" to Israel, where unually for a "holiday" she met various government figures up to and including the prime minister, and visited the occupied Golan Heights, whose occupation is not recognised by the UK. She failed to declare any of it thus breaking the ministerial code (might have been fine if she had, although the Golan thing wouldn't have been a good look). Unfortunately for her she did all of this in the most visible way possible including allowed herself to be photographed many times. Perhaps she thought it possible that once she'd left the UK she could pursue her own foreign policy, and literally no-one back home would notice? If so, then you can draw your own conclusion on her intelligence...
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You say all that about her intelligence, but despite going on questionable holidays etc., she has managed to position herself as the home secretary...
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You say all that about her intelligence, but despite going on questionable holidays etc., she has managed to position herself as the home secretary...
No she didn't, she was "positioned" there by Boris Johnson / Dominic Cummings. Their actual reasoning for that is for them to know. If you wish to believe that it was due to her pre-eminent intelligence then that's your prerogative. I suspect lots of other factors played a more decisive role.
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Well I don't know what her aims in life are, but I recon one of them was a top job in government. I'm not saying she is the brightest cookie out there, but she must be pretty good at manipulating things/people to get where/what she wants, which shows some kind of intelligence? I think people commonly say politicians are thick, as it is the easy answer for explaining actions we don't understand due to not having the full picture, and covering up that we expect MPs to be infallible.
Why she got the job is a good question, but one we are unlikely to find out.
Not sure why I'm defending her. My limited understanding of her policies and views are that they range from ill thought out, to abhorrent.
Fucking politics.
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Not sure why I'm defending her. My limited understanding of her Dominic Cummings' policies and views are that they range from ill thought out, to abhorrent.
And mostly on the abhorrent side.
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Fucking politics.
Agreed!
Perhaps you are right that she has shown some nous to get where she is. Obviously there is the more cynical take that she is well known for espousing some pretty retrograde views which endear her to the right (detention centres, death penalty), while simultaneously providing some natural cover for nasty home office policies by virtue of her being the daughter of immigrants herself. Ticking two cabinet diversity boxes at once, and of course her Brexit position, may well have figured too. Like you say, who is to know?
Now I come to think of it, maybe my original point - she shouldn't be allowed in the cabinet in my opinion - is another factor? The fact she has been forced to resign in recent memory might make her more malleable / less of a threat to emperor Johnson (feel free to change for Cummings here too SA Chris!)...
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Whatever her faults, level of intelligence or heaven forbid redeeming qualities are, they are unlikely to be fairly described by people ideologically opposed to her politics posting on ukb. Why are you even bothering? This politics thread puzzles me - it's like an online version of listening to dour, world-weary and bitter old men who've been beaten by life, grumbling amongst themselves about how shit they think the world is :lol:
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Welcome Pete 🤗 😃
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Whatever her faults, level of intelligence or heaven forbid redeeming qualities are, they are unlikely to be fairly described by people ideologically opposed to her politics posting on ukb. Why are you even bothering? This politics thread puzzles me - it's like an online version of listening to dour, world-weary and bitter old men who've been beaten by life, grumbling amongst themselves about how shit they think the world is :lol:
So are you only allowed to criticize people you agree with? Perhaps football commentators should only cover their own team? As you clearly aren't that interested in people talking about politics, why indeed comment?
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Whatever her faults, level of intelligence or heaven forbid redeeming qualities are, they are unlikely to be fairly described by people ideologically opposed to her politics posting on ukb. Why are you even bothering? This politics thread puzzles me - it's like an online version of listening to dour, world-weary and bitter old men who've been beaten by life, grumbling amongst themselves about how shit they think the world is :lol:
Or, translated, “don’t talk about politics or views I don’t agree with, because then I’ll just say you’re moaning, or try to belittle you by mocking your views, especially if you express outrage or any real moral conviction”?
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_DrsVhzbLzU
Shocking to think that there's a Home Secretary who does not understand what the term "beyond all reasonable doubt" means and that it is presently in use. She had absolutely no response to Hislop's point.
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Pretty strong on counter-terrorism though :devangel:
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Pretty strong on counter-terrorism though :devangel:
I thought she was for Counter-counter-terrorism?
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This politics thread puzzles me - it's like an online version of listening to dour, world-weary and bitter old men who've been beaten by life, grumbling amongst themselves about how shit they think the world is :lol:
I think Pete has a point! 😂
(And that’s certainly including myself!)
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I'm not normally a fan of links to the guardian, but this is too topical to resist:
Perma-smirking Priti Patel brings the hostile environment in-house
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/feb/21/priti-patel-hostile-environment?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Copy_to_clipboard (https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/feb/21/priti-patel-hostile-environment?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Copy_to_clipboard)
It's almost like the author reads ukb, its all in there - intelligence jibes, weird "holidays", the lot...
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Whatever her faults, level of intelligence or heaven forbid redeeming qualities are, they are unlikely to be fairly described by people ideologically opposed to her politics posting on ukb. Why are you even bothering? This politics thread puzzles me - it's like an online version of listening to dour, world-weary and bitter old men who've been beaten by life, grumbling amongst themselves about how shit they think the world is :lol:
Things don't get better by the voting population burying their head in the sand. My entire working and political life has involved fighting predudice and stupidity to get where I did and then to support others in that.
Maybe you can give some examples of where popularist leaders appointing thick and occasionally criminal megaphones like Patel to major ministerial positions, pandering to the worst in small c conservative prejudice and paranoia (whilst keeping away any threat of leadership challenge) ended well. Her points based policies are plain dumb even from a conservative perspective .... wait until those tory voters in the SE can't get workers to look after their relatives in care homes. All our farming that needs pickers is stuffed, many hotels and restaurants, cleaning companies.... the list goes on and on.
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Whatever her faults, level of intelligence or heaven forbid redeeming qualities are, they are unlikely to be fairly described by people ideologically opposed to her politics posting on ukb. Why are you even bothering? This politics thread puzzles me - it's like an online version of listening to dour, world-weary and bitter old men who've been beaten by life, grumbling amongst themselves about how shit they think the world is :lol:
Things don't get better by the voting population burying their head in the sand. My entire working and political life has involved fighting predudice and stupidity to get where I did and then to support others in that.
Maybe you can give some examples of where popularist leaders appointing thick and occasionally criminal megaphones like Patel to major ministerial positions, pandering to the worst in small c conservative prejudice and paranoia (whilst keeping away any threat of leadership challenge) ended well. Her points based policies are plain dumb even from a conservative perspective .... wait until those tory voters in the SE can't get workers to look after their relatives in care homes. All our farming that needs pickers is stuffed, many hotels and restaurants, cleaning companies.... the list goes on and on.
I'm not here to give you examples of anything - I didn't offer any view on Patel or my perception of her competence. I said this thread is like the online version of listening to dour, world-weary and bitter old men who've been beaten by life, grumbling amongst themselves about how shit they think the world is. This thread could be re-titled from 'politics 2020' to 'middle-aged left-wing men despairing at the state of the world 2020'. Fair enough, I should just ignore the thread and I mostly do, but every now and then I just wonder what you gain from bouncing pessimism and despair back and forth between the same regular 4 or 5 people. I wonder the same about some of my facebook 'friends' - you know the ones who regularly share, unsolicited, their despairing views of the state of the world.
In response to your 'things don't get better.. etc. etc.' and 'wait until those tory voters.. etc. etc.'
I get the impression you've probably been repeating these mantras to yourself and others since before you got your first personal computer. It gets boring quickly. If, as according to you 'things don't get better by the voting population burying their heads in the sand', then from your perspective they can't have been getting better for a very long time. More head-pulling-out-of-sand posts required I'm assuming is your answer?
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Honestly though Pete, I think you’re quite nihilistic sometimes.
It still makes me smile that you think everyone commenting is “Left wing” (especially me) as if not supporting the latest bunch of tossers to take office is somehow silly or to be despised.
I honestly don’t think you realise how far to the right you seem to be.
(The current government are pretty damn extreme by UK norms. Simply put, the Tories are our “normal” ruling party. However, rarely have they been as socially reactionary as they have been over the last decade. They appear to be moving further that way too).
Being socially liberal, doesn’t make you “Left wing”, it just means you’re not some right wing zealot or religious nutter.
Pretending that all is right with the world, simply because government policy hasn’t yet impacted you (Anybody) too negatively In your particular socioeconomic/ethnic grouping; doesn’t mean you should stay quiet when see it occurring elsewhere.
And, ultimately, many a revolution began in after dinner, middle class, conversation.
Who knows what might or might not spark change?
The difference is, I will happily tell people I think they are wrong, I would never tell them they shouldn’t have or express an opinion; which is what you do.
As you keep saying, you don’t come to offer counter argument, you only slip in to mock.
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I'm not here to give you examples of anything - I didn't offer any view on Patel or my perception of her competence. I said this thread is like the online version of listening to dour, world-weary and bitter old men who've been beaten by life, grumbling amongst themselves about how shit they think the world is. This thread could be re-titled from 'politics 2020' to 'middle-aged left-wing men despairing at the state of the world 2020'. Fair enough, I should just ignore the thread and I mostly do, but every now and then I just wonder what you gain from bouncing pessimism and despair back and forth between the same regular 4 or 5 people. I wonder the same about some of my facebook 'friends' - you know the ones who regularly share, unsolicited, their despairing views of the state of the world.
OMM pretty much summed up my thoughts on your contribution. You’re like a climate change denier clicking on a thread titled ‘Environment 2020’ and then posting “Jesus, why is everyone so glum on here”.
If you have something worthwhile to contribute or feel like defending this government or the general direction of travel of politics either in the UK or around the world and see it as a force for good then do it. I for one don’t want this just to be an echo chamber and value hearing counter arguments. But you don’t come across well just making snide comments from the sidelines.
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Fair enough Mat and Ali, except I'd never think or tell anyone that they shouldn't express their views - that's what we're doing here right. I'm sincerely all for free expression - including telling someone I think they're wasting their breath.
I just think it's a pointless exercise in pissing in the wind to post your politics in an echo chamber online which is exactly what this thread is - there aren't the numbers of people with opposing political views to make it anything but an echo chamber.. a few people poke their heads above the parapet every once in a while and they quickly realise it's futile to bother posting views counter to the vocal majority on these sorts of threads.
That's social media all over really: online debate doesn't work well for politics or other emotive topics where people have ideological views, because people generally go into silos where they feel safe.
I haven't commented specifically on you being left wing Mat to my knowledge? However this site and this thread I think reflects a left-wing bias. I don't even use left-wing as a pejorative label as you seem to be assuming I am either - according to every 'political compass' type thing I've ever done I'm actually mid left on an economic scale and extremely libertarian on the social scale; don't let brexit fool you into thinking I'm a natural toryboy!
Speaking of which, it should be round about now that all those people who so stridently proclaimed we'd enter an economic recession upon leaving the EU are proven correct no? Slackline et al. I'm wondering if he or anyone else will have the humility to ever admit they were wrong. Time yet of course, and a broken clock is right twice a day.
Carry on in your online political silo.
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If you actually read the thread, Pete, you'll see that there has been disagreement on this thread - in particular about the direction of the Labour party. These views may be "left" but they're different within that label.
There are occasions in the forum where debate can happen. A recent example being "why is privatisation/nationalisation necessarily good/bad". I value your input but your last few posts have just been "what's the point of discussing anything".
On your point about recession, I believe the point was that Remainers argued that the economy would be weakened. We can't know for sure what the economy would be like now, but the government's own calculations estimate 3% knocked off? What's that if not a downside?
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No, there was definitely a pretty widespread and clearly stated belief on here (and just about every social media echo-chamber) in the dire economic forecasts of a recession if we left the EU.
This claim was used over and over, in the lead-up and aftermath of the referendum, as a hammer to hit leave voters with. When a recession continually failed to materialise in the 2 years following June 2016 the line was 'we haven't left yet, just wait'. Like I said plenty of time for one yet, but it was supposed to be on leaving the EU. I'll wait to see, if we don't enter recession in 2020, if any one of those forecasters revisits their 2016 forecasts and has the humility to admit they were wrong.
Same for some of the posters on the ukb brexit thread, I'm <only slightly> interested to see if any of you have the flexibility and humility to admit you might have been wrong to put your trust, in the run up to and aftermath of a pivotal point in UK history, in ideologically-motivated forecasters who were forecasting a recession which ever so conveniently lined up with their ideological beliefs. I predict many here will have switched to a different rationale for not wanting to leave which is understandable if sincere, or convenient if not.
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As far as I understand things, recession was/is deemed to be a consequence of different trading conditions as a result of the status quo of agreements with the EU being overturned.
When that happens, I’ll judge its consequences. Until then, I can’t see any sense in claiming its outcome either proven or disproven. :shrug:
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That’s a ludicrous point. A few fireworks and a sing song is not us leaving the EU. We have not changed anything economically yet.
I am not making comment on what effect it will have but we won’t know until after the trade deals are done.
I feel you know that and are trolling for some reason.
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Funny.. that's what you were saying in 2016.
So GME now you're waiting for post-2021? And you're taking about ludicrous points... How often do you reckon recessions come along on average? It'd be more improbable if there wasn't a recession at some point in the 5 years post 2021!
(https://www.cityam.com/assets/uploads/content/2015/05/recession-5555b861558a1.png)
edit: grammar
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Funny.. that's what you were saying in 2016.
So GME now you're waiting for post-2021? And you're taking about ludicrous points... How long do you reckon recessions come along on average? It'd be more improbable if there wasn't a recession at some point in the 5 years post 2021!
(https://www.cityam.com/assets/uploads/content/2015/05/recession-5555b861558a1.png)
I’m sorry, are you claiming that everything is just peachy or are you just being pedantic by trying to imply that no negative consequences have/will occurred/occur because (as yet) the worst case predictions have not materialised?
You know, the ones that were predicated on a “no deal” departure, that hasn’t happened (yet) and were based on that departure happening many months ago (when far less preparation had been made) and yet persist as very credible “worst case” scenarios for a similarly disorganised departure a little less than a year from now (mitigated by the transition period (that was not a certainty and has yet to actually prove it’s worth)?
Predictions that ranged from dire recessions through marked economic decline, to gradual degradation of living standards and a failure of growth?
Many of the lesser, apparently occurring already?
Lesser, of course, not meaning unimportant, just less dire (after all, having your eye poked out by flying debris during a minor road accident, whilst better than burning alive after ploughing into a petrol tanker; is still pretty friggin unpleasant and disabling.
Stretching that analogy, you might learn to cope without that eye, you might even return to a productive lifestyle; however, you were still better off when you had both eyes and you lost ground whilst you recovered).
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I think Matt that anyone reading what I wrote can see quite clearly I haven't said 'things are quite peachy'. They can also read that I said that many people predicted dire economic consequences - a recession no less - in the event of choosing to leave and that hasn't yet happened. On the contrary, various things have occurred that run counter to the narrative predicted by many of dire economic consequences Make of that what you will.
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I think Matt that anyone reading what I wrote can see quite clearly I haven't said 'things are quite peachy'. They can also read that I said that many people predicted dire economic consequences - a recession no less - in the event of choosing to leave and that hasn't yet happened. On the contrary, various things have occurred that run counter to the narrative predicted by many of dire economic consequences Make of that what you will.
Back to my analogy there Pete.
I watched an Ice berg bump up against the dock at Narsarsuaq once.
The dock had been well built, for just such an occurrence, anyway, the draft at the dock and for several tens of meters into the fjord, was only about 5 meters (too shallow for a really big berg to threaten the dock).
This berg, though, was made up of several thousand smaller bergs, that had been pushed up against the far cliffs of the fjord for several months, in almost constant shadow, by an unusually long period of consistently easterly winds.
The wind shifted.
At first, it seemed clear that the dock was robust enough. All the small vessels inside that used it as a harbour wall, were left in place. Our vessel, too big to shelter inside, had slipped and we had, easily, sailed around the berg to anchor clear and watch the show (dodging bergs and flows was a normal day, relaxation was rare, except in Nuuk or Qaaqortoq, which were good harbours). Sat like that for a few days.
The crack, deafening, abrupt, shocking, when it came, signalled the first failure of the concrete and steel edifice.
It wasn’t a huge bit, 5%, maybe? Pushed up a couple of tens of centimetres. Maybe 3m³ ish.
But it was just the first.
By the next day, it was four or five places.
And so on, for two or three more days.
Dock was a right bloody mess by the time the flow retreated.
It was late August. By September the weather was closing in and winter was bearing down on those latitudes, long before repairs could be made.
We couldn’t return to the dock. No chance any significant ship could.
Narsarsuaq Is the principle airport for the entire country of Greenland. You can only reach it by sea, domestically. It was a year before that dock could be used again.
Amazing really. It was bright sunshine the day the berg first kissed the dock. Winds were light. Didn’t look that alarming to us. We carried on taking a tender to shore and heading to the airport to get pissed in the bar. The locals were concerned. This was something new. But...
Resilience.
Thats the thing.
Weaken a thing, you reduce it’s resilience to shocks and pressures.
They don’t always come in crashing waves, some times they come in groups of small shoves and bumps. Sometimes, it takes time for the cracks to show.
So, no, I don’t feel much like applauding your sage shrugging of possible consequence. Ask me again in a decade.
Ask me again this time next year.
Ask me again when we know the shape all this will finally take.
But, for fucks sake, the main assertion that Remainers made, is that you should never have had to ask in the first place and that every answer, will be “things are worse than they should have been”.
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You're not expecting anyone to read that are you? I didn't. I've no doubt you've good intentions but I'm not interested in reading novellas about icebergs.
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You're not expecting anyone to read that are you? I didn't. I've no doubt you've good intentions but I'm not interested in reading novellas about icebergs.
And there in lies your problem.
Short version: wrong question Pete. Back around.
Of course, being a leave supporter you’re not much for detail or anything longer than a sound bite...
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When a recession continually failed to materialise in the 2 years following June 2016 the line was 'we haven't left yet, just wait'. Like I said plenty of time for one yet, but it was supposed to be on leaving the EU. I'll wait to see, if we don't enter recession in 2020, if any one of those forecasters revisits their 2016 forecasts and has the humility to admit they were wrong.
By your simplistic argument, and as you seem to want immediate consequences on leaving the EU despite no material changes in trade or immigration conditions yet, I could ask why hasn’t the NHS started getting its promised £350million/wk extra yet?
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When a recession continually failed to materialise in the 2 years following June 2016 the line was 'we haven't left yet, just wait'. Like I said plenty of time for one yet, but it was supposed to be on leaving the EU. I'll wait to see, if we don't enter recession in 2020, if any one of those forecasters revisits their 2016 forecasts and has the humility to admit they were wrong.
By your simplistic argument, and as you seem to want immediate consequences on leaving the EU despite no material changes in trade or immigration conditions yet, I could ask why hasn’t the NHS started getting its promised £350million/wk extra yet?
Yes, however, the question is more disingenuous than that. An actual reduction in the economy is just the “worst case” and Pete is correct, in that such an event is both likely at moderately rhythmic intervals and probable with the next five to ten years, regardless of the Brexit situation.
That’s, ultimately, the gist of the iceberg analogy. Regardless of whether Brexit directly precipitates a recession (a far from dodged bullet, yet) it has most assuredly weakened our economy and reduced it’s resilience to external shock.
Pete, is the first to criticise a sweeping statement , or extreme prediction, yet fails to see his dismissal of any prediction of dire consequences; as an equal and opposite sweeping statement and extreme prediction.
To the “weakening” assertion, I’ll cite a fact check of a “Remainer” claim. Estimates, of course, being estimates, but the inference is reasonable.
https://fullfact.org/europe/online-cost-brexit-net-contributions/ (https://fullfact.org/europe/online-cost-brexit-net-contributions/)
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Tangible negative effects of the Brexit process so far: the significant depreciation of sterling value against particularly the euro since the vote; the departure of large numbers of care workers from agencies and homes as they're sick of being abused and told to go back to where they came from, and because sterling is increasingly not worth earning to send abroad. The gradual rise in companies moving premises to European countries or farther afield (HSBC as one example) to guard against the potential for regulatory barriers.
Pete, you are coming across like an angry Twitter troll. I struggle to see why; if you have a point of view why not put it?
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Pete, is the first to criticise a sweeping statement , or extreme prediction, yet fails to see his dismissal of any prediction of dire consequences; as an equal and opposite sweeping statement and extreme prediction.
Quickly, as I'm heading out: your characterisation would be true if that's what I said, ever. (Or even if that's what I thought but never expressed, although not sure how you'd know my mind in that case).
I haven't.
Show me where I've dismissed *any* prediction of negative economic impact of brexit. I haven't, and you're wrong. I've always expressed that I believe brexit will have negative effects on the economy. Just not as negative as the ideologically-influenced rhetorical devices economic forecasts which the majority of economists pre and post-referendum were making.
Ali: in line with above, show me (tip - you won't find any evidence anywhere) where I've ever said or implied that I believe in the *£350m NHS figure. I don't, and I didn't on the day it was released. If you'd like me to articulate my reasons for voting to leave the EU I will happily.
Toby: I typed a long post in reply but it boils down to: homogeneous silos aren't very creative places.
* (There *is* a figure, but that's not as interesting as a big accounting-sheet lie on the side of a campaign bus. In fact I'd place the big accounting-sheet lie of the £350m NHS figure, in a roughly similar bracket as the big economic-forecast lie of imminent recession upon brexit that was written on the side of the metaphorical 'economic expert's campaign bus' ).
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I've always expressed I believe brexit will have negative effects on the economy. Just not as negative as the ideologically-influenced rhetorical devices economic forecasts which the majority of economists pre and post-referendum were making.
I think Pete is being a little disingenuous here. I clearly remembering him getting quite excited about a report on Brexit which predicted no future serious hit on the economy, until it was pointed out to him that, modelling issues aside, the report got its results by making assumptions that included running the NHS into the ground.
As for the second part of the quote above, below is an article from the FT's chief economics writer, dated March 2019, reviewing the Brexit predictions and the outcomes.
(If you've got FT access it's here: https://www.ft.com/content/3a6c470e-048c-11ea-9afa-d9e2401fa7ca)
tl;dr - mostly pretty accurate.
And yes, the pre-referendum forecasts of an immediate recession were wrong. Many models assumed voters would spend less in the expectation that they would soon be poorer. A good proportion simply don't believe that, so spending didn't tank. Those short term forecasts were always very contingent upon unpredictable political events, so hard to get right, however let's remember that we've had a quarter of negative growth and have bumped along close to zero growth for some time. That's not great, and it is a direct result of Brexit.
I saw quite a few people - many of them anti-Brexit - saying that of course Brexit would be bad in the short term but who could say what would happen in the long term. I think that got it almost completely wrong: there is inevitable long term pain, very well expressed in the piece below when it talks of lost opportunities. There's no way one can make the very small advantages of leaving the EU make up for the losses, and the only way that's been done is to ignore everything we know about the way the world actually works.
Which is what the pro-Brexit forecasters did and which most Brexit supporters are totally fine about. Ignoring any evidence when making policy is a recipe for disaster, and mainstreaming the stupidity which has always been there in some corners of public life is really damaging.
Still, sovereignty eh.
Politics is failing on Brexit but economics has been on the money
For those in despair with Britain’s political class, I bring good news. Its top economists, those without a political axe to grind, made excellent Brexit forecasts both before and shortly after the June 2016 referendum. Politics might be in meltdown, but economics (this time) has been on the money.
A few days before the vote, three of the UK’s most reputable economic institutions — the National Institute of Economic and Social Research, the Institute for Fiscal Studies and the Centre for Economic Performance at the London School of Economics wrote a short joint statement under the heading: “Leaving the EU would almost certainly damage our economic prospects”.
In it, they predicted the economy would be between 1 per cent and 3 per cent smaller by 2020 than if the UK stayed in the bloc. Further hits would come thereafter, they said, with the severity depending on the type of Brexit chosen. The pound would fall, real wages would be lower, public borrowing would therefore be higher and unemployment would rise.
Apart from predicting an unemployment rise — its absence is part of a longer UK puzzle of disappointing productivity growth amid strong employment gains — the outlook was remarkably accurate. The economy is now 1.5 per cent smaller than the Bank of England forecast in May 2016 while the world economy has been stronger than expected. Compared with similar advanced economies, studies estimate the UK Brexit hit to be 2.3 per cent.
After the referendum, mainstream forecasters were even more accurate. The Office for Budget Responsibility got the size of the economy at the end of 2018 almost spot on. Its error was within 0.1 per cent. In contrast, the pro-Brexit lobby group, Economists for Free Trade, was far too optimistic and George Osborne’s Treasury short-term shock scenario was much too pessimistic. They made opposite errors some 25 times larger than the OBR.
Brexit is a deliberate decision to miss out on economic progress. It is a slow drip of lost opportunities, activity moved elsewhere and income disappointments
The lesson is simple: listen to economists, but not to those peddling a political line. With such a good record over the first two-and-a-half years of the Brexit saga, it is not surprising the mainstream is still singing a similar tune about the long-term Brexit effects as they were three years ago. It will hurt, they say, potentially quite a lot.
We need to think clearly about the nature of the pain. Rather than making us poorer than in the past, Brexit is a deliberate decision to miss out on economic progress. It is not empty shelves and huge job losses, but a slow drip of lost opportunities, activity moved elsewhere and income disappointments. The correct analogy is Britain’s slow, 30-year, relative decline from victor in the second world war to the sick man of Europe, not the immediate pain of a recession or a financial crisis.
A no-deal Brexit could impose an additional short, sharp, shock, and its severity would be entirely in the gift of Brussels. With the ability to control transport and financial services, the EU27 will be able to choose how tight to turn the screw. In any negotiated and smooth Brexit, NIESR concluded in a recent study that “the losses . . . are larger the more distant the relationship with the EU that is established”. No deal is the worst outcome; staying in the EU is best. Putting magnitudes on these general predictions, NIESR estimates the UK would miss out on a further 2.8 per cent of national income with a close relationship, rising to 5.5 per cent in a reasonably orderly no-deal scenario. These are noticeable losses.
Good economics cannot tell us the right decision for Britain in these febrile times. But it has demonstrated that the vote to leave was bad for living standards. It predicts more of the same once Brexit happens. No one need follow the advice of economists, but we do need to face facts. Michael Gove was wrong, the experts were right and we should never get tired of listening to them.
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Which all sounds very intelligent Sean. Until you reflect that beyond a certain point in time it will become impossible to differentiate the economic effect of brexit from the background noise of the world turning as it does, opportunities or not opportunities branching off at every moment into an unknowable future. Your forecasters struggle beyond 3 years. And my point is that, like the big misleading fact of the £350m beinf used by leavers for justification, the misleading fact of a recession was front and centre in economic reasons for staying. I'm interested in neither because they were clearly rhetorical rubbish.
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Which all sounds very intelligent Sean. Until you reflect that beyond a certain point in time it will become impossible to differentiate the economic effect of brexit from the background noise of the world turning as it does, opportunities or not opportunities branching off at every moment into an unknowable future. Your forecasters struggle beyond 3 years. And my point is that, like the big misleading fact of the £350m beinf used by leavers for justification, the misleading fact of a recession was front and centre in economic reasons for staying. I'm interested in neither because they were clearly rhetorical rubbish.
Translated: This disagrees with my deeply held conviction, therefore I can dismiss it and substitute my instinct for the best derived predictions of people who study this every day, for whole careers.
When you do this, Pete, I jist hear the typical conversation I’m still have with all my kids.
Me: FFS, get down off that bloody wall, can’t you see how far you’re going to fall if you slip?
Kid: I’m not going to slip.
Me: I said get down.
Kid gets down.
Me: Can you really not see that you might have fallen?
What that might have meant?
Kid: Yeah, but I didn’t.
Me: *grits teeth*
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Which all sounds very intelligent Sean. Until you reflect that beyond a certain point in time it will become impossible to differentiate the economic effect of brexit from the background noise of the world turning as it does, opportunities or not opportunities branching off at every moment into an unknowable future. Your forecasters struggle beyond 3 years. And my point is that, like the big misleading fact of the £350m beinf used by leavers for justification, the misleading fact of a recession was front and centre in economic reasons for staying. I'm interested in neither because they were clearly rhetorical rubbish.
The problem for this line of argument is that it ignores the fact that lots of macroeconomic variables have pretty well defined trend rates that are surprisingly persistent. But not completely persistent: it appears, for example, that there's a possibility that the growth rate trend was pushed downwards after the crash. This is not entirely certain (there are a bunch of technical issues even around measuring trend rates) but there are really good reasons to think that Brexit is another event that will push us off one fairly clearly defined trend and onto another, lower growth trend, that will be a pretty persistent path for the UK economy regardless of what else happens. This isn't a matter of forecasting, but rather looking back over the data we already have and trying to work out what happened.
The suggestion that the UK would take a short-term economic hit was not rhetorical rubbish, but a well worked out attempt at making a guess at the unknowable future. On some bits it was wrong, but on lots the forecasts were pretty accurate. But let's ignore the accuracy and look at it from an epistemological point of view: do we think the recession forecasts and the £350m Brexit bonus for the NHS are the same type of claim, the same type of knowledge?
You clearly do, and so do many Brexiters. This is one of the biggest dangers of Brexit, because you are dead, dead wrong.
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No, one is the twisting of a figure (UK EU contributions, net of concessions) to make it sound like we could have £350m more to spend, when we couldn’t. The other is what I’d classify as using an appeal to authority to attempt to persuade people to focus on the various different *possible* negative consequence of a decision. Note I’ve never denied the potential for negative consequences, just their severity and lasting effect.
One is a form of lie. The other is a form of persuasion. Both are rhetorical devices.
As for the future I still think beyond a certain time point you or I have very little evidence for either your or mine beliefs.
You aren’t adding much of value to this discussion OMM, you just don’t like having it pointed out that you were wrong.
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My concerns with this government are much bigger than my concerns with brexit. The most important factor for me is that the typical erosion of democracy and freedoms (that occurs with monotonous regularity in popularist governments) has already started, as we have policy based partly on blatant lies and to help with this a denigration of critical experts and strict managing (even manipulating in the case of the BBC) of the press and attacks on the judiciary; also diluting traditional checks and balances in power in our cabinet based government, aided by the promotion of incompetant loadspeakers like Patel to major ministerial roles. It's like a virus has infected the UK's best minds and that even the too few who are aware lack the antibodies to resist. Truth simply used to be more important before Boris. It's also why I'm so annoyed with progressives who attack the northern working class voters who backed Boris (he told them what they wanted to hear) , when this only happened due to progressive failures to stop Boris earlier. A country simply cannot be run well when its prime purpose is to pander to the ego of its leader and with any major challenge to that silenced.
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You aren’t adding much of value to this discussion OMM, you just don’t like having it pointed out that you were wrong.
I must have missed your evidence then, Pete.
Must have been a short paragraph somewhere in your baseless assertions.
Perhaps you could point me towards it?
Happy to admit I’m wrong when you are able to do more than insist that I am, because you say so.
I spent the week in meetings and dinners and lunches, with MOD and RN, specifically looking at Fisheries protection.
The briefing notes are a little more bleak, the budgetary pressure a little higher, potential flash points more volatile, than you seem to think.
It’s difficult to be so confident in it all as you.
On a plane to Glasgow in a couple of hours, as things are developing rapidly (by MOD standards), just training stuff, but, do you not think pulling personnel out of retirement is a bit odd; if all is well?
It turns out, that I should do rather well out of Brexit, personally.
For the record, though, there’s plenty of evidence linked to in my posts. Far more than you bothered to contribute. I value your input and enjoy the argument, I always have.
However, even when someone like Sean presents you with well reasoned argument, you still insist you are right and everyone else wrong.
Also, I make these post as long as possible, because...
But then, you’ll never read this far, will you.
Kidding aside, Brexit is not a good move. It might not be an abject disaster for all, but it probably will be for some. It might not precipitate a deep recession, but it almost certainly will be a massive drag on growth for decades to come. I think your arguing against demonstrable trends is weak. Your position on the forecasts, pedantic and you seem to assume that current forecasts are the same ones made in 2016. Despite Sean making a very lucid and compelling explanation.
Still, you might be aware, I haven’t shut up because you told me to.
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...I could ask why hasn’t the NHS started getting its promised £350million/wk extra yet?
Why? Hasn't it? :-\
This from Theresa May's speech as Prime Minister on the NHS: 18 June 2018 (https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/pm-speech-on-the-nhs-18-june-2018)
...As the NHS approaches its 70th birthday, it is the right moment to look again at how we secure the future of the NHS: now and for generations to come... Let me start with funding... we will do more than simply give the NHS a one-off injection of cash.
Under our plan, NHS funding will grow on average by 3.4 per cent in real terms each year from 2019/20 to 2023/24. We will also provide an additional £1.25 billion each year to cover a specific pensions pressure.
By 2023/24 the NHS England budget will increase by £20.5 billion in real terms compared with today. That means it will be £394 million a week higher in real terms.
Additionally, in August 2019, Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced an extra £1.8 billion for NHS frontline services (https://www.gov.uk/government/news/pm-announces-extra-18-billion-for-nhs-frontline-services)
The £1.8 billion funding is in addition to the extra £33.9 billion, in cash terms, the NHS is set to receive every year by 2023/24 through the Long Term Plan agreed last year.
:-\ :???: :-\
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...I could ask why hasn’t the NHS started getting its promised £350million/wk extra yet?
Why? Hasn't it? :-\
This from Theresa May's speech as Prime Minister on the NHS: 18 June 2018 (https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/pm-speech-on-the-nhs-18-june-2018)
...As the NHS approaches its 70th birthday, it is the right moment to look again at how we secure the future of the NHS: now and for generations to come... Let me start with funding... we will do more than simply give the NHS a one-off injection of cash.
Under our plan, NHS funding will grow on average by 3.4 per cent in real terms each year from 2019/20 to 2023/24. We will also provide an additional £1.25 billion each year to cover a specific pensions pressure.
By 2023/24 the NHS England budget will increase by £20.5 billion in real terms compared with today. That means it will be £394 million a week higher in real terms.
Additionally, in August 2019, Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced an extra £1.8 billion for NHS frontline services (https://www.gov.uk/government/news/pm-announces-extra-18-billion-for-nhs-frontline-services)
The £1.8 billion funding is in addition to the extra £33.9 billion, in cash terms, the NHS is set to receive every year by 2023/24 through the Long Term Plan agreed last year.
:-\ :???: :-\
No, it hasn't. Most of this is covered by the inflation and the standard necessary increase in funding.
But anyway, rational economic arguments for or against leaving the EU are rather irrelevant now I think. Leave won in 2016 by making a primarily emotional argument and I think that this remains the case today. I just hope that we can leave in the least damaging way possible
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Not followed this thread especially closely but the suggestion that the NHS now has it’s extra £350 million based on the above quotes is not accurate.
It is actually below the average annual increase in funding for the NHS since it’s inception to 2008 (which is about 3.7% pa from memory...) but still, being positive, it is above the 2008-2018 average funding increase of about 1.8% annually (again from memory, might be slightly out...). So we’re still drifting away from the “average” albeit at a slower rate than the last 10 years.
My understanding (and given the lack of “fact” around the whole brexit debate I use the word understanding in the very loosest sense...) is that the £350 million a week was going to be above and beyond these standard annual funding increases as it was “free money” that we no longer had to hand over to the EU, hmmmm.....
Anyway I agree with Toby that facts and rational thought seem to have very little to do with this whole shambles so this is all largely irrelevant...
(Figures from slightly hazily remembered Kings Fund report, feel free to google....)
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I made no such suggestion Nik, I only posed the questions. Perhaps I should have taken a stab at an answer myself for avoidance of doubt on my position on this:... Yes, it hasn't. :devangel: No, it has!
My understanding (and given the lack of “fact” around the whole brexit debate I use the word understanding in the very loosest sense...) is that the £350 million a week was going to be above and beyond these standard annual funding increases as it was “free money” that we no longer had to hand over to the EU, hmmmm.....
I fear you may be reading a bit too much into what was little more than a campaign slogan painted on the side of a bus, but then again you're probably not the first. ;)
(Another question: when Mrs May said "£394 million a week higher in real terms" she was quoting a figure which took inflation into account, was she not?)
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Regardless of the accuracy of the increased NHS funding figures you cite, or the semantics over whether that is money including/excluding the promised extra £350million/wk, you (and Pete) have both missed the point.
Pete was arguing that, despite the fact that we are still in the transition period and there has been no change in trading arrangements or immigration restrictions (or other factors which might impact the economy), because we are not in recession TODAY that somehow proves the economists’ predictions of a weakened economy following Brexit wrong.
So by the same logic we should be getting an extra £350million/wk TODAY which is not happening, even by those figures.
Either way, this thread isn’t really about Brexit. It’s done now, and I’m not sure why Pete decided to bring it back round to that.
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Wait! There's a point to all this?! In that case you are right; I have missed it!
One of my personal favourite false Brexit predictions was that of George Osborne when he said if the UK voted to leave the EU it would trigger an 'immediate economic shock' which would cause an 18% reduction in house prices. (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-36344425) The then chancellor seemingly oblivious to the possibility that an 18% reduction in the cost of buying a house might be seen as a positive by millions of people in the country struggling to get a foot on the housing ladder. I'm sure, in 2016, no one actually cast a ballot one way or the other with that in mind, but it illustrates well how out of touch much of the political class really is.
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Like I said plenty of time for one yet, but it was supposed to be on leaving the EU. I'll wait to see, if we don't enter recession in 2020, if any one of those forecasters revisits their 2016 forecasts and has the humility to admit they were wrong.
Speaking as a business owner, I would point out that 'nothing has changed'. We are in the transition period.. yet more kicking the can down the road... the crunch will not arrive until 1st Jan 2021. Lots of firms are using this peroid to relocate all or essential service into the EU before that date. I see lot of firms are also hastily pushing spending through now having sat on their hands for the last two years. And yet growth remains well below the long term average.
All our business planning currently is on making hay while we can while preparing for a massive recession kicking in sometime in 2021. That would be tempered by a good deal but all the wrong noises are being made at the moment.
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Thought this was worth a repost in light of some of the discussions up-thread. I'll leave you to decide who's who.
(http://i.imgur.com/VKGtg.jpg)
I'd replace religious logic with political/Brexit logic if I had the appropriate technical skills, but I only do spreadsheets, so if you could just imagine that I've done that....
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With improvements in medicine and an NHS to look after all... here is some news we should never have seen this decade:
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/feb/24/austerity-blamed-for-life-expectancy-stalling-for-first-time-in-century
In the meantime the Boris cull of inconvenient voices continues:
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/feb/25/inside-boris-johnsons-whitehall-a-poisonous-horrible-atmosphere
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With improvements in medicine and an NHS to look after all... here is some news we should never have seen this decade:
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/feb/24/austerity-blamed-for-life-expectancy-stalling-for-first-time-in-century
I'm normally all for a bit of Tory/austerity bashing, but I think this article is making the classic correlation vs causation mistake. I think it's more instructive to look at the source of the past mortality/longevity improvements and see why they've not continued. We've been discussing this drop off in life expectancy in the pensions/insurance industry for a couple of years and there has been some causal analysis of improvements. From memory, the slow down is a drop off in improvements attributed to cardiac disease. I'll try and find a decent summary of it when I get a few minutes.
I don't doubt that there's some effect of austerity, but I'd question whether you would see it coming through the data that quickly.
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With improvements in medicine and an NHS to look after all... here is some news we should never have seen this decade:
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/feb/24/austerity-blamed-for-life-expectancy-stalling-for-first-time-in-century
I'm normally all for a bit of Tory/austerity bashing, but I think this article is making the classic correlation vs causation mistake. I think it's more instructive to look at the source of the past mortality/longevity improvements and see why they've not continued. We've been discussing this drop off in life expectancy in the pensions/insurance industry for a couple of years and there has been some causal analysis of improvements. From memory, the slow down is a drop off in improvements attributed to cardiac disease. I'll try and find a decent summary of it when I get a few minutes.
I don't doubt that there's some effect of austerity, but I'd question whether you would see it coming through the data that quickly.
From what I read the key findings were the notable regional differences in drops in LE - and how these were regions most affected by austerity policies.
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With improvements in medicine and an NHS to look after all... here is some news we should never have seen this decade:
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/feb/24/austerity-blamed-for-life-expectancy-stalling-for-first-time-in-century
I'm normally all for a bit of Tory/austerity bashing, but I think this article is making the classic correlation vs causation mistake. I think it's more instructive to look at the source of the past mortality/longevity improvements and see why they've not continued. We've been discussing this drop off in life expectancy in the pensions/insurance industry for a couple of years and there has been some causal analysis of improvements. From memory, the slow down is a drop off in improvements attributed to cardiac disease. I'll try and find a decent summary of it when I get a few minutes.
I don't doubt that there's some effect of austerity, but I'd question whether you would see it coming through the data that quickly.
If austerity was directly affecting the quality of critical care, that wouldn’t that produce immediate changes to data?
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With improvements in medicine and an NHS to look after all... here is some news we should never have seen this decade:
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/feb/24/austerity-blamed-for-life-expectancy-stalling-for-first-time-in-century
I'm normally all for a bit of Tory/austerity bashing, but I think this article is making the classic correlation vs causation mistake. I think it's more instructive to look at the source of the past mortality/longevity improvements and see why they've not continued. We've been discussing this drop off in life expectancy in the pensions/insurance industry for a couple of years and there has been some causal analysis of improvements. From memory, the slow down is a drop off in improvements attributed to cardiac disease. I'll try and find a decent summary of it when I get a few minutes.
I don't doubt that there's some effect of austerity, but I'd question whether you would see it coming through the data that quickly.
If austerity was directly affecting the quality of critical care, that wouldn’t that produce immediate changes to data?
Yes, but I’d expect it to be quite slow to impact LE. LE takes quite a lot to move it significantly and critical care would only affect a small portion of deaths. Like I said, I think austerity has an impact and will continue to have one, but writing an article suggesting the entire drop off in LE is due to austerity is a bit disingenuous in my opinion.
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From what I read the key findings were the notable regional differences in drops in LE - and how these were regions most affected by austerity policies.
Yes, but is that correlation or causation? The deprived areas are also those that have the most to gain from cardiac disease mortality improvement, which is now slowing.
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The article is just that; the issue is Marmot’s review. He was on Today this am, pretty unequivocal in his views about the impact of austerity.
From the foreword:
From rising child poverty and the closure of children’s centres, to declines in education funding, an increase in precarious work and zero hours contracts, to a housing affordability crisis and a rise in homelessness, to people with insufficient money to lead a healthy life and resorting to food banks in large numbers, to ignored communities with poor conditions and little reason for hope … Austerity will cast a long shadow over the lives of the children born and growing up under its effects.”
[/quite].
Do you think he is wrong/extrapolating too far from the available evidence?
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From what I read the key findings were the notable regional differences in drops in LE - and how these were regions most affected by austerity policies.
Yes, but is that correlation or causation? The deprived areas are also those that have the most to gain from cardiac disease mortality improvement, which is now slowing.
Isn't it all correlation??? Not trying to be an arse but unless you look at the actual mortality causes - and then drill each one down to the lifestyle/treatment/austerity (or not) 'cause' then it has to be??
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From what I read the key findings were the notable regional differences in drops in LE - and how these were regions most affected by austerity policies.
Yes, but is that correlation or causation? The deprived areas are also those that have the most to gain from cardiac disease mortality improvement, which is now slowing.
Isn't it all correlation??? Not trying to be an arse but unless you look at the actual mortality causes - and then drill each one down to the lifestyle/treatment/austerity (or not) 'cause' then it has to be??
Yes, it is and that’s exactly my point. “Austerity blamed for life expectancy stalling” implies causality to me when the truth is likely to be way more nuanced than that.
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Personally I find myself very conflicted by this news. I want to blame it on austerity but I also want to blame it on Brexit or Brexiters. Would it be too much to hope that it could be blamed on both?
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From what I read the key findings were the notable regional differences in drops in LE - and how these were regions most affected by austerity policies.
Yes, but is that correlation or causation? The deprived areas are also those that have the most to gain from cardiac disease mortality improvement, which is now slowing.
Isn't it all correlation??? Not trying to be an arse but unless you look at the actual mortality causes - and then drill each one down to the lifestyle/treatment/austerity (or not) 'cause' then it has to be??
Yes, it is and that’s exactly my point. “Austerity blamed for life expectancy stalling” implies causality to me when the truth is likely to be way more nuanced than that.
I totally agree. The Guardian is too ready here to leap up and down shouting austerity when a responsible journalistic approach would have reported the news rather more neutrally.
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I totally agree. The Guardian is too ready here to leap up and down shouting austerity when a responsible journalistic approach would have reported the news rather more neutrally.
Bit puzzled by this desire to shoot the messenger. Marmot said
Austerity has taken a significant toll on equity and health, and it is likely to continue to do so. If you ask me if that is the reason for the worsening health picture, I’d say it is highly likely that is responsible for the life expectancy flat-lining, people’s health deteriorating and the widening of health inequalities.
How would you have them report this? With the caveat that they don’t believe the report’s findings? Or do what they have done, which is report the conclusions Marmot has drawn?
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The article is just that; the issue is Marmot’s review. He was on Today this am, pretty unequivocal in his views about the impact of austerity.
From the foreword:
From rising child poverty and the closure of children’s centres, to declines in education funding, an increase in precarious work and zero hours contracts, to a housing affordability crisis and a rise in homelessness, to people with insufficient money to lead a healthy life and resorting to food banks in large numbers, to ignored communities with poor conditions and little reason for hope … Austerity will cast a long shadow over the lives of the children born and growing up under its effects.”
.
Do you think he is wrong/extrapolating too far from the available evidence?
Simple answer would be yes - LE projections require a degree of extrapolation and there’s different ways to go about it which can give different results. I’ve just read the exec summary of the report and there’s not enough detail to see how it’s been done for this study (childcare day today and full report wouldn’t download onto my phone). My preferred way of looking at these things is to show a range of projected outcomes with the assumptions that underpin them. Too easy to bring in bias (intentional or otherwise) with a single view.
Having now read the exec summary, Guardian reporting seems fine. Just surprises me that the IHE report isn’t more nuanced.
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Yes, it is and that’s exactly my point. “Austerity blamed for life expectancy stalling” implies causality to me when the truth is likely to be way more nuanced than that.
My point was more nuanced :) I meant to communicate that ALL LE data is based on correlation... not just this work.
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I totally agree. The Guardian is too ready here to leap up and down shouting austerity when a responsible journalistic approach would have reported the news rather more neutrally.
Bit puzzled by this desire to shoot the messenger. Marmot said
Austerity has taken a significant toll on equity and health, and it is likely to continue to do so. If you ask me if that is the reason for the worsening health picture, I’d say it is highly likely that is responsible for the life expectancy flat-lining, people’s health deteriorating and the widening of health inequalities.
How would you have them report this? With the caveat that they don’t believe the report’s findings? Or do what they have done, which is report the conclusions Marmot has drawn?
That's a fair point, I hadn't read it very carefully, it's reasonable reporting. If there was an open government, dedicated to transparency, then there would have been a minister commenting on this, or being interviewed on the today programme about it. However, they're all too busy trying to sack civil servants who tell them things they don't want to hear.
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Toby, may I respectfully suggest you return to the above-linked article and scroll down, almost to the very bottom, where you may find Secretary of State for Health Matt Hancock's comments in response.
With regard to the Today Programme: I used to tune in each morning but in recent years have found it un-listenable. I saw its recent output best described as 'Blue Peter for adults'. Why would any serious politician bother? I think there has been a change of editor now so maybe it will improve.
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Toby, may I respectfully suggest you return to the above-linked article and scroll down, almost to the very bottom, where you may find Secretary of State for Health Matt Hancock's comments in response.
With regard to the Today Programme: I used to tune in each morning but in recent years have found it un-listenable. I saw its recent output best described as 'Blue Peter for adults'. Why would any serious politician bother? I think there has been a change of editor now so maybe it will improve.
It's basically a departmental press release though isn't it, rather than a minister having to answer difficult questions.
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Geeze Louise, Toby, has the Guardian's Health Editor done something to offend you or something?
I had looked at the Department of Health's press releases (https://www.gov.uk/search/news-and-communications?organisations%5B%5D=department-of-health-and-social-care&parent=department-of-health-and-social-care) but couldn't find anything about this story. So no, it doesn't seem to be 'basically a departmental press release' as far as I can tell. After checking the gov.uk site I then did a web-search of news items and this piece seemed to be the first and only one to come up with comments from Matt Hancock.
Give the poor Guardian journalist some credit for pity's sake. It does seem like she may have actually contacted the department and requested a statement from the Health Secretary before no doubt editing it down and burying it at the bottom of the article.
Difficult questions?... Worth watching the below in full...
https://youtu.be/l0hhCwsVQYM
(As an aside, how nice it is when an interviewee is given time to answer without constant interrupting.)
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Geeze Louise, Toby, has the Guardian's Health Editor done something to offend you or something?
It wasn't the Guardian I was meaning to criticise, I think the report is fine. The government however is making every attempt that it can at avoiding any scrutiny. There's a limited amount that newspapers or serious media can do if the PM will only submit to questions from primary school children, his own press department, or possibly a softball chat show occasionally.
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I was beginning to worry Toby. Investigating causation isn't for the Guardian, it's for the Department of Health and health researchers. The facts and correlations on longevity of poorer people in the poorer areas of the country certainly look very serious to me and so improved research looks like an urgent need. I suspect a large factor in causation is a decline in quality of old age social care for the poorer part of the UK population.
On a different subject there is an interesting article from a BBC journalist supporting my views that the progressive establishment and the BBC were not always helping themselves over brexit (it links to a more extensive article near the bottom).
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/feb/27/tv-debates-brexit-bbc-centre-ground-leavers-remainers
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I suspect a large factor in causation is a decline in quality of old age social care for the poorer part of the UK population.
I don't know if you meant this, but quality is often good. I work with mainly elderly people in their homes and have quite a lot of experience of domiciliary social care. A definite issue is that there's nowhere near enough of it so older adults in need of care spend longer in hospital, where they're vastly more likely to acquire infections, illness and become physically deconditioned and undernourished.
Boris Johnson said after the election that his government has a great plan for social care. Isn't it funny that Mr Cummings hasn't devoted any of his efforts to looking after people and is concentrating on spying on spads and trying to destroy the BBC.
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Getting rid of the BBC is a critical first step. He who controls the past controls the future; he who controls the present controls the past.
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Anyway. I voted yesterday for the labour leader.
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Anyway. I voted yesterday for the labour leader.
Care to share? My papers haven't come through yet. Not sure whether to vote for Nandy or Starmer. Leaning towards Starmer. Personally, I like his detailed responses to questions, but my concern is that he's not very good at playing the media game and delivering short, snappy soundbites. As much as I loathe that simplicity, if the leader can't get the message across to people before they switch off then you just get wiped out by the next big Cummings three word slogan. Nandy seems OK but a bit depressing.
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Anyway. I voted yesterday for the labour leader.
Care to share? My papers haven't come through yet. Not sure whether to vote for Nandy or Starmer. Leaning towards Starmer. Personally, I like his detailed responses to questions, but my concern is that he's not very good at playing the media game and delivering short, snappy soundbites. As much as I loathe that simplicity, if the leader can't get the message across to people before they switch off then you just get wiped out by the next big Cummings three word slogan. Nandy seems OK but a bit depressing.
It’s all electronic. Nothing sent through in the post. Slick website actually...
I voted KS first and LN second. RLB doesn’t figure for me.
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I suspect a large factor in causation is a decline in quality of old age social care for the poorer part of the UK population.
I don't know if you meant this, but quality is often good. I work with mainly elderly people in their homes and have quite a lot of experience of domiciliary social care. A definite issue is that there's nowhere near enough of it so older adults in need of care spend longer in hospital, where they're vastly more likely to acquire infections, illness and become physically deconditioned and undernourished.
Boris Johnson said after the election that his government has a great plan for social care. Isn't it funny that Mr Cummings hasn't devoted any of his efforts to looking after people and is concentrating on spying on spads and trying to destroy the BBC.
Where is your evidence that quality for the poorest in domiciliary care is often good (which implies its usually good when my impression is the opposite: it's mostly below fully acceptable, can occasionally be OK or good but too often is dangerous). The fact is that, thanks to austerity, council rates (for those old people not paying for their own social care) are so low that homes have to subsidise with differential rates (for those paying for themselves) or can barely afford to function to statutory standards. Pretty much all the families I know in the north of England using care homes that take council funded places have had bad and sometimes very bad experiences and those who eventually secure a place in a good care home that takes council funded places feel very lucky. All the big independent health information organisations and think-tanks looking at care funding say council rates for care are normally simply no longer commercially viable. This isn't recent either: government warnings have been made for years now.
https://www.communitycare.co.uk/2015/01/28/council-cuts-threaten-viability-adult-childrens-social-care-mps-warn/
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Where is your evidence that quality for the poorest in domiciliary care is often good
The fact that I've been a community physio for nearly ten years and see carers at work all the time, sometimes getting them to do exercises with people, and the people being cared for tell me about them all the time. The most common complaint is that they arrive too early or too late. I know that there are many poor experiences and services, but I think it's important to emphasize that there are an awful lot of carers working amazingly hard and doing a great job. I think it's doing them down to start saying that all social care is awful.
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It may be that you work in an area where things are better than average or don't get to work in the worst establishments (or as my wife, as an agency nurse earning cash to support her degree studies, discovered 30 years ago working night shifts at nursing homes: that the worst things happen when hardly anyone else is around) . The overall data form the Parliamentary Health Select Committee, CQC, and independant bodies like the Kings Trust, The Health Foundation, etc, looks very bad. Several big carehome providers have already gone into administration (like Four Seasons and Carlauren).
I never said care workers don't work hard or don't care (just the opposite... as a group of workers, many on minimum wage, they seem amazingly impressive to me from my personal experience) but if the council funded system is financialy non viable that quality of staff only goes so far. I also never said every care home is awful (but most are below where a civilised system should be because of funding issues and minority are awful).
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Any way, whatever ones view of the quality of the current situation is, it's unarguable that it does represent a huge crisis as there isn't enough care provision now, and it's going to get worse. The last person to honestly propose something that would have made a difference was Theresa May, and it played a big part in losing her majority, as the press branded it a dementia tax. It may have been ill conceived but it was an effort at least. Johnson seems keen to not repeat the error, by not actually doing anything about it.
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You aren’t adding much of value to this discussion OMM, you just don’t like having it pointed out that you were wrong.
I must have missed your evidence then, Pete.
Must have been a short paragraph somewhere in your baseless assertions.
Perhaps you could point me towards it?
Happy to admit I’m wrong when you are able to do more than insist that I am, because you say so.
<TLDR>
...
Just catching up.
I was referring to your strawman representations of my views Matt. Not about whether or not my views on brexit/the economics are ‘right or ‘wrong’. Strawman constructions like these..
''It still makes me smile that you think everyone commenting is “Left wing” (especially me) as if not supporting the latest bunch of tossers to take office is somehow silly or to be despised.'''
I don't believe that, nor have I ever said it. Can you show me where I did. In your mind maybe?
'The difference is, I will happily tell people I think they are wrong, I would never tell them they shouldn’t have or express an opinion; which is what you do.'
I've never told anyone that they shouldn't have or express an opinion, nor have I ever thought it. Can you show me where I said it. Again, possibly in your mind?
Counter to your assertion, actually I may be more open-minded, more accepting of other's views and more tolerant of diversity than the average person.. I enjoy the company of people who hold views at odds with my own and I enjoy hearing them. I appreciate listening to views from all angles of a subject, not just the one I personally hold as I find listening to different viewpoints the best way of better understanding something. In real life I also just enjoy trying to understand people and hearing their opinions without feeling the need to offer my own opinion or prove them 'wrong' (maybe that doesn't come across as well online!..). Finally for my adult life I've consistently scored almost maximum on the 'openness to experience' scale (OCEAN) in every test I’ve ever taken if that's proof of anything? Hopefully most people would see that I'm the opposite of your characterisation.
'I’m sorry, are you claiming that everything is just peachy or are you just being pedantic by trying to imply that no negative consequences have/will occurred/occur because (as yet) the worst case predictions have not materialised?'
Err.. no, I haven't said anywhere that 'everything is peachy'. Nor have I said 'no negative consequences will occur'. Can you show me where I said this. In your mind?
'I spent the week in meetings and dinners and lunches, with MOD and RN, specifically looking at Fisheries protection.
The briefing notes are a little more bleak, the budgetary pressure a little higher, potential flash points more volatile, than you seem to think.
It’s difficult to be so confident in it all as you.'
I haven't expressed any opinion on fisheries?. Nor have I said I'm 'confident in it all'. Can you show me where I said this. In your mind maybe?
I've just said we haven't had a recession (yet), as some predicted would immediately happen and as was heavily publicised in the debate around brexit - just like the lie about the £350M was heavily publicised.
I'll take your word for that stuff about fisheries as, apparently, you're privy to high-level private information from the mod or navy that none of the rest of us are... I assume it's still OK to make reasonable assumptions for ourselves on the likely impact to our lives, based on the available evidence.
'Of course, being a leave supporter you’re not much for detail or anything longer than a sound bite...'
Stay classy. This sort of BS doesn't really warrant a reply other than it makes people who express such rubbish look as daft as those they're trying to (mis)characterise.
'Pete, is the first to criticise a sweeping statement, or extreme prediction, yet fails to see his dismissal of any prediction of dire consequences; as an equal and opposite sweeping statement and extreme prediction'
Except that I haven’t ‘dismissed any prediction of dire consequences’, see above. At the risk of painful repetition.. Mentioning the current lack of the, much-publicised, predicted recession isn't 'dismissing any prediction of dire consequences'. It's pointing out that there isn't yet the, much-publicised, recession (but there's plenty of time yet!)
Ali K
'Pete was arguing that, despite the fact that we are still in the transition period and there has been no change in trading arrangements or immigration restrictions (or other factors which might impact the economy), because we are not in recession TODAY that somehow proves the economists’ predictions of a weakened economy following Brexit wrong.'
You're giving an impression here of being incapable of separating what I said (no recession yet - but there's still time!) from what you wanted me to have said ('no recession yet, and therefore no economic consequences, and therefore all those silly forecasters were wrong')
You and Ali K are committing a textbook construction of a straw-man of someone's views and then charging it with your bayonets fixed. Boringly par-for-the-course on here unfortunately.
I don’t have deeply-held convictions, other than valuing truth and anyone making the effort to seek it. I appreciate hearing opinions different to my own and am happy to adjust my own views. To that end I enjoy an occasional discussion with most people on ukb. But not really with you Matt, your dog-with-a-stick style and mischaracterisation of views is just tiresome.
Happy to say I won’t be engaging in any more politics threads as they're as pointless as I made out in my original moan, should have made that promise to myself long ago.
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Ha!
Strawman representations...?
Not sure asking for evidence is quite that.
What was that “privy to high level briefings” BS?
Bollocks, just illustrating one of the reasons why I feel differently about the process to you and nothing that’s not in the public domain:
https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/brexit/the-royal-navy-brexit-and-uk-fisheries/ (https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/brexit/the-royal-navy-brexit-and-uk-fisheries/)
Only fleshed out a little, by discussing where currently responsibilities are shared with other EU nations and the blind spots the end of those partnerships will create. I think the perceived threat is actually from non-EU nations exploiting those shadows.
I believe Pete was actually asking people to apologise for sharing the dire consequence models, no?
Oh well.
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Pete, I think I counted at least 5 people who read the same into what you wrote. So maybe not so much a straw man as a sign you could be clearer in how you phrase things? Assuming we all read your sentiments incorrectly...
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Keir Starmer in.
Phew!
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Keir Starmer in.
Phew!
Good. I preferred Lisa Nandy in many ways - but KS is a safe post Corbyn choice.
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Do we know how RLB performed? Out on a walk and can't really Google.
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27.6%
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Keir Starmer in.
Phew!
Go on then, I’ll bite Sharko. Not the result that many of us wanted, I’m not thinking phew at all. For many of us Sir Kier is viewed as an establishment figure that is backed by the likes of the pharma industry, we think he is ‘owned’ and that should he reach power there will be a heavy watering down of the socialist politics we wanted. I hope to goodness that he gets on with slamming this horrifying government and that his posturing as a socialist proves to be of substance. I also hope that he appoints a team that reflects the broad views of the membership.
I’m a party member and will miss JC but at present will not be reactionary about this, as I know some will be sacking their memberships today. I wait and watch with interest to see how this pans out. :popcorn:
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I’m a member and one of the 52.6%. 👍
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Keir Starmer in.
Phew!
Good. I preferred Lisa Nandy in many ways - but KS is a safe post Corbyn choice.
But you voted for Sir K?
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I’ll reserve judgement until I see his shadow cabinet, but the fact that George Osbourne was urging Londoners to vote for him is not a good sign so far.
The only manifesto he has stood on is party unity, the illusion of which can easily be achieved by denying anyone on the left a media platform.
His politics, if he even has any, are completely unknown to the membership at the moment.
Aside from that the guy is obviously savvy. Being the architect of the defeat which has crushed the left, while still being the darling of the pro-remain membership, is great politics on a personal level. The small matter of the election defeat is just a bit shit for 90% of the country.
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and that should he reach power there will be a heavy watering down of the socialist politics we wanted.
That's one reason it's a phew from me.
The country doesn't want the socialist politics you wanted.
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That’s fine as a position if you had a free university education and have amassed a huge amount of equity in housing over the last 20 years.
Surely it’s not too much of a leap of imagination to realise there is a huge, and ever growing, constituency in this country who are crying out for the policies proposed by Corbyn and McDonnell, and that they might be feeling a little despondent today.
I think generally on this forum the political debate is dominated by the ‘centrist dads’ who did very well during the Blair years and have a real blind spot when it comes to the problems third way triangulation has caused down the line for the next generation.
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That’s fine as a position if you had a free university education and have amassed a huge amount of equity in housing over the last 20 years.
Surely it’s not too much of a leap of imagination to realise there is a huge, and ever growing, constituency in this country who are crying out for the policies proposed by Corbyn and McDonnell, and that they might be feeling a little despondent today.
I think generally on this forum the political debate is dominated by the ‘centrist dads’ who did very well during the Blair years and have a real blind spot when it comes to the problems third way triangulation has caused down the line for the next generation.
Hey Si,
You know, if you are correct on the “growing constituency” hypothesis, give it 5 years and you won’t have anything to worry about, because they’ll be a clear majority by the time of the next election.
So berating “centrist dads” for not believing, is pointless. I mean, is that actually going to convince people to change their minds?
Oh, meant to add.
Those dads, have teenage and twenty something kids and understand quite well what they’re facing.
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Apologies if I came across as berating. Didn’t mean to.
No one has got it ‘right’ and no one has got it ‘wrong’. Everyone is coming at politics from their own unique viewpoint and circumstances.
But to say that ‘no one wants’ a policy platform that 40% voted for as recently as 2017, is overly dismissive in my opinion.
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I don't see the centrist Dad thing, I see a load on the left and a load in the centre and not a lot from the right. Didn't come across as berating, more a moan that not everyone agrees with you. That's concomittant with 40% I suppose.
Very encouraged to see Starmer's support for political reform. Though it could be argued that with labour's marginalisation they haven't much choice.
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Well this centrist Dad is very happy to see the passing of JC’s regime.
It has (being kind) been a failed experiment that has led to another 10+ years of Tory government - and left the NHS in mess its picking up now. So - the Trotsky Uncles that led momentum’s charge are in my view culpable for our present government.
Quoting the second to last Labour Prime minister: - to affect change you have to be in power.
Edit: soz if that came across a bit arsey. Just glad of the change.
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Has anyone watched Sir Ks opening speech? Can anyone who’s seen it draw any inspiration from it? Seemed very flat and banal from my perspective... doesn’t bode well.
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I suppose if it was a moan, it’s not that everyone doesn’t agree with me, it’s based in a frustration there seems to be a gleefulness that Corbynomics is dead and buried, but without any constructive discussion of an alternative policy platform.
Also JB do you have a link to Starmer saying that? Has he mentioned PR specifically?
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Three tweets I've seen in the last hour:
@paulwaugh
One startling statistic from the Labour leadership election results:
@Keir_Starmer today won the votes of nearly twice as many party members as @jeremycorbyn did in 2015.
Starmer 2020: 225,000 members
Corbyn 2015: 121,000 members
That's a hell of a grassroots mandate
@PeoplesMomentum
In this new era Momentum will play a new role. We’ll hold Keir to account and make sure he keeps his promises, champion big ideas like the Green New Deal, build the power of Labour members and do everything we can to get a Labour government elected.
FFS!
@CarolineLucas
Congratulations to new Labour leader @Keir_Starmer - look forward to working together to hold Government to account
Very much welcome his support for electoral reform - as he said, “millions of people vote in safe seats & they feel their voice doesn’t count”.
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I was and remain a supporter of Corbyns policies. I voted for Starmer because I like him and think he is respected by the population in a way that RLB and Nandy aren't. Today feels positive to me. I think Corbyn has shifted the overton window of the labour party to the left significantly and even if starmer does what is likely and shifts back to the right slightly, the oversll direction of travel is left compared to say Blair and represents a real alternative to the tories. This will not be enough for many who were really enthused by corbyn but personally i would urge the, to look at the bigger picture. I am 26 and have never voted in an election where my preferred outcome won. I am sick of it, want it to change and thats why i voted for Starmer. Not because i think he is the worlds most inspirational man or because the policies he will likely enact tick all my boxes but because i think when you weight everything up, he was the most likely to convince people to come back to Labour, and without that, we are fucked, along with the millions who need a labour government desperately. Apologies for the long post and numerous typos.
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Very glad to see Keir Starmer elected. I think that he has an opportunity to gain a good measure of respect in the country amongst the wider electorate. It's painfully obvious that Boris Johnson is underperforming at the moment, obviously right now because he's pretty ill, and I hope he makes a good recovery, but he wasn't appearing authoritative and in control up til he got it anyway.
I never understood how people found Corbyn inspirational, he always seemed petulant and to have a really poor grasp of facts and details in all the interviews I've ever seen. I might be centrist, whatever that means, but I'm not a Dad and didn't get a free university education, but I think Simon is totally correct. The country just won't vote in a PM who bangs on and on about socialism, any more than they were likely to vote for one of the old school negative Eurosceptic wing of the conservative party, witness IDS's comprehensive failure to lead the party effectively.
It'd be good to see Starmer bring back highly capable politicians like Rachel Reeves to the front of the party, and hopefully clear out people like Richard Burgon.
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‘Clear out’ unhelpful language there TD. He’s an elected Labour MP, I’m sure his constituents don’t want him ‘cleared out’ and I am sure you don’t actually want to shut down the voices of MPs that are a part of a ‘democratic’ party?
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I am 26 and have never voted in an election where my preferred outcome won. I am sick of it, want it to change
Amen.
I'm 33 and have voted in every general, local and European election and every referendum since I turned 18.
I think there have been two European elections where the party I voted for got a candidate elected. In every other election, the candidate / party / side I have voted for has come away with nothing.
My political opinion has zero value, purely because of where I live in the country. I am effectively disenfranchised by geography, meanwhile other people's votes have great value through living in marginal areas. This is not democratic.
If we retain FPTP, there is little prospect of my vote ever having any meaning unless I move to a new area.
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I am 26 and have never voted in an election where my preferred outcome won. I am sick of it, want it to change
Amen.
I'm 33 and have voted in every general, local and European election and every referendum since I turned 18.
I think there have been two European elections where the party I voted for got a candidate elected. In every other election, the candidate / party / side I have voted for has come away with nothing.
My political opinion has zero value, purely because of where I live in the country. I am effectively disenfranchised by geography, meanwhile other people's votes have great value through living in marginal areas. This is not democratic.
If we retain FPTP, there is little prospect of my vote ever having any meaning unless I move to a new area.
I’m 50 in a few months.
I voted Con in my first two elections (90’s). Went to work for Ashcroft (99), didn’t vote again until 2010, because I lost all faith in everything. Never voted for a candidate who won, though. Both my early elections went to Liberals, then when I switched to Orange, my world turned Blue.
Bring on the PR.
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Surely it’s not too much of a leap of imagination to realise there is a huge, and ever growing, constituency in this country who are crying out for the policies proposed by Corbyn and McDonnell, and that they might be feeling a little despondent today.
There isn’t though is there or they would have voted for them only a few months ago. Or at least a few more of the hugE evergrowing number would have.
I think KS will improve things and hope he gets rid of all the momentum/ mcckluskey back room influence.
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I do wonder when I hear opinions about whether a would be leader has the desired sort of politics. If they cannot get a mandate to enact their agenda the answer is always pretty much ‘no sort of politics’ for all the good they may do.
In this respect, Starmer represents the greatest gift the left could ever hope to receive: genuine competence, and with that a chance to reshape the country for the better.
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I'm with the thank fuckers. Honestly think that anybody still thinking that Corbyn was in any way effective and not a complete fucking failure must be deranged.
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Has anyone watched Sir Ks opening speech? Can anyone who’s seen it draw any inspiration from it? Seemed very flat and banal from my perspective... doesn’t bode well.
I’ve watched it in full and thought it was pitched pretty well. It’s not the right time, given the current situation, to start banging on about new flashy policies or openly attacking Johnson. And remember it was for a wide audience - the media, general population, and importantly at this point in his leadership ALL factions of the party, to bring it together. So it had to be fairly light on substance. And he’s not the most charismatic guy, but I’d take sincerity and honesty over the bluster, lies and showbiz of Bojo and Trump any day, and hopefully the nation will tire of the clown act soon enough and look for someone competent even if they are a tad bland.
I’m firmly left of centre and agree with many of Corbyn/Mcdonnell’s policies but I’m also pragmatic enough to realise most voters don’t. And the 2017 result doesn’t mean they do. Also agree with Toby that Corbyn was just increasingly tetchy in interviews but maybe that’s because he knew what a hiding Labour was about to get at the election?
In summary - a good day! And now considering upping my donations to Labour. I was ready to cancel my membership if RLB won.
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I accept that Corbyn was ultimately the wrong salesman for the British people, but I still don’t believe the whole platform should be thrown out of the window because of the result of the 2019 election.
The conclusions that should be drawn from the election are way more complicated than an outright rejection of the mixed economy being proposed.
It was framed as a second referendum and run through first past the post, which had 400 odd leave seats. And Labour’s triangulation on the subject was disastrous.
I believe, rightly or wrongly, the 2017 result is more representative of where the country is at economically.
I hope Keir Starmer does continue in this vein, but it’s a big if at the moment.
Corbyn ultimately was a weak leader, insofar as he appeased the wreckers in his own party in a way Blair would never have tolerated, and he abandoned reforms of party democracy after 2017 because complacency set in.
However remembering the context of the leadership election in 2015, his ideas allowed a political expression for many who had written Labour off. Third way economics had spectacularly tanked in 2008 and Miliband’s abject failure to counter the austerity narrative left people who believe in a mixed economy with little choice. I still think the centrists in the party are devoid of any meaningful ideas, they just have a very strong idea of what they don’t like.
What I find particularly distasteful about some of the debate, and which has more than a whiff of divide-and-rule about it, is this notion that people who voted for him in these circumstances should apologise or ‘own’ the defeat just for supporting the democratically elected leader of a party, while letting off the hook entirely the people in the Labour right who spent their whole time working towards this loss.
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Three tweets I've seen in the last hour:
@paulwaugh
One startling statistic from the Labour leadership election results:
@Keir_Starmer today won the votes of nearly twice as many party members as @jeremycorbyn did in 2015.
Starmer 2020: 225,000 members
Corbyn 2015: 121,000 members
That's a hell of a grassroots mandate
Well, to some degree that is true, but it also just goes to show that if you are unscrupulous you can get statistics to prove anything!
Rule 1: compare apples and apples. Starmer received more members votes in absolute numbers simply because there were more members available. In 2015 Corbyn got 121,751 members votes of 245,520 who voted. In 2020 Starmer got 225,135 votes of 401,521 voters. The percentages are 49.6% Corbyn to 56.1% Starmer. So on *members* Starmer still wins on percentages but comparing absolute numbers is insane as the membership increased massively over the years 2015-2020. Asking who these people are and why they joined is much more interesting than quoting meaningless 6 figure numbers...
In addition if you add in all registered supporters and affiliates then Corbyn got 59.5% of *all* eligible voters (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_Labour_Party_leadership_election_(UK)#Result and go to "result"), whereas Starmer got 56.2% of all eligible voters (see https://labour.org.uk/people/leadership-elections-hub-2020/leadership-elections-2020-results/). So actually Corbyn wins nur nur, nur nur nur!
I know this is completely irrelevant, and yes my second paragraph is totally tongue in cheek before anyone starts, but it really grates me when people like Paul Waugh (whoever he is) try to prove a point which is, frankly, spin. In terms of mandate it is broadly similar to Corbyn, so deserves a well done - why couldn't he just be happy with that?
I will try to think of something to say about the labour leadership now I have got that off my chest ;)
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Is that like including the block club vote in BMC elections?
What did you think about the bold bits in the other tweets?
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Is that like including the block club vote in BMC elections?
I could answer that direct comparison better if I knew anything about BMC block club votes! Labour voting is one member one vote, including affiliates and registered supporters, so there are no block votes. So I would guess no, not the same.
What did you think about the bold bits in the other tweets?
By bits in bold do you mean the dichotomy between momentum wanting to hold Kier to account vs Lucas referring to holding government to account? No strong feeling to be honest. Momentum have a left-wing agenda within the labour party. I would expect them to fight for that. In the same way that Progress fight for a different agenda.
If you mean RE electoral reform, yes I am all for that. If he really wants that, then perhaps its a good thing to have someone holding him to account for his promises?
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Of the members who had to pay extra to vote (or supporters who had to do this - whatever it’s called). Less than 800 voted for RLB and more than 12000 for KS.
It’s a landslide. Also the centre candidates were elected as deputy and for the three national exec positions. A pretty convincing 👎 From the membership for how things had been I’d say...
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I'm not disputing its a landslide TomTom, just the misleading nature of that particular tweet. Like I say, a personal bugbear, nothing more.
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I'm not disputing its a landslide TomTom, just the misleading nature of that particular tweet. Like I say, a personal bugbear, nothing more.
Fair enough. Though I think there’s going to be quite a bit of people/members crowing though- as many have had to bite their tongue as the momentum wagon rolled into town...
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‘Clear out’ unhelpful language there TD. He’s an elected Labour MP, I’m sure his constituents don’t want him ‘cleared out’ and I am sure you don’t actually want to shut down the voices of MPs that are a part of a ‘democratic’ party?
Accepted. I think you are right, but he massively underperformed in any interviews I've ever heard, there are many far more capable members of the labour party, but I'm sure he's a valuable back bencher.
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I accept that Corbyn was ultimately the wrong salesman for the British people, but I still don’t believe the whole platform should be thrown out of the window because of the result of the 2019 election.
The conclusions that should be drawn from the election are way more complicated than an outright rejection of the mixed economy being proposed.
It was framed as a second referendum and run through first past the post, which had 400 odd leave seats. And Labour’s triangulation on the subject was disastrous.
I believe, rightly or wrongly, the 2017 result is more representative of where the country is at economically.
I hope Keir Starmer does continue in this vein, but it’s a big if at the moment.
Corbyn ultimately was a weak leader, insofar as he appeased the wreckers in his own party in a way Blair would never have tolerated, and he abandoned reforms of party democracy after 2017 because complacency set in.
However remembering the context of the leadership election in 2015, his ideas allowed a political expression for many who had written Labour off. Third way economics had spectacularly tanked in 2008 and Miliband’s abject failure to counter the austerity narrative left people who believe in a mixed economy with little choice. I still think the centrists in the party are devoid of any meaningful ideas, they just have a very strong idea of what they don’t like.
What I find particularly distasteful about some of the debate, and which has more than a whiff of divide-and-rule about it, is this notion that people who voted for him in these circumstances should apologise or ‘own’ the defeat just for supporting the democratically elected leader of a party, while letting off the hook entirely the people in the Labour right who spent their whole time working towards this loss.
I think the fact that your post is largely about factional infighting in the labour party perfectly illustrates that to any voter who would happily vote for any party with broadly workable, believable and well intentioned policies to make the country better, Corbyns administration always seemed considerably more interested in their party reforms which appeared to be about retaining control by the further left elements.
It's been the tune of momentum and the left to blame Brexit and 'trianglulation' for the catastrophic failure to do well in the last election. But if you listened to any of the reports, indeed if you listened to many of the labour MPs all you heard was people saying that voters wouldn't vote for Corbyn. Not only is he insufficiently competent to be PM, but he's got a questionable political past, and managed to foster what became an enormous problem with anti-Semitism.
You could certainly argue that the first two apply equally to Boris Johnson, but he's good at persuading apathetic people to like him, which counts for a lot. Corbyn succeeded only in persuading apathetic people that he's a stroppy old Marxist.
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I’m sure lots of people who were canvassed probably did have a few choice words about Corbyn. And I don’t deny his personal ratings among key demographics was a big problem.
But I reckon if questioned further on specifically why, the answers would more likely have been along the lines of terrorist sympathiser, woolly on Brexit, antisemitism, weak leader, pacifist, stroppy etc than a criticism of the policies.
The policies when polled anonymously are popular and are much more in line with a mixed economy rather than being the sort of authoritarian socialism being bandied about by some critics.
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I’m sure lots of people who were canvassed probably did have a few choice words about Corbyn. And I don’t deny his personal ratings among key demographics was a big problem.
But I reckon if questioned further on specifically why, the answers would more likely have been along the lines of terrorist sympathiser, woolly on Brexit, antisemitism, weak leader, pacifist, stroppy etc than a criticism of the policies.
The policies when polled anonymously are popular and are much more in line with a mixed economy rather than being the sort of authoritarian socialism being bandied about by some critics.
You lump ‘antisemitism’ in with vague criticisms like ‘woolly on Brexit.. weak leader’?
I fear it will take you some time to see things clearly.
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I voted for Nandy but happy with Starmer. I was pretty confident Starmer would get in but want Nandy to get a big role so hoped support for her in this leadership race would facilitate that.
For those disappointed at "the end of Corbynism", I really don't believe that the party will lurch to the right now. A lot of the policies were popular, there were just delivered by incompetent spokespeople (I'm looking at you Richard Burgeon) and the manifesto as a whole just looked like a wishlist without a coherent plan.
Maintaining the core manifesto, stripping out the ridiculousness (free wifi broadband etc...) and delivering it with confidence, competence and gravitas should see Labour right (fingers crossed).
Having said all that, taking over the reigns at the moment it pretty bloody difficult and how Starmer handles the impact on the Brexit negotiations (bearing in mind he is seen as trying to cancel Brexit) will set the tone for his leadership.
Interesting times.....
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Apologies, that wasn’t an attempt to belittle antisemitism.
Just trying to point out that while there were lots of valid reasons to not vote for Labour under Corbyn, I think the next leader should be clear about what positives can be taken from Corbyn’s time. And I think broadly speaking the policy platform is one of them.
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I voted for Nandy but happy with Starmer. I was pretty confident Starmer would get in but want Nandy to get a big role so hoped support for her in this leadership race would facilitate that.
Yes, I think Nandy should be a shadow minister, as should Rosena Allen-Khan.
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No problem Somebody’s Fool, I do see the point you are making about policies.
I wouldn’t worry about Starmer fir a few reasons. Firstly, he’s the most competent leader since Brown or perhaps Blair. Corbyn and Miliband were very inadequate, albeit in very different ways. Part of that competence will be the insight and ability to hold together a broad coalition. I’d also take him at his word, fwiw.
One of the criticisms levelled at Corbyn was his factionalism. It’s the curse of Labour- a lot easier to be successful fighting factions on your own side than winning elections. I think things will be different, in a good way. I haven’t thought that since 2007.
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Is Brexit now relevant?
CV has rendered / shown much of what the EU does as a bit of window dressing perhaps?
Every nation doing its own thing. Minimal co-operation. Extra-ordinary border controls. Hungary effectively a dictatorship. Trade plummeted. Migration irrelevant in a lockdown.
I can imagine some sort of post Cv EU re-organisation or restructuring... that may leave it remarkably close to what a soft brexit deal would look like?
Though perhaps in recovery the EU will pick up the reigns and come up with a multi €€ trillion recovery new deal etc...?
Just busking...
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‘Kin ell unite the party they say bring everyone together.. Lots of Burgeon bashing going on from some of you here. Times have changed we have a new leader if you want to bring the party on in a show of unity you’re going to have to let your wounds heal quick and move on comrades. Looking backwards will do nothing but increase divisions. There are some great policies to bring forward, there are vulnerable people needing our help and support, their are massive injustices in our society to be addressed and now we have leader that a majority believe can achieve power. So rather than looking at individuals and calling them incompetent which is very easy to do, swallow your bitter pills with some sugar folks and let’s get some power so we can end the austerity that hits our most vulnerable, end exploitation of loopholes by the most wealthy and enable them to contribute to the society they grow wealthy from, ensure workers are paid a wage they can live on (rather than subsidises profits), fund our NHS properly, grow our youth services again, fund our schools properly, fund our social care system properly etc. etc. Is this not what we all want? There’s much work to be done, so let’s get on with it. Sniping back at JC and co. does nothing!
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Fair enough Brutus. But there have been five years of people being ostracised for being ‘Blairite’ - attempted candidate deselections - etc.. etc.. (let’s not fail to mention the antisemitism issues..).
Maybe some sort of Mea Culpa from those who were key players in this over the last five years would help with reconciliation?
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2 sides of the same coin TT it’s Mea Culpa for everyone surely? Time to move on.
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2 sides of the same coin TT it’s Mea Culpa for everyone surely? Time to move on.
Yeah. Though reconciliation is about enabling a bit of venting (and we’ve only done 24 hours so far!).
I’m not quite as optimistic as some I’m afraid. I think KS is the best choice at the moment - but not sure all the LP’s issues are going to suddenly heal... I’m positive - it’s a good change though. See how it all evolves.
Maybe he can bring some ideas (and leadership) to the CV issues - it’s notable since BJ was ill and Cummings is isolating how (more?) rudderless things have been.
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Brutus, one of my issues with the Corbyn era was the undermining of decent policies by them being faced up to the media/public by MPs who are poor media performers. That was my issue with Burgeon and by extension, Corbyn. There seemed to be an inability to see people strengths and use them appropriately. I've no idea of Burgeon's abilities as an MP, nor as a policy maker/writer but my opinion of him is forever tainted by his inability to neither articulate a policies benefits nor argue for it when faced with criticism.
It's not a case of gloating, and quite frankly the vocal members of the party on all sides have done themselves no favours with their media comments, but a frustration that we still have a Tory government, one filled with it's fair share of rogues (to put it politely) and incompetents, and have again missed the opportunity to change the path the country is taking.
The recent crisis may well change the way the population feel, even the FT seems to be more pro nationalisation.....
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EU1BxYBXkAAix5S?format=png&name=large)
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Brutus, one of my issues with the Corbyn era was the undermining of decent policies by them being faced up to the media/public by MPs who are poor media performers. That was my issue with Burgeon and by extension, Corbyn. There seemed to be an inability to see people strengths and use them appropriately. I've no idea of Burgeon's abilities as an MP, nor as a policy maker/writer but my opinion of him is forever tainted by his inability to neither articulate a policies benefits nor argue for it when faced with criticism.
It's not a case of gloating, and quite frankly the vocal members of the party on all sides have done themselves no favours with their media comments, but a frustration that we still have a Tory government, one filled with it's fair share of rogues (to put it politely) and incompetents, and have again missed the opportunity to change the path the country is taking.
The recent crisis may well change the way the population feel, even the FT seems to be more pro nationalisation.....
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EU1BxYBXkAAix5S?format=png&name=large)
I fully understand all the gripes and criticisms there are they don’t need re-explaining. In response to your criticism I will point out that the media and thus public opinion was aided and abetted by the undermining done by Labour MPs, the staged resignations, the failed coups, the MPs going rogue and off message but then you’ve heard all that before haven’t you? And we will continue to go on in ever growing and dividing circles. All elements are angry with the behaviour and performance of others. My point is, whilst we may all wish to vent our frustrations, there are things such as the nationalisation, that you mention, that are way more important than continuously raking over the same old shit.
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My point is, whilst we may all wish to vent our frustrations, there are things such as the nationalisation, that you mention, that are way more important than continuously raking over the same old shit.
I agree wholeheartedly with the above and hope that, on the back of the current coronavirus awfulness, we can make some substantial changes to society.
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Now, see, I’m not of the Labour party, but...
I think I see yer problem there, Guv.
All disent and internal objection to the erstwhile leadership characterised as “Coups”, “undermining”, “staged”, etc, etc.
That’s exactly what the Momentum rhetoric sounded like in the build up to the election, to outsiders and it sounds so much like, almost Soviet, party line propaganda.
“Betray the party” this, “Betray the Leader” that.
Why not brand them “Enemies of the People” and join the Daily Fail brigade.
(Opposite end of the bridge, perhaps, but to me that bridge always seems to curve around so much the ends touch).
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I was pretty confident Starmer would get in but want Nandy to get a big role so hoped support for her in this leadership race would facilitate that.
Yes, I think Nandy should be a shadow minister
My money’s on Home Secretary.
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My guess would be that Labour will do a lot better than current assumptions in the upcoming election so Corbyn will probably still be in place. Alternatively the present polls will be right (ha! Chinny reckon emoji) and maybe you'll get your centrist leader of the opposition for 5 years while Johnson and the gang go mad.
Me, 30th October 2019.
Well I was very wrong, so now we have Kier. Well done to him, it was a convincing victory. I voted for RLB. I knew she wouldn't win obvs but I wanted to show support for the continuity Corbyn ticket. Sorry about that ;) But it was always about the policies rather than the man, and I wanted to see them survive.
Corbyn grew the Labour membership from 200k ish to 550k ish over his tenure. If we assume that this increase was solely the sort of Trotskite entryist or Momentum "loon" that we were led to believe then Kier has obviously won at least some of them over. I suppose the question is, have they done that because they have become converted to "centrist dads", or because they see Kier as someone who can sell the existing left leaning platform more effectively? Answers on a postcard... I'm not sure that his softly softly approach of being all things to all people thus far will quell internal dissent once his cards start getting put face up on the table, and I mean dissent from both the left *and* the right. But for the time being he has a period of grace which hopefully he will use to build the broad coalition that we are always told the labour party is. I wish him all the best, genuinely.
My near term worry for him is that the tories try to drag him into the coronavirus response in such a way that they can offload responsibility / blame for any failings. Please don't read that wrong, having Kier involved in the response would be a dream come true in terms of competence compared to the current cabinet, but he has a fine line to tread if that becomes the case...
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I see Labour members are playing nicey nicey but let's get real: this attitude is inadequate for the future of the Labour Party and it's also bad politics.
For a start, a reminder that under Corbyn and his faction, some Labour officials thought it acceptable to pay a home visit to prospective members to vet them because they were Jewish. Under Corbyn we've seen decent Labour employees - people so committed to the Party they went to work for it - hounded out for their religion and treated so badly they fell into depression. They felt the issues were so serious that they brought them to public attention - remember, we're talking about people who carried on working for Labour with Corbyn as its leader - and the response of many, many decent, ordinary Labour members was basically to gaslight them.
:sick:
We should be clear: the rot is deep. Racism has been allowed to spread, encouraged by the top and ignored or denied by many of the rank and file. Consider the hypocritical nonsense fermented by the far left: Keir Starmer is, apparently, bought by big pharma, whereas Sainted Jeremy is owned by no one despite taking money for appearing on the Iranian regime's propaganda outlets. Whatever the sins of big pharma, I'm not sure GSK have ever strung up gays from lampposts or bulldozed walls on top of adulterers, have they?
So there's a really good moral reason to clear the stables out. Corbyn let this shit flourish and many members gave him a pass for it. The party needs to clear the backlog of racism cases and expel people from the party, and preferably some high ups too. Men like Andrew Murray need to be kicked out for bringing the party into disrepute and personally I'd leak the value of Seamus Milne's pay-off to the press - Labour members shouldn't be paying large sums to incompetent but wealthy fools. I hope that Corbyn's history of encouraging terrorists and indulging racism would be enough to get him chucked out too when the EHRC report comes out, but that may be a little too much for delicate lefty sensibilities. Labour does not need reconcilliation with these people - morally it's not right, and politically we need to show the public that we are done with the far left, that they are back in their box and not coming out.
And you know who else needs to get back in their box? Labour members (and I am one again, for the moment). We know, from their actions over the past five years, that in general Labour people prefer self-indulgence and hobby politics over actually improving society through the ballot box. Corbyn's eventual failure was obvious from 2015 and it was certainly increasingly obvious over the last few years (leaders' personal ratings are a very good indicator and they were almost always bad). But Labour members either encouraged him, acquiesed or, even worse - tried to shoot down anyone who suggested Labour was making a collossal mistake. Now they prefer to blame those who raised the alarm rather than those that steered the ship onto the rocks.
So the defeat of 2019 should see the Labour membership's influence in future leadership contests stripped right back. We simply can't have a situation in which the leader of the Labour Party doesn't have the confidence of his MPs: there is a deep informational asymmetry going on here, with MPs having a better knowledge of the leader's calibre by virtue of actually working with him or her on a regular basis. Labour MPs suffer much of the fatal sentimentality of the rest of the party, for sure, but their incomes depend on getting this right, and we already know that Labour members care considerably less about electability than about personal feel good factor.
Just because things are popular with the Labour membership - 2019 manifesto, I'm looking at you - doesn't make them sacred. This was a manifesto which was less generous to the working poor than the Lib Dems' proposals. Oh yes, Jez made Labour feel good but so often the devil is in the detail - and in his last week in post put out a five point coronavirus plan which had six points... I am all for extra state involvement in parts of the economy but each step has to be rigorously examined and considered on its own merits, not given as a blanket prescription as many in the party seem to want.
I see few reasons why the Labour Party should treat the architects and supporters of the last five years of idiocy with anything other than minimal respect, unless permanent opposition has some kind of deep allure.
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let’s get some power
Sorry, can't resist. I thought this wasn't important?
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let’s get some power
Sorry, can't resist. I thought this wasn't important?
Take a quote out of context to make a cheap point. Lovely. :-*
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I’m out, not out of the party (which is no doubt what some would like)..but out of this thread. :wave:
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I’m out, not out of the party (which is no doubt what some would like)..but out of this thread. :wave:
“Not that I lov'd Rome less, but that I lov'd Caesar more.”
:'(
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I’m out, not out of the party (which is no doubt what some would like)..but out of this thread. :wave:
See, I call that a shame, because I think you are an important part of the overall discussion. Being in a minority, doesn’t make you of less value , it means your input is more important.
Also, being a centrist, actually means I agree with some of your core beliefs. As many to my left, believe in a larger “chunk” of that core and so on.
Some.
Not all.
Have you considered how many read but do not comment on, this thread?
How do you know your contribution is pointless?
You have the courage to eloquently defend your position, you should be proud.
My comment on the language you used?
Shit mate, take that as coming from someone who, pretty much, always says the wrong thing, in too many words, at the wrong time.
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Andrew Gwynne's resignation:
https://mobile.twitter.com/GwynneMP/status/1247099675301367809
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I’m out, not out of the party (which is no doubt what some would like)..but out of this thread. :wave:
I second what OMM says above... please stay.
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Come back Brutus 😢
Broad church means lots of views. I think the present CV situation makes many people (and posts - mine included) a lot more snarky than usual...
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Come back Brutus 😢
Broad church means lots of views. I think the present CV situation makes many people (and posts - mine included) a lot more snarky than usual...
Ooooh I resent the insinuation that I wrote a more than usually snarky anti-Corbyn post due to CV! ;)
I think Brutus should definitely contribute. My points are about the broader far left rather than any single individual.
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I have no interest in an echo chamber and anyone who does really needs to step away from their screen. It is important to hear a good range of different views imo. Sean’s, galpinos’s, Brutus’s contributions- all worthwhile.
If Brutus wants to step back that’s a shame, and does seem unduly sensitive, but really it his prerogative.
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Hi
I don’t often post but generally read these threads and find them interesting. I am also really interested in hearing different points of view and also from people who are very invested in the situation or are members of the Labour Party such as (I believe?) Brutus and Sean. So I think it would be great if you did feel able to contribute.
My own feeling about the leadership contest is that (disclaimer: I am not a Labour Party member but did vote Labour) I would pretty much have been happy with all of them and whoever it was would have been a huge improvement on Corbyn in terms of ability to perform well in the media and also not alienate people who could vote Labour. I guess RLB would have been the hardest sell to the public but I thought that she generally interviewed well.
Policy wise I liked the 2017 manifesto a lot and was okay with the 2019 one I just thought that it had too much in it.
I really struggle to understand much of the internal wranglings and vitriol that has clearly taken hold and I hope that Starmer manages to put an end to that and get the party to work together.
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As a little essay, this was thought provoking and it seemed aspects of it could be applied to our own situation, here:
https://www.quora.com/What-dont-most-liberals-realize/answer/Peter-Kruger?ch=1&share=95ddcb10&srid=iAmK&fbclid=IwAR2t4wGeid9w19XicEbhJEXhm2cNae9sci-4UOivdgHLLskVJTkT1gjEPgU (https://www.quora.com/What-dont-most-liberals-realize/answer/Peter-Kruger?ch=1&share=95ddcb10&srid=iAmK&fbclid=IwAR2t4wGeid9w19XicEbhJEXhm2cNae9sci-4UOivdgHLLskVJTkT1gjEPgU)
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https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/keir-starmer-approval-rating-boris-johnson-first-time-a4438786.html
Early days I know, but this brought me a little joy this morning. At what point will Johnson be sacrificed I wonder?
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Opinions on the merger of Dfid and the foreign office seem pretty predictable, I thought this was by far the best analysis I've read,
https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/staggers/2020/06/david-cameron-has-broken-his-silence-criticise-boris-johnson-heres-why
The thought of giving Raab even more to do when hes a total failure at his current breif is rather unsettling. I could see that the merger might make sense if you had a competent administration.
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Yeh that was my feelings on it. I can see the arguments for and against the merger but my concerns boil down to two main ones:
1. Of all the things the govt and civil servants could be spending valuable time and effort on right now, departmental restructuring would come pretty low down my list of priorities.
2. Johnson’s preoccupation with it seems to be borne out of a frustration during his time as Foreign Sec not to be able to engage in a fairly short-termist transactional approach to foreign policy and aid. I have absolutely no faith that between him and Raab there will be any great long-term strategy. It seems more likely to be used as a simple carrot or stick approach with minimal concern for global consequences.
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Opinions on the merger of Dfid and the foreign office seem pretty predictable, I thought this was by far the best analysis I've read,
https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/staggers/2020/06/david-cameron-has-broken-his-silence-criticise-boris-johnson-heres-why
The thought of giving Raab even more to do when hes a total failure at his current breif is rather unsettling. I could see that the merger might make sense if you had a competent administration.
I thought the NS piece was very good on the Westminster aspect of the DfID/FCO merger, but poor on the operational impacts. I've worked in the aid and development sector for several years, including a on project which involved close co-operation with DfID staff. There's a real depth of technical and specialist expertise in the department and, unlike many of the things the government trumpets as world-class, it actually is.
Running development programmes and doing diplomacy are two different things, and what do we do when they contradict each other? If realpolitik means cosying up to an unpleasant regime, and development means supporting disadvantaged groups in that country - say campaigners against female genital mutilation - then I think it's almost inevitable that as development plays second fiddle to foreign policy interests, the outcomes for the world's poorest will decline. Given that DfID has led the world in things like setting standards (boring, but important) there could also be a knock-on effect.
I see also that the Commons international development select committee is being disbanded, meaning less oversight and scrutiny, as is the way of this government.
I thought this was good:
https://www.devex.com/news/what-happens-when-an-aid-department-is-folded-96262
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Opinions on the merger of Dfid and the foreign office seem pretty predictable, I thought this was by far the best analysis I've read,
https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/staggers/2020/06/david-cameron-has-broken-his-silence-criticise-boris-johnson-heres-why
The thought of giving Raab even more to do when hes a total failure at his current breif is rather unsettling. I could see that the merger might make sense if you had a competent administration.
I thought the NS piece was very good on the Westminster aspect of the DfID/FCO merger, but poor on the operational impacts. I've worked in the aid and development sector for several years, including a on project which involved close co-operation with DfID staff. There's a real depth of technical and specialist expertise in the department and, unlike many of the things the government trumpets as world-class, it actually is.
Running development programmes and doing diplomacy are two different things, and what do we do when they contradict each other? If realpolitik means cosying up to an unpleasant regime, and development means supporting disadvantaged groups in that country - say campaigners against female genital mutilation - then I think it's almost inevitable that as development plays second fiddle to foreign policy interests, the outcomes for the world's poorest will decline. Given that DfID has led the world in things like setting standards (boring, but important) there could also be a knock-on effect.
I see also that the Commons international development select committee is being disbanded, meaning less oversight and scrutiny, as is the way of this government.
I thought this was good:
https://www.devex.com/news/what-happens-when-an-aid-department-is-folded-96262
Sean, there's another article on the New Statesman site by their other main political reporter saying more or less exactly what you do above.
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https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/picture/2020/jun/17/martin-rowson-on-pms-plan-to-merge-dfid-with-foreign-office-cartoon
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Almost missed this...
https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk/2020/06/perfect-storm-causes-boris-johnson-s-first-parliamentary-defeat-election
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Far more interesting today was RLB being sacked, I think it's really the only thing Starmer could have done to maintain credibility given Corbyn's utter failure to do anything about antisemitism. I'm sure some on the left will still get all stroppy but what did she expect if she shares conspiracy theories on Twitter?
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Did you read the original article Toby? I had a look. No sensible politician would maintain th3 rightful ness of that, the wording made it sound as if Israel were had led the US astray regarding the death of George Floyd:
Systemic racism is a global issue,” she adds. “The tactics used by the police in America, kneeling on George Floyd’s neck, that was learnt from seminars with Israeli secret services.”
The following disavowal by Israeli spokesperson was inserted into the article after the brouhaha, it wasn’t’t there when I first read it just after she was sacked.
Starmer showing good - and long overdue- leadership on this matter.
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I presume he saw a good opportunity to kill a few birds with one stone, and a shrewd political move that would also ‘cut through’ to the general public. Getting a grip on anti-semitism, a clear break from Corbynism, and also getting rid of someone underperforming? I hadn’t heard much from her during the schools rows - was she just shit at the job? It’s certainly grabbed some of the news agenda and draws a stark contrast with Johnson’s weak leadership. Win win win for him probably.
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Agreed on all points. Long-Bailey’s contribution on schools has been nil as far as I can discern. And this will come to be vaguely remembered as Starmer being tough on antisemitism by the public in general, long after the details have been forgotten. More differentiation from Corbyn.
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This is a reckless overreaction. We stand in full solidarity with Rebecca Long-Bailey.
The central point of Maxine Peak's claim is that US police officers are frequently trained by Israeli security forces. On this, she is absolutely correct. This relationship has been documented and criticised by Amnesty USA due to the involvement of the Israeli security forces in 'chronic' human rights abuses. It is not antisemitic to point this out.
This appals me.
-It does not look reckless; sacking RLB looks decisive and shows that anti-Semitic slurs are not acceptable in the PLP.
- Her 'central point' is being sanitised here, it a clear anti-Semitic trope, unjustifiably linking Israel to the death of George Floyd.
- It IS anti-Semitic to promote distortions of the truth in a way which feeds an anti-Semitic narrative.
In my view, Momentum really bring themselves into disrepute by twisting things in this way. I get they want to defend the influence of the left at the top of the party, but I did not think they would try to justify clearly anti-Semitic speech in the process. :no:
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I get the impression they're just lost in an argument about what should/shouldn't constitute anti-semitism, and are more fussed about arguing about this than about how a lot of the public views the argument. Either RLB had to issue a grovelling apology or Starmer had to give her the boot
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Jon Lansman this morning saying Starmer was making life harder for himself (in terms of uniting the party) by sacking her. No, I think you’re making it harder for him by continuing to sow division and turn this into a left-right battle you fool. It sounds like RLB didn’t answer the phone for 4hrs in the middle of a Twitterstorm yesterday. Starmer really had no option.
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Total car-crash by momentum imho.
1. Why RLB thought re-tweeting that article as a Labour front bencher is unfathomable. After antisemitism dogged the party at the last election, she decides to retweet an article with an antisemitic trope in it.
2. Regards of the "Israeli Secret Services" part, there's the "If you didn't vote for Corbyn you're a Tory"s section, the slagging off KS section etc. What did she think would happen?
2. Amnesty international have made some clarifications, Peake has apologised. RLB has not.
3. RLB apparently avoided KS for hours whilst this was all kicking off.
People didn't vote for Corbyn for many reasons but for me, he, and his momentum backed team, are incompetent politicians. RLB has basically been sacked for not being good at her job.
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She has really helpedUk schoolchildren through the pandemic though. Really pushed Williamson to get his act together, hasn’t she? :blink:
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Wrong Aps are boring, we need to reach for the sky with our mistakes.
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2020/jun/26/satellite-experts-oneweb-investment-uk-galileo-brexit
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I entirely agree with all of the above. Starmer was just doing what any vaguely credible politician would have done, witness Johnson/ Jenerick for what an incompetent politician with little integrity would have done.
Landsman, Mccluskey etc are just showing that still don't get a significant part of the reason why they've helped to lose the last two elections. I'm sure that Jess Phillips would be far better at pursuing Williamson for being so bloody useless
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Wrong Aps are boring, we need to reach for the sky with our mistakes.
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2020/jun/26/satellite-experts-oneweb-investment-uk-galileo-brexit
The more I read about this the more bonkers it sounds... apparently we can bolt on some sort of gps box onto the side of some mobile internet satellites (in a far lower orbit than regular GPS ones) and have our own system. Or not.
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Aside from the satellites it’s been quite a week for the govt:
“ 1. Let’s start with the milder corruption: it was revealed Matt Hancock tried to block 400 homes and a primary school near Newmarket racecourse, after receiving at least £65,000 in donations from horseracing bigwigs who opposed the scheme
2. And then Robert Jenrick, the Housing Minister, overruled his dept and planning officers to rush through planning permission that saved Richard Desmond a £45m fee. Desmond is a billionaire pr0nographer, former-Express owner, and (subsequent to this) a Tory donor
3. The Tory Manifesto says: “we will offer more homes to local families, enabling councils to use developers’ contributions via the planning process”
4. The lost £45m was the “developers’ contribution”. One of Britain’s most deprived areas lost it. A billionaire kept it.
5. And then, I'm sure coincidentally, Desmond donated £12,000 to the Tory Party the next week. A bargain – only 0.02% of the £45m he saved
6. So this week Jenrick denied he had done anything wrong
7. Unfortunately, he had already admitted his actions were “unlawful” on 29 May
8. And then the business minister said voters could “raise their concerns at Tory fundraisers”
9. So now have to donate to the Tory Party before we can complain about the Tory Party doing illegal things for their donors
10. In Coronavirus news: Boris Johnson announced more relaxations of the lockdown, saying he would “trust the British public to use their common sense”
11. 48 hours later a major incident was declared on the South Coast, as 500,000 people common-sensibly crowded the beaches
12. Boris Johnson said he “would not hesitate” to bring back lockdown if the rules on social distancing weren’t observed
13. 48 hours later, he hasn’t brought back lockdown
14. Then the govt announced councils would have the “power and resources” to enforce local lockdowns
15. But council leaders wrote to the govt to explain that they don’t actually have the legal powers to do this
16. And then 8 out of 10 councils in England have declared they are at risk of bankruptcy, having absorbed cuts of between 26% and 50%
17. Health leaders, including the presidents of Royal Colleges of Physicians, Nurses, GPs and Surgeons wrote to the govt asking for an urgent review of preparations for a second wave
18. The govt declined to do a review
19. And then the WHO warned of global shortage of oxygen and breathing equipment
20. So naturally, the govt opened pubs and cinemas
21. Then, after a month of not telling us the daily test numbers, the govt went a step further and cancelled the daily briefings altogether
22. UK Statistics Authority issued a 2nd official warning about the “trustworthiness” of the govt’s figures
23. Association of Medical Research said 74% of clinical trials had been put on hold in 2020 due to cuts
24. So we spent £900k painting a flag on Boris Johnson’s plane
25. And then it was revealed the govt spent £12m on the “world beating” contact app that didn’t work
26. If you paid the average £50,000 programmer salary, £12m buys 320 programmers
27. The German app code is open-source, and the free repository for it lists 34 programmers
28. The UK has repeatedly declined to use the free German App
29. Boris Johnson claimed in Parliament that "no country in the world has a working contact tracing app”
30. There are working contact tracing apps in: Angola, Australia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Bangladesh...
... Brazil, Canada, China, Colombia, Czech Rep, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ghana, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, India, Indonesia, Israel, Italy, Japan, Jordan, Latvia, Malaysia, Morocco, N Macedonia, Netherlands, Norway, NZ, Poland ...
... Qatar, Russia, S Africa, S Korea, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Spain, Switzerland and Vietnam. That's 42 countries.
31. The gov declined to publish its report on food and medicine shortage risks from no-deal Brexit, which surely bodes well.
32. Boris Johnson said Brexit must be delivered, as we have a “democratic duty” to listen to the people
33. A report this week found 9m voters – most thought likely to oppose the Conservatives – will vanish from the electoral roll when new Westminster seats are drawn up
34. When the govt (breaking pre-election promises) merged the Dept for International Development into Foreign Office 2 weeks ago, they said there would be no cuts to overseas aid
35. This week the Treasury asked govt depts to find "a minimum of 30%" cuts, including overseas aid
36. The govt continued to decry the removal of statues connected with slavery, as this might “diminish public knowledge of British history”
37. Govt cuts led to the closure of 773 public libraries, and I suspect many of them contained books about British History
38. The Minister for Arts said the govt was “committed to supporting the Arts Sector in through crisis”
39. Emergency funding for the arts (converted into £)
- France £6.3bn
- Germany £900m
- Canada £295m
- Italy £221m
- NZ £90
- Spain £68m
- Ireland £18m
- UK £0
40. In 2019 the govt committed to net zero carbon emissions by 2050
41. A year on a report found at the current rate, the govt would hit its target by the year 3650, which is 1500 years from now, a mere 1470 years too late
42. This week it reached 38°C in the Arctic
43. The govt said it would “fairly and courageously to maintain law and order” in the light of the #BlackLivesMatter movement
44. And then the govt announced it wants to abolish trial by jury in order to address a 41,000-case backlog caused by its own cuts
45. It's Friday. Not even very late Friday. There are 2 more days of this week to go”
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1276512600398925824.html
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What about continued Brexit related footshooting this week.
Tory MPs getting pissed off with government by focus groups
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jun/26/swedish-exceptionalism-coronavirus-covid19-death-toll
Spad spats
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/jun/24/dominic-cummings-could-face-inquiry-over-special-advisers
A hard rain on the civil service
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/hard-rain-is-going-to-fall-on-civil-service-says-dominic-cummings-gcq79vcl0
Arguably worst of all, most of this tsunami of shit barely appears on the most watched BBC TV news.
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Arguably worst of all, most of this tsunami of shit barely appears on the most watched BBC TV news.
Really? I don't think that is the case at all. I've seen many reports on the BBC on all of the above; the lack of arts funding, the Cummings civil service reforms, deceit over the testing figures, the poor timing of the reopening of pubs and its poorly communicated announcement, the Jenerick affair, and so on. Its frankly bollocks trying to claim that the BBC aren't willing to criticise the government at the moment.
I strongly suspect that when many people are criticising the BBC, from the right or the left, it eventually boils down to them being unhappy about it not exactly replicating their point of view.
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I'm talking the main most watched BBC TV news. Yes R4 and Newsnight have covered most of the list (not all). This way it's easy for the BBC to claim they meet scrutiny requirements and keep the government happy by keeping harsh criticism from the news most ordinary folk watch ( BBC1 breakfast, 18.00 and 22.00). If you are calling BS tell me when they were on or where they were discussed cumulatively as it's a pretty big list for just one week.
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I strongly suspect that when many people are criticising the BBC, from the right or the left, it eventually boils down to them being unhappy about it not exactly replicating their point of view.
Yes R4 and Newsnight have covered most of the list (not all). This way it's easy for the BBC to claim they meet scrutiny requirements and keep the government happy by keeping harsh criticism from the news most ordinary folk watch (BBC1 breakfast, 18.00 and 22.00).
I’m somewhere in between these. I’m definitely guilty of getting frustrated the BBC don’t often go as far as I’d like with their scrutiny of govt. But if you ever click on the comments section on the BBC news website you get a whole stream of people convinced BBC is all leftie luvvies so they must be getting the balance right in some ways.
Having said that, I do think there’s something in what Offwidth says too. BBC breakfast is a joke, and there’s often huge disparities in how stories are presented between different news slots. I get this may be down to different editors but do wonder if it’s as Offwidth says too. Maitlis on Newsnight is comparable with Channel 4 in terms of scrutiny but that’s an exception and has pretty low viewing figures compared with 6 and 10pm news. BBC Reality Check and More or Less are excellent at countering the bullshit govt ministers spout, but they are quite niche and it rarely seems to feed back into the other news programmes to set the record straight.
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I suspect it’s down to target audience, rather than inherent bias.
The viewership for Breakfast television, is liable to evaporation in the face of the heat of rigorous journalism.
They don’t want “News”, they want reassuring “Olds”.
To paraphrase Pratchet, they want to hear that a dog bit a man, not that a man bit a dog.
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I suspect it’s down to target audience, rather than inherent bias.
The viewership for Breakfast television, is liable to evaporation in the face of the heat of rigorous journalism.
They don’t want “News”, they want reassuring “Olds”.
To paraphrase Pratchet, they want to hear that a dog bit a man, not that a man bit a dog.
I think that is pretty reasonable, Ali I'll accept that I don't watch breakfast television ever, but is it where anyone who was interested would look anyway? I'd assume that its a fairly light news magazine style format. None of you have mentioned Emma Barnett on 5 live who has a good sized audience as far as I'm aware and is routinely very good at grilling ministers properly but without being hectoring or rude. Panorama is widely watched and also not shy about laying into government when its appropriate.
One thing I would say is that BBC comedy is disproportionately left wing, but that may well be that there really aren't very many right wing comedians!
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I suspect it’s down to target audience, rather than inherent bias.
I think that is pretty reasonable, Ali I'll accept that I don't watch breakfast television ever, but is it where anyone who was interested would look anyway?
Me neither, I’ve just caught it occasionally when staying away with work and it’s nauseating. I agree you’re not gonna look there for in-depth journalism but if most people just watch that and then maybe the 6 or 10pm news there’s an argument for the BBC needing to get the balance right even more and not just being a mouthpiece for the govt on those particular shows (which is what Dan Walker’s questioning amounts to on Breakfast), otherwise they do open themselves up to the criticism.
None of you have mentioned Emma Barnett on 5 live
She’s great but I don’t think late morning radio gets anywhere near the reach of those three prime TV slots.
Don’t get me wrong, on balance the BBC does a decent job on news coverage. And I’m under no illusion that if it disappears it’ll be replaced by a good quality centre or slightly left of centre media organisation so I don’t want it to go anywhere.
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One thing I would say is that BBC comedy is disproportionately left wing, but that may well be that there really aren't very many right wing comedians!
I’ve often wondered this. Maybe there’s less acceptable material now for right wing comedians?
[*over-simplified categorisation warning*]
If left is generally thought of as being on the side of the poor and discriminated and right on the side of the wealthy and powerful it’s a lot easier for left wing comedians to ‘punch up’ and not down. What would right wing comedians take a pop at? Wokeness?
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Funny that the ‘disproportionately left wing‘ BBC comedy is partially responsible for us ending up with our current prime minister!
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Is it not, rather, about mocking “the powers that be”, more than right or left wing politics?
Coupled with predominantly Tory government for post war/TV era Britain?
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The story of Moscow Bob (presumably way too hot for the BBC)
https://bylinetimes.com/2020/06/23/sweeney-investigates-what-connects-robert-jenrick-to-the-gambino-crime-family-and-putins-oligarchs/
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Much as I’d like to not consider it comedy - where does Mrs Browns boys fit on the left to right political spectrum?
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Much as I’d like to not consider it comedy - where does Mrs Browns boys fit on the left to right political spectrum?
I did wonder about things like that after I'd posted. I've never seen it, but my totally judgemental prejudiced guess is that if you really like MBB, you're not interested in politics, but voted leave, think that lowering immigration would be good, and that we never should have had a lockdown in the first place.
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Can I put Michael McIntyre in the same dark box as MrsBB please? I never watch long enough to know if he has any political angle - my crawling skin makes me leave the room rapidly.
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I believe Michael McIntyre to be to on the conservative / right wing of things politically (based solely things said during his appearances on Mock the Week many years ago).
As for Mrs Browns Boys, the only person I know who actually watches it is my father in law; he is a lifelong Labour voter / and voted Remain, however I suspect this is mostly based on tradition and inertia.
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Since a few years as what might charitably described as a mediocre performance as PM, Theresa May is doing rather a good job of causing trouble as a backbencher. Her furious questions to Gove about the appointment of David Frost precipitated a series of um, err ... faultering from Gove.
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Can always rely on Stewart Lee to answer comedy questions (albeit from 2013 so a bit out of date now) - https://www.stewartlee.co.uk/written_for_money/where-are-all-the-right-wing-stand-ups/ (https://www.stewartlee.co.uk/written_for_money/where-are-all-the-right-wing-stand-ups/)
Even he doesn't dip as low as Mrs Brown's Boys :lol:
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Can I put Michael McIntyre in the same dark box as MrsBB please?
Not sure which one is less funny. I can't be in the same room as them without teaching the kids some new vocab.
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Can I put Michael McIntyre in the same dark box as MrsBB please?
Not sure which one is less funny. I can't be in the same room as them without teaching the kids some new vocab.
Indeed. Room 101ing both of em.
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Actually MMI wins, based on the fact that so many twats like him.
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More worrying news from HK
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jul/08/china-great-firewall-descends-hong-kong-internet-users
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Top wally appointment yet in the wallygarchy:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jul/10/chris-grayling-chair-intelligence-committee-
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I haven't read the link, but I don't think it's a matter of debate that Chris Grayling is incompetent, and being recommended for the post on the grounds that he's a very loyal politician. He stuck with Theresa May continuously, and he'll do as he's told, I suspect.
What's more concerning is that the committee hasn't released the Russia report. I doubt that it's as damning as some hope, but it may be embarrassing for the government; but it fits within a pattern of avoiding scrutiny which indicates that the government will avoid any blame for mismanagement of the pandemic, mismanagement of leaving the EU, failing to have a plan for social care, failing to have a functional environmental policy, and so on until the next election.
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What's more concerning is that the committee hasn't released the Russia report.
Yet. But it hasn’t been set up for long enough, and Dominic Grieve yesterday said it’s understandable if it doesn’t get released until the new committee have read and digested it, which may take weeks due to the content. But they also have the power to further redact or edit it I believe, so the new chair could steer the committee to remove parts that are embarrassing I suppose. Which is far from unlikely.
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On a different topic:
New Day...
News and Comment from Roy Lilley
I'm up early. The new day is announcing its arrival with a tangerine streak, low across the London horizon. The light, catching windows in the steel and chrome office blocks, by the river. The Thames is deciding between coming and going. The water, like glass. The Clipper, London's water-bus, makes elegant ripples, as it moves effortlessly, westward. Daybreak is a good time to reflect on optimism. What will I achieve today? Who will I talk to? What will I read? What will inspire me?
What's next for the NHS? Who knows? Are we edging our way back to normality? Fingers crossed there won't be a second spike, the flu-season won't be too bad. We'll start to make a dent on the waiting lists. There's new money in the offing. A building programme getting its shovels ready. We'll find ways to hang-on to the radical changes, obliged on us by Covid. Innovation, efficiency and new ways of doing things seem to be in our grasp. Dare we spare ourselves a moment of optimism? The NHS, applauded by the nation, perhaps on the cusp of a new beginning. A new dawn. I thought so, I hoped so. I really did think... this time.
I turned to my in-box, to see what the day was offering. The usual stuff; press releases, interviews, emails denouncing me as wrong, others saying I'm right, some saying I should be locked up! ... then came the wrecking ball. The plug, pulled on my day. A report, like an unexploded war-time bomb, a time-machine, dragging me back to the 70's and 80's. The bad old-days. The Cumberlege Report; The report of the Independent Medicines and Medical Devices Safety Review, was published yesterday.
I bet you didn't know it was being written and for sure you wouldn't have known it was finished and published. Its full title is borrowed from medical ethics. The Hippocratic Oath, taken from the Greek text... First, Do No Harm. It is a report all about harm. It is about butchery, carelessness, system failure, arrogance, nonchalance, ignorance, thuggery, lies and covering-up. Dissembling and dodging responsibility. Everything, I stupidly thought, we had left behind with a past that was, often shame-full. It is a report about ruined lives, abandoned patients and neglect. It is a report about lack of leadership, cowardice and arrogance. Timid policymakers, unresponsive systems and the view that patients are somehow a disruption of the working day. A system that ignores the wisdom of data, is flying blind, into catastrophe and refuses to regard failure as a lesson to learn... instead, a reason to bury it.
The report takes us into the treacherous, duplicitous world of hormone pregnancy tests, prescribing sodium valproate in pregnancy and the use of pelvic mesh. Much of the report is told through the narrative of patients. One of whom describes her experience as if she was;
'... an unsuspecting and unwilling participant in a cruel experiment'.
This is a life changing read. I can't do it justice in an eLetter but you can. You can read it, or the summary. Flick through the pages and on each one is evidence of a human disaster, lives ruined, hopes dashed. Of people's experiences ignored and dismissed as 'anecdotal'.
This is a report that if it doesn't make you angry, you are working in the wrong job. The response of some medical device and pharma-companies is infuriating and reinforces much of the self-inflicted prejudice against them, that festers in the NHS. Page 187 has nine recommendations. They speak to; data, transparency, implementation of the report and its findings.
They recommend a new, Patient Safety Commissioner to work where all other organisations, responsible for our safety, have failed. Redress, specialist treatment centres to try and ameliorate the impact of these disasters and a good kicking for the MHRA, asleep at the wheel.
http://r20.rs6.net/tn.jsp?f=001CuYroyYoEBqkqziJ62vMUaUuIIwQRK3b95kqv9DafZzia1MPSmzY4vuWSWKCZsHOEH6N4BUl3Nxx-QoifHdSsxVu6c3HxqXWesBuOWDNgKaMzUP5N-PFXjA8-3HtPsUdGOr2oZ9l9tmVgXkW1xHaL7CJFaPwvAcGlw-uOLAdYiwlrQP253_Y0C3iN1gHNA5MSaG5o9bQJ1h1LfW3Zggbp4Z-_pxnrsjq&c=y8i6OimWZ3ubQ1aQWmJNPVyrt6WY-PBupJmqHevvnOzhf_im1_9sQg==&ch=ED9DYwrqBemUqpiWvQMyWH8ki_XSh75Vc0Lz9wRXKnIAt-t0DGIytQ==
The NHS has dragged itself through political neglect, ten years of austerity funding, workforce shortages, useless regulation, the shock and aftershock of Covid-19, PPE, deaths of colleagues... to arrive at this morning, this day. If No18 doesn't implement every paragraph, every word, full-stop and comma, of this towering, detailed, exquisitely researched report, we will never scrape the past off our boots and never step a sure-foot into a new day.
----------------
Contact Roy - please use this e-address
roy.lilley@nhsmanagers.net
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What's more concerning is that the committee hasn't released the Russia report. I doubt that it's as damning as some hope, but it may be embarrassing for the government
So a full 15 months after this report was concluded and following the farcical attempts to improperly install Cummings’ stooge as committee chair, obviously it’s just pure coincidence that on the same day as it’s announced the report will be published the govt screams “Well they did it to other people too you know. Look - Russian meddling everywhere”.
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And that’s exactly what sky News have said in their analysis.
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What's more concerning is that the committee hasn't released the Russia report. I doubt that it's as damning as some hope, but it may be embarrassing for the government
So a full 15 months after this report was concluded and following the farcical attempts to improperly install Cummings’ stooge as committee chair, obviously it’s just pure coincidence that on the same day as it’s announced the report will be published the govt screams “Well they did it to other people too you know. Look - Russian meddling everywhere”.
I think that describing Chris Grayling as Cummings stooge is talking him up a bit too much to be honest. He's a known incompetent, even to seemingly all of his own party, his only recommendation is brainless loyalty to whoever is currently his master; much like a particularly stupid and greedy Labrador being loyal to whoever feeds him.
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Conservative politicians talk about Johnson with a venom few socialists can match. It’s not that he’s a criminal like Putin, they say. He doesn’t have the balls to be truly evil. Rather, he is a pathetically insecure narcissist who turns on you if you don’t feed his craving for applause. “He’s an abject, hectoring, incompetent show-off,” said one. “If you don’t love him or can’t fake a love for him, he will go for you.” from Nick Cohen's article today, on expelling MPs who displease him. I'd certainly agree. Sadly I think hes in a stronger position than many who dislike him would like.
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Keir Starmer has made a generally well regarded start as opposition leader, and already increased labour party support in the general population, if polls are to be believed. Given that Corbyn rather stupidly defamed John Ware and the whistleblowers again immediately after the court hearing, should Starmer remove the whip from him?
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Given that Corbyn rather stupidly defamed John Ware and the whistleblowers again immediately after the court hearing, should Starmer remove the whip from him?
I keep forgetting Corbyn is still an MP. Given that it's largely gone unnoticed by most of the public the sensible thing for Starmer would be to wait until Corbyn says something even more stupid and then take very decisive action a la Long Bailey which will get a decent amount of coverage and draw an even thicker line between them. A slightly cynical way of looking at it maybe but politically would probably serve him better?
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I keep forgetting Corbyn is still an MP. Given that it's largely gone unnoticed by most of the public the sensible thing for Starmer would be to wait until Corbyn says something even more stupid and then take very decisive action a la Long Bailey which will get a decent amount of coverage and draw an even thicker line between them. A slightly cynical way of looking at it maybe but politically would probably serve him better?
A reasonable idea I think. Momentum et al will get all hot and bothered either way. The negative side is that by doing nothing now, the labour party may be involved in the ensuing legal action rather than it just being against Corbyn.
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I keep forgetting Corbyn is still an MP.
With Corbyn back out of the public eye, and with momentum neutered for now, the best thing politically might be to just leave him there and ignore him.
It was different with Long-Bailey because she was still in a position of power.
Kicking him out might galvanise momentum for another power struggle.
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Wait till the EHRC report and kick him out of Labour for bringing the party into disrepute. Of course lots of members would leave too, but if subscriptions had to rise because of it, I’m sure for many left that would be a price worth paying.
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Well Corbyn seemingly wasn't being enough of a PITA, so now Len McCluskey is doing his best to claw Labour back to total unelectability. He's the best asset the Conservative party have got.
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Thanks for highlighting this, I'd missed his interview with the Observer.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/aug/01/len-mccluskey-labour-should-not-be-taking-unites-money-for-granted
I agree McCluskey is often a gift for the tories but not everything from the left of Labour is automatically wrong. There have been rumblings about the independence of the EHRC but not much in the mainstream media.
https://www.newsweek.com/equalities-human-rights-commission-ehrc-pavita-cooper-race-racism-equality-1513338
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Imagine a world without him; where David, not Ed Miliband, succeeds Gordon Brown.
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Imagine a world without him; where David, not Ed Miliband, succeeds Gordon Brown.
And in that world our present prime minister would surely have already been on Im a Celebrity.... having torpedoed his oven ready career over some indiscretion or something...
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Thanks for highlighting this, I'd missed his interview with the Observer.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/aug/01/len-mccluskey-labour-should-not-be-taking-unites-money-for-granted
I agree McCluskey is often a gift for the tories but not everything from the left of Labour is automatically wrong.
Perhaps Len shouldn't be taking Unite's money for granted either. One of the things which really irks me about many of the left wing bosses who propped up Corbyn is how much they preach about the 'workers' and 'privileged tories' whilst being really rather wealthy, especially Murray.
Are they just a bit more equal than the others?
A political party exists to gain power and enact its policies, surely? Starmer has made a very good start at repairing some of the damage done to Labours reputation and making it electable again. Len McCluskey seems to think that this just isn't really on. His interview on the today program was an embarrassment, when it was put to him that perhaps Starmer had made a moral choice in paying the whistleblowers, he responded that that wasn't being an issue, the point was that Labour could have beaten them in court.
I found that rather chilling.
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His interview on the today program was an embarrassment, when it was put to him that perhaps Starmer had made a moral choice in paying the whistleblowers, he responded that that wasn't being an issue, the point was that Labour could have beaten them in court.
Yeh, it was quite telling wasn’t it. Basically if you can crush someone in court there’s no reason to ever make a payout to the individual :wank:
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The hard left leaders (political and intellectual) are bullies and thugs. The rank and file are blinded to that by promises about health care and education. They’ll also tell you they’re devoted to Orwell whilst ignoring the fact he spent most of the 30s and 40s warning against this very tendency.
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They don't enjoy that being pointed out.
On a different subject some details of a mini exodus.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/aug/04/number-of-uk-citizens-emigrating-to-eu-has-risen-by-30-since-brexit-vote
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His interview on the today program was an embarrassment, when it was put to him that perhaps Starmer had made a moral choice in paying the whistleblowers, he responded that that wasn't being an issue, the point was that Labour could have beaten them in court.
Yeh, it was quite telling wasn’t it. Basically if you can crush someone in court there’s no reason to ever make a payout to the individual :wank:
I was aghast at his seemingly disbelief that anyone should ever make a moral choice if it might be financially disadvantageous.
It's probably on a similar moral plane to Boris Johnson's charming implied message that disagree with him, and you lose the whip; however if you're accused of a few rapes, fine, carry on as normal. Disgusting. Boris, that is.
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Can any of the UkB members who are in or associated with the Labour party shed any light on whether they think this story:
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/aug/07/jeremy-corbyn-accuses-labour-officials-of-sabotaging-election-campaign?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Copy_to_clipboard
Is likely to be in any way true? Did rebels wreck Corbyns election victory? I'd honestly like an opinion because it seems an awful lot like they still can't believe that the British people didn't vote for a hard left government.
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Yanks Varoufakis seemed to think so, he discusses it briefly here iirc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jzd4FA7rbk4
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Good morning. Hope your all keeping well. Thank you to those of you whom encouraged me to continue to post a left (not hard left! TD) perspective on here. I stopped posting here (on political stuff) and withdrew from fudge book largely because it was causing me to become stressed and a large part of the stress was anger over the contents of the leaked Labour report for the ECHR. Given that I was (note the past tense SK will be pleased I'm sure) a Labpur Party activist and worked hard in my spare time to support the cause this all left a horrid sick feeling in my stomach. I am pleased to report my mental health is much improved and my climbing levels of strength/fitness are on the up too! I am involved in political action with a small 'p' placing my energy into actions that have a direct effect in helping those in need. NO. This is not a return to posting on political threads on here just a bit of closure for me I guess. Anyhow, here's a comprehensive report on the underreported shitshow that was going on behind the scenes in the LP, truly sickening. https://youtu.be/gAnVBtG03Gk
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Thanks Brutus, I'm not sure I need to watch a video of Jon Lansman to guess what the content will be? I take it therefore that you do think that Corbyn would have won if Labour moderates, or whatever you want to call them, hadn't sabotaged his election campaign by mis directing funds?
All I was after was people's opinions; I'm genuinely curious and unsure whether to regard this as another plaintive plea of we won the argument or a credible exposure of a bitter internal conflict.
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Good morning. Hope your all keeping well. Thank you to those of you whom encouraged me to continue to post a left (not hard left! TD) perspective on here. I stopped posting here (on political stuff) and withdrew from fudge book largely because it was causing me to become stressed and a large part of the stress was anger over the contents of the leaked Labour report for the ECHR. Given that I was (note the past tense SK will be pleased I'm sure) a Labpur Party activist and worked hard in my spare time to support the cause this all left a horrid sick feeling in my stomach. I am pleased to report my mental health is much improved and my climbing levels of strength/fitness are on the up too! I am involved in political action with a small 'p' placing my energy into actions that have a direct effect in helping those in need. NO. This is not a return to posting on political threads on here just a bit of closure for me I guess. Anyhow, here's a comprehensive report on the underreported shitshow that was going on behind the scenes in the LP, truly sickening. https://youtu.be/gAnVBtG03Gk
Very, very, glad you’re feeling a bit better.
Generally speaking, if you are paying attention, the country/world sucks right now. Switching it off is quite important. I’ve had to.
I hope things continue to improve.
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Good on you Brutus. I stopped using FB a few years ago and feel much better for it. Pretty poisonous for individual mental health and society at large IMO.
Very sad to hear that you’ve pulled back from Labour Party activism though. I supported a lot of the Corbyn/McDonnell policies but only joined the party after the election defeat in December. Not because I support a huge shift to the right per se, but because I see Starmer as the best opportunity to hold Johnson/Cummings and this current cabal to account and hopefully to ultimately get rid of them. That’s the most important thing for me right now. For too many of the electorate, Corbyn just wasn’t the right person to do that. I’m sure the right wing media had a lot to do with it but unfortunately that’s just the rules of engagement as it stands, and he didn’t help himself a lot of the time.
I think the worst thing the Labour Party could do right now is blow itself up with factionalism and in-fighting and allow Johnson another easy win in a few years’ time.
Glad you’re feeling better.
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Good to hear from you again Brutus :)
FWIW I view Facebook through a 3rd party app that removes all the advertising and suggested posts. Its remarkably anodyne now... and just what I want it for (keeping in touch with a few people) and Lancashire climbing gossip :)
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Glad you are back and feeling better Brutus. Please stay.
I'm not impressed with the video so far (still watching). The key point we can agree on is the evidence showing real issues of concern in the party are not being discussed in the mainstream press and they are important and should be. Also that staffers should function independently of factions (as hard as the may be). We can also agree that this is great news for tory propagandists who are hiding their own similar and equally nasty factionalism and a much worse issue with party racism.
I don't believe the staffers were trying to make Labour lose any election, however they were from the evidence clearly playing internal factional games and did seem to be using party money in that; all against party rules. This was a fight for the soul of Labour... there really was factionalism and there was plenty of inappropriate shit in the other direction as well. What some of the jewish Labour MPs faced was unequivocal racism from Labour members. The left of Labour cannot argue with the fact there were issues of anti-Semitism in Labour, only the degree.
I simply don't accept Labour staffers were evidenced to be racist or sexist towards Diane Abbott but I do believe from the evidence they encouraged harassment on factional lines and that should have been a party disciplinary issue. That this video spins a racist/sexist intent from Labour staffers is conspiracy theory factional mudslinging of the type the authors claim to abhor.
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Good to hear from you again Brutus :)
FWIW I view Facebook through a 3rd party app that removes all the advertising and suggested posts. Its remarkably anodyne now... and just what I want it for (keeping in touch with a few people) and Lancashire climbing gossip :)
Which one? I can't leave Facebook as it's the main link I have to many old friends.
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Can any of the UkB members who are in or associated with the Labour party shed any light on whether they think this story:
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/aug/07/jeremy-corbyn-accuses-labour-officials-of-sabotaging-election-campaign?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Copy_to_clipboard
Is likely to be in any way true? Did rebels wreck Corbyns election victory? I'd honestly like an opinion because it seems an awful lot like they still can't believe that the British people didn't vote for a hard left government.
It is exactly what it looks like: an incompetent extremist leader whipping up a stab in the back myth amongst the fairthful. Labour only lost as it did because the Tories were so bad at elections (ironically I think a May govt would be mildly better than a Johnson one, as at least May had an interest in governing).
Brutus, good you are back and I hope you are feeling better.
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:-[
Thanks Brutus, I'm not sure I need to watch a video of Jon Lansman to guess what the content will be? I take it therefore that you do think that Corbyn would have won if Labour moderates, or whatever you want to call them, hadn't sabotaged his election campaign by mis directing funds?
All I was after was people's opinions; I'm genuinely curious and unsure whether to regard this as another plaintive plea of we won the argument or a credible exposure of a bitter internal conflict.
You miss the point TD. Lansman appears as a guest at the end and tbh as lefty I was not overly impressed by what he had to say on the subject. Watch the first 30 mins or so to see/ hear for yourself hard evidence of the undermining of election efforts, diversion of party funds, sitting on AS complaints to undermine leadership, racist and misogynistic bullying by senior figures within the party etc. Thuggery of the worst kind. When Lansman appears you can switch off he's there to comment. I'm sure you can formulate your own opinion based on facts presented and assume how people on the 'left' feel about it all. As I said I'm not here to engage in political debate anymore. I would encourage folk to broaden sources of information beyond the Guardian etc.. in order to at least get a deeper understanding of political shenanigans within the LP and where 'the left' is coming from. Novara would be a good starting point.
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Good to hear from you again Brutus :)
FWIW I view Facebook through a 3rd party app that removes all the advertising and suggested posts. Its remarkably anodyne now... and just what I want it for (keeping in touch with a few people) and Lancashire climbing gossip :)
Which one? I can't leave Facebook as it's the main link I have to many old friends.
Friendly or Friendly +.
https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/friendly-social-browser/id400169658
It’s a little clunky as it pretends to be the regular website - but has an effective ad blocker and you can do the messenger without having to have the messenger app too. It’s not perfect but fine for me.
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One has to wonder why, if Corbyn and his cronies discovered evidence of fraud, why they took it to the media and not the police. Making headline winning “allegations” which turn out to be baseless is a common tool in the populists’ arsenal - our current PM made his name at the Telegraph with such deceptions.
One also has to wonder why they didn’t properly investigate these alleged offences whilst running the party. Indeed why they went into another election without having done so.
Plenty of Labour staffers in twitter saying it’s all made up. I guess we’ll see when it comes to court.
Of course in any other context the Labour left would automatically take the side of beleaguered employees being harassed in the media by their bosses, in an attempt to blame management’s failures on staff.
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Cheers. I need something that will work on an android tablet. One factor of leaving work during covid is I still haven't got access to my work email with recovery details to Facebook and having forgotten the password and my old tablet being dead I can't access my Facebook account.
Having watched to the end of the video now, it's notable that Landsman is more sensible than the two journalists! My only new point is, I disagree that there is any connection with the old staffers failure to progress anti-Semitism complaints and their clear dislike of Corbyn. The motives seem backwards if this were true. Corbyn moved the party to widen membership to those previously blocked from the party and this allowed known anti-Semitic leftist activists to join (and some SWP and other entryists). The shift needed strong checks to prevent leftist racists and members of revolutionary parties entering the Labour party, bringing it into disrepute. Progressing those complaints would have damaged the Corbyn leadership as it shows up the failure to have those safe checks. The failure to progress shows cock-up, not conspiracy.
There was also some infantile bullying comments from senior staffers to another member that shame the party. All these staffers with clear problematic behaviour are no longer employed by Labour, and from the evidence they now won't be in the future.
I can't see Sean's point being true on it all being made up.... the leaked conversations are either true (most likely) or an incredibly clever fraud and I know what Occam says. Sean needs to explain why he is ignoring this (or is maybe saying stuff without seeing the evidence). The fraud accusations are not clear yet as even Landsman admitted the financial details need to be looked at.
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@offwidth - for android too of course
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=io.friendly&hl=en_GB
No idea what to do about the password though!
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I can't see Sean's point being true on it all being made up.... the leaked conversations are either true (most likely) or an incredibly clever fraud and I know what Occam says. Sean needs to explain why he is ignoring this (or is maybe saying stuff without seeing the evidence). The fraud accusations are not clear yet as even Landsman admitted the financial details need to be looked at.
I meant the fraud allegations. As I said, it’s a classic piece of media spin. The financial details from 2017 still need looking at? They thought they were good enough to re-invent the U.K. economy but couldn’t even manage their own finances.
I’ve seen some of the comments directed at Abbot which are clearly both awful and the signs of a totally dysfunctional workplace. Her staff could be wankers, she could be an extremely difficult person to work for, and both could be true. Occam’s Razor is - like all razors - sometimes blunt.
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Have you even listened to the piece (the presentation may be highly biased but the content they are reporting on isn't)? Abbott was crying in a toilet after another racist and sexist attack from outside the party and a Labour party office senior staffer informed Michael Crick where she was. It wasn't her staff or anyone working with her it was a Labour party senior staffer who is supposed to be strictly independent in factional terms.
I can't stand Corbyn but this leaked commentary stinks. Occam's razor doesn't look blunt to me..... that this could really all be an incredibly tricky fabrication. If nothing else why not fabricate something more serious? Plus this is just one example of many with private written behaviour that would justify an internal investigation. Why is this not all over the mainstream press??
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Why aren’t the media - other than Novara, let’s not pretend they are somehow a different beast* - reporting this? Maybe because they’ve had it lawyered and it’s potentially libellous? I looked at the bit on the crying in the toilet episode and I didn’t see any of the staffers given a right of reply. Was a comment from
them included later in the piece? (Sorry I haven’t got over an hour to watch Aaron Bastani, this could all be in an article.) If not, Novara are entering dodgy waters ethically and legally. As I said above, it’s quite clear from what we know that Labour staffers could have acted terribly and Abbot be an awful boss.
The WhatsApp message itself struck me as as much as a bad taste throw-away comment (now being taken literally) as much as a genuine description of actions taken, but of course I could be wrong - and Novara doesn’t seem to care about finding out exactly what happened.
As for internal investigation, the Corbyn faction did this already - they controlled the Party, after all - and their efforts have put the Labour Party at risk of prosecution for the way they handled the data.
Corbyn and Co were incompetent fools. Their actions now are an ego trip at the expense of Labour’s continuing attempts to win power. Corbyn doesn’t give a fig about the poor in this country - otherwise he’d hang his head in shame at what he’s done and depart the political scene immediately.
*You do know “mainstream media” was a term invented by the US right in order to discredit information around climate change? It’s a term fit for conspiracists and extremists. Surprised you use it.
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Edit. Oops, just seen Offwidth asked the same question!
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Why is this not all over the mainstream press??
Because there's been non-stop allegations around bullying, nepotism, incompetence, sexism, racism and virtually everything else with an ism between the various factions of the labour party since before the 2017 election, Corbyn is yesterday's news and the media judges that nobody cares about the he said she said tittle-tattle between the factions?
Or alternatively Kier's mates are leaning on contacts in the media that it wouldn't be helpful to the Labour cause for the media to pursue it now the party is apparently getting its act together post Corbyn...
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The way that every single political tribe is complaining bitterly about the 'main stream media' really cheeses me off. To the Corbyn fans, they're all Tory party supporters, to the libertarian right, they're all slavishly following a nanny state agenda, to the true blue euro sceptics they're all pinko liberal remainers.
Unless you live in China or Russia and have an actually state controlled media, I think whining about the media is a sign that you have a weak argument.
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Why aren’t the media - other than Novara, let’s not pretend they are somehow a different beast* - reporting this? Maybe because they’ve had it lawyered and it’s potentially libellous? I looked at the bit on the crying in the toilet episode and I didn’t see any of the staffers given a right of reply. Was a comment from
them included later in the piece? (Sorry I haven’t got over an hour to watch Aaron Bastani, this could all be in an article.) If not, Novara are entering dodgy waters ethically and legally. As I said above, it’s quite clear from what we know that Labour staffers could have acted terribly and Abbot be an awful boss.
The WhatsApp message itself struck me as as much as a bad taste throw-away comment (now being taken literally) as much as a genuine description of actions taken, but of course I could be wrong - and Novara doesn’t seem to care about finding out exactly what happened.
As for internal investigation, the Corbyn faction did this already - they controlled the Party, after all - and their efforts have put the Labour Party at risk of prosecution for the way they handled the data.
Corbyn and Co were incompetent fools. Their actions now are an ego trip at the expense of Labour’s continuing attempts to win power. Corbyn doesn’t give a fig about the poor in this country - otherwise he’d hang his head in shame at what he’s done and depart the political scene immediately.
*You do know “mainstream media” was a term invented by the US right in order to discredit information around climate change? It’s a term fit for conspiracists and extremists. Surprised you use it.
Novara are a highly biased fringe outfit as far as I'm concerned, not dissimilar to Socialist Worker. I'm not interested in their spin one jot. The leaked content does look politically important, as these same senior staffers were being suggested for prospective senior roles under Keir, which could damage his leadership. The left of the party are hardly going to forgive and forget. Retaining a sense of balance and rights of reply in proper journalism without ending up facing writs is normal for a major media company, and you know that, so why are you still deflecting? My semantics of 'mainstream media' wasn't loaded, it's just the situation we live with.
Corbyn and co did pretty well for incompetents in the face of a large opposition in the PLP and pretty much the whole establishment..... they were not many seats from preventing a workable tory government in 2017... so I fail to understand the benefit of your childish comments when there are many concrete things to pick up, on what they did wrong. If Labour are to maximise their chance of winning next time, some kind of internal reconciliation is needed.
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One has to wonder why, if Corbyn and his cronies discovered evidence of fraud, why they took it to the media and not the police. Making headline winning “allegations” which turn out to be baseless is a common tool in the populists’ arsenal - our current PM made his name at the Telegraph with such deceptions.
One also has to wonder why they didn’t properly investigate these alleged offences whilst running the party. Indeed why they went into another election without having done so.
So this was my initial knee jerk reaction to reading this story. The Corbyn administration were clearly awful enough at cultivating any widespread popular appeal or winning elections without needing this to be sabotaged.
I posted because I wanted my reaction challenged, I wanted to engage with the idea that Corbyn and McDonnell were cheated of their shot at government.
I've now read several articles on Novara and a few other things people have mentioned.
The thing about those horrid "main stream media" publications is that (most!) of them are actually professionally edited and sub edited so that almost every opinion piece isn't a tediously long diatribe full of cliché, childish and repetitive use of tropes such as 'meta-...' in an attempt to sound genuinely intellectual.
I find it very hard to engage with any ideas in these articles because they're so badly written.
When one watches some tired hack on the platform mechanically repeating the familiar phrases - bestial atrocities, iron heel, blood-stained tyranny, free peoples of the world, stand shoulder to shoulder - one often has a curious feeling that one is not watching a live human being but some kind of dummy, the appropriate noises are coming out of his larynx, but his brain is not involved
George Orwell, Politics and the English Language
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The left of the party are hardly going to forgive and forget.
Corbyn and co did pretty well for incompetents in the face of a large opposition in the PLP and pretty much the whole establishment..... they were not many seats from preventing a workable tory government in 2017...
I'd argue strongly against this. The left, it seems to me are mired in denial that they led the party to its worst defeat in almost a century, and were a complete disaster for the party's credibility. The PLP and those nasty media people had absolutely nothing to do with any number of examples of poor leadership. The response to the Salisbury attacks, Corbyn's failure to ever give an actual opinion on Brexit, the tolerance of antisemitism, the complete lack of credibility of the 2019 manifesto; just for a start. They always appeared far more engaged with their internal party administration than even pretending that they represented a realistic alternative to the incumbent government.
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The most recent New Statesman podcast is worth listening to, for those engaged with UK politics. Stephen Bush makes an interesting and convincing case for why Priti Patel is the most interesting politician in British politics today.
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For fuck sake; Dido Harding screws up test and trace so they put her in charge of the renamed and reorganized PHE. It's worth noting that she also presided over a massive data breach when she was in charge of talk talk.
Hancock (et al) blaming PHE for the testing failure, Williamson blaming Ofqual for the exam debacle. Priti Patel is blaming the French for her failing on immigration strategy. Boris Johnson is blaming no-one, because he's on holiday, like he usually is.
The government has degraded into infant school name calling, denial of responsibility, and no sign whatsoever of any crumb of competence.
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Williamson is on BBC Breakfast shortly. Only question they need to ask is when he thinks Boris will throw him under the bus..........
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No prospect of that whilst return to school looms.
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No he still needs to blame him when that all goes wrong.
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No he still needs to blame him when that all goes wrong.
Or, is it overly cynical to suggest that Johnson has promoted a bunch of barely qualified mates to high level roles, on the proviso that they get Dom's approval as well?
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Surely both are givens.
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No he still needs to blame him when that all goes wrong.
Or, is it overly cynical to suggest that Johnson has promoted a bunch of barely qualified mates to high level roles, on the proviso that they get Dom's approval as well?
Is it possible to be over cynical, anymore?
I remain mildly surprised that Bojo didn’t abseil off Big Ben into a press conference and claim he had “just heard” about it all and immediately swooped in to right the wrong and save the children etc etc...
Oh, and blame the “unelected Civil sevants” at Ofqual (mindless, uncaring drones and (simultaneously) trying to make the government look bad (and so forth, etc etc))
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Oh the irony... there is a ship’s manoeuvre when there is a man overboard known as (OMM should know this) ‘a Williamson turn’. 😃😃
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_overboard_rescue_turn#Williamson_turn
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No he still needs to blame him when that all goes wrong.
Or, is it overly cynical to suggest that Johnson has promoted a bunch of barely qualified mates to high level roles, on the proviso that they get Dom's approval as well?
Is it possible to be over cynical, anymore?
I remain mildly surprised that Bojo didn’t abseil off Big Ben into a press conference and claim he had “just heard” about it all and immediately swooped in to right the wrong and save the children etc etc...
Oh, and blame the “unelected Civil sevants” at Ofqual (mindless, uncaring drones and (simultaneously) trying to make the government look bad (and so forth, etc etc))
Boris is well past all that now. Hes achieved being the boss hes always dreamed of being, and is hoping to go on holiday as much as possible until the next election, leaving a bunch of ex-revolutionary Communist Party members and wannabe revolutionaries to run the show, with some Eton pals in there for good measure. Come the next election, he'll be back to knock down some polystyrene bricks, shout and gesticulate wildly, and be proclaimed a man of the people, having spent 5 years in the foreign mansions owned by his exorbitantly wealthy Russian backers.
Is that cynical enough?
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Hell no! MORE!!!
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The government has degraded into infant school name calling, denial of responsibility, and no sign whatsoever of any crumb of competence.
And yet the Tories remain comfortably ahead in voter intention polling. Which shows how big a task Labour have ahead of them, despite a new and competent leader. I’ve decided to accept that Trump will get another term and this lot will win a majority again so that I can only be pleasantly surprised. Just like with Trump I’ve stopped being shocked at how terrible they are.
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The most recent New Statesman podcast is worth listening to, for those engaged with UK politics. Stephen Bush makes an interesting and convincing case for why Priti Patel is the most interesting politician in British politics today.
I normally enjoy these a lot but am finding Stephen Bush increasingly irritating. He seems unable to say a sentence without the word 'like' in it. Its a shame as when he actually thinks about what hes saying rather than ad libbing hes very engaging but I much prefer listening to Ailbe Rea and Anoosh Chakelian at the moment. PS I am aware this opinion makes me sound like I'm in my nineties.
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The government has degraded into infant school name calling, denial of responsibility, and no sign whatsoever of any crumb of competence.
And yet the Tories remain comfortably ahead in voter intention polling. Which shows how big a task Labour have ahead of them, despite a new and competent leader. I’ve decided to accept that Trump will get another term and this lot will win a majority again so that I can only be pleasantly surprised. Just like with Trump I’ve stopped being shocked at how terrible they are.
Yup, me too. The true pessimist is never disappointed, only right, or pleasantly surprised.
The most recent New Statesman podcast is worth listening to, for those engaged with UK politics. Stephen Bush makes an interesting and convincing case for why Priti Patel is the most interesting politician in British politics today.
I normally enjoy these a lot but am finding Stephen Bush increasingly irritating. He seems unable to say a sentence without the word 'like' in it. Its a shame as when he actually thinks about what hes saying rather than ad libbing hes very engaging but I much prefer listening to Ailbe Rea and Anoosh Chakelian at the moment. PS I am aware this opinion makes me sound like I'm in my nineties.
Ha! You're certainly not the only one who's noticed that, it had been cheesing me off too. He's one of the best political commentators at the moment, his writing is excellent, but he's almost unlistenable to at times. As it happens a member of my family is his boss, I've requested that words be had ;-)
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The government has degraded into infant school name calling, denial of responsibility, and no sign whatsoever of any crumb of competence.
And yet the Tories remain comfortably ahead in voter intention polling. Which shows how big a task Labour have ahead of them, despite a new and competent leader. ...
Most recent polls don't put them too far apart, a Times radio podcast reported a focus group / opinion poll where people were asked about what car they thought best represented the government. Apparently London black cab was popular. Initially looked like a good idea, but performs awfully, is unbelievably expensive, and capable of repeated tight u-turns...
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And yet the Tories remain comfortably ahead in voter intention polling.
Most recent polls don't put them too far apart
Yeh, I noticed the latest yougov one has them virtually neck and neck after this week. I do still worry, similarly in the US, that they’ll have a disastrous 4 years and then just run an effective albeit dirty election campaign. They do have form for that!
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And yet the Tories remain comfortably ahead in voter intention polling.
Most recent polls don't put them too far apart
Yeh, I noticed the latest yougov one has them virtually neck and neck after this week. I do still worry, similarly in the US, that they’ll have a disastrous 4 years and then just run an effective albeit dirty election campaign. They do have form for that!
Indeed, I suspect that a lot of the fuss about exams and Cummings' behaviour isn't the pr disaster its portrayed as in the media, more just a load of journalists getting het up about it on Twitter. Williamson will probably stay a government minister for some time, just like Cummings will as an adviser; until they get bored and someone gives them a seat at the Lords.
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My attention was caught by a comment below the line of a Guardian article by Marina Hyde which mocked Boris Johnson for being on holiday/ too lazy to do his job.
I have a hunch that Johnson will come to regret securing the prize for which he has struggled so long, because the experience of the premiership will lay bare his absolute unfitness for it.
I was Boris Johnson’s boss: he is utterly unfit to be prime minister
Max Hastings
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I have been reading some of the excerpts of the book about the Corbyn administration which are serialised in the Times. I have no idea what the authors' political leanings or intentions are, or whether there is indeed anything to gain from description of them as politically illiterate, belligerent and somewhat arrogant. What does strike me is that, from their undoubtedly partial telling, that McDonnell sounds as though he was very much the adult in the room, although his instincts pre 2019 election were misplaced in overrating the Lib Dems chances of gaining seats. My guess is that most people were surprised about how badly they did though.
It does convince me that Corbyn would have been at least at bad at managing the current situation as Boris Johnson has been and would have installed a similar cabinet of staunch loyalists who were probably not up to their jobs, with the possible exception of the chancellor.
It'd be nice to see some political hope and reasonable, evidence based policy making focused on actually making the country better to live in rather than dogma and pre-planning for the next election. Perhaps Starmer and whoever the Lib Dems pick will provide this. I wouldn't describe myself as optimistic about this though.
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. What does strike me is that, from their undoubtedly partial telling, that McDonnell sounds as though he was very much the adult in the room,
I think many people would agree.
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Ed Davey, good choice, bad choice, or irrelevant?
Before anyone jumps into the easy cynical position, consider that the party came second in 91 seats last year, with an unpopular leader, and many were extremely close. Many voters will have been put off by the thought of allowing Corbyn to get through by voting for the Liberal Democrats, with this no longer an issue, will they do better?
For what it's worth I think Ed Davey is probably the right choice, although I do think Layla Moran is a decent media performer, and has a good, honest approach. Davey has good environmental credentials and probably a wider appeal in the seats that they might conceivably win.
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https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/aug/27/data-covid-care-home-deaths-kept-secret-protect-commercial-interests
I know things will probably have changed since March/April and that there is a shortage of care home places so putting out information which might mean people avoid certain providers could exasperate that problem, however hiding information on deaths doesn’t sit right with me...
Though I’m unsure whether it was the fault of care homes, or whether they didn’t have much choice in taking back patients from hospitals. So perhaps if it wasn’t their fault then retaining this information is for the best for now.
I wouldn’t like the prospect of having to choose a care home at the moment though.
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Ed Davey, good choice, bad choice, or irrelevant?
I suspect irrelevant. The Lib Dems have a hard road ahead if they are too become nationally relevant again.
I don't think Davey has been successful at getting his message out as interim leader so I doubt he is capable of turning it round for them as leader either.
I don't know much about Moran's positions on most issues, another sign of the Lib Dem's struggle to regain relevance.
Things can change very quickly in UK politics at the moment but I'm not convinced that Davey is the right person to make the changes they need.
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Things can change very quickly in UK politics at the moment but I'm not convinced that Davey is the right person to make the changes they need.
They do need to make it plain what they stand for now the UK is leaving the EU. However, they stand to gain considerably from an electoral understanding with Labour and a potentially weaker Conservative party. 80 or so of the seats that they're a close second in are conservative, with Labour a distant third.
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I notice that the government is considering digital ID cards as reported today. Given how much of a roaring success test and trace has been, I wont hold my breath.
It seems that they've changed their minds about ID in the last decade, when they were very much against Gordon Brown bringing them in.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/libertycentral/2009/jun/30/idcards-uksecurity?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other
The author of the above article, Chris Grayling has now got a job with a port authority after ditching the intelligence and security committee in a strop. https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/dress-down-to-climb-ladders-b2h35n0w7?shareToken=8f588e866e9546a10e901b8e4d3a1dbe
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So is Moonshotgate (we hardly need a crystal ball to know it will go wrong) a Trump style distraction play from Dom the spinmaster? The Health Secretary was censored by the Speaker on Wednesday for not including this in his Tuesday ministerial briefing to Parliament but leaking it on Twitter instead. Thursday didn't go so well either but it was so bad it smells funny to me.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/sep/10/hancocks-breakdown-slides-westminster-even-more-through-the-looking-glass
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So is Moonshotgate (we hardly need a crystal ball to know it will go wrong) a Trump style distraction play from Dom the spinmaster? The Health Secretary was censored by the Speaker ...
The proposed strategy is yet another example of Dominic Cummings thinking that he's an expert because he's read some pop science books (superforecasting). It's scientifically and statistically unfeasible, if not impossible. The Times has an excellent explanation today. Even if you did get a test sensitive enough to be accurate, if you did test the entire population, even if you got as low as 1% false positive, you'd quarantine about ⅔ of a million people at any one time who didn't have the virus. Obviously, there's bugger all chance that the government are competent enough to implement it anyway, so don't worry it won't happen.
The breach of an international treaty is rather more worrying. I really think that they haven't thought this particular dead cat strategy through, and it's not going to end well.
Re your comments on Hancock, do you mean censured rather than censored?
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Re your comments on Hancock, do you mean censured rather than censored?
I like the idea of the Speaker having a big red beeper button to press when MPs start talking BS
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Need to borrow the one they use in The Last Leg.
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The proposed strategy is yet another example of Dominic Cummings thinking that he's an expert because he's read some pop science books (superforecasting). It's scientifically and statistically unfeasible, if not impossible.
Yep, this is the interesting bit for me. Anyone who's kept half an eye on will know this is exactly the sort of thing he's been proposing that his vision of a dynamic post-Brexit UK can deliver, in spades. And I suspect his ability to articulate this vision may be the only thing keeping the Brexit train on the rails. What I'm wondering is whether getting the go-ahead for this is (or will prove to be) some sort of test for him to retain the party's trust, and prove Brexit will be worth it? Or, being surrounded by the incompetent, is it simply that he's now running the show? As well as he's done I think he underestimates the potential for his sudden defenestration.
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The proposed strategy is yet another example of Dominic Cummings thinking that he's an expert because he's read some pop science books (superforecasting). It's scientifically and statistically unfeasible, if not impossible.
Yep, this is the interesting bit for me. Anyone who's kept half an eye on will know this is exactly the sort of thing he's been proposing that his vision of a dynamic post-Brexit UK can deliver, in spades. And I suspect his ability to articulate this vision may be the only thing keeping the Brexit train on the rails. What I'm wondering is whether getting the go-ahead for this is (or will prove to be) some sort of test for him to retain the party's trust, and prove Brexit will be worth it? Or, being surrounded by the incompetent, is it simply that he's now running the show? As well as he's done I think he underestimates the potential for his sudden defenestration.
I don’t believe anyone at No.10 has heard the word “no” in many months.
Anyone capable of uttering it was fired or resigned months ago and Parliament is utterly defunct in our new age of rule by Twitter decree.
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The proposed strategy is yet another example of Dominic Cummings thinking that he's an expert because he's read some pop science books (superforecasting). It's scientifically and statistically unfeasible, if not impossible.
Yep, this is the interesting bit for me. Anyone who's kept half an eye on will know this is exactly the sort of thing he's been proposing that his vision of a dynamic post-Brexit UK can deliver, in spades. And I suspect his ability to articulate this vision may be the only thing keeping the Brexit train on the rails. What I'm wondering is whether getting the go-ahead for this is (or will prove to be) some sort of test for him to retain the party's trust, and prove Brexit will be worth it? Or, being surrounded by the incompetent, is it simply that he's now running the show? As well as he's done I think he underestimates the potential for his sudden defenestration.
I don’t believe anyone at No.10 has heard the word “no” in many months.
Anyone capable of uttering it was fired or resigned months ago and Parliament is utterly defunct in our new age of rule by Twitter decree.
Although Cummings would like to bypass parliament completely, he may well be disappointed that laws still have to be passed and it seems as though it will be possibly amended in the Commons as I'd guess that the Lords will reject it on first reading. Michael Howard, a Conservative Euro sceptic sounded more angry than anyone else about the proposed strategy.
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The breach of an international treaty is rather more worrying. I really think that they haven't thought this particular dead cat strategy through, and it's not going to end well.
I think you're right but from what I've been hearing its not a dead cat, it is THE point of brexit. Apparently dom wants to set up a nationalised tech business to basically stuff tax payer cash in his mates pockets and isn't too keen on the EU limiting state aid. I just hope he catches the full blame for any fallout from this, and he doesnt just get to walk away from the country after setting it on fire...
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I wonder if some Tory Mp’s are thinking this might be a viable ‘hill to die on’ in order to get rid of Cummings?
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The breach of an international treaty is rather more worrying. I really think that they haven't thought this particular dead cat strategy through, and it's not going to end well.
I think you're right but from what I've been hearing its not a dead cat, it is THE point of brexit. Apparently dom wants to set up a nationalised tech business to basically stuff tax payer cash in his mates pockets and isn't too keen on the EU limiting state aid. I just hope he catches the full blame for any fallout from this, and he doesnt just get to walk away from the country after setting it on fire...
I know this, but without a meaningful free trade deal, what good is an improved tech sector without an export market? O, there's that marvellous deal with Japan, you say? Call me a sceptic but I can't see us selling tech to Japan, or indeed cars, livestock...
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I wonder if some Tory Mp’s are thinking this might be a viable ‘hill to die on’ in order to get rid of Cummings?
They clearly all hate him, hes not a conservative in any way, I wonder if there will be a rebellion next week, or will concerns about Starmer being competent and reasonably popular keep them in line?
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The breach of an international treaty is rather more worrying. I really think that they haven't thought this particular dead cat strategy through, and it's not going to end well.
I think you're right but from what I've been hearing its not a dead cat, it is THE point of brexit. Apparently dom wants to set up a nationalised tech business to basically stuff tax payer cash in his mates pockets and isn't too keen on the EU limiting state aid. I just hope he catches the full blame for any fallout from this, and he doesnt just get to walk away from the country after setting it on fire...
I know this, but without a meaningful free trade deal, what good is an improved tech sector without an export market? O, there's that marvellous deal with Japan, you say? Call me a sceptic but I can't see us selling tech to Japan, or indeed cars, livestock...
I don’t think the tech sector will still be here...
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-arm-holdings-m-a-nvidia-idINKBN2630UE?utm_campaign=trueAnthem%3A+Trending+Content&utm_medium=trueAnthem&utm_source=facebook&fbclid=IwAR0SNzrSmop27ftIPCVP0tlIHWoczj-_FsN932khuBetUMJDWR58xpiQXRw (https://www.reuters.com/article/us-arm-holdings-m-a-nvidia-idINKBN2630UE?utm_campaign=trueAnthem%3A+Trending+Content&utm_medium=trueAnthem&utm_source=facebook&fbclid=IwAR0SNzrSmop27ftIPCVP0tlIHWoczj-_FsN932khuBetUMJDWR58xpiQXRw)
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Re the government's proposed infringement of international law, this cursory piece of investigative journalism suggests that the Attorney General may have massaged significant parts of her CV, I wonder how credible a legal authority she really is?
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/sep/12/when-even-the-attorney-general-flouts-the-law-what-hope-does-britain-have-suella-braverman?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other
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Christ, they're as bad as the BMC.
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I don’t believe anyone at No.10 has heard the word “no” in many months. Anyone capable of uttering it was fired or resigned
Although Cummings would like to bypass parliament completely, he may well be disappointed that laws still have to be passed...Michael Howard, a Conservative Euro sceptic sounded more angry than anyone else about the proposed strategy.
I haven’t heard a single person outside of Cummings’ immediate circle of acting yes men (even the most ardent Brexiteers) speak up in support of this bill. I think No.10 have miscalculated this one.
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I don’t believe anyone at No.10 has heard the word “no” in many months. Anyone capable of uttering it was fired or resigned
Although Cummings would like to bypass parliament completely, he may well be disappointed that laws still have to be passed...Michael Howard, a Conservative Euro sceptic sounded more angry than anyone else about the proposed strategy.
I haven’t heard a single person outside of Cummings’ immediate circle of acting yes men (even the most ardent Brexiteers) speak up in support of this bill. I think No.10 have miscalculated this one.
Unless threats of removing the whip get it through...
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I don’t believe anyone at No.10 has heard the word “no” in many months. Anyone capable of uttering it was fired or resigned
Although Cummings would like to bypass parliament completely, he may well be disappointed that laws still have to be passed...Michael Howard, a Conservative Euro sceptic sounded more angry than anyone else about the proposed strategy.
I haven’t heard a single person outside of Cummings’ immediate circle of acting yes men (even the most ardent Brexiteers) speak up in support of this bill. I think No.10 have miscalculated this one.
Unless threats of removing the whip get it through...
Funnily enough, that’s how Bojo got the Brexit bill through in the first place.
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Funnily enough, that’s how Bojo got the Brexit bill through in the first place.
It's as though he repeatedly uses bullying in place of actually having a reasonable argument. Far be it from me, however to pigeon hole BJ as an ignorant entitled public school bully, lacking any scrap of moral integrity, or a single sign that he actually gives a shit about the country that he's supposed to govern.
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Re the government's proposed infringement of international law, this cursory piece of investigative journalism suggests that the Attorney General may have massaged significant parts of her CV, I wonder how credible a legal authority she really is?
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/sep/12/when-even-the-attorney-general-flouts-the-law-what-hope-does-britain-have-suella-braverman?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other
Toby for someone interested in politics do you not read Private Eye? They were all over the AG's dodgy CV months ago (after her defence of Cummings I think?).
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I've been away for a good while so apologies for going over old ground here as I'm back reading the thread.
I have been reading some of the excerpts of the book about the Corbyn administration which are serialised in the Times......
It does convince me that Corbyn would have been at least at bad at managing the current situation as Boris Johnson has been....
I don't read the Times, and do not know the book of which you speak Toby. So I'd be genuinely interested to have an expanded version of what makes you so convinced of this?
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Even if Corbyn's management skills were genuinely worse than BritainTrump's, I can't see the response being worse simply because his politics are actually aligned with helping people. I daresay that's not how the Times would have painted it though.
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Even if Corbyn's management skills were genuinely worse than BritainTrump's, I can't see the response being worse simply because his politics are actually aligned with helping people. I daresay that's not how the Times would have painted it though.
It's nothing to do with the Times, Corbyn's issues, among others were that he was more concerned with helping people in East Timor, or his own internal party politics than actually doing anything useful. John McDonald tried to provide some balance but, it seems was often overruled by people like Karie Murphy or Seamus Milne.
Boris Johnson is not, in my opinion, in himself any better, but there are a few more competent people around him although it has to be said that this doesn't include the vast majority of the cabinet. I'm not arguing that Johnson's administration has a semblance of competence, however. More that the two main parties both presented an absolutely appalling choice of people to run a country in late 2019.
This is probably why I voted Green, because I at least believed in much of what they stand for, despite the fact that they had absolutely no chance of gaining anything like a foothold in my constituency.
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It’s obviously v hard to draw any conclusions, but if everything else was equally shambolic, just the absence of Cummings from Downing Street, meaning that we didn’t waste a few weeks thinking herd immunity might be a thing would have put us in a better position.
To me it seems that Corbyn and staff may have been more likely to listen to senior NHS figures rather than sidelining them.
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What Stubs and JB said. I don't see any reason to think that a Corbyn government wouldn't have responded along the lines of the socialist Sanchez government in Spain, and gone into lockdown in line with the rest of Europe. A lot of the problems we have faced stem from that initial delay in taking any action whatsoever. Instead the government waved Cheltenham ahead and Johnson missed meeting after meeting.
The view that Corbyn would have have been as incompetent is at least arguable. The view that he would have displayed the same cavalier attitude to peoples welfare and helping people is risible.
I presume in your reference to 'competent people around Johnson' you are basically referring to Sunak, who is after all The Times' go-to good news story when they can't face criticisng the government too much (once a week, soft coated). Lest we forget Sunak was hand picked by Cummings and Johnson precisely because he's pliable and obedient, and unlike Javid allowed Cummings to select his team for him. He's not the Messiah, he's a shill like the rest of the Cabinet!
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What Stubs and JB said. I don't see any reason to think that a Corbyn government wouldn't have responded along the lines of the socialist Sanchez government in Spain, and gone into lockdown in line with the rest of Europe. A lot of the problems we have faced stem from that initial delay in taking any action whatsoever. Instead the government waved Cheltenham ahead and Johnson missed meeting after meeting.
The view that Corbyn would have have been as incompetent is at least arguable. The view that he would have displayed the same cavalier attitude to peoples welfare and helping people is risible.
I presume in your reference to 'competent people around Johnson' you are basically referring to Sunak, who is after all The Times' go-to good news story when they can't face criticisng the government too much (once a week, soft coated). Lest we forget Sunak was hand picked by Cummings and Johnson precisely because he's pliable and obedient, and unlike Javid allowed Cummings to select his team for him. He's not the Messiah, he's a shill like the rest of the Cabinet!
I really don't want to get mired into a debate about a totally hypothetical issue in that the UK was never going to elect Corbyn. I am interested in discussing the competence or otherwise of the current administration. I wasn't thinking of Rishi Sunak, now you mention it. The select committee chairs and some other MPs do actually know what they're doing. I think it's important to distinguish whether you are criticising someone because you disagree with or dislike them, or whether they are competent. Michael Gove is a competent politician who like any human being has made mistakes , but I really don't take to him, or agree with much of what he stands for. Just because Gove does things I don't like doesn't mean he's terrible at his job, nor is Rishi Sunak. Boris Johnson, on the other hand is manifestly shit at his job.
Dominic Cummings is bloody good if you consider his job to get the party into government, however as a PM's special adviser to run a country, he is not proving to be a roaring success to put it mildly.
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Even if Corbyn's management skills were genuinely worse than BritainTrump's, I can't see the response being worse simply because his politics are actually aligned with helping people. I daresay that's not how the Times would have painted it though.
Good intentions =/= good outcomes.
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Michael Gove is a competent politician who like any human being has made mistakes , but I really don't take to him, or agree with much of what he stands for.
Okay, putting everything else aside, I’m going to need some reasoning behind this. He seems to have done a terrible job at justice and education, and whilst making some nice noises whilst environment secretary I can’t remember him actually achieving anything of note.
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Good intentions =/= good outcomes.
Sure, but can't you agree it's a better start than bad intentions? (BTW I voted Green as well, obvs...)
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Good intentions =/= good outcomes.
Sure, but can't you agree it's a better start than bad intentions? (BTW I voted Green as well, obvs...)
As Steven Bush has observed several times, I feel fairly relaxed about the government announcing things I don't agree with, as they're probably not competent enough to deliver them. I think that very much the same would be true of Corbyn whatever you think of him.
I would love the days of highly adversarial zero sum politics to be numbered. It's more interesting but we'd be served far better by a more collaborative approach with less tribal name calling bullshit
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Something like XR, and this? https://www.citizensassembly.ie/en/what-we-do/
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I would love the days of highly adversarial zero sum politics to be numbered.
Amen to that. I think they already are tbh, the media and electorate just seem to be in denial. I can't see any way Labour could win a majority in the next ten years. Putting aside the fact that during the last election they brought a knife to the social media gunfight, the numbers simply don't add up with FPTP. Good that Starmer has put electoral reform in the manifesto, but his only hope of enacting it is in a coalition.
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God, don't, its too depressing.
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Well I think it's really important that people engage with the facts. Everyone seems to be stuck in a fairyland where Labour will sweep to victory like '96. It simply isn't going to happen and the next election needs fighting on that basis. And the social media campaigning/ manipulation is an even bigger problem.
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Understandably its hard to get people enthused about that future though! To be fair, the majority is significantly smaller than the third of Blairs in 2006 which obviously ended up in coalition government. The return of the Lib Dems to relevance *might* help in this regard. Obviously Labour's main problem is the SNP and the fall of Scottish Labour.
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Michael Gove is a competent politician who like any human being
Whoa! This is not proven.
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Well I think it's really important that people engage with the facts. Everyone seems to be stuck in a fairyland where Labour will sweep to victory like '96. It simply isn't going to happen and the next election needs fighting on that basis. And the social media campaigning/ manipulation is an even bigger problem.
I completely agree. Starmer is wisely avoiding as far as I can see the tedious identity politics that Johnson is desperately trying to fight them on. He and his team seem to have a positive, collaborative approach.
Although I do generally dislike the adversial politics, it was pretty entertaining listening to Angela Rayner do PMQs, and make Johnson sound like a fool
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The latest information sent out from tory HQ to supporters. I guess it was to be expected but it so resembles 1984 style propaganda it shocked me (edited slightly here to remove the user name).
"Last night I voted to protect the United Kingdom, as any Prime Minister would do.
Unfortunately, I was not joined by a single Labour or SNP MP.
Instead Labour and the SNP chose to side with the EU and their outrageous threats to carve up our Union.
Making it clear we’re the only Party willing to stand up for the United Kingdom.
Which is why I’m asking you to stand with us today by joining our Party
Become a Member
Last year in good faith I signed the Withdrawal Agreement, believing the EU would stand by their word to be reasonable.
But regretfully, as Labour know, in recent months the EU have suggested they would go to extreme and unreasonable lengths.
Threatening to put up blockades across our own country, divide our own land and change the very economic geography of our own union.
No British Prime Minister, Government or Parliament has ever bowed to such a humiliating and offensive threat.
And I’m proud to say that legacy continued last night.
But appallingly when presented with another opportunity to stand up for the UK, Labour chose not to. Instead they buckled to the EU.
So now, faced with this unprecedented situation we must all redouble our efforts to combat Labour.
Will you step up and side with the only Party willing to protect the United Kingdom? Become a member now >>
Stand with Us
With your support I’m certain we will succeed.
Yours sincerely,
Boris Johnson"
https://www.ukclimbing.com/forums/off_belay/johnson_propagandist-725007
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English National Party now innit.
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For fuck sake. I know that political propaganda is as old as politics, but when did it become so common to just lie repeatedly? Is this Trump poisoning political discourse everywhere? Or that Boris lied repeatedly as a (poor) journalist? I'm sure someone suitably inclined could find examples of Labour politicians bending the truth as well, but this is so blatant it's almost like the stuff that Putin put out after the Salisbury incident: almost mocking.
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For fuck sake. I know that political propaganda is as old as politics, but when did it become so common to just lie repeatedly? Is this Trump poisoning political discourse everywhere? Or that Boris lied repeatedly as a (poor) journalist? I'm sure someone suitably inclined could find examples of Labour politicians bending the truth as well, but this is so blatant it's almost like the stuff that Putin put out after the Salisbury incident: almost mocking.
Even the Daily Fail, Toby Young, The Spectator, have turned on him.
The Times also tweeted out an editorial comment that he was “unfit for office” or words to that effect.
So, I don’t think it’s working.
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For fuck sake. I know that political propaganda is as old as politics, but when did it become so common to just lie repeatedly? Is this Trump poisoning political discourse everywhere? Or that Boris lied repeatedly as a (poor) journalist? I'm sure someone suitably inclined could find examples of Labour politicians bending the truth as well, but this is so blatant it's almost like the stuff that Putin put out after the Salisbury incident: almost mocking.
Even the Daily Fail, Toby Young, The Spectator, have turned on him.
The Times also tweeted out an editorial comment that he was “unfit for office” or words to that effect.
So, I don’t think it’s working.
The whole Times today seems to be dedicated to saying that Boris' time is up as PM; however I wouldn't be quite so sure. Libertarians are pissed off because of covid rules, lawyers are peeved about him breaking the law, but I don't think he'll go just like that. My guess is that he thinks that if he just does what Dom tells him to it'll all be okay, and that he'll carry on with that strategy for a while.
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The whole Times today seems to be dedicated to saying that Boris' time is up as PM; however I wouldn't be quite so sure. Libertarians are pissed off because of covid rules, lawyers are peeved about him breaking the law, but I don't think he'll go just like that. My guess is that he thinks that if he just does what Dom tells him to it'll all be okay, and that he'll carry on with that strategy for a while.
I think he'll be gone before the next election. But I don't think it will happen imminently.
Leave it another 12-18 months, then he can take the fall for the covid-19 response and brexit and make way for someone else to market themselves as the latest Conservative candidate for change.
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Even the Daily Fail, Toby Young, The Spectator, have turned on him.
The Times also tweeted out an editorial comment that he was “unfit for office” or words to that effect.
So, I don’t think it’s working.
The whole Times today seems to be dedicated to saying that Boris' time is up as PM
so billionaire media owners turning on him because they're not coining it in while the economy is slow. Maybe don't like that their input is reduced with Cummings there and would prefer their own lapdog in the form of Gove.
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The latest constitutional problem exposed in the government.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/sep/20/dido-harding-appointment-corrupting-our-constitution-lord-falconer
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Even the Daily Fail, Toby Young, The Spectator, have turned on him.
The Times also tweeted out an editorial comment that he was “unfit for office” or words to that effect.
So, I don’t think it’s working.
The whole Times today seems to be dedicated to saying that Boris' time is up as PM
so billionaire media owners turning on him because they're not coining it in while the economy is slow. Maybe don't like that their input is reduced with Cummings there and would prefer their own lapdog in the form of Gove.
I am emphatically not a defender of News UK, but I very much doubt it's that simple. Owners influence, but certainly don't write the newspapers. Stuff like saying the PM's days are numbered is exciting as far as news goes, it drives interest online and sells papers. They certainly have strong political bias, but are first and foremost businesses.
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If this is true then it's yet another glaring example of "them and us"...
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/sep/21/no-10-denies-reports-boris-johnson-went-on-secret-italy-trip
I also wrote to my MP (Simon Fell, Conservative, Barrow-in-Furness) about the Internal Markets Bill and his position on the possibility of breaking international law. His response was essentially.
I will not support anything that breaks the law. But you would be surprised how often International law is broken, including by the UK. Voting for this bill doesn't actually break the law, it just gives us a stronger negotiating hand in the next 2-3 weeks.
Guess he's happy to break the law after all then... Even if voting the bill in didn't break the law (which depends on who you listen to), by voting in the ability to break the law amounts ot the same thing, in my opinion. You're either happy to have that option on the table, or you're not.
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Hansard will tell you how he voted. A lot of MPs, mine included, put power a long way before principle.
Where the Republicans lead, it seems the Conservatives now follow.
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If this is true then it's yet another glaring example of "them and us"...
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/sep/21/no-10-denies-reports-boris-johnson-went-on-secret-italy-trip
I also wrote to my MP (Simon Fell, Conservative, Barrow-in-Furness) about the Internal Markets Bill and his position on the possibility of breaking international law. His response was essentially.
I will not support anything that breaks the law. But you would be surprised how often International law is broken, including by the UK. Voting for this bill doesn't actually break the law, it just gives us a stronger negotiating hand in the next 2-3 weeks.
Guess he's happy to break the law after all then... Even if voting the bill in didn't break the law (which depends on who you listen to), by voting in the ability to break the law amounts ot the same thing, in my opinion. You're either happy to have that option on the table, or you're not.
The Italy story, it seems was complete rubbish.
Re international law breaking; I believe that there is precedent for this, but only where the matter is not contested. This is the bit that many conservative MPs are ignoring, as this is extremely contested. Theresa May has been extremely vocal in criticising this bill, she said today "so much for global Britain" in a speech in the Commons. Indeed.
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If this is true then it's yet another glaring example of "them and us"...
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/sep/21/no-10-denies-reports-boris-johnson-went-on-secret-italy-trip
I also wrote to my MP (Simon Fell, Conservative, Barrow-in-Furness) about the Internal Markets Bill and his position on the possibility of breaking international law. His response was essentially.
I will not support anything that breaks the law. But you would be surprised how often International law is broken, including by the UK. Voting for this bill doesn't actually break the law, it just gives us a stronger negotiating hand in the next 2-3 weeks.
Guess he's happy to break the law after all then... Even if voting the bill in didn't break the law (which depends on who you listen to), by voting in the ability to break the law amounts ot the same thing, in my opinion. You're either happy to have that option on the table, or you're not.
The Italy story, it seems was complete rubbish.
Re international law breaking; I believe that there is precedent for this, but only where the matter is not contested. This is the bit that many conservative MPs are ignoring, as this is extremely contested. Theresa May has been extremely vocal in criticising this bill, she said today "so much for global Britain" in a speech in the Commons. Indeed.
Indeed, and I'm very glad (as much as I'd love another reason to hate Johnson).
I do feel a degree of pity for MPs. They work hard to build up the respect of their constituents and likely have a rose-tinted view of what they can achieve. There is also so much going on that they really aren't experts in and are being pressured (and convinced with rationale that they don't have the expertise to criticism) by their party - and there's so much going on in a short space of time they need to decide quickly. If they want to remain as an MP they need to keep their whip. It seems such a conflict of interest and wholly irresponsible practice by the puppet masters at the top.
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They work hard to build up the respect of their constituents
Hmm. Perhaps they do sometimes. I don't remember George Osborne doing any of that when he was handed the safe seat where I grew up, despite him never having visited the place before. I don't recall anything like that from Jared O'Mara either. My belief is that electorate swing with the national winds without giving much attention to the individual they are actually voting for.
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MPs no, well at least locally anyway. Our constituency is unfortunately lumped in with the wealth suburbs of Deeside, so ended up with a Tory again, although it was close. Any Bowie has never bothered responding to any correspondence with him, via email or FB.
Local Councilors are a different story, and are much better at engaging with regional and community issues.
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Any Bowie has never bothered responding to any correspondence with him, via email or FB.
That’s pretty shit, I had assumed it was mandatory for them to respond to their constituents? Had a bit of correspondence with our MP, I’ve always emailed but his official replies have always come back on very posh parliament stationery. The stipulation was that you had to include your address in any contact so they could confirm you were a constituent.
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BELLENDS
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sorry, that's Andy Bowie to clarify.
https://www.andrewbowie.org.uk/
Just so you can see what the smug c looks like and get annoyed too.
I've always signed letters off with my name and the town I live in, but not full address, didn't know i needed to.
If he wanted my full address to confirm, he could look it up, he always manages to get a few letters to me with my name and address on them, usually in the month or two before an election.
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Today Boris Johnson announced, apparently, with an entirely straight face:
"There is nothing more frustrating for the vast majority, the law-abiding majority that do comply, than the sight of a few brazenly defying the rules."
Was anybody watching?
I only read the transcript. Did he glance over his shoulder, in a vaguely Cummings type direction, at this juncture?
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From today's column by Marina Hyde:-
Today, British people were invited to enjoy the spectacle of Johnson shutting pubs – for an hour – and the irony of being hectored that they are “in the last chance saloon” by the very people who herded them back to the saloon and bought them half-price lunches there.
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Today Boris Johnson announced, apparently, with an entirely straight face:
"There is nothing more frustrating for the vast majority, the law-abiding majority that do comply, than the sight of a few brazenly defying the rules."
Was anybody watching?
I only read the transcript. Did he glance over his shoulder, in a vaguely Cummings type direction, at this juncture?
Think you must have missed the bit about only breaking the law in limited and specific ways
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From today's column by Marina Hyde:-
Today, British people were invited to enjoy the spectacle of Johnson shutting pubs – for an hour – and the irony of being hectored that they are “in the last chance saloon” by the very people who herded them back to the saloon and bought them half-price lunches there.
She's usually annoyed me in the past but recently her articles have made me laugh and been reasonably witty. I think it's the not-at-all repressed rage that's amusing.
I wonder how long the conservative back benchers will put up with Boris for now. The ERG lot will be fuming about the new rules, the more sensible ones are annoyed about the bill relating to the Irish trade situation, and the new ones are likely to be annoyed that all the levelling up stuff was bullshit, and shelved anyway because the next 100 years budgets have been spent on giving Dido Harding fifteen jobs.
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Apologies again for replying to a post on a previous page, I was away at the weekend.
...Corbyn's issues, among others were that he was more concerned with helping people in East Timor, or his own internal party politics than actually doing anything useful. John McDonald tried to provide some balance but, it seems was often overruled by people like Karie Murphy or Seamus Milne.
I have to say I find that less convincing evidence than you do that Corbyn would have been "at least as bad as Johnson" at handling the pandemic! Unless there's more?
I know its all hypothetical so I won't labour the point, but I can say with confidence what a Corbyn-led government would not have done:
+Missed the first 5 covid COBRA meetings as he had better things to do (go on holiday / finish a book / finalise a divorce / prepare to announce a new baby)
+Spend £1Bn on PPE for the health service which hasn't been delivered. From companies such as Ayanda Capital (a personal wealth management fund, £252m), Clandeboyne Agencies (a sweet wholesaler, £107m), or Luxe Lifestyle (no employees, assets, or turnover. £25m)
+Declined to provide free school meals in holidays at the height of the first wave until shamed into it by a Premier League footballer
+Declined to waive the NHS migrant surcharge until shamed into it by everyone
+Paid millions, without tender, to companies linked to Vote Leave. Including an integral role in the NHSX app (where is it?!)
+Kept on his chief advisor after flagrantly breaking the rules and despite offering the worst defence imaginable
+Set up a TTI system run by Serco (fined by Serious Fraud Office for failures in prison outsourcing), Deloitte (an accountancy firm), and headed by the ex-CEO of a mobile phone company (as an aside this conglomerate of private companies keeps being referred to as "NHS Test and Trace" - its not)
I would also guess that a Corbyn-led government might perhaps not have chosen to divert precious government resources mid-pandemic into such things as combining DFID and the Foreign Office, reorganising the Civil Service, and getting rid of PHE. Although perhaps they would have used the cover to make their own Stalinesque changes?
The things the Tories get credit for e.g. furlough and Nightingale hospitals (I can't think of any others!) I suspect would have happened under Corbyn as lets face it they are a little leftish in nature are they not? I'm quite sure John McDonnell would have been equally as "imaginative" as Sunak and implemented a scheme used in many other countries. Although I also suspect that we would never hear the end of wailing about "how we'll pay for it" from the media if a Labour govt had done it!
And Brexit - would we still be pressing ahead with this at all costs? And also threatening to break international law into the bargain? At the cost of, according to an unnamed source of Stephen Bush, about 50% of civil service capacity?
I know the above is fighting old battles but it does relate to your wider point i.e. "that both sides in 2019 were as bad / incompetent as each other". I disagree. It presupposes that if only they were more competent then everything would be fine, which ignores the fact that ideologically the conservatives are not well equipped to deal with this crisis. Giving TTI to Serco is not managerial incompetence, its ideological. Although I do agree that this Johnson government is uniquely bad, even for the Tories, for whom the sort of grift described above is baked in. The lack of honesty, humility, learning from mistakes, and seriousness is off the scale. Equating them to Labour 2019 is, in my opinion, not correct.
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Its all a bit of a false comparison really - its a bit like getting beaten up in a pub by some meathead and saying "shame I wasn't smashed up by that other bloke instead"....
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Nigel, you omitted
"Definitely wouldn't have made an exception for people wandering the countryside decimating wildlife with firearms"
"Not sacked a key member of his staff for breaking his own rules"
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With some reluctance...
If we accept that Johnson's party management is awful, so was Corbyns. He had clearly lost control of his main advisors as has Johnson. Corbyns cadre almost managed to sack his deputy leader without his say so. Corbyn spent several years not managing to deal with anti semitism in the party which would have been really easy to sort out. I find it very hard to imagine that any sort of idealogical purity would have made up for his utterly ineffectual leadership. Not that electing a second rate panel show comedian as a PM was any better, mind.
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Nigel, you omitted
"Definitely wouldn't have made an exception for people wandering the countryside decimating wildlife with firearms"
"Not sacked a key member of his staff for breaking his own rules"
I can't see Corbyn would have sacked Milne if he'd been caught out. Or Karie Murphy, or McCluskey...
The hunting thing is bull. It was on a list of many excepted sports including climbing. Don't mix up a personal dislike of those activities with politics.
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Toby, I can only really applaud your audacity in trying to argue for the opposite side of the coin here, you have so very little to work with. Bravo for trying though top marks for effort.
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It's not just about one bloke beating you up in a pub instead of another one. One bloke was menacing you in the pub beforehand and the other was hardly likely to even be there. It was nigh on impossible on the electoral maths for Corbyn to achieve a majority government. It was why worrying about him in the campaign was so pointless and worrying about Boris was so important. Middle class swing voters in southern and city marginals were just as guilty of being fooled as working class voters in the red wall in producing this incredibly dangerous majority of seats for the biggest buffoon of a leader and the most incompetent, crimnal and inexperienced looking cabinet I have ever witnessed.
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It's not just about one bloke beating you up in a pub instead of another one. One bloke was menacing you in the pub beforehand and the other was hardly likely to even be there. It was nigh on impossible on the electoral maths for Corbyn to achieve a majority government. It was why worrying about him in the campaign was so pointless and worrying about Boris was so important. Middle class swing voters in southern and city marginals were just as guilty of being fooled as working class voters in the red wall in producing this incredibly dangerous majority of seats for the biggest buffoon of a leader and the most incompetent, crimnal and inexperienced looking cabinet I have ever witnessed.
I agree with all of that, the British people would never have elected Corbyn, and rightly so; however they should never have elected Johnson either, he's a liability, he clearly has no idea what he's doing, doesn't work very hard, and very likely isn't actually terribly intelligent.
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I think picking apart my metaphor is about as useful as playing what if Labour won the election..
:D
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With some reluctance...
.....I find it very hard to imagine that any sort of idealogical purity would have made up for his (Corbyn's) utterly ineffectual leadership.
Given the reluctance I'll be brief - this line of yours quoted above I suppose is why we won't agree on this!
You seem to place the vast majority of weight on "competence", as incidentally does Kier Starmer. My contention is that you can be as competent as you like, but doing the wrong thing, competently, is still a bad idea.
The example of TTI is instructive. Given to private firms Serco / Deloitte / ex-Talk Talk CEO. £12bn spent (£432 per UK household). Results - shambolic: revealed today that pillar 2 (private Serco et al) testing returns 10% of results within 24hrs i.e. pointless. Pillar 1 (NHS labs) returns 88% within 24hrs. Labour 2019 edition would, I guarantee, not have made this incredibly expensive mistake. My point is that the conservative party is hardwired to waste money like this by outsourcing, when it would have been cheaper, more effective, and more accountable to have done TTI by expanding existing provision. No amount of competence from the government will override this basic error.
In summary I'd take a useless Corbyn doing the right things than a useless Johnson doing the wrong ones.
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Honestly, though, Nigel; you’re missing the point.
He wouldn’t have been “doing” anything, right or wrong (what ever that means).
He would have had at best a slim majority, more likely minority government and a party riven by divisions, behind him (a little like the Senators were “behind” Ceasar).
This is because he was an ineffective leader and compromised, eternally, in the eyes of the public.
Your reasoning and moral stance, is admirable, but you might as well wish for the perfect benevolent dictator or just go whole hog, rub the lamp and ask for utopia.
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Good intentions =/= good outcomes.
Sure, but can't you agree it's a better start than bad intentions? (BTW I voted Green as well, obvs...)
I think the importance of good intentions is vastly over-stated.
I mean, everyone thinks they have good intentions, yet plenty of people and organisations fuck up. The Tories' "good intention" was to reduce the hit to the economy as much as possible during the pandemic. That's why they were quite happy to abandon dogma with the furlough scheme. But the UK economy is still going to take a massive hit, and whilst part of that is probably due to its structure, part of that is because the government have handled the pandemic poorly. Their intentions counted for nothing.
This is why I believe it's really worth sitting down with a pen and paper and working through the Prisoners' Dilemma. Not because it is an accurate representation of reality, although many of the methods used to overturn (and then re-impose) the standard outcome are indeed used by mobsters and law enforcement, but rather because it presents in a stark little model the idea that intentions count for little when compared to incentives.
Now I'm not saying the issue with the Johnson government messing up the pandemic response is entirely down to incentives. Obviously they are just shit at governing, for reasons we can all agree on: as a leader Johnson is stupid, vain, lazy and incurious. He is over-reliant on flunkies who are not that great either. His cabinet is chosen on ideological purity rather than talent, and he tries to quash those who disagree with him. He prefers giving his core supporters soundbites rather than governing for a majority of the population.
The problem is, all those descriptions were true of Corbyn too. So whilst he would clearly not have given away huge contracts to his mates, he'd probably have done some equally stupid stuff, we just don't know for sure what it would be. But the appeal to good intentions is the bane of left-wing and progressive politics.
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Good intentions =/= good outcomes.
Sure, but can't you agree it's a better start than bad intentions? (BTW I voted Green as well, obvs...)
I think the importance of good intentions is vastly over-stated.
... But the appeal to good intentions is the bane of left-wing and progressive politics.
I agree almost entirely. Actions, not intentions, matter. Johnson may have intended to have a functioning test and trace system by now, but his actions in appointing a race horse owner and university colleague as its head amongst other things mean its bloody useless. Corbyn may have intended to fight racism and prejudice, but when it appeared that a number of his supporters were guilty of these, he did absolutely nothing about it.
The only thing I'd disagree on is the ideological purity of the Johnson cabinet. I'd actually say most of them don't have any ideology, in many cases just self interest, much as their boss does. For example, Jenerick seems to be interested only in screwing the planning system to make a few quid.
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The Tories' "good intention" was to reduce the hit to the economy as much as possible during the pandemic.
Agree with all that you've written. The bad intention I was referring to was the no-deal Brexit that nobody voted for and that landed them with a cabinet full of compliant idiots, as you say. I remain unconvinced that, however incompetent Corbyn may or may not have been, his government would have had such a destructive ideology at their centre.
But the appeal to good intentions is the bane of left-wing and progressive politics.
I'm not sure it's an issue in itself (the alternative would seem to be rather nihilistic) - the issue is the inability to put pragmatism over principles, which is perhaps another side of the same coin but remains the core reason why the Tories, always doing the obverse, have been so successful at hanging on to power while the left confine themselves to opposition. Politics is ultimately about building coalitions and finding compromises.
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I remain unconvinced that, however incompetent Corbyn may or may not have been, his government would have had such a destructive ideology at their centre.
Although you would have had a government run by a man stupid enough to be photographed at a dinner party with 9 people. He should probably lose the whip.
The SNP to their credit seem to have done everything they can about their own member guilty of crass stupidity. I can't imagine how she's still hanging on, after her boss called her up and told her she should resign.
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She was apparently among the legion calling for Cumming's head after his excursion so the double standards and sheer effrontery in refusing to resign is quite outstanding.
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She was apparently among the legion calling for Cumming's head after his excursion so the double standards and sheer effrontery in refusing to resign is quite outstanding.
Yup. Saw that. She’s redefining stubborn at the moment...
Not sure Sturgeon can do much more - been suspended from party (could be sacked I guess) - probably easier if she’s charged.
Still - at least she’s admitted she did wrong - it never appeared if Dom felt that...
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She was apparently among the legion calling for Cumming's head after his excursion so the double standards and sheer effrontery in refusing to resign is quite outstanding.
Not sure Sturgeon can do much more - been suspended from party (could be sacked I guess) - probably easier if she’s charged.
Nicola Sturgeon cannot sack her. The SNP have removed the whip which is as much as they can do.
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Constituents can ballot for a byeelection if she’s censured by Parliamentary Standards or convicted.
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How is Margaret Ferrier still in her job? After she had developed symptoms, had a test she went to church, and to a leisure centre, hairdresser, and parliament on the train...
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For anyone who may have concerns that Covid provides a good cover for sneaking dodgy law through unnoticed while you have an 80 seat majority, keep an eye on the progress of the following three bills:
Internal Market Bill
Overseas Operations Bill
Covert Human Intelligence Sources (Criminal Conduct) Bill
In short, all of the above put the UK state and / or its agents outside the law, both international and domestic.
Internal Market Bill - I would guess most who read this thread already know about this one breaking international law, as the government itself has admitted that it does. It also has the effect of undermining devolved parliaments.
Overseas Operations Bill - Intention: limit vexatious claims against UK service personnel.
Effect: puts a "statute of limitations" of 5 years on UK war crimes (including torture and murder), probably in contravention of Geneva conventions. As such opens up UK services to prosecution by the ICC. Also works in the other direction as it puts a "statute of limitations" of 6 years on claims from servicemen against the MOD (e.g. for lack of training, inadequate equipment), with a provision in this case for the government to opt out of any ECHR provisions under which a claim could be brought.
Covert Human Intelligence Sources (Criminal Conduct) Bill - Intention: to allow various UK gov agencies to commit crimes in order to a) protect national security, b) prevent crime and disorder, c) secure the economic well-being of the UK.
Effect: Authorises crimes within the UK for purposes of a, b, c above with no express exception (i.e. anything at all - even the US prohibits murder and torture, this doesn't) by MI5, the armed forces, the police, National Crime agency, Serious Fraud Office, HMRC, Department of Health, Home Office, Ministry of Justice, Competition and Markets Authority, Environment Agency, Financial Conduct Authority, Food Standards Agency, and the Gambling Commision. Quite a list.
None of the above are currently passed into law yet (first is in Lords, other two still in the commons), so they may yet be amended to have a bit less of a "rogue state" flavour. But as initially proposed they give an indication of the tendencies of the current administration to go beyond certain norms.
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For anyone who may have concerns that Covid provides a good cover for sneaking dodgy law through unnoticed
... But as initially proposed they give an indication of the tendencies of the current administration to go beyond certain norms.
You missed the dodgy trade policy that will definitely threaten British agriculture a bit more than leaving the EU does already, for the benefit of allowing the government to justify leaving in the first place. I'm not so worried about chlorinated chicken per se, but the safety of animal welfare and the financial viability of any British agriculture is unlikely to survive if US imports are available more cheaply at the supermarket.
If anyone has a Conservative MP, and is concerned about this petition them (its being promoted by Jamie Oliver etc) to maintain food standards in any future trade deals.
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Which bill is that Toby? Not surprised to miss stuff, they seem to be pushing a tsunami of shady stuff at the minute. Petitioning for an agriculture bill to protect food standards may do very little anyway, if as per the covert bill the Food Standards Agency can break any law to "safeguard the economic well-being" of the UK.
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Which bill is that Toby? Not surprised to miss stuff, they seem to be pushing a tsunami of shady stuff at the minute. Petitioning for an agriculture bill to protect food standards may do very little anyway, if as per the covert bill the Food Standards Agency can break any law to "safeguard the economic well-being" of the UK.
I'm not sure if it's a new bill, or an amendment to older legislation but I would have thought that if the likes of Jamie Oliver get enough public interest it would soon go the way of Marcus Rashford's campaign and force a u turn. One advantage to an incompetent, indecisive government is that they seem to change tack given a significant amount of public opinion
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The new system of tiers may be easier to communicate, but the cause of the initial confusion, that the government itself is confused about what to do, remains in place.
https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk/2020/10/new-covid-19-tier-system-doesn-t-fix-government-s-real-problem
I just tried to say this on the lockdown thread but not as consicely. They really don't know whether to listen to the scientific advisors, or to the likes of Graham Brady and the Daily Telegraph do they?
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Am I being overly sceptical in thinking that calling out special forces to do a dramatic night time raid on a boat with a few stowaways on board is a bit over the top?
Is this standard procedure? (OMM?) Or a successful attempt to get migrants back into the headlines?
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Meanwhile I noticed on Hancocks media rounds this morning the narrative for 500k tests per day has shifted to the 'end of the year' rather than 'end of October' which is er 5 day days away...
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Am I being overly sceptical in thinking that calling out special forces to do a dramatic night time raid on a boat with a few stowaways on board is a bit over the top?
Is this standard procedure? (OMM?) Or a successful attempt to get migrants back into the headlines?
The chap (not someone from the government) interviewed on the today programme this morning said that this was standard procedure. The potential security threat from an oil tanker being taken over by a group who might wish to cause maximum damage with it would be pretty significant I'd imagine. It may well be that they had no such intention but if it was your responsibility, youd be pretty risk averse about the possibility, no?
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Just to add to the generally poor year we're going through, it seems (according to Ivan Rodgers, reported at the weekend) that whether we get a deal with the EU may well depend on who wins the US election.
4 more years of Trump and a no deal? Given that its 2020, I'd say that's practically guaranteed.
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Just to add to the generally poor year we're going through, it seems (according to Ivan Rodgers, reported at the weekend) that whether we get a deal with the EU may well depend on who wins the US election.
4 more years of Trump and a no deal? Given that its 2020, I'd say that's practically guaranteed.
Saw that, it may be be my tendency to believe that even some of the worst people have a shred of decency in them but I actually found it slightly shocking that this government could be hoping for the mad orange one to get back in so that they can tell the EU to p*ss off! More fool me :(
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The chap (not someone from the government) interviewed on the today programme this morning said that this was standard procedure. The potential security threat from an oil tanker being taken over by a group who might wish to cause maximum damage with it would be pretty significant I'd imagine. It may well be that they had no such intention but if it was your responsibility, youd be pretty risk averse about the possibility, no?
Yeh I heard that. The master of the ship had followed procedure in so much as locking crew down in a safe area and notifying Libyan authorities, who then notified British authorities. As I understood it the coastguard and police had already boarded the ship and identified them as stowaways. It’s the subsequent involvement of special forces (presumably a decision by the Home Sec and Defence Sec given that they’ve been praised over their ‘strong leadership’) that struck me as a way to turn it from a routine removal of stowaways into a headline grabbing migrant story.
Or maybe 2020 has just pushed me over the edge in my cynicism and mistrust of this govt’s motivations in all they do.
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Am I being overly sceptical in thinking that calling out special forces to do a dramatic night time raid on a boat with a few stowaways on board is a bit over the top?
Is this standard procedure? (OMM?) Or a successful attempt to get migrants back into the headlines?
Yes.
SOP.
There is no way of knowing the capability or likely attitudes to killing hostages (or of losing their own lives) of the hostile party. There is no way to eliminate the possibility of further hostile intent or even accidentally catastrophic repercussions. A tanker or any large vessel is potentially an horrendous weapon in the hands of the intent, or tragedy/disaster in the hands of the incompetent.
T-bone a cross channel ferry with one, or plough it into Southampton’s residential sea front and people will wonder why you didn’t use the unit especially trained to deal with such a situation...
The lads could almost have swum there (it was 29 miles from their base).
This is precisely what they are for/trained to do.
(We, the RN, provide boarding parties for raiding suspect vessels. I used to do that. Fast roping out of the ship’s Lynx or whacking a Bear Claw on a hull and scrambling up a boarding ladder from a Pacific sea boat). But, if the vessel had known combatants or likely to have such, then the task would be bumped up to the Bootnecks. They in turn, if hostages are involved, would bump it to the Squadron.
Things to note:
They deployed with standard RN air and sea assets, not the dedicated SF air support unit (7sqn RAF, these days, I think).
Nobody was hurt/killed (Jack, in overalls and ill fitting body armour, with an SA80 he fires once or twice a year at a Dan bouy, from the flight deck; is quite likely to hurt him/herself and will almost certainly let fly if actually challenged).You let the pro’s deal with it. Less drama all round.
It will be a few days before you can sort the wheat from the chaff amongst the rumours here (well, I’m actually at home right now, coz I don’t have a ship yet, but you know what I mean).
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The chap (not someone from the government) interviewed on the today programme this morning said that this was standard procedure. The potential security threat from an oil tanker being taken over by a group who might wish to cause maximum damage with it would be pretty significant I'd imagine. It may well be that they had no such intention but if it was your responsibility, youd be pretty risk averse about the possibility, no?
Yeh I heard that. The master of the ship had followed procedure in so much as locking crew down in a safe area and notifying Libyan authorities, who then notified British authorities. As I understood it the coastguard and police had already boarded the ship and identified them as stowaways. It’s the subsequent involvement of special forces (presumably a decision by the Home Sec and Defence Sec given that they’ve been praised over their ‘strong leadership’) that struck me as a way to turn it from a routine removal of stowaways into a headline grabbing migrant story.
Or maybe 2020 has just pushed me over the edge in my cynicism and mistrust of this govt’s motivations in all they do.
I can tell you that there were no other “authorities” on board and that direct and credible threats were made and the crew overpowered. I don’t know what weapons were in play, but the decision to bring in the Squadron, means it was escalated through all the other levels I touched on. This will not have been done lightly and the Civilian authorities actually have a much more limited ability to impose tactical decisions on the military chain of command, than you are implying. There are a number of checks and balances between political appointees and their access to tactical and strategic assets.
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Is this standard procedure? (OMM?) Or a successful attempt to get migrants back into the headlines?
totally about the headlines, the guy from the government ( conservative MP for Isle of White?) interviewed on the Today programme used the phrase "lawyer up by lunchtime" when talking about the possibility of the stowaways claiming asylum.
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Is this standard procedure? (OMM?) Or a successful attempt to get migrants back into the headlines?
totally about the headlines, the guy from the government ( conservative MP for Isle of White?) interviewed on the Today programme used the phrase "lawyer up by lunchtime" when talking about the possibility of the stowaways claiming asylum.
Did you read what OMM said? It sounds like a completely standard way of dealing with several thousand tonnes of metal and crude oil drifting around the world's busiest shipping lane. Can you imagine the potential environmental consequences if it had run aground or crashed?
If politicians are choosing to take advantage of it to push their agenda then it's likely that they're using an event that would have taken place anyway to their advantage, rather than making the event happen artificially. The media are probably keen to report it because the SBS boarding an oil tanker in the middle of night is one of the more exciting stories that's happened in the last six months.
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Cheers OMM. Good knowledge. Sounds more a case of Patel and Wallace being given credit for something they had absolutely no involvement in then.
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Is this standard procedure? (OMM?) Or a successful attempt to get migrants back into the headlines?
totally about the headlines, the guy from the government ( conservative MP for Isle of White?) interviewed on the Today programme used the phrase "lawyer up by lunchtime" when talking about the possibility of the stowaways claiming asylum.
Suggesting that using 'the big noisy red vehicle with the sirens and flashing blue lights' to put out a fire in, lets say, a migrant detention centre, was 'totally about the headlines' would be for the tin-foil hat brigade. Why is your suggestion not?
Do you have a suggestion for how the situation should have been better dealt with so that it didn't make headlines?
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Is this standard procedure? (OMM?) Or a successful attempt to get migrants back into the headlines?
totally about the headlines, the guy from the government ( conservative MP for Isle of White?) interviewed on the Today programme used the phrase "lawyer up by lunchtime" when talking about the possibility of the stowaways claiming asylum.
(https://i.ibb.co/N9Vqd6X/5-C8-DD11-B-02-E4-4-AE1-B1-C6-C38067-F78-E0-E.jpg)
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totally about the headlines, the guy from the government ( conservative MP for Isle of White?) interviewed on the Today programme used the phrase "lawyer up by lunchtime" when talking about the possibility of the stowaways claiming asylum.
It's nuts right.. It's as if the UK authorities consider preventing 228 metres and 42,000 tons of crude oil tanker becoming a danger to other shipping in one of the busiest seas in the world, or to the inhabitants and economy of Southampton, or an oil release that would devastate the environment of a large area of the south coast of Britain, is somehow more important than the rights of 7 stowaways from Nigeria to claim asylum. I'm appalled.
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Wound Pete up so much he had to reply again!
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totally about the headlines, the guy from the government ( conservative MP for Isle of White?) interviewed on the Today programme used the phrase "lawyer up by lunchtime" when talking about the possibility of the stowaways claiming asylum.
It's nuts right.. It's as if the UK authorities consider preventing 228 metres and 42,000 tons of crude oil tanker becoming a danger to other shipping in one of the busiest seas in the world, or to the inhabitants and economy of Southampton, or an oil release that would devastate the environment of a large area of the south coast of Britain, is somehow more important than the rights of 7 stowaways from Nigeria to claim asylum. I'm appalled.
I think it’s funny, more than infuriating.
Mostly.
But, you have a good idea of how ridiculous the those conspiracy theories actually are. A good many people think the military are actually a well oiled, efficient, machine of precise, measured domination and control; unthinkingly and robotically at the whim of political (short term) appointees etc etc.
When it’s really a hide bound behemoth of protocol and traditions, harder to steer than a VLCC, with no rudder, in a hurricane...
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I think the media splash was probably because it was something different from
(a) Covid stuff
(b) US election stuff
:D
Throw in a bit of special forces and there you go :)
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Wound Pete up so much he had to reply again!
Haha, not wound up in a bad way - like Matt I find what some people will believe about the military hilarious and almost (but sadly not completely) beyond belief. Having some insight into that world it is not, as OMM accurately points out, a precision tool of government anti-migrant rhetoric.
If ballsofcottonwool was tin-foil-hatting about a topic that was more fashionable with ukb's regular columnists then he'd be getting schooled for his absurd thinking.
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Fwiw I agree with you and Matt entirely regarding the risk posed by hijack on such a vessel.
As a slight aside I do think it’s quite interesting how regularly special forces operations do seem to end up in the papers, especially SAS missions it seems. Hopefully not too tin foil hatty, but I have wondered if the press releases these sorts of stories originate from do serve a purpose in forming a reminder to the world those units exist.
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Fwiw I agree with you and Matt entirely regarding the risk posed by hijack on such a vessel.
As a slight aside I do think it’s quite interesting how regularly special forces operations do seem to end up in the papers, especially SAS missions it seems. Hopefully not too tin foil hatty, but I have wondered if the press releases these sorts of stories originate from do serve a purpose in forming a reminder to the world those units exist.
It would be more surprising if they didn’t use the deterrent factor.
Like an obvious, flashing lamp lit, burglar alarm box; it’s the “Bad neighbour” principle.
It says “Hey there Perp, you might be able to beat our alarm system, but it would be way easier to go try three doors down, they don’t have an alarm”.
Compared to how busy these guys actually are, however, the reported incidents are little cherries on a pretty hefty cake...
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Compared to how busy these guys actually are, however, the reported incidents are little cherries on a pretty hefty cake...
I imagined as much, and I’m sure the ops that get the press release treatment are the all at the more public friendly, obvious enemy end of things!
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Corbyn suspension: I can't see that the whips had any other choice but to do it after his effective denial that there was really a problem. I'm sure some people think otherwise. Belligerence in the face of a totally decisive legal assessment just cannot be an intelligent response.
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Corbyns response - was poor and out of touch.
Some of his supporters think it’s a set up or trap - but honestly if it were - it’s an elephant trap with big sign posts in flashing neon warning that it’s a trap.
IIRC the only other party to be found at fault by this body was th BNP
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It was pathetic. Tone deaf and counterproductive. I gave him the benefit of the doubt many times but I think this speaks volumes of his inability to do real politics.
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He managed to turn what should have been a day of humility into it being all about him and playing the victim. Pathetic and juvenile.
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Perhaps fewer people than I thought think otherwise! I think I agree with all of the responses.
Corbyns response seems analogous to being pulled over for speeding by the police and instead of saying sorry, saying "f**k off I'm the best judge of how fast it's safe to drive". It is indeed a good indication of why he really wasn't any good at leading a political party and remains an amateurish student politics style campaigner.
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In the full text of his statement, 90+% of what is in there seems to be an appropriate response, but it seems he just couldn’t resist a couple of digs about not agreeing with the findings and the whole thing being overblown. It’s almost like those comments were thrown in as testers to see how the new leadership would respond.
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A decent course of action, but then I would say that given that I left the Labour Party over this issue.
Wait till the EHRC report and kick him out of Labour for bringing the party into disrepute. Of course lots of members would leave too, but if subscriptions had to rise because of it, I’m sure for many left that would be a price worth paying.
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Can someone wiser than me help with a point: if you are a member of Unite, but don’t agree with McLuskey’s potential withdrawal of funding, are there other unions that you can join to represent you, or are you stuck?
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TGWU?
Corbyn has really made the EHRC point for them about the leadership being unwilling to seriously address the issue.
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He managed to turn what should have been a day of humility into it being all about him and playing the victim. Pathetic and juvenile.
Absolutely 100%. Unbelievable.
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i thought this was quite an interesting article from Peter Oborne - ex Telegraph
worth a read for a slightly different slant on this situation
https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/ehrc-labour-antisemitism-starmer-corbyn-soul?fbclid=IwAR0mgIIsgyc6rinTbW9EmYUWuP8S4E2cP2zMdDII-gBTXVlHDyaXeOKRhj8
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I don't doubt the problem and Corbyn's culpability has been overstated by an unsympathetic media. That unfortunately is out of the Labour party's hands. Sadly politics is rarely about the facts and details, it's about the general impression given to a disinterested public.This was about a bit of theatre to pacify the attack dogs so the party could finally move on. Despite an enormous imbalance between the potential benefit and damage, Corbyn did the opposite. Clearly he is incapable of putting his slighted ego aside for the sake of the party.
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It’s an interesting read, casting Corbyn in a much more favourable light. Thanks for the link.
As JB says above (more or less), Corbyn’s response was politically inept.
Standing back a little, if you have a mounting crisis which challenges the core values of the party, what do you do? Let it build and argue you are doing a good job? Or show some humility and awareness and make resolving it a top priority?
I do not feel that Corbyn and his team have ever grasped the seriousness of this.
Edit:
I don't doubt the problem ... has been overstated by an unsympathetic media.
I am afraid I do. Unsympathetic média or not, hysterical headlines or not, the problem is manifestly widespread and serious. I came to that conclusion in spring 2017 and it has only recently appeared to be taken seriously. Corbyn’s own comments have done nothing to address it- the mural, the foreword, the ‘friends’ in Hamas vs the unironic Zionists. The list goes on. He had to go.
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I didn't mean to imply it didn't exist. But it was always going to be treated very differently in the media from, say, islamaphobia in the Conservative party.
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I didn't mean to imply it didn't exist. But it was always going to be treated very differently in the media from, say, islamaphobia in the Conservative party.
Right wing parties are supposed/expected to be some sort of ‘ist. Racist, sexist, classist or all the ‘ists.
So it’s never “ News” only “Olds”...
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I didn't mean to imply it didn't exist. But it was always going to be treated very differently in the media from, say, islamaphobia in the Conservative party.
No, I did not think you meant that it did not exist, but do feel that the media bandwagon does not make it substantìally worse than it already is, so disagreed with that point.
Islamophobia reporting and the Tories? Yes, absolutely.
FWIW I really do not care if Corbyn dislikes Jews, has a ‘blind spot’ or any other scenario regarding his personal beliefs. I care that the consequences of his actions are that antisemitism in the Labour Party has not been adequately addressed. That is enough.
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It’s an interesting read, casting Corbyn in a much more favourable light. Thanks for the link.
Oborne in Middle East Eye, yes? It's nothing less than an antisemitic blog.
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Thanks, I don't know it and you may well be right. The point about the transition in management of the complaints process was interesting but it does not change the overall responsibility in my eyes.
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It’s an interesting read, casting Corbyn in a much more favourable light. Thanks for the link.
Oborne in Middle East Eye, yes? It's nothing less than an antisemitic blog.
could you post some evidence of that please? I've googled and duck duck go to no avail
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could you post some evidence of that please? I've googled and duck duck go to no avail
A spin through the editor's twitter account, if your stomach is strong enough,
Or, absolutely anything Oborne has written about Jews and Israel, may convince.
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Double posted in error.
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Details on its site are delightfully vague.. . ‘independently funded’ (how? by whom?) ‘influential think tanks’ (which?). Editor and funding not listed.
Had to google to find out anything.
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I don't doubt the problem and Corbyn's culpability has been overstated by an unsympathetic media.
Two problems with this. Firstly, talk of “the media” as an identical mass always strikes me as an inaccurate simplification that plays into the conspiratorial mindset of left and right, indeed helps create it. I was going to suggest the only things the editors of the Guardian and the Mail have in common is a dedication to getting the spellings right, but to be honest I’m not sure about that either.
But mainly, Corbyn and Corbyn Labour have been strongly criticised by prominent Jewish journalists like Nick Cohen, Jonathan Freeland, Oliver Kamm and Daniel Finkelstein. Are they exaggerating racism because they disagree with Corbyn’s policies? Are Gary Younge or David Olusoga any less trustworthy writing about racism from Trump or Johnson because they disagree with those men’s politics?
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Can I second the call for some actual evidence about MEE and Peter Oborne antisemitism? A google has only produced a link to this crank site: https://honestreporting.com/. If I am missing something I am happy to be corrected.
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https://vimeo.com/349649184
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https://vimeo.com/349649184
Brilliant, just wish it wasn't so true!
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Can I second the call for some actual evidence about MEE and Peter Oborne antisemitism? A google has only produced a link to this crank site: https://honestreporting.com/. If I am missing something I am happy to be corrected.
Have you looked at its output on say, Israel, antisemitism, Corbyn, or are you Googling-around?
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I've had a look but am struggling to see anything that seems especially worrying. I might just be not looking hard enough. It's quite a serious word to just chuck around, can you post a link or two? Again I stand to be corrected but it's not immediately obvious to me.
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Can I second the call for some actual evidence about MEE and Peter Oborne antisemitism? A google has only produced a link to this crank site: https://honestreporting.com/. If I am missing something I am happy to be corrected.
Have you looked at its output on say, Israel, antisemitism, Corbyn, or are you Googling-around?
You haven’t actually provided any specific examples.
Given the lack of similar commentary, I’m guessing this is an opinion you have formed yourself through reading Oborne? I don’t/haven’t, so have no opinion. Surely you can point to specific articles and his expressed views that have lead you to this conclusion?
Not having a go, it’s just too much to try and plough through his back catalogue, right now...
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I've had a look but am struggling to see anything that seems especially worrying. I might just be not looking hard enough. It's quite a serious word to just chuck around, can you post a link or two? Again I stand to be corrected but it's not immediately obvious to me.
It's an absolute sewer of a site. Just one example because you can look yourself, can't you? https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/israel-lobbys-non-stop-attacks-corbyn-will-backfire
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On the subject of Corbyn, the former Labour MP Ruth Smeeth has just written a personal account for the Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/nov/01/jewish-labour-members-have-been-vindicated-antisemitism-ruth-smeeth
Quite an arresting first paragraph:
Shit-stirring Zionist cum buckets, bought and paid for by Israel.” According to the Labour party governance unit, as recently as last year, this statement made about Margaret Hodge and I was neither racist nor misogynist and didn’t warrant any action against the Labour party member who had written it. That is, until it appeared on the front page of a national newspaper and even then, the member wasn’t suspended until Jeremy Corbyn had to face MPs in parliament.
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I have to say I find a search for Middle Eastern Eye’s ideological baggage a distraction in the current case. To take Oborne’s article seriously we have to assume that a journalist who has spent a day reading the report has a better grasp of the situation than the team of lawyers who spent months researching the case. And we have to make this assessment whilst also acknowledging the deep need for many on the left to downplay the findings in order to preserve their view of themselves as principled anti-racists, rather than people who looked the other way.
I had a quick scroll through the report today. On my extremely brief reading, the allegation that someone else ran the NEC seems fairly minor. The leaders office claimed in their submission that they had every right to oversee politically sensitive cases, then rowed back when they realised they had broken their own rules. They thought it was perfectly acceptable for complaints against Corbyn to be dismissed by the leader’s office rather than going through the proper channels. They had people overseeing cases who also helped the alleged perpetrator - clearly completely corrupt and unfair.
Nothing was written down formally but there was a massive exchange of information via private channels; information which Corbyn’s flunkies declared was too onerous to give to the EHRC but which they somehow managed to collate for their own private report.
One paragraph stood out for me. Amongst the stuff they couldn’t investigate - because it pertained to members not “agents” for whom the Party was legally responsible - were allegations of Holocaust denial and praising Hitler. Something has gone very wrong in a left wing party when people like that believe they are welcome there.
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I have to say I find a search for Middle Eastern Eye’s ideological baggage a distraction in the current case. To take Oborne’s article seriously we have to assume that a journalist who has spent a day reading the report has a better grasp of the situation than the team of lawyers who spent months researching the case. And we have to make this assessment whilst also acknowledging the deep need for many on the left to downplay the findings in order to preserve their view of themselves as principled anti-racists, rather than people who looked the other way.
I had a quick scroll through the report today. On my extremely brief reading, the allegation that someone else ran the NEC seems fairly minor. The leaders office claimed in their submission that they had every right to oversee politically sensitive cases, then rowed back when they realised they had broken their own rules. They thought it was perfectly acceptable for complaints against Corbyn to be dismissed by the leader’s office rather than going through the proper channels. They had people overseeing cases who also helped the alleged perpetrator - clearly completely corrupt and unfair.
Nothing was written down formally but there was a massive exchange of information via private channels; information which Corbyn’s flunkies declared was too onerous to give to the EHRC but which they somehow managed to collate for their own private report.
One paragraph stood out for me. Amongst the stuff they couldn’t investigate - because it pertained to members not “agents” for whom the Party was legally responsible - were allegations of Holocaust denial and praising Hitler. Something has gone very wrong in a left wing party when people like that believe they are welcome there.
Yes, I agree it was a distraction, it just caught my attention. The piece linked is concerning. The Oborne one wasn't though, and it's interesting principally because he is no friend of the left in general. Had it appeared on the canary or similar I would have dismissed it immediately. However back on topic, my views on Corbyn and his suspension are almost identical to Ali K and JB further up the thread. I have no problem with his suspension.
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However back on topic, my views on Corbyn and his suspension are almost identical to Ali K and JB further up the thread. I have no problem with his suspension.
Indeed, having thought about it a bit, and listened to some different commentaries on the suspension (interesting that the New Statesman and Spectator podcasts from journalists had very similar takes on it considering), it's rather difficult for anyone to have a considered position which argues with Corbyn's suspension. He explicitly did exactly what the report had most criticised the party under his leadership for; and also an hour or two after Starmer had said that those who deny the presence or magnitude of antisemitism in the Labour party after this report have no place in it. He basically suspended himself.
Personally I wonder if he either wanted to try to bolster the left's cause by becoming some sort of a martyr and focus for them to rally around by being suspended, or alternatively that he is incredibly stupid and self centred and genuinely thinks that it really is all about him.
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Personally I wonder if he either wanted to try to bolster the left's cause by becoming some sort of a martyr and focus for them to rally around by being suspended, or alternatively that he is incredibly stupid and self centred and genuinely thinks that it really is all about him.
I know which one my money's on.
See also the multitudes on Twitter etc demanding that Starmer intervene with Corbyn's disciplinary procedure - the very thing that the former leader's office did wrong. You couldn't make it up.
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OK - in the last few days there’s been a lockdown U turn, US election and other pandemic related stuff to occupy the news, But.....
The generally Tory focused press have been pretty - err - generous to Starmer and Labour as a whole in their coverage. As on here - its generally been along the lines of Corbyn shot himself in the foot - was very out of touch - and good riddance. Really they could have had a field day with this... and they’ve not.
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The generally Tory focused press have been pretty - err - generous to Starmer and Labour as a whole in their coverage...they could have had a field day with this... and they’ve not.
I’m not sure what they could have attacked him for though? Isn’t that the problem with Starmer (for the Tories) - that he doesn’t fall into the traps that Corbyn used to.
And drawing attention to how Starmer has dealt with it would (a) draw an even bigger line between him and Corbyn (a good thing for Labour), and (b) show what a pussy Johnson has been when it comes to disciplining any of his cabinet or advisers. Oh, and the Islamophobia issue the Tories have which they aren’t doing anything about.
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Plenty to go at I’d have thought. In the general “chaos at labour”, “civil war” stuff etc.. and that KS was a senior member of the Shadow cabinet when all of this was going on. Anyway - I’m not trying to shit stir - just surprised they’ve not gone for him more.
I’ll put money on Boris bringing it up at PMQ’s though.
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Plenty to go at I’d have thought. In the general “chaos at labour”, “civil war” stuff etc.. and that KS was a senior member of the Shadow cabinet when all of this was going on. Anyway - I’m not trying to shit stir - just surprised they’ve not gone for him more.
I’ll put money on Boris bringing it up at PMQ’s though.
Re the media, interestingly, I thought that the Spectator journalists were slightly more generous to Starmer and the Labour party in general, than the New Statesman. Boris may well bring it up, but hes going to have a very difficult time explaining why he has now done what Keir Starmer told him to do 2 or 3 weeks ago, and why he'll probably need Labour votes to get this lockdown 2 through parliament, as so many of his MPs will rebel. Conservative backbenchers are apparently absolutely livid with him and many hate any increase on restrictions. They've got at least as many problems as Labour with party unity.
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Ok, here some altenrative viewpoints re - Corbyn from Jewish people
https://www.youtube.com/embed/VMc_0gaeoBU?fbclid=IwAR2UcdBBhqOKatMg5e8qVzGKgsBiEOkUiXpnm6Gcmb4BshGFFiJ5QojyKOs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6oOj7BzciA
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I said I wouldn't but you Guardianistas shouldn't have it all your own way. Thanks for the share BP David Graeber is a legend, well known in academic circles in London and a huge influence on many young leftists...I only discovered him a short time ago sadly he died very recently RIP. :'(
And another alternative Jewish voice professor Norman Finkelstein.
https://youtu.be/JEX5OGmXLz4
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Thanks Brutus. I recognise the name, but don’t know much about Finkelstein. I am quite open to hearing a different point of view, but found it disappointingly long on assertion and generalisations such as ‘conspiracy’ and ‘British elites’ but short of developed argument.
I was pleased when Corbyn won the leadership, because I thought under Miliband’s weak leadership the party had forgotten what it was for. That changed when LP members went unpunished for anti-Semitic speech.
It is not enough to say Corbyn threatened the prevailing order and so there was a fabricated scandal. The unwillingness to deal with antisemites in Labour was capitalised upon by his enemies - of course it was! They call it politics- but the failure to address the issue is the party leader’s to own.
Ultimately, I reproach Corbyn for that, and for being so spectacularly bad at politics outside of the factional left that we face 4 more years of an incompetent government with a near unassailable majority. The far left enabled the populist right, and that is a terrible legacy.
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Thanks Brutus. I recognise the name, but don’t know much about Finkelstein.
Finkelstein wrote a book called The Holocaust Industry which made significant waves when it was published. I read it years ago at university and it made quite an impression on me. He is undoubtedly a polemicist and has a very forthright style on a podium which can put people off, but worth reading I think even if he probably isn't all that much fun to be around. His second book Beyond Chutzpah is basically a takedown of Alan Dershowitz, who defended OJ Simpson successfully. His books have the same give-no-quarter attitude as his speech but they are meticulously footnoted to back up his sometimes quite strident points. Haven't seen him crop up for a few years so thanks for the link Brutus.
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JR under Corbyn the LP had over half a million members, add staff to that and union affiliates. How many instances of law breaches did the EHRC find amongst all that?? The answer is 2.
Is the prevalence of anti-semitism more than the whole of our society within the LP?
We should of course strive to remove AS and all forms of racism from our society and politics.
Is the prevalence of AS and racism more or less within other political parties?
Will the EHRC be investigating the Conservative party where the prevalence of AS and Islamaphobia is higher? Will there be calls for expulsions?
There needs to be some balance to all of all this because from where I'm sitting it's grossly unfair. Find it flabergasting that the current leadership immediately ignored the recommendations within the EHRC report by expelling JC without following any kind of procedure or protocol..
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Ok, here some altenrative viewpoints re - Corbyn from Jewish people
Thanks for the links Ben, always good to hear David Graeber speak - RIP. Also heard that the world lost Robert Fisk today. A tragedy for real journalism, especially RE the Middle East.
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Thanks Brutus. I recognise the name, but don’t know much about Finkelstein.
Finkelstein wrote a book called The Holocaust Industry which made significant waves when it was published. I read it years ago at university and it made quite an impression on me. He is undoubtedly a polemicist and has a very forthright style on a podium which can put people off, but worth reading I think even if he probably isn't all that much fun to be around. His second book Beyond Chutzpah is basically a takedown of Alan Dershowitz, who defended OJ Simpson successfully. His books have the same give-no-quarter attitude as his speech but they are meticulously footnoted to back up his sometimes quite strident points. Haven't seen him crop up for a few years so thanks for the link Brutus.
Too true. Can't imagine he's a bundle of joy to be around. There are much longer monologues on YouTube where his statements are much better qualified and evidenced if anyone wishes to indulge.
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Breaking the law isn’t the only issue and it’s serious, especially in a party which is supposed to embody ideals of equality and justice.
The Tories are a different, but no less vexed, issue. Agreed.
Relative incidence is not the point for me, but that this behaviour was not dealt with effectively. I felt that a good 12 months prior to any press polemic.
As far as I understand it Brutus, your last point is incorrect- he is suspended pending an investigation which may result in his expulsion. I do not see that Starmer had much choice tbh, having just announced that denying the problem would not be tolerated - and then Corbyn went and did just that, and stuck to his guns rather than rowing back.
Corbyn is emblematic of an egalitarian strand of politics and for that people love him very much. He also embodies a terrible lack of comprehension of how his politics is perceived more widely in society. Without an effective appeal outside of his natural electorate, the project was doomed.
Slaughtered by the press, at times unfairly misrepresented- yes. Politics.
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Oborne in Middle East Eye, yes? It's nothing less than an antisemitic blog.
could you post some evidence of that please? I've googled and duck duck go to no avail
A spin through the editor's twitter account, if your stomach is strong enough,
Sorry, catching up. By editor, do you mean David Hearst, formerly of the Guardian etc? I never read Twitter and won't start now (sorry!) so will need your help - is he himself posting anti-semitic material?
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Corbyn is emblematic of an egalitarian strand of politics and for that people love him very much. He also embodies a terrible lack of comprehension of how his politics is perceived more widely in society. Without an effective appeal outside of his natural electorate, the project was doomed.
I agree with all of this post but especially the above paragraph. I wish it were otherwise.
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This has reminded me of this essay by Graeber which came out just after the election.
I personally think it’s got a lot of great insight and analysis, although it might not be to everyone’s taste!
The paragraph about ‘swiftboating’ is quite pertinent to the above debate.
https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2020/01/13/the-center-blows-itself-up-care-and-spite-in-the-brexit-election/ (https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2020/01/13/the-center-blows-itself-up-care-and-spite-in-the-brexit-election/)
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JR under Corbyn the LP had over half a million members, add staff to that and union affiliates. How many instances of law breaches did the EHRC find amongst all that?? The answer is 2.
The number of members is irrelevant, as the party is not responsible for their actions. The EHRC was mandated to examine the behaviour of "agents", ie people employed by or representing the party - as I put in an earlier post. Hence your figure of half a million is purely a rhetorical flourish rather than a figure that has much to do with the scope of the EHRC's findings.
Is the prevalence of anti-semitism more than the whole of our society within the LP?
Again, the report says it found instances of denying the scale of the Holocaust and support for Hitler amongst members' social media postings.
That's p31 of the report:
https://www.equalityhumanrights.com/sites/default/files/investigation-into-antisemitism-in-the-labour-party.pdf
It's quite clear that under Corbyn, racists felt perfectly comfortable in the Labour Party. It would do many posters on here to reflect upon why that is.
Edit: lots of Graeber love here, unsurprisingly, but you do know his writing on economics was full of factual errors? I'm sure it's a wonderful read.
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The number of members is irrelevant, as the party is not responsible for their actions. The EHRC was mandated to examine the behaviour of "agents", ie people employed by or representing the party - as I put in an earlier post. Hence your figure of half a million is purely a rhetorical flourish...
...
Again, the report says it found instances of denying the scale of the Holocaust and support for Hitler amongst members' social media postings.
Errr, i dont think it cuts both ways? Surely the report comments on the actions of members, in which case the figure is more significant than a "rhetorical flourish"?
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The “half a million members, two unlawful acts” is certainly a misleading ratio, for the reason I’ve explained. Bear in mind that as well as the denominator, we should be careful about the numerator too: the report describes these two incidents as “the tip of the iceberg”.
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“the tip of the iceberg”.
Worryingly, I think you're right. Why can't we all just get on?
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I do not see that Starmer had much choice tbh, having just announced that denying the problem would not be tolerated - and then Corbyn went and did just that, and stuck to his guns rather than rowing back.
[Corbyn] also embodies a terrible lack of comprehension of how his politics is perceived more widely in society.
+1 on both points.
Given where Labour (and the general public) is at, it would have been prudent for Corbyn to realise that his need to shout "yes, but..." should be suppressed, even if he thinks he's right. There are times when being right, and convincing others that your view is right, isn't what's important, and it's better just to say sorry, get over it and move on. Politics and family arguments strike me as two occasions where this is regularly true.
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It's quite clear that under Corbyn, racists felt perfectly comfortable in the Labour Party. It would do many posters on here to reflect upon why that is.
I'm extremely sceptical that Corbyn was so naive and innocent about the widespread abuse of Jewish Labour MPs; they tried repeatedly to get support from the leadership and were brushed off. The abuse and threats they received are absolutely appalling. The fact that Corbyn still clearly thinks hes the victim is disgusting and he deserves to be thrown out of the party just for that alone to be honest.
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Meanwhile another U-turn as Boris funds a child welfare program after meeting Rashford (this is of course a good thing!)
It turns out Liz Truss’ super Japan trade deal has led to tariff reductions for four items. Of which the UK doesn’t export anyway.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/brexit-japan-trade-deal-liz-truss-exports-b1619263.html
Oh - and we’ve a week or two to get a EU trade deal. Let’s not think about how Biden will get on with BJ.
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Let’s not think about how Biden will get on with BJ.
About that:
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/mr-president-i-have-a-mr-johnson-on-the-line-will-you-accept-the-call-rg8mxsfhf
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Meanwhile another U-turn as Boris funds a child welfare program after meeting Rashford
As one of those that voted against the Commons motion last month I wrote to my MP this morning asking how he was feeling today.
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Oh - and we’ve a week or two to get a EU trade deal. Let’s not think about how Biden will get on with BJ.
Which we probably will, now that Trump is gone the rug is pulled out from under no deal. That said he's still technically in office until Jan 2020 so there is still a window for shenanigans. But if as I suspect we do manage to get a deal, it will be the EU handing us a stack of paper with the instruction "sign here - sorry, there's no time for you to read it". I.e. it will be on EU terms and not favourable to the UK. Although of course there will be the usual theatre, hard deadlines which are passed then sorted a day later, and then the inevitable BJ spin that its a sweeping victory for team UK. Covid has masked the fact that all of Johnson's hard deadlines to the EU so far have passed without incident - he was obviously waiting to see which way the US election went. Given the Internal Market Bill's effects on Northern Ireland, Irish Catholic Democrat Biden was not Johnson's preferred choice.
Brexit has "reclaimed UK sovereignty", only to give it over to a few thousand swing voters in Pennsylvania. They in turn have handed it to Michel Barnier. Slow hand clap...
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Wow. Rumpelstiltskin has left the building!
Possibly just for an eye test, but hopefully for good.
Is this the death nell of the SPAD?
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Empty your desk Cummings
It’s fucking obvious what’s happened here.
He’s got a place on I’m a celebrity!!
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Empty your desk Cummings
It’s fucking obvious what’s happened here.
He’s got a place on I’m a celebrity!!
Replacing Katya, surely.
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Oh - and we’ve a week or two to get a EU trade deal. Let’s not think about how Biden will get on with BJ.
Which we probably will, now that Trump is gone the rug is pulled out from under no deal. That said he's still technically in office until Jan 2020 so there is still a window for shenanigans. But if as I suspect we do manage to get a deal, it will be the EU handing us a stack of paper with the instruction "sign here - sorry, there's no time for you to read it". I.e. it will be on EU terms and not favourable to the UK.
Although this is a widespread opinion, I think that this is to underestimate Boris Johnson's enthusiasm for Euroscepticism, which is perhaps the only ideology which he possesses. I think that no deal is still pretty likely, in other words. Frost is also still negotiating, and he is very much willing to go for a no deal. I'd guess that any brake on this is likely to come from minister(s) terrified about the consequences of spiralling food prices and screwed up borders for months.
Frankly, would it not be cheaper to pay all fishermen fifty grand to keep quiet and just let the France and Spain have the rights anyway? After all they eat the majority of it while we import Norwegian cod, prawns from SE Asia etc and export most of our catch to the rest of Europe, as Brits just won't eat whelks or sardines or whatever.
I do wholly agree that if we get a deal it will be a) shit and b) hailed as a success by the government. Much like the last shit deal which was hailed as a success despite being a bit shitter than what Theresa May had got a few months earlier, which they thought was awful. If we don't get a deal, every other country will surely look at our 4 year debacle to agree anything with the EU and swiftly conclude that the UK is just too difficult to bother trying to negotiate with at all. What a great success Dominic Cummings has been for the UK, eh.
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Apparently Frost offered his resignation last week.
Throw that into the mix of why Cummings went/was fired.
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Apparently Frost offered his resignation last week.
Throw that into the mix of why Cummings went/was fired.
Aka:
Almost all of “Vote leave” has ducked out, just early enough to be able to avoid taking the blame for what happens in the spring.
Cummings isn’t dumb enough to brief against the PM accidentally.
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Frankly, would it not be cheaper to pay all fishermen fifty grand to keep quiet and just let France and Spain have the rights anyway?
I was assuming this might be the tactic that the EU adopts to get Frost to buckle. Then BoJo gets to shout about how he saved the fishing industry at the same time as getting royally fucked for access to EU financial markets or other imposed tariffs.
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Although this is a widespread opinion, I think that this is to underestimate Boris Johnson's enthusiasm for Euroscepticism, which is perhaps the only ideology which he possesses.
Johnson is not an ideological Eurosceptic. He was largely pro Europe until he spotted an opportunity to switch sides to suit his ambitions.
It's a marriage of convenience that he would drop in a flash if he thought it benefitted him.
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Although this is a widespread opinion, I think that this is to underestimate Boris Johnson's enthusiasm for Euroscepticism, which is perhaps the only ideology which he possesses.
Johnson is not an ideological Eurosceptic. He was largely pro Europe until he spotted an opportunity to switch sides to suit his ambitions.
It's a marriage of convenience that he would drop in a flash if he thought it benefitted him.
Much akin to his trousers...
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Although this is a widespread opinion, I think that this is to underestimate Boris Johnson's enthusiasm for Euroscepticism, which is perhaps the only ideology which he possesses.
Johnson is not an ideological Eurosceptic. He was largely pro Europe until he spotted an opportunity to switch sides to suit his ambitions.
It's a marriage of convenience that he would drop in a flash if he thought it benefitted him.
I really don't know about that. He made a name for himself writing terrible articles about Brussels and the EU as a journalist before he was sacked for making several of them up.
I suspect that this is one thing that he might believe in. He might cave in on no deal if he thinks that it'll be an utter catastrophe though. Particularly with supplies of vaccine and essential medicines
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If only.
https://youtu.be/8JP0SxoQVlU
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Dominic Grieve on Boris and #10
Those of us who have watched him (Johnson) in action as a colleague over the years can appreciate the engaging optimism that forms the base of his success as a communicator. But behind this lies a vacuum of detail, industry and integrity. It is this vacuum that gets filled by chaos. Equally troubling is the tendency when facing hard choices to take refuge in Churchillian “heroics” that serve only his personal short-term needs and can be reckless as to consequences.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/nov/16/dominic-cummings-no10-boris-johnson
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If only.
https://youtu.be/8JP0SxoQVlU
That C*nt doesn't deserve a click, post or any attention.
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If only.
https://youtu.be/8JP0SxoQVlU
That C*nt doesn't deserve a click, post or any attention.
I occasionally listen to him to see what he's up to. I watched this video and it's striking that he doesn't actually say why he thinks Brexit is in danger. He points out that a couple of people have left number 10 (but claims most of Cummings' slogan master strokes as his own :wank:) but doesn't say what policy change that will precipitate which will in turn imperil the great project. Is it an extension to the transition period, is it a bad deal with the EU, is it No Deal?
He does foretell that Brexit will be put in danger and bets the viewer that his prophecy will come to pass, which is so obviously a fait accompli because WHATEVER happens in the next few months he will say that it is not a True Brexit. The rest of the time he spends trotting out the same anti establishment rhetoric he's peddled for years, but with no real thrust to it.
I know this isn't new, but it's really disappointing how people lap this stuff up with no critical thought.
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So now Boris Johnson has to self-isolate for 2 weeks. The papers/BBC etc are mainly saying that this is a bad situation for him as he wanted to now portray a more ordered government ready to start afresh after the reason departures. The way I see it is that it is just a way for him to avoid parliamentary scrutiny for a while after the recent departures, potential new reshuffle and questions on anything from how the Brexit deal is coming along and what the government are planning to do on the 2nd December (he will miss two Prime Ministers questions - unless they link him up via Zoom or whatever which according to Jacob Ress-Mogg is technologically challenging for some reason and they are looking into whether they can do it in time).
Whilst it is potentially a good advert for the current status of the track and trace system that the MPs involved and Johnson were contacted by the app to say they had been exposed, how likely is it that that is what really occurred? I am worried I am turning into one of these conspiracy nuts where I assume everything that comes out of government is a lie or has an ulterior motive but it all seems too convenient for me.
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If he’s just self isolating and not ill then I don’t see why they can’t just let Starmer give him a PMQ roasting over Zoom instead! 😂
Tomtom, some Sun Tsu for ya
If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.
If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat.
If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.
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What about if I know the enemy but not myself?
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What about if I know the enemy but not myself?
In the words of another famous philosopher, in that case you need to talk to the man in the mirror.
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Does Sun Tsu have anything specific to say about peanut headed bell ends? :)
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Does Sun Tsu have anything specific to say about peanut headed bell ends? :)
Possibly not, however, the BMJ do:
https://www.bmj.com/content/371/bmj.m4425?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_term=hootsuite&utm_content=sme&utm_campaign=usage (https://www.bmj.com/content/371/bmj.m4425?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_term=hootsuite&utm_content=sme&utm_campaign=usage)
I believe that was “both barrels”.
Wasn’t sure whether this belonged in a Covid thread or here. It’s decidedly political though, isn’t it.
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Ace paper!! Yes. It’s about as both barrels as academia gets...
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... I am worried I am turning into one of these conspiracy nuts where I assume everything that comes out of government is a lie or has an ulterior motive but it all seems too convenient for me.
I'm in on this conspiracy as well. He gets to avoid the Brexit shitshow, embarrassing aftermath of two aides leaving, and PMQs. He can send out the cabinet nobodys to announce all the poorly though through new policies and take the flack for it. Then he can bounce back and announce that lockdown is over, feel good about it, and half the country can return to passing COVID around in Wetherspoons.
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Right now, we literally can't call this one way or the other. He's announced he's full of beans and ready to go, so surely he can do some kind of remote PMQs - and we should all be writing to our MPs demanding this, particularly if we live in Tory areas.
Conspiracy thinking seems to me to be endemic in our society and it's terrible. Until we can prove otherwise (missing any sort of PMQ would be a good indicator) then I think we should be responsible and not give into the temptation of conspiracy thinking.
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Conspiracy thinking seems to me to be endemic in our society and it's terrible. Until we can prove otherwise (missing any sort of PMQ would be a good indicator) then I think we should be responsible and not give into the temptation of conspiracy thinking.
I totally agree really, I was mostly being ironic (as Trump would say) There's a report in the papers today about a group of antivax healthcare and care workers, including a Sheffield GP. There are a really concerning number of people in the NHS who believe loads of shit like that.
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Looks like Corbyn is still a Labour party member but won't have the whip restored; I wonder if he'd still stand in the next election if he remained outside the party.
I believe he's very popular in his constituency so I imagine he'd retain his seat. I imagine Starmer would rather that the NEC had chucked him out, and frankly I think it'd have been better for the party if they had, but this seems like a reasonable compromise in the circumstances, if an unsatisfactory one for many.
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I hope this is the best thread for this one.
Interesting use of the word decree"decided" by Boris.
https://news.sky.com/story/boris-johnson-rules-priti-patel-did-not-breach-ministerial-code-over-bullying-allegations-12136986
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My partner suffered workplace bullying by her boss in her previous employment and was eventually forced to leave due to it becoming unbearable so this is particularly close to the bone.
I’m sure the same “mitigating circumstances” could be used by anyone in a position of power to excuse their actions in the name of getting results. “I was under pressure so I shouted, swore and created a general climate of fear among my staff to get what I wanted”. It’s fucking unacceptable. Have written to my MP but I’m not expecting much.
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One rule for us, another one for her I think.
Marina Hyde in the Graun made the point that you may not get very far using ‘I am sorry, it wasn’t a deliberate mistake’ as an excuse when dealing with government departments.
Benefits sanctions and asylum application refusals probably won’t bend to Patel’s excuse.
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Seems like a real missed opportunity to prove that you've moved on post Classic Dom.
Was also disheartening to see Johnson's new press sec attempting to go for some serious spin too.
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Seems like a real missed opportunity to prove that you've moved on
He can’t really move on from himself though, can he! What’s the common denominator in this tsunami of incompetence, preposterous promises and corruption?
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It’s exactly the sort of behaviour we’d expect from Trump.
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Seems like a real missed opportunity to prove that you've moved on
He can’t really move on from himself though, can he! What’s the common denominator in this tsunami of incompetence, preposterous promises and corruption?
His parliamentary code.. ?
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He can’t really move on from himself though, can he!
Fair point! I’d like to think there were other advisers screaming at him to do the right thing.
It made me shudder to think of him as the ‘final arbiter of a code’!
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I completely agree that she ought to be sanctioned. However, interesting to see the difference between the attitude to her and, say, Bercow. Not necessarily on here but certainly there was a lot of looking at ones shoes when the Bercow allegations came out.
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From a quick google it would appear that there wasn't ever a formal investigation into the claims against Bercow, potentially because they were historical accusations, although this isn't clear.
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I completely agree that she ought to be sanctioned. However, interesting to see the difference between the attitude to her and, say, Bercow. Not necessarily on here but certainly there was a lot of looking at ones shoes when the Bercow allegations came out.
The Bercow accusations always had more than a whiff about them. He had vengeful political enemies in government and on the tory backbenches since 2008, given the way he managed his work as Speaker. He had civil service enemies in his department given the sweeping modernising process changes he introduced to the office, which were strongly opposed by some of his accusers. The idea he orchestrated an establishment cover up seemed very unlikely to me. How, when both sides of the establishment seemed against him? However, at a minimum there were process failures that he must take some blame for.
The contrast to the Patel situation is enormous. Even now she appears on TV and makes a ludicrous apology for inadvertent bullying which includes swearing in peoples faces. The PM intervened, delayed by months and broke tradition in not sacking her (given the findings). She has appalling form on ignoring ministerial rules (some experts think the secret meeting with Israeli officials as a minister was so serious she should not have been allowed to continue to be an MP). After Boris backs her, the PMs advisor in this important watchdog role resigns. Boris has yet to answer numerous questions on the matter.
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Both are wrong. Because Bercow* wasn’t ‘caught’ (investigated etc) and sanctioned does not mean Patel should not!
*if he did etc../allegedly etc...
The bigger stink here is Johnson. He could have simply decided not to act on the investigation (that he could have - lots of waffle about water under the bridge - she’s taken training etx..) - but instead he decided to contradict / over-rule the findings - this placing the civil servant in charge in an untenable position. So it’s now his problem (he’s owned it) instead of Patel.
God knows what she must have on him....
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I'm in complete agreement that Patel should be sanctioned and that Johnson has failed massively by dismissing the findings.
There was a shortfall in how the Bercow allegations were dealt with (as the Speaker is he subject to different rules?). My point is that none of us really made much noise about that at the time, I suspect because Bercow was doing quite a good job at the time of holding the government to account over Brexit. Offwidth's claims of the allegations having a political whiff about them smacks of the sort of attitude that can lead to a culture of victims' claims being dismissed unfairly or not taken seriously. The allegations should have been investigated properly and if they didn't stand up to scrutiny then that would have been that.
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The accusers make the claims about Bercow, not me, as nothing was proven and there was no establishment backing him, just a rag tag coalition of people who believed in Parliament. Others in Parliament (who were a lot more trustworthy than his ERG enemies, right wing commentators and civil service ceremonial dinosaurs) knew the situation and defended him; I simply don't believe they would have done so if bullying was clear. He was never above the rules but gaps in the rules were exposed.
Bercow was shaking up the establishment at long odds; Patel is the establishment backed by a huge majority and was excused of clear abuses by the PM under extraordinary circumstances.
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There was a shortfall in how the Bercow allegations were dealt with (as the Speaker is he subject to different rules?). My point is that none of us really made much noise about that at the time, I suspect because Bercow was doing quite a good job at the time of holding the government to account over Brexit.
All hypothetical etc. but I’d like to think there would have been a similar amount of noise if Bercow had been investigated, found to have broken the Ministerial code and then been excused by May.
It’s a shame there wasn’t an investigation that could have concluded one way or another.
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I thought there might still be an investigation after Lord Lisvane made a formal complaint in January this year (7 years after the problems, and as one of the known opponents of the Bercow reforms). I don't know what has happened after that but obviously Boris and the cabinet were sympathetic to it proceeding. The whole thing looks like a political stitch up.
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-51220144
From the BBC article on Lisvane:
The prime minister's spokesman added: "There can be no place for bullying or abuse in Westminster or any workplace, and it is important that the parliamentary leadership responds fully and promptly to any concerns which are raised."
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interesting to see the difference between the attitude to her and, say, Bercow.
This is the same whataboutery that’s being played out in Tory circles to defend her. As well as mutterings about this being some kind of witch hunt involving a bit of sexism and racism to boot.
I suspect we weren’t talking about it because there hadn’t been payoffs to Bercow’s staff or people resigning and bringing legal cases against him or a Cabinet Office enquiry into his behaviour, which was then ignored by the PM at the time.
I’m not having a go at you Will, or defending Bercow, but to me there are clear differences.
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Anyway - as ever the cover up is probably worse than the original crime... more dripping out about Boris trying to alter / influence the report before it came out.
https://news.sky.com/story/boris-johnson-tried-to-water-down-priti-patel-bullying-report-say-whitehall-sources-12137960
What does Priti have over him!!
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Anyway - as ever the cover up is probably worse than the original crime... more dripping out about Boris trying to alter / influence the report before it came out.
https://news.sky.com/story/boris-johnson-tried-to-water-down-priti-patel-bullying-report-say-whitehall-sources-12137960
What does Priti have over him!!
Perhaps the next time she tries to deport some asylum seekers, they'll claim that they didn't mean to somehow arrive in the UK, and they're awfully sorry that she's annoyed about it, but they're going to just carry on doing exactly as they please. Presumably, that'll be ok with her?
Any political doubt that some people may cast on her behaviour should surely be seen in the context of her having organised meetings with Israeli government officials while on holiday, and being sacked for it.
How can anyone keep a job they've breached the professional code of twice? A policeman was subjected to a disciplinary hearing and will almost certainly be fired earlier this week for stealing some doughnuts once. It really is one rule for them... isn't it.
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I am sorry that my behaviour in the past has upset people. I acknowledge that I am direct and have at times been a bit of a dick.
https://ukbouldering.com/board/index.php/topic,3291.0.html
But, obviously, by declaring this I am now thoroughly fit to govern
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Perhaps the next time she tries to deport some asylum seekers, they'll claim that they didn't mean to somehow arrive in the UK, and they're awfully sorry that she's annoyed about it, but they're going to just carry on doing exactly as they please. Presumably, that'll be ok with her?
I believe the preferred defence would be that they were only in the UK in a limited and specific way.
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There seem to be a fair few people who like a bet. I wonder whether anyone would bet on us getting any sort of deal with the EU? Granted, its going to be a bit of a shitshow now either way. It seems utterly incomprehensible that we're chucking out an amazing trade and services set up for nothing except catching a load of fish that most Brits won't want to eat and we wont be able to sell with 10 to 20% tariffs on selling them to the EU.
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Remarkably little discussion of Brexit, even as we seem to be hurtling unavoidably toward no deal.
How's everyone feeling: numb, depressed, relieved, optimistic, sick of it, resigned, celebratory? Maybe there's simply nothing left to say at this point.
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Remarkably little discussion of Brexit, even as we seem to be hurtling unavoidably toward no deal.
How's everyone feeling: numb, depressed, relieved, optimistic, sick of it, resigned, celebratory? Maybe there's simply nothing left to say at this point.
Numb, depressed, and ashamed sum it up for me. Johnson is not going to climb down from his position of expecting access without any conditions when the Express and Telegraph are cheering him on. I suspect a lot of people are just quietly resigned to what’s about to happen.
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Well, have you’ve seen the headline that BJ has threatened to deploy “The Gun Boats” (most versions carry a picture of the Batch 1 River class OPVs)?
That’s funny.
Because the RN don’t have the personnel to man all their ships, which is why I am/will be working for them again, but what with the RN/MOD being the behemoth they are and lockdown #2 happening, our deployment on January the 1st (after doing the work up training in December) has been postponed to April (the Navy works in Quarters, if you’re not ready to go at the start of a quarter, you drop off the program until next quarter. Rapid response fighting force for the 21st century. As long as you book a year in advance).
For reference, the vessel in the photo’s is usually the Severn, currently the Dartmouth college Navigational training ship, full of spotty cadets and foreign navy exchange students and about as warlike as Christopher Biggins.
(https://i.ibb.co/WWR8wzV/4-F7-C5-AC1-5170-42-C3-BF57-9-D120-A9-B7926.jpg)
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Fatigue for me Andy. All seems inevitable now however cross I get about it all.
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Well, have you’ve seen the headline that BJ has threatened to deploy “The Gun Boats” (most versions carry a picture of the Batch 1 River class OPVs)?
That’s funny.
Because the RN don’t have the personnel to man all their ships, which is why I am/will be working for them again, but what with the RN/MOD being the behemoth they are and lockdown #2 happening, our deployment on January the 1st (after doing the work up training in December) has been postponed to April (the Navy works in Quarters, if you’re not ready to go at the start of a quarter, you drop off the program until next quarter. Rapid response fighting force for the 21st century. As long as you book a year in advance).
For reference, the vessel in the photo’s is usually the Severn, currently the Dartmouth college Navigational training ship, full of spotty cadets and foreign navy exchange students and about as warlike as Christopher Biggins.
I'd wondered what you'd think about this. I'd tend to agree with Tom Tuggenhart (sp?) the Conservative MP who has commented that the Russians must be loving all the bickering between their political adversaries; Putin can happily get on with subjugating his own people, and annexing neighbouring states unmolested, and China can merrily go about continuing genocide and putting peaceful protesters in prison without criticism. All while our government get haughty about fish, which the fishermen won't be able to sell after a no deal brexit.
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...the Russians must be loving all the bickering between their political adversaries; Putin can happily get on with subjugating his own people, and annexing neighbouring states unmolested...
...and partnering with the Oxford - Astrazeneca team to improve the efficiacy of "our" vaccine https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/virus-vaccine-astrazeneca-russia-collaboration/2020/12/11/6481a3f8-3baa-11eb-aad9-8959227280c4_story.html (plus assisting the GSK and Sanolfi vaccine attempts).
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Well, have you’ve seen the headline that BJ has threatened to deploy “The Gun Boats” (most versions carry a picture of the Batch 1 River class OPVs)?
That’s funny.
Because the RN don’t have the personnel to man all their ships, which is why I am/will be working for them again, but what with the RN/MOD being the behemoth they are and lockdown #2 happening, our deployment on January the 1st (after doing the work up training in December) has been postponed to April (the Navy works in Quarters, if you’re not ready to go at the start of a quarter, you drop off the program until next quarter. Rapid response fighting force for the 21st century. As long as you book a year in advance).
For reference, the vessel in the photo’s is usually the Severn, currently the Dartmouth college Navigational training ship, full of spotty cadets and foreign navy exchange students and about as warlike as Christopher Biggins.
I'd wondered what you'd think about this. I'd tend to agree with Tom Tuggenhart (sp?) the Conservative MP who has commented that the Russians must be loving all the bickering between their political adversaries; Putin can happily get on with subjugating his own people, and annexing neighbouring states unmolested, and China can merrily go about continuing genocide and putting peaceful protesters in prison without criticism. All while our government get haughty about fish, which the fishermen won't be able to sell after a no deal brexit.
This is just another form of nationalistic sabre rattling for mine from Tughendhat. Exchanging the bogey man of the EU for the Russian/Chinese/insert other no western country here.
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There was a familiar voice at the start of Any Questions last night, articulating the way so many of us feel.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000q3n4
Personally I'm glad I'm no longer in business. I really fear for our economy if this pans out the way its looking (despite all the hollow promises / lies during the referendum / election), particularly off the back of the pandemic.
Truly worrying times, at least for this (not so) 'plucky Brit'.
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All while our government get haughty about fish, which the fishermen won't be able to sell after a no deal brexit.
The irony is that the British fishing fleet isn’t large enough to fish ‘our’ waters anyway. Utter madness.
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I think Covid made me almost completely turn off from the news cycle and to concentrate on things I can affect and not get caught worrying about what a terrible job the Gov is doing.
As there’s literally nothing I can do to influence the Brexit process at this point, I’m not remotely interested in following the slow motion train disaster in any detail and will wait to see the fall out.
I feel fairly similar about politics in general at the moment. Unless there a change to the fixed term parliament act or something else disastrous occurs, it seems unlikely that we are going to get to vote on anything for another 4 years.
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The irony is that the British fishing fleet isn’t large enough to fish ‘our’ waters anyway. Utter madness.
Would this be a positive thing from a sustainability perspective?
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Unless there a change to the fixed term parliament act or something else disastrous occurs, it seems unlikely that we are going to get to vote on anything for another 4 years.
The government published a draft bill last week to repeal the Fixed-term Parliaments Act.
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Guys, despite the gutter media and our illustrious Cabinet’s assertion otherwise; the dastardly Frogs and their piratical fishing squadrons; are not the threat.
It’s the massive Chinese fleets, that can vacuum a few thousand square miles of ocean clean in a few days.
Currently, these semi-state owned “navies” are reluctant to cause incident with Europe. The fear is that little old Britain, on her own, is not in a position to prevent or even monitor, such an incursion.
Four 80mtr OPV’s? Do me a favour.
We are lucky that proximity to France and Ireland, gives a degree of protection to a fair chunk of coastline and operating in the North Sea, is unlikely to go undetected, but the North West coast? Opph!
So, despite my earlier comments, it’s entirely possible that those headlines and threats, were never really aimed at Europe.
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Unless there a change to the fixed term parliament act or something else disastrous occurs, it seems unlikely that we are going to get to vote on anything for another 4 years.
The government published a draft bill last week to repeal the Fixed-term Parliaments Act.
Yes - this has snuck under the radar. Cameron bought it in iirc.
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The government published a draft bill last week to repeal the Fixed-term Parliaments Act.
What would you need to trigger an election if that passed, a normal majority? Opens up things a bit but will require a significant number of pissed of tories!
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There was a familiar voice at the start of Any Questions last night, articulating the way so many of us feel.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000q3n4
Personally I'm glad I'm no longer in business. I really fear for our economy if this pans out the way its looking (despite all the hollow promises / lies during the referendum / election), particularly off the back of the pandemic.
Truly worrying times, at least for this (not so) 'plucky Brit'.
Worth listening to the first 5 minutes, if you didn’t hear it last night....
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The government published a draft bill last week to repeal the Fixed-term Parliaments Act.
What would you need to trigger an election if that passed, a normal majority? Opens up things a bit but will require a significant number of pissed of tories!
Yes, just a simple majority I think.
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/government-to-fulfil-manifesto-commitment-and-scrap-fixed-term-parliaments-act
Tories won't vote for an early election because they're pissed off, they'll vote for an early election if they think it's their best chance of extending the period under a Tory government.
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BJ's trying to work through them, one at a time.
I think we've had "I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat" a couple of times, for Brexit and Covid-19.
This time it's "We shall never surrender" ;D:
"I have, myself, full confidence that if all do their duty, if nothing is neglected, and if the best arrangements are made, as they are being made, we shall prove ourselves once again able to defend our Island home, to ride out the storm of war, and to outlive the menace of Europe, if necessary for years, if necessary alone.
..
We shall fight on the seas and oceans,
we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be,
we shall fight on the beaches,
we shall fight on the landing grounds,
we shall fight in the fields and in the streets,
we shall fight in the hills;
we shall never surrender."
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This is just another form of nationalistic sabre rattling for mine from Tughendhat. Exchanging the bogey man of the EU for the Russian/Chinese/insert other no western country here.
I hope you don't really think that a conservative backbench mp is more of a risk to the UK than Russia trying to disrupt every UK and US election for the last few years, poisoning people with Novichok, and annexing Crimea? I don't doubt that millions of Russian people are excellent human beings, expert scientists etc etc, but Putin is not.
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Guys, despite the gutter media and our illustrious Cabinet’s assertion otherwise; the dastardly Frogs and their piratical fishing squadrons; are not the threat.
It’s the massive Chinese fleets, that can vacuum a few thousand square miles of ocean clean in a few days.
Currently, these semi-state owned “navies” are reluctant to cause incident with Europe. The fear is that little old Britain, on her own, is not in a position to prevent or even monitor, such an incursion.
Four 80mtr OPV’s? Do me a favour.
We are lucky that proximity to France and Ireland, gives a degree of protection to a fair chunk of coastline and operating in the North Sea, is unlikely to go undetected, but the North West coast? Opph!
So, despite my earlier comments, it’s entirely possible that those headlines and threats, were never really aimed at Europe.
I think that the threats were expressly aimed at the ERG contingent to keep them onside as BJ is clearly worried about his declining popularity within his party. Chances of them thinking strategically about China at this point would be very minimal
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Fishing is worth 0.5 or maybe even 0.05% of GDP.. (I’ve forgotten which - but it doesn’t compare to the other sectors being thrown under the brexit bus at the moment). anything about fishing is political rather than logical.
I see the ‘mood music’ (Raab..) is that talks may go on until new year. Peston summarised things nicely (to me) a day or so ago when he tweeted that he couldn’t decide whether UK position was genuine heading to no deal or a paper tiger to make Boris look good when he comes back/off the phone with THE breakthrough etc.. etc..
I was going to say at least we’ll find out today. But....
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There was a familiar voice at the start of Any Questions last night, articulating the way so many of us feel.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000q3n4
Personally I'm glad I'm no longer in business. I really fear for our economy if this pans out the way its looking (despite all the hollow promises / lies during the referendum / election), particularly off the back of the pandemic.
Truly worrying times, at least for this (not so) 'plucky Brit'.
Worth listening to the first 5 minutes, if you didn’t hear it last night....
Well done Mr Moon.
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There was a familiar voice at the start of Any Questions last night, articulating the way so many of us feel.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000q3n4
Personally I'm glad I'm no longer in business. I really fear for our economy if this pans out the way its looking (despite all the hollow promises / lies during the referendum / election), particularly off the back of the pandemic.
Truly worrying times, at least for this (not so) 'plucky Brit'.
Worth listening to the first 5 minutes, if you didn’t hear it last night....
Well done Mr Moon.
Indeed! Chapeau
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Newham runs out of funds to maintain levels of free school meals: https://www.theguardian.com/education/2020/dec/17/free-school-meals-scheme-one-uk-poorest-areas-faces-axe-newham-london
Interesting, but sadly not surprising, that Rees-Mogg should dismIss UNICEF’s work inSouthwark as a ‘disgusting ... political stunt’. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-55354958
Anything to avoid responsibility. Immiserating people in one of the richest countries in the world is a political choice, as is the chaotic school management in the pandemic.
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Newham runs out of funds to maintain levels of free school meals: https://www.theguardian.com/education/2020/dec/17/free-school-meals-scheme-one-uk-poorest-areas-faces-axe-newham-london
Interesting, but sadly not surprising, that Rees-Mogg should dismIss UNICEF’s work inSouthwark as a ‘disgusting ... political stunt’. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-55354958
Anything to avoid responsibility. Immiserating people in one of the richest countries in the world is a political choice, as is the chaotic school management in the pandemic.
Indeed, christ knows how Gavin Williamson is still in a job. I'd be bloody livid if I was a secondary school teacher; and JRM... it's as though Boris has employed him specifically to say something really stupid every so often to distract people from BJ having done something even more incompetent himself.
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No flights to most of Europe, cross Channel freight blocked, Kent backed up with queing lorries. Got to hand it to Johnson, after being late to the party on everything else all year, on this one he's ten days early.
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Turkeys voting for Christmas seems apposite now...
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No flights to most of Europe, cross Channel freight blocked, Kent backed up with queing lorries. Got to hand it to Johnson, after being late to the party on everything else all year, on this one he's ten days early.
It's ok plenty more things he can fuck up before the end of the year, but by being late to them. But will he keep his job? A lot of his party are very annoyed about the Christmas debacle and anything resembling a lockdown. A lot of others about the absence of levelling up and some other ones about the planning laws....
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I don't think he'll go yet.
They won't want his replacement to have to bring in new lockdowns or to be in charge for the short term problems caused by brexit.
My current guess would be Johnson announcing that his job is done after vaccinating the majority of the country towards the end of spring. Allowing the next person to take over just in time for a triumphant reopening of everything in the summer.
But that is based on someone like Hunt or Sunak pulling the strings. If someone like Patel, Gove or Raab can mobilise enough of the crazies to mount a challenge, then all bets are off.
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the short term problems caused by brexit
:lol:
:'(
:wall:
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Depends on how you define "short" Will....
I mean, long term the sun is going to explode and obliterate earth. But to guess the old tory crusties might look that old, but...
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Depends on how you define "short" Will....
I mean, long term the sun is going to explode and obliterate earth. But to guess the old tory crusties might look that old, but...
Most of them started looking that old at around 15 years old. Reece-Mogg was actually lifted out of a black obsidian Sarcophagus, found under a mass grave of child corpses about 200 mtrs East of the Sphinx; rather than born.
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From this mornings today interview:
Priti Patel: "The government has consistently throughout this year been ahead of the curve in terms of proactive measures with regards to coronavirus."
Priti Patel: "We don't know the trajectory of the virus. None of us can sit through and forecast where this will go."
🤦♂️
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Claivoyant and inept at the same time. Shrodinger's Minister.
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https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=FC15eIkUDws (https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=FC15eIkUDws)
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From this mornings today interview:
Priti Patel: "The government has consistently throughout this year been ahead of the curve in terms of proactive measures with regards to coronavirus."
Priti Patel: "We don't know the trajectory of the virus. None of us can sit through and forecast where this will go."
🤦♂️
Yesterday, Grant Shapps insisted that they only knew about the new virus strain on Friday last week. Hancock talked about it in the Commons on Monday.
Clearly you have to be able to lie shamelessly to be in the cabinet.
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From this mornings today interview:
Priti Patel: "The government has consistently throughout this year been ahead of the curve in terms of proactive measures with regards to coronavirus."
Priti Patel: "We don't know the trajectory of the virus. None of us can sit through and forecast where this will go."
🤦♂️
Yesterday, Grant Shapps insisted that they only knew about the new virus strain on Friday last week. Hancock talked about it in the Commons on Monday.
Clearly you have to be able to lie shamelessly to be in the cabinet.
Lying is a prerequisite of Tory scum membership.
-
From this mornings today interview:
Priti Patel: "The government has consistently throughout this year been ahead of the curve in terms of proactive measures with regards to coronavirus."
Priti Patel: "We don't know the trajectory of the virus. None of us can sit through and forecast where this will go."
♂️
Yesterday, Grant Shapps insisted that they only knew about the new virus strain on Friday last week. Hancock talked about it in the Commons on Monday.
Clearly you have to be able to lie shamelessly to be in the cabinet.
Lying is a prerequisite of Tory scum membership.
That sort of thing when said by Labour politicians is one reason why Labour hardly ever get elected. Conservative politicians, or voters are not scum. They are just people like you and I with a set of beliefs. Some Conservative politicians are very competent, and trustworthy. I wouldn't trust some Labour members one inch. I daresay the same is true of any mainstream party.
However it is a shame that the entire current cabinet with a couple of possible exceptions are only there to make Boris Johnson look slightly less shit. Surely its better to criticise people on the evidence of their performance instead of decrying them as intrinsically evil, which they patently aren't.
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From this mornings today interview:
Priti Patel: "The government has consistently throughout this year been ahead of the curve in terms of proactive measures with regards to coronavirus."
Priti Patel: "We don't know the trajectory of the virus. None of us can sit through and forecast where this will go."
♂️
Yesterday, Grant Shapps insisted that they only knew about the new virus strain on Friday last week. Hancock talked about it in the Commons on Monday.
Clearly you have to be able to lie shamelessly to be in the cabinet.
Lying is a prerequisite of Tory scum membership.
That sort of thing when said by Labour politicians is one reason why Labour hardly ever get elected. Conservative politicians, or voters are not scum. They are just people like you and I with a set of beliefs. Some Conservative politicians are very competent, and trustworthy. I wouldn't trust some Labour members one inch. I daresay the same is true of any mainstream party.
However it is a shame that the entire current cabinet with a couple of possible exceptions are only there to make Boris Johnson look slightly less shit. Surely its better to criticise people on the evidence of their performance instead of decrying them as intrinsically evil, which they patently aren't.
I get your, point, and generally agree. However, Priti Patel I think, may, actually be genuinely evil.
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As an academic, the worst type of student I encounter is one who is both arrogant and a bit thick. PP seems to fall into those categories.
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That sort of thing when said by Labour politicians is one reason why Labour hardly ever get elected.
Are they any actual incidences of such comments being made by Labour politicians then? Excluding the recent Rayner-gate (and subsequent rapid apology), which followed pretty offensive allegations of opportunism if I remember correctly.
Sound to me more like a lazy stereotype, which is exactly what you are trying to argue against.
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From this mornings today interview:
Priti Patel: "The government has consistently throughout this year been ahead of the curve in terms of proactive measures with regards to coronavirus."
Priti Patel: "We don't know the trajectory of the virus. None of us can sit through and forecast where this will go."
♂️
Yesterday, Grant Shapps insisted that they only knew about the new virus strain on Friday last week. Hancock talked about it in the Commons on Monday.
Clearly you have to be able to lie shamelessly to be in the cabinet.
Lying is a prerequisite of Tory scum membership.
That sort of thing when said by Labour politicians is one reason why Labour hardly ever get elected. Conservative politicians, or voters are not scum. They are just people like you and I with a set of beliefs. Some Conservative politicians are very competent, and trustworthy. I wouldn't trust some Labour members one inch. I daresay the same is true of any mainstream party.
However it is a shame that the entire current cabinet with a couple of possible exceptions are only there to make Boris Johnson look slightly less shit. Surely its better to criticise people on the evidence of their performance instead of decrying them as intrinsically evil, which they patently aren't.
Name one competent, honest, genuine Tory. I'll wait. You'll be a while.
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Dominic grieve.
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From this mornings today interview:
Priti Patel: "The government has consistently throughout this year been ahead of the curve in terms of proactive measures with regards to coronavirus."
Priti Patel: "We don't know the trajectory of the virus. None of us can sit through and forecast where this will go."
♂️
Yesterday, Grant Shapps insisted that they only knew about the new virus strain on Friday last week. Hancock talked about it in the Commons on Monday.
Clearly you have to be able to lie shamelessly to be in the cabinet.
Lying is a prerequisite of Tory scum membership.
That sort of thing when said by Labour politicians is one reason why Labour hardly ever get elected. Conservative politicians, or voters are not scum. They are just people like you and I with a set of beliefs. Some Conservative politicians are very competent, and trustworthy. I wouldn't trust some Labour members one inch. I daresay the same is true of any mainstream party.
However it is a shame that the entire current cabinet with a couple of possible exceptions are only there to make Boris Johnson look slightly less shit. Surely its better to criticise people on the evidence of their performance instead of decrying them as intrinsically evil, which they patently aren't.
Name one competent, honest, genuine Tory. I'll wait. You'll be a while.
Ken Clarke and Dominic Grieve are the first names that spring to mind. I'm sure I could think of more. The fact that you don't specify that I need to agree with their politics means I could probably name quite a few.
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Dominic grieve.
He's now independent. So yeah, so honest and competent he left the party :lol:
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Dominic grieve.
Baroness Warsi is a decent politician and person I think.
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That sort of thing when said by Labour politicians is one reason why Labour hardly ever get elected.
Are they any actual incidences of such comments being made by Labour politicians then? Excluding the recent Rayner-gate (and subsequent rapid apology), which followed pretty offensive allegations of opportunism if I remember correctly.
Sound to me more like a lazy stereotype, which is exactly what you are trying to argue against.
So apart from the time it was captured on tv in parliament (because presumably that doesn't count)?
No, none..
Allegations of opportunism being felt to be offensive..?
Not unlike any barbed allegation made by any politician, ever. Pretty standard fare in a democracy - see 'PPE-gate opportunism, 2020, tory party et al'.
Lots of people see Labour as using the covid crisis, like any crisis, as an opportunity for political gain. They'd be crazy not. Just have to be careful not to be seen to be doing so *too* much. It doesn't justify politicians calling each other scum.
If politics is war without the bloodshed as it has been called, then if politicians started labelling the other scum in response to being 'offended' - like being offended is a heinous crime against humanity, but only humanity on the side of righteousness - it wouldn't be very long before society added the blood.
Andy F. I'd take a stab that when all is said and done the truth is you're no more of an honest, competent or genuine human than *most* other humans, tories, labour included. I'd even include Welsh labour although I believe there's a special corner of hell reserved for them.
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Dominic grieve.
Baroness Warsi is a decent politician and person I think.
Why is it all the decent ones leave?
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That sort of thing when said by Labour politicians is one reason why Labour hardly ever get elected.
Are they any actual incidences of such comments being made by Labour politicians then? Excluding the recent Rayner-gate (and subsequent rapid apology), which followed pretty offensive allegations of opportunism if I remember correctly.
Sound to me more like a lazy stereotype, which is exactly what you are trying to argue against.
Andy F. I'd take a stab that when all is said and done the truth is you're no more of an honest, competent or genuine human than *most* other humans, tories, labour included. I'd even include Welsh labour although I believe there's a special corner of hell reserved for them.
I'd hazard a guess that I'm more honest than any Tory in the cabinet. And after 10 years of austerity, the Brexit shambles ruining the country and the horrific handling of the COVID crisis, a much more competent and genuine human.
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Why is it all the decent ones leave?
In a word: Brexit.
All the Tory MPs with enough of a backbone to speak up about this have been forced to leave or been removed. Prior to this there were still competent and honest(ish) ones, even though I disagreed with their politics.
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So apart from the time it was captured on tv in parliament (because presumably that doesn't count)?
Of course it counts, she shouldn't have said it, and you're right that political opportunism isn't an excuse. I'm interested in whether Toby's comment and critique of Labour's electoral ills was based solely on this recent example or on an actual long term pattern of Labour politicians calling the opposition scum. I think its probably the former, which would reduce the impact of his argument.
I am not in favour of abuse in politics, obviously. Slightly off topic, I wonder at what point the 'civility in politics' argument reaches a limit though? In response to certain arguments, to certain ideologies, presumably what might be termed 'robust criticism' is acceptable? For example, is it ever acceptable for a politician to call another politician a racist or not? Or would that breach the principles of 'civility' that govern our politics? I think some of Johnsons articles are obviously and unashamedly racist, for example, but when Dawn Butler called him a racist on the BBC there was a big row.
Andy F: Warsi resigned from the government but remains a Tory peer, no?
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It doesn't justify politicians calling each other scum.
Labour (and Remain supporting Tory) MPs have been called much worse during the Brexit debates in and out of Parliament.
If politics is war without the bloodshed as it has been called, then if politicians started labelling the other scum in response to being 'offended' - it wouldn't be very long before society added the blood.
Like when Jo Cox was murdered you mean?
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That sort of thing when said by Labour politicians is one reason why Labour hardly ever get elected.
Are they any actual incidences of such comments being made by Labour politicians then? Excluding the recent Rayner-gate (and subsequent rapid apology), which followed pretty offensive allegations of opportunism if I remember correctly.
Sound to me more like a lazy stereotype, which is exactly what you are trying to argue against.
Laura Pidcock during the election campaign saying that she'd never be friends with a Tory.
There are any number of examples.
I believe you can buy 'Id never kiss a Tory' badges at Labour conferences. From this mornings today interview:
Priti Patel: "The government has consistently throughout this year been ahead of the curve in terms of proactive measures with regards to coronavirus."
Priti Patel: "We don't know the trajectory of the virus. None of us can sit through and forecast where this will go."
♂️
Yesterday, Grant Shapps insisted that they only knew about the new virus strain on Friday last week. Hancock talked about it in the Commons on Monday.
Clearly you have to be able to lie shamelessly to be in the cabinet.
Lying is a prerequisite of Tory scum membership.
That sort of thing when said by Labour politicians is one reason why Labour hardly ever get elected. Conservative politicians, or voters are not scum. They are just people like you and I with a set of beliefs. Some Conservative politicians are very competent, and trustworthy. I wouldn't trust some Labour members one inch. I daresay the same is true of any mainstream party.
However it is a shame that the entire current cabinet with a couple of possible exceptions are only there to make Boris Johnson look slightly less shit. Surely its better to criticise people on the evidence of their performance instead of decrying them as intrinsically evil, which they patently aren't.
I get your, point, and generally agree. However, Priti Patel I think, may, actually be genuinely evil.
Well ok possibly.
Decent conservative MPs? Douglas Ross seems pretty honest, he resigned from government after Barnard Castle gate but remains an MP.
Jeremy Hunt is fine, he's certainly made some mistakes but has learned from them and is competent. I'm sure many will get stroppy about that suggestion, however.
There are plenty who are okay. The current government is barely really conservative anymore, it's almost English nationalist, but their MPs differ a lot in their outlooks, hence Johnson's terrible issues with party management.
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For example, is it ever acceptable for a politician to call another politician a racist or not? Or would that breach the principles of 'civility' that govern our politics? I think some of Johnsons articles are obviously and unashamedly racist, for example, but when Dawn Butler called him a racist on the BBC there was a big row.
Andy F: Warsi resigned from the government but remains a Tory peer, no?
I'd say if you're a US politician you can very reasonably say that Trump is a racist, because he manifestly is one.
I think Johnson's past articles about "picanninies with watermelon smiles " are racist too. He is obviously xenophobic as well. I would myself say that Boris Johnson is a racist, but if I were an MP it would likely not be terribly productive to do so, many of the people who like him in some way, may indeed vote for me in a hypothetical next election.
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many of the people who like him in some way, may indeed vote for me in a hypothetical next election.
I hope that was a typo..
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BBC News - Essex lorry deaths: Trial was halted after Priti Patel tweet
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-essex-55403058
This was pretty profoundly incompetent. It's not really necessary to call her names, she is a bully, (according to the official inquiry) and really not any good at her job.
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many of the people who like him in some way, may indeed vote for me in a hypothetical next election.
I hope that was a typo..
Confusion in my hypothetical situation of me as an MP who thought Johnson is racist.
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Labour (and Remain supporting Tory) MPs have been called much worse during the Brexit debates in and out of Parliament.
Like when Jo Cox was murdered you mean?
This formulation is a little bit of whatboutery, but it does also rankle with me that the need for civility only seems to flow one way. I think it would be fair to say it is far more acceptable to accuse someone of being a traitor to their country (ad nauseam in brexit debates) than to call them a racist.
Laura Pidcock during the election campaign saying that she'd never be friends with a Tory.
There are any number of examples.
I believe you can buy 'Id never kiss a Tory' badges at Labour conferences.
Decent conservative MPs? Douglas Ross seems pretty honest, he resigned from government after Barnard Castle gate but remains an MP.
Jeremy Hunt is fine, he's certainly made some mistakes but has learned from them and is competent. I'm sure many will get stroppy about that suggestion, however.
There are plenty who are okay. The current government is barely really conservative anymore, it's almost English nationalist, but their MPs differ a lot in their outlooks, hence Johnson's terrible issues with party management.
I think Pidcock was pretty hopelessly naive in many ways, evidenced by her losing what was previously an unloseable seat. But what you've described isn't really on the same level as 'scum' is it? Conference tongue-in-cheek t shirts (the equivalent of which you can buy at the Tory conference) and a throwaway remark; are these the best examples? Its not exactly hate speech is it? Surely anyone who is remotely offended by that is a 'snowflake' or falling into the trap Pete identified as being offended at everything. When similar sentiments come from the right (champagne socialists, do gooders, lefty lawyers etc etc etc) its all high jinks or political cut and thrust. I don't think you've made a remotely convincing case I have to say.
Whether calling Johnson a racist is good electorally or not is a different question, but my point was that it is considered a faux pas to do so, as the gasps of horror from the other guests when Butler did so show. It is a truism that to be called a racist in the UK is considered far worse than to actually be one. As far as Patel is concerned, she is both incompetent and malignant. Her spiteful and malicious character is part of what makes her so fucking useless at her job; she neither has the brains nor the morals for it. The two are connected.
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Did you mean that it is far worse to call someone a racist than to be one? I don't know about that but it is certainly a tag that some people feel only applies to white supremacist thugs, which it clearly isn't. I think it's probably best not to get into whether certain politicians' tolerance of antisemitism constitutes racism but it certainly takes many forms, and a person need not actually have a swastika tattooed on their forehead to be a racist.
I don't think Butler's comment should have been that contraversial to be honest, other than that she is an MP and its just not necessary. There are 101 ways to say that Boris Johnson is unfit to govern the country due to being indecisive, incompetent, craving affection etc without getting into calling him a racist.
I believe that Pidcock, although it might have been another MP, has used the word scum, actually. She wasn't just naive, she also really wasn't very effective. For balance, Anne Marie Morris (Cons) should have lost too, although not name-calling, she used the phrase "n**ger brown" to describe a colour at an official local meeting, which is unforgiveably stupid, and she also is profoundly ineffective.
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many of the people who like him in some way, may indeed vote for me in a hypothetical next election.
I hope that was a typo..
Confusion in my hypothetical situation of me as an MP who thought Johnson is racist.
Ah gotcha.
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I believe that Pidcock, although it might have been another MP, has used the word scum, actually. She wasn't just naive, she also really wasn't very effective. For balance, Anne Marie Morris (Cons) should have lost too, although not name-calling, she used the phrase "n**ger brown" to describe a colour at an official local meeting, which is unforgiveably stupid, and she also is profoundly ineffective.
Thats not stupid, its racist. Regardless of Pidcock's effectiveness, naivety or anything else, the fact that she lost while Morris won despite her overt racism highlights the problem.
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Anyway - some external perceptions on Plague Island as we’re now known... 😀 can’t say I disagree with the external view...
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/dec/22/worlds-media-ask-how-it-went-so-wrong-for-plague-island-britain-covid?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
In the eyes of the world’s media, Britain – a “Plague Island” led by a man who thinks “optimism is a substitute for hard truths and proper management” – is currently getting a good lesson in “what ‘reclaiming sovereignty’ means”.
If never quite explicit, the schadenfreude is palpable as dozens of countries, days before the end of the Brexit transition period and with no trade deal yet agreed, suspend travel from the UK in response to the new, more contagious coronavirus variant.
Much of the blame was on Boris Johnson, whose U-turn on Christmas had “once more shown the yawning gulf between the prime minister’s airy promises and the real world,” said Germany’s Die Welt.
That vacuum, however, is now “fast being filled with the anger and fear of a nation hit ever since by horror story upon horror story”. The continental blockade could well be “preparing the British for what Brexit might actually mean”, the paper said, “since there is still no agreement on a trade deal, 10 days before the deadline.”
At that point, it said, “corona chaos would merge seamlessly into Brexit chaos. Few will then be able or willing to tell which bottleneck and which new emergency measure is due to what. But the frustration, if Johnson once more fails to keep his lofty promises, will be the same.”
Britain, “christened not long ago by a pro-Brexit lawmaker as ‘Treasure Island’ for the riches it offers, has earned another moniker”, reported the New York Times. “‘Plague Island’ … And for their troubles, Britons largely blamed Boris Johnson.”
For the UK’s embattled residents, the paper said, “already girding for the country to finalise its messy divorce from the EU, the sudden sense of being cut adrift from the bloc – and from the world at large – felt like a bitter taste of what might be to come.”
The Netherlands’ NRC Handelsblad said that no one in the UK would have a normal Christmas: “not even a tiny bit of one. The ports are closed; London’s stations witnessed a veritable exodus; tens of kilometres of trucks are stranded on the country’s motorways; ministers are publicly saying the virus is out of control.”
And in the meantime, it said, there is “still no deal on future trade with the EU … If governing is about forward thinking, Johnson has failed. From ‘saving Christmas’ to a hard lockdown and looming shortages of fruit and vegetables – how can it all have gone so wrong for Britain?”
The Sydney Morning Herald had a brutal answer. Britain’s response to the pandemic had been “mired in inaction, plagued by failures of the state to mobilise and Johnson’s own destructive habit of promising false dawns simply because he cannot stand to be the bearer of bad news,” it said.
Time after time, Johnson has “promised a ‘return to normal’ before the British state was able to deliver. Instead, Booster Boris has delivered up a busted flush. Britons have extra cause to feel cheated. They have been whispered fantasies by a prime minister who thinks optimism is a substitute for hard truths and a clear, consistent management plan.”
For the French daily Libération, the continental blockade was “even more effective than that decreed by Napoleon in 1806, cutting Britain off from the rest of Europe and from parts of the rest of the world.”
With ports closed, planes grounded and the Channel tunnel shut, it said, “nothing can leave the kingdom – even if, theoretically at least, it is still possible to enter … A few days from the UK’s exit from the single market on 31 December, it’s all giving London a foretaste of its ‘regained sovereignty’.”
Spain’s El Pais was worried about what might come next. “The pressure is mounting,” it said. “The short time left until the end of transition has been exacerbated by alarm over the new variant, and the closing of EU borders. The chaos feared at the end of the year has come 10 days early. Johnson’s reactions may even more unpredictable.”
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My favourite Tory MP is Michael Green. Or maybe Sebastian Fox? They at least have the virtue of being figments of a fevered imagination, so less horrifying than the real ones:
Their current scoreboard
+Travel bans from the UK to much of Europe and elsewhere. Plus also within the UK
+Chaos in Kent (due to unsovereign France somehow controlling their borders???)
+UK master negotiators paying much more per dose of Pfizer & Moderna vaccines than the EU
+"Oven ready" Brexit 9 days away, no deal yet. Deadline to ratify it has passed (hmmm, we'll see). Businesses should be ready for the upcoming changes, whatever they are...possibly our new free trade zone will be smaller than the actual UK. Incidentally potentially making the above 3 things a wilful choice rather than the result of a mutating virus
+Covid "over by Christmas". Christmas now cancelled at the last minute (correctly as it happens, despite it being in their own words "inhuman")
+Covid deaths 691 yesterday, highest since May (does anyone even notice now?)
+500,000 people vaccinated so far (one dose of two) - only a decade to go at that rate
+Lateral flow mass testing ("Moonshot") shelved due to poor reliability. Current testing 430,000 / day, someway to go to 10 million / day promised "early 2021" (anyone remember?)
+Booming business in PPE start ups for those with links to Tory MPs
+Newly minted "unelected bureaucrats" making our laws e.g. son of ex-KGB agent, disgraced Tory chairman Peter Cruddas, Johnson's brother
+Officially disgraced and known bully as home secretary, officially disgraced education secretary (for a start....)
+In the last just over 12 months have unlawfully suspended parliament & proposed and then voted for breaking international law
+Cummings gone, no noticeable difference
+Backbenches of their own party in meltdown, not through sense but because they are further gone than the leadership
+Too much non-Covid / Brexit to mention, but e.g. flammable high rise cladding still not solved
Not exhaustive, just exhausting. Current UK voting intention 39% Con (clue in name), 37% Lab. So all in all a job well done.
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+"Oven ready" Brexit 9 days away, no deal yet. Deadline to ratify it has passed (hmmm, we'll see).
Well our collective goose is thoroughly cooked, so they were right in a way.
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oven ready = half baked. Anyone who swallows it will get food poisoning.
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Turkeys voting for Xmas etc...
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2021 might actually be considerably more shit than 2020, that's a cheerful thought.
Nigel, I'd agree that the government are distinctly culpable in many, perhaps most of your examples, but not all of these are all them, or at least would have been problems for any government. For example not extending the transition period because of COVID was fucking stupid, it's clearly not a good time to be negotiating. But Cummings going wasn't going to make much difference, Johnson is after all the person who makes the decisions.
But Grenfell, the low funding for the authority leading to them using substandard contractors for cladding and insulation is a government issue for sure, but the really awful things that lead to the disaster being far more likely were done by the companies in question.
COVID would have been a nightmare for anyone, but Brexit is all the government.
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Is Labour right to vote for the government's Brexit deal?
They're clearly in a difficult situation in which any decision will precipitate considerable criticism from part of the party / electorate, and abstaining would make them politically vulnerable and isn't a good look for a party serious about governing the country anyway.
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Is Labour right to vote for the government's Brexit deal?
They're clearly in a difficult situation in which any decision will precipitate considerable criticism from part of the party / electorate, and abstaining would make them politically vulnerable and isn't a good look for a party serious about governing the country anyway.
Whilst it seems at first glance, that the deal is unfortunately hard and probably spells disaster for many; it also looks to be better than no deal. Surely a responsible political party should be voting for the course of least harm, in the absence of any better option?
Lucas and her tub thumping defiance are pointing the gun squarely at their own feet.
There is a difference between protest (or even civil disobedience) and rioting.
Blocking the deal is the political equivalent of rioting. Bringing it all crashing down and watching it burn.
Just like a riot, it’s the shopkeepers and local residents that pay the price, not the lord in the manor.
Most of the rioters just wander off to do their shopping somewhere else, but soon come to realise all they achieved was a longer walk to buy a pint of milk.
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Does anyone really care what Labour do on this? Presumably the deal going through is a fait accompli so who cares whether Lab whip one way or the other or give their MPs a free vote? I certainly don't, am I in the minority?
IMO they should focus their energy on hammering BJ for being behind the curve on every covid-related decision ever (we all know more restrictions are coming so just f*cking get on with it rather than waiting and making it shitter), and anyone on either wing of the party spending their time talking about the Brexit deal is wasting time and drawing attention to an unwinnable point. We're fucked, it's shit, there's not much more to say. :shrug:
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The deal will pass whatever Labour do. This is entirely a a tory fudge, it isn't what Leave campaigned on or the "oven ready deal" the tories campaigned on last year. Labour should abstain and retain the ability to hammer those points and all the deal's other shortcomings home every chance they get.
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The deal will pass whatever Labour do. This is entirely a a tory fudge, it isn't what Leave campaigned on or the "oven ready deal" the tories campaigned on last year. Labour should abstain and retain the ability to hammer those points and all the deal's other shortcomings home every chance they get.
But not having a decision on an absolutely crucial national issue isn't really tenable for a party which wants to govern. If you abstain many voters will conclude that Labour can't make up its mind on anything and aren't worth voting for.
It's a difficult choice but I think Starmers approach is correct. However I also agree with Alex that most people won't care, and that they should criticise the government on their COVID response. Which is basically what Starmer has been doing anyway.
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My MP emailed me (amongst thousands I expect) asking my view on how she should vote and on Labours position. The vote puts Labour between a rock and a hard place, but I think KS is taking the most pragmatic (least damaging) path.
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Agnostic on the vote as it’s going to go through anyhow, so the only important thing about it for Labour is how voters feel about Labour as a result. Figure we should swallow this one, highlight the absurdly short time it had in Parliament, and then work out how to minimise the damage the reckless and foolish Brexiters have done.
Interesting read:
https://ukandeu.ac.uk/british-sovereignty-run-by-europe/
If correct, then mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, good to keep us a vaguely social democracy. On the other, more vassal state bollocks for idiot nationalists to keep whining on about. I would rather fight them on better working conditions than culture war shite, but there’s a wide streak of sadism amongst Brexit supporters (not, I hasten to add, masochism), so even battling for guaranteed holidays and clean air might not be all that easy...
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My MP emailed me (amongst thousands I expect) asking my view on how she should vote and on Labours position. The vote puts Labour between a rock and a hard place, but I think KS is taking the most pragmatic (least damaging) path.
After subjecting myself to BBC parliament today I don't agre. The logic he's been using on lockdown/tiers is that he doesn't think the proposals are enough, but voting against them would mean no measures. Therefore, Labour abstain.
Replace lockdown/tiers/measures with deal in the above and I can't see why this time they need to support it with the Gov's majority?
Given what happens at PMQs is serious questions get asked and the PM just takes the piss back, all KS is going to hear from now on is "well you voted for it"; his speech regarding why won't be remembered let alone cited in context.
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Worth a couple of minutes:
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/dec/29/obsolete-software-from-1990s-features-in-brexit-deal-text?CMP=fb_gu&utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Facebook&fbclid=IwAR27nsXOoh1zWGxF4zTmtX7x2ah1HrXX0T6Sv03AyNpSYSNrlGuol2ut610#Echobox=1609270657 (https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/dec/29/obsolete-software-from-1990s-features-in-brexit-deal-text?CMP=fb_gu&utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Facebook&fbclid=IwAR27nsXOoh1zWGxF4zTmtX7x2ah1HrXX0T6Sv03AyNpSYSNrlGuol2ut610#Echobox=1609270657)
And you’re going to get the best eye roll workout session imaginable.
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Paul - I was referring to brexit rather than covid. Soz if that wasn’t clear
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Latest YouGov polling shows the overwhelming majority of the public wanted the deal to go through (almost 60% in favour vs 9% against) despite hardly any (17%) thinking it’s a ‘good’ deal (even among Tory and leave voters).
Which suggests to me Brexit isn’t top of anyone’s priority list and people just want to move on, even though they know this is a shit outcome. So Labour are broadly in line with public opinion on that front.
The SNP have some political mileage in calling out the shitness of the deal so I can understand why they voted against, given Scotland didn’t want Brexit. But Labour have more to lose if they constantly go on the attack over the details of the deal and risk sounding like “I told you so” remainer whiners. So I doubt we’ll hear much from Starmer on it at PMQs. They know the public are bored of it.
Any positives which emerge from Brexit are going to be sung from the rooftops by the Govt and the Murdoch press, so by voting for the deal Starmer has removed what would have been an inevitable attack line “Labour wanted no deal blah blah”.
But the Tories, and particularly Johnson, Gove et al, completely own Brexit and the public know it, and this deal is Johnson’s deal. And they also know Starmer never wanted Brexit in the first place - god knows Johnson has banged on about that enough. So any downsides from Brexit in the next few years, or hidden clauses within the deal that fuck the UK over, will be laid squarely at the feet of Johnson, or the Tories more broadly, in my opinion.
I think he’s done the right thing.
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Have you read his recent release and if so do you still hold that opinion?
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Another vote Labour voting the right way on this. It is simply not feasible for a serious opposition party to keep abstaining on big issues. Public opinion is right behind passing the deal so it seems a no brainer to have voted for it as far as I am concerned.
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Public opinion is behind the deal because it's a choice between deal or no deal and the clock has run out.
How do you feel about KS now saying that he doesn't think the EU/relationship will be part of their next manifesto?
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I think that is common sense. EU membership will be back as a live issue but I don't think banging the drum to rejoin is worth it in the short term, not least because it will sound like sour grapes and a lot of people will think "let's at least see how it goes and give a bet a chance to go down."
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How do you feel about KS now saying that he doesn't think the EU/relationship will be part of their next manifesto?
No problem with that. If they try to fight the next election around Brexit, even if it’s only a bit part, they’ll lose badly again. No one wants a rerun of the 2017 or 2019 elections, and saying “I told you so” won’t go down well. As much as I’d love KS to ram every lie and broken promise Johnson has made down his throat day in day out for the next 4yrs that’s not the way to win the next election.
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How do you feel about KS now saying that he doesn't think the EU/relationship will be part of their next manifesto?
No problem with that. If they try to fight the next election around Brexit, even if it’s only a bit part, they’ll lose badly again. No one wants a rerun of the 2017 or 2019 elections, and saying “I told you so” won’t go down well. As much as I’d love KS to ram every lie and broken promise Johnson has made down his throat day in day out for the next 4yrs that’s not the way to win the next election.
Agreed.
Of course, by the time of the next election, that might be a valid campaign angle...
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I didn't mention rejoin, I was thinking more with regard to the renegotiation:
Starmer said he could not
envisage Europe or Brexit playing any part in the election campaign of 2024 – or featuring on any Labour MPs’ election leaflets – despite the opportunity for a review of the treaty in 2024, which is spelled out in the current deal.
“It’s pretty unlikely. The focus will be on Britain and on Britain’s role in the world,” he said. “Will the renegotiation of the treaty be central to the manifesto? No.
I still feel that abstaining was more in keeping with their approach to the Covid restrictions but understand their support for it more after reading that.
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The government of The Netherlands has resigned amidst a scandal.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jan/15/dutch-government-resigns-over-child-benefits-scandal
You may wonder what alternative universe you have stumbled into where you find a government fucking up, taking responsibility for it, apologising, and taking the political consequences for it on the chin. I'd thought that we were past all that.
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The government of The Netherlands has resigned amidst a scandal.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jan/15/dutch-government-resigns-over-child-benefits-scandal
You may wonder what alternative universe you have stumbled into where you find a government fucking up, taking responsibility for it, apologising, and taking the political consequences for it on the chin. I'd thought that we were past all that.
Not sure it's quite as commendable as that, with elections due in March I reckon the coalition parties have taken a calculated bet that it will look better to try to distance themselves from the Mark Rutte to save some face. #cynic.
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According to what I was reading yesterday they reckon Mark Rutte will get elected again in March and be the leader of a coalition government. So not that commendable.
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Maybe so. But if they are re-elected then it will be because they have the confidence of the electorate.
I just thought it was remarkable to see a political leadership that chose to admit a failure rather than see if it could outlast the media attention.
I accept this is probably a very superficial reading of the situation.
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Really impressed by Neil O Brien. As well as his Twitter feed, he has written in today’s Observer about the danger posed by COVID sceptics like Toby Young and his ilk.
It really shouldn’t be left to a constituency to MP oppose their nonsense.
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Really impressed by Neil O Brien. As well as his Twitter feed, he has written in today’s Observer about the danger posed by COVID sceptics like Toby Young and his ilk.
It really shouldn’t be left to a constituency to MP oppose their nonsense.
I agree, I thought it was a good article. He also wrote a hilarious letter to the Telegraph pointing out all the bullshit that they published in the last year, in response to a Telegraph piece on what the country had got wrong in the pandemic.
The Telegraph and Spectator, among others have shown no contrition for the number of dangerous lies that they have published and deserve more criticism than they have had.
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The Telegraph and Spectator, among others have shown no contrition for the number of dangerous lies that they have published and deserve more criticism than they have had.
The Telegraph did publish a correction following the IPSO finding
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/01/14/cross-reactive-t-cells-correction/
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Well, this is quite a read.
https://twitter.com/pmdfoster/status/1352575097308143616
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Is Scotland heading for independence?
My guess is yes, although Johnson may manage to push the issue to one side for the duration of his tenure, leaving a gigantic cess pit for the next leader to inherit. I feel that it has something of the same grim inevitablity as the UK leaving the EU, that it was perhaps not a matter of whether, as when it would end up happening. It may well be that it has profoundly negative economic consequences in at least the medium term for Scotland (and perhaps the remainder of the UK?), but that same fact didn't deter Brexit.
However, I'm not Scottish nor do I live there, any opinions?
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Is Scotland heading for independence?
Johnson may manage to push the issue to one side for the duration of his tenure, leaving a gigantic cess pit for the next leader to inherit. It may well be that it has profoundly negative economic consequences for Scotland...but that same fact didn't deter Brexit.
The trouble I see is that virtually every argument against independence was also true of Brexit but was ignored and swept aside by this govt so any attempt to argue against it just undermines the case for Brexit. So pretty much all Johnson is left with is “it was a once in a generation referendum so pipe down Ms Sturgeon”. Which then helps the SNP’s cause.
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He’s their biggest asset IMO.
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Is Scotland heading for independence? My guess is yes...
However, I'm not Scottish nor do I live there, any opinions?
Neither am I, but consider this:-
You are right that every time Johnson tries to dismiss SNP calls for a referendum, it plays into their hands. Referenda have a lot to answer for, imo…
There is, however, another way, which I’ve yet to hear a Westminster politician articulate, despite it being quite obvious to me.
The SNP wants a referendum on its desire to leave the United Kingdom, but the UK is a union of 4 countries, all of which would be affected should Scotland decide to go it alone.
It seems only right, therefore, that those entitled to vote in any future referendum on Scottish independence (or Welsh, or for a reunified Ireland) should be the citizens of those nations – all 4 of them.
Clearly Nicola would cry foul, but why should I not have a vote in a proposal which will fundamentally affect the future of the sovereign nation I live in?
Of course any referendum has inherent risks, which is why I shall never forgive Cameron for gambling with the very future of our nation simply to placate his own backbenchers, but I think the chances of the SNP winning independence from such a referendum would be massively reduced.
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Is Scotland heading for independence? My guess is yes...
However, I'm not Scottish nor do I live there, any opinions?
Neither am I, but consider this:-
You are right that every time Johnson tries to dismiss SNP calls for a referendum, it plays into their hands. Referenda have a lot to answer for, imo…
There is, however, another way, which I’ve yet to hear a Westminster politician articulate, despite it being quite obvious to me.
The SNP wants a referendum on its desire to leave the United Kingdom, but the UK is a union of 4 countries, all of which would be affected should Scotland decide to go it alone.
It seems only right, therefore, that those entitled to vote in any future referendum on Scottish independence (or Welsh, or for a reunified Ireland) should be the citizens of those nations – all 4 of them.
Clearly Nicola would cry foul, but why should I not have a vote in a proposal which will fundamentally affect the future of the sovereign nation I live in?
Of course any referendum has inherent risks, which is why I shall never forgive Cameron for gambling with the very future of our nation simply to placate his own backbenchers, but I think the chances of the SNP winning independence from such a referendum would be massively reduced.
I really, really don't think that will wash. Not least because of the precedent set by the previous referendum. I think this is a bit of a logical fallacy to be honest; the franchise is set on the same terms as for Holyrood elections.
In the event of a future referendum on Irish unification, there would have to be votes in favour both from NI to leave the UK and from the Republic to accept the unification, but Scottish, Welsh and English voters would not get a vote. This seems entirely just to me. (this is the established legal position; good Briefing Room podcast on exactly this topic this week).
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Is Scotland heading for independence? My guess is yes...
However, I'm not Scottish nor do I live there, any opinions?
Neither am I, but consider this:-
You are right that every time Johnson tries to dismiss SNP calls for a referendum, it plays into their hands. Referenda have a lot to answer for, imo…
There is, however, another way, which I’ve yet to hear a Westminster politician articulate, despite it being quite obvious to me.
The SNP wants a referendum on its desire to leave the United Kingdom, but the UK is a union of 4 countries, all of which would be affected should Scotland decide to go it alone.
It seems only right, therefore, that those entitled to vote in any future referendum on Scottish independence (or Welsh, or for a reunified Ireland) should be the citizens of those nations – all 4 of them.
Clearly Nicola would cry foul, but why should I not have a vote in a proposal which will fundamentally affect the future of the sovereign nation I live in?
Of course any referendum has inherent risks, which is why I shall never forgive Cameron for gambling with the very future of our nation simply to placate his own backbenchers, but I think the chances of the SNP winning independence from such a referendum would be massively reduced.
Could you imagine the brexit referendum had to include the EU 27?
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I may have had some wine for the first time since Xmas day... but...
Isn’t it entirely in the Conservative parties interest to lose Scotland and those 50 or so SNP mp’s?
Guaranteed majority... (nearly)
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I may have had some wine for the first time since Xmas day... but...
Isn’t it entirely in the Conservative parties interest to lose Scotland and those 50 or so SNP mp’s?
Guaranteed majority... (nearly)
I can't see it in reality, although it's plausible; wouldn't it be economically bad news for both parties?
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Is Scotland heading for independence? My guess is yes...
However, I'm not Scottish nor do I live there, any opinions?
Neither am I, but consider this:-
You are right that every time Johnson tries to dismiss SNP calls for a referendum, it plays into their hands. Referenda have a lot to answer for, imo…
There is, however, another way, which I’ve yet to hear a Westminster politician articulate, despite it being quite obvious to me.
The SNP wants a referendum on its desire to leave the United Kingdom, but the UK is a union of 4 countries, all of which would be affected should Scotland decide to go it alone.
It seems only right, therefore, that those entitled to vote in any future referendum on Scottish independence (or Welsh, or for a reunified Ireland) should be the citizens of those nations – all 4 of them.
Clearly Nicola would cry foul, but why should I not have a vote in a proposal which will fundamentally affect the future of the sovereign nation I live in?
Of course any referendum has inherent risks, which is why I shall never forgive Cameron for gambling with the very future of our nation simply to placate his own backbenchers, but I think the chances of the SNP winning independence from such a referendum would be massively reduced.
I agree that referenda fundamentally don't work for a representative democracy on an issue of any complexity.
But I think that all 4 nations of the UK getting a vote is not really precedented, or likely.
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I may have had some wine for the first time since Xmas day... but...
Isn’t it entirely in the Conservative parties interest to lose Scotland and those 50 or so SNP mp’s?
Guaranteed majority... (nearly)
I can't see it in reality, although it's plausible; wouldn't it be economically bad news for both parties?
Like Brexit? Nailed on then :D
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Isn’t it entirely in the Conservative parties interest to lose Scotland and those 50 or so SNP mp’s?
Guaranteed majority... (nearly)
Exactly what I thought but you'd imagine there'd have to be some kind of voting reform, although that might just be wishful thinking.
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Maybe I’m being cynical - but efforts at voting reform generally seem to bubble up when then favour the incumbents
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Maybe I’m being cynical - but efforts at voting reform generally seem to bubble up when then favour the incumbents
Pretty much true though. The PR referendum during the coalition government passed many people by and unfortunately went nowhere.
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It seems only right, therefore, that those entitled to vote in any future referendum on Scottish independence (or Welsh, or for a reunified Ireland) should be the citizens of those nations – all 4 of them.
Clearly Nicola would cry foul, but why should I not have a vote in a proposal which will fundamentally affect the future of the sovereign nation I live in?
Of course any referendum has inherent risks, which is why I shall never forgive Cameron for gambling with the very future of our nation simply to placate his own backbenchers...
If there’s one thing we should have learnt from the Brexit debacle, it’s that massive constitutional, economic and cultural changes should probably require a super-majority to pass.
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And/or maybe not ask the question "should we leave" but "should we look at what leaving would mean?"
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And/or maybe not ask the question "should we leave" but "should we look at what leaving would mean?"
Yeah I believe that the SNP at least has a sort of a plan and idea of how they would do it, unlike the leave campaign, the current trade situation isn't looking terribly positive.
I'm not saying I think that Scotland leaving would be a great thing btw, just that it appears slightly more planned
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Scottish Conservative Party keep sending me mail with prepaid envelopes to return forms to them. Was wondering, do they pay for these in bulk, or do they get charged per letter that gets returned?
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And/or maybe not ask the question "should we leave" but "should we look at what leaving would mean?"
Yeah I believe that the SNP at least has a sort of a plan and idea of how they would do it
Really? I've always got the impression independence was an end in itself and what comes next other than perpetual dictatorship for the SNP is very peripheral! In the EU, out of the EU, using the pound, the Euro, the Scots groat, it all changes... For the true believers it seems to be anything will do, as long as they're in charge.
In some ways on practical terms it will be interesting to see how opinion develops as people see how in trade terms Brexit isn't working. The waverers they need would surely not be attracted to vote for Brexit++ given is it around 70% of trade is with England?
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And/or maybe not ask the question "should we leave" but "should we look at what leaving would mean?"
Yeah I believe that the SNP at least has a sort of a plan and idea of how they would do it
Really? I've always got the impression independence was an end in itself and what comes next other than perpetual dictatorship for the SNP is very peripheral! In the EU, out of the EU, using the pound, the Euro, the Scots groat, it all changes... For the true believers it seems to be anything will do, as long as they're in charge.
In some ways on practical terms it will be interesting to see how opinion develops as people see how in trade terms Brexit isn't working. The waverers they need would surely not be attracted to vote for Brexit++ given is it around 70% of trade is with England?
It's not an unreasonable point, but every economist said that Brexit was likely to be a poor idea as well, economically. A lot of people will decide that they're out of work, things are bad, and that they want to shake it up. I suspect that, as with leaving the EU it would be regretted for years afterwards.
Pretty much the problem with referenda, people vote with the heart, not their heads.
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On the note of brexit benefits, Liz Truss announced trade discussions with India https://twitter.com/trussliz/status/1358025617661456387?s=20
At the same time The Guardian reports of curtailment of press freedoms under Modi's government https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/feb/06/india-journalists-sedition-no-free-press-police-farmers-modi
It really worries me that we left a union created in the wake of a vision for peace following the great wars to pursue relations with fascistic governments. First Trump, now this.
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On the note of brexit benefits, Liz Truss announced trade discussions with India https://twitter.com/trussliz/status/1358025617661456387?s=20
At the same time The Guardian reports of curtailment of press freedoms under Modi's government https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/feb/06/india-journalists-sedition-no-free-press-police-farmers-modi
It really worries me that we left a union created in the wake of a vision for peace following the great wars to pursue relations with fascistic governments. First Trump, now this.
I'd agree, in that I'd frankly rather live in a country with an ethical foreign policy. I think the government should be taking a much harder line on Myanmar, Russia, Saudi Arabia and China, for a start.
Bidens swift decision to stop selling arms to the Saudis was a good one, and one that the UK should follow.
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On the note of brexit benefits, Liz Truss announced trade discussions with India https://twitter.com/trussliz/status/1358025617661456387?s=20
At the same time The Guardian reports of curtailment of press freedoms under Modi's government https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/feb/06/india-journalists-sedition-no-free-press-police-farmers-modi
It really worries me that we left a union created in the wake of a vision for peace following the great wars to pursue relations with fascistic governments. First Trump, now this.
I'd agree, in that I'd frankly rather live in a country with an ethical foreign policy. I think the government should be taking a much harder line on Myanmar, Russia, Saudi Arabia and China, for a start.
Bidens swift decision to stop selling arms to the Saudis was a good one, and one that the UK should follow.
Have you seen the ideological cant of the bastards in power at the mo?
They’re so far up the arse of the “dog eat dog”, “the poor are there to serve us” and “all failure is deserved” ethos, they’re touching it’s fucking Tonsils.
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I'd agree, in that I'd frankly rather live in a country with an ethical foreign policy. I think the government should be taking a much harder line on Myanmar, Russia, Saudi Arabia and China, for a start.
Bidens swift decision to stop selling arms to the Saudis was a good one, and one that the UK should follow.
I had always thought with Saudi Arabia the issue was that we relied on oil from there, but in fact it only makes up a tiny fraction of what we import ( https://www.statista.com/statistics/381963/crude-oil-and-natural-gas-import-origin-countries-to-united-kingdom-uk/ ) so I guess it’s just down to the vested interest of the arms dealers?
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I'd agree, in that I'd frankly rather live in a country with an ethical foreign policy. I think the government should be taking a much harder line on Myanmar, Russia, Saudi Arabia and China, for a start.
Bidens swift decision to stop selling arms to the Saudis was a good one, and one that the UK should follow.
I had always thought with Saudi Arabia the issue was that we relied on oil from there, but in fact it only makes up a tiny fraction of what we import ( https://www.statista.com/statistics/381963/crude-oil-and-natural-gas-import-origin-countries-to-united-kingdom-uk/ ) so I guess it’s just down to the vested interest of the arms dealers?
Also relevant is that the Saudis can disrupt the world's economy by flooding the market with oil, driving down prices.
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On the note of brexit benefits, Liz Truss announced trade discussions with India https://twitter.com/trussliz/status/1358025617661456387?s=20
At the same time The Guardian reports of curtailment of press freedoms under Modi's government https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/feb/06/india-journalists-sedition-no-free-press-police-farmers-modi
It really worries me that we left a union created in the wake of a vision for peace following the great wars to pursue relations with fascistic governments. First Trump, now this.
I'd agree, in that I'd frankly rather live in a country with an ethical foreign policy. I think the government should be taking a much harder line on Myanmar, Russia, Saudi Arabia and China, for a start.
Bidens swift decision to stop selling arms to the Saudis was a good one, and one that the UK should follow.
Have you seen the ideological cant of the bastards in power at the mo?
They’re so far up the arse of the “dog eat dog”, “the poor are there to serve us” and “all failure is deserved” ethos, they’re touching it’s fucking Tonsils.
:agree: Add to that the thinly veiled or indeed open talk of Eugenics, their treatment of the disabled and vulnerable, the likes of Bannon advising from the wings, the dog whistle and blatant racism. Doesn't just whiff of fascism, they've been ticking off more and more of the boxes..
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I'd agree, in that I'd frankly rather live in a country with an ethical foreign policy. I think the government should be taking a much harder line on Myanmar, Russia, Saudi Arabia and China, for a start.
Bidens swift decision to stop selling arms to the Saudis was a good one, and one that the UK should follow.
I had always thought with Saudi Arabia the issue was that we relied on oil from there, but in fact it only makes up a tiny fraction of what we import ( https://www.statista.com/statistics/381963/crude-oil-and-natural-gas-import-origin-countries-to-united-kingdom-uk/ ) so I guess it’s just down to the vested interest of the arms dealers?
Also relevant is that the Saudis can disrupt the world's economy by flooding the market with oil, driving down prices.
One of the upsides of a move towards renewables - it's distributed and not not very "storable", which, from a technical engineering and cost standpoint is not great, from a "geopolitical power play" standpoint is brilliant - massively reduces the clout of many despotic or otherwise overly influential states.
That said...data and AI will probably become king, and Israel, for better or worse seems to be a world leader in that field. As is China. This is not meant to be in any way anti-Chinese or anti-Israel (and certainly not anti Jewish before anyone plays that card) just an observation that the power may shift in those directions as they are taking the lead. That said, the US is pushing hard in that arena, with Europe also making strides.
I wonder what the old oil rich states will do as oil becomes less important?
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The think tank "UK in a Changing Europe" has done a "Brexit Witness Archive", a series of interviews with some of the key players in the Brexit process. It's an attempt to find out where we ended up here, with a very hard Brexit and disruption to fairly large parts of the UK economy.
I've only had the time to skim read Philip Hammond's piece and, obviously there is a self-serving element in there, but it is quite shocking and a terrible indictment of Theresa May.
Hammond starts off as a typical Tory Eurosceptic but after being Foreign Secretary realises:
"It (the EU) was a multiplier of British power, not a diminisher of British power....That’s why I wanted to stay in. I saw it as a way of leveraging British power, and multiplying British power and influence, and multiplying the benefit to the British people, and a way of cementing Britain’s economic lead in Europe. That was, I believe, in January 2016, a realistic view of the future: that Britain would have become the dominant power in the European Union."
Kind of obvious, I would have thought, but this clearly shows how far the Tories have become untethered from any reality beyond winning elections (at which, I should say, they are very good, perhaps because many aging voters are also somewhat untethered from reality).
Then he becomes Chancellor:
"When I sat in the Cabinet Room on that evening – and the only other person in the room was Fiona Hill – I did ask her about Brexit, and she said to me, ‘Brexit means Brexit.’ That was it. That was the only discussion we had about it."
To which the only reply can be what the fucking fuck, right? But no, it gets worse! :tumble:
"I was completely stunned by the speech that she made at the Conservative Party Conference in October 2016. I hadn’t seen the relevant part of it in advance. I’d had no input to the speech. Nick Timothy kept me completely away from it. I did see some text on the economy the day before, but I had no idea that she was going to describe Brexit in the hardest possible terms.
"I was absolutely horrified by what I was hearing. All I remember thinking was, ‘There will be a television camera that will be on your face. If you move a muscle, it will be the story on the front page of every newspaper tomorrow.’ I remember I wasn’t even really listening to her. I was just sitting there. I remember exactly where I was sitting: on the end of a row, to the side of the stage, looking up diagonally at the stage, looking up at her. I just remember focusing my entire energy on maintaining a rictus half-smile, and trying not to show any reaction at all, and then get out of the room without speaking to any journalists. I was completely and utterly horrified by what I felt was almost a coup: a definition of Brexit without any proper Cabinet consultation at all."
So, a breakdown in the system of government that the UK is supposed to have (not the first time, obviously, but still.) :great:
Hammond leaves for an IMF meeting:
"When I arrived in Washington, it was to discover that the pound was in free-fall, on the back of the Prime Minister’s speech and the market’s reaction to it. I then had to get out on the TV in Washington, to try to reinterpret the Prime Minister’s speech for the markets in a way that would try to stop the slide in sterling. We had what looked like a genuine sterling crisis on our hands in the couple of days immediately after the speech. It was a disaster on all fronts, a total unmitigated disaster that scarred her Prime Ministership and should have sealed Nick Timothy’s fate, but I think she only realised later how badly that had constrained her ability to deliver any kind of practical Brexit at all.
"Remember, the complex narrative about the nuances of Brexit and so on came much later, so I’m not even sure that she understood, as she was delivering that speech, how extreme the words coming out of her mouth really were."
It was all about - lest we forget - immigration. (Any liberal Leave voters really were patsies, but we knew this all along.)
And the final kicker:
"I think I said at the beginning of this interview that the terrible thing here is that I am pretty sure that, in the end, the one thing I can guarantee is that, whether we have a no deal Brexit or a hard Brexit with a deal, the price, the cost that that imposes on the economy, will be pretty much 100% absorbed by exactly the demographic profile that voted Leave and then voted Boris Johnson, having never voted Tory before, in December 2019. I’m pretty sure that is almost exactly the definition of the people who are going to bear the costs of Brexit."
:wavecry:
I've no idea what the other interviews are like, but I'm kind of surprised this one hasn't had more coverage.
Full thing here:
https://ukandeu.ac.uk/brexit-witness-archive/
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It is becoming increasingly clear that the Euro sceptics really didn't even have a shred of a plan, to paraphrase Barnier. It's not a sudden catastrophe, but it'll be a slow drip of stories about various industries either seriously affected of almost destroyed by the changes. The UK shellfish industry, while not huge, is screwed. Time sensitive exports just aren't working at the moment; also widely reported are companies outsourcing or setting up shell companies in the EU to avoid the border issues.
I haven't seen any reports of any significant dividend yet; we could have gone our own way on vaccines anyway.
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I'd agree, in that I'd frankly rather live in a country with an ethical foreign policy. I think the government should be taking a much harder line on Myanmar, Russia, Saudi Arabia and China, for a start.
Bidens swift decision to stop selling arms to the Saudis was a good one, and one that the UK should follow.
I had always thought with Saudi Arabia the issue was that we relied on oil from there, but in fact it only makes up a tiny fraction of what we import ( https://www.statista.com/statistics/381963/crude-oil-and-natural-gas-import-origin-countries-to-united-kingdom-uk/ ) so I guess it’s just down to the vested interest of the arms dealers?
Also relevant is that the Saudis can disrupt the world's economy by flooding the market with oil, driving down prices.
They can, but it hurts them as much as it hurts anyone. Their extraction is not very economically efficient, unlike elsewhere in the world where itnis forced to be. At the mone they are doing the opposite, hence minor climb.
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The think tank "UK in a Changing Europe" has done a "Brexit Witness Archive", a series of interviews with some of the key players in the Brexit process. It's an attempt to find out where we ended up here, with a very hard Brexit and disruption to fairly large parts of the UK economy.
I've only had the time to skim read Philip Hammond's piece and, obviously there is a self-serving element in there, but it is quite shocking and a terrible indictment of Theresa May.
Hammond starts off as a typical Tory Eurosceptic but after being Foreign Secretary realises:
".... whether we have a no deal Brexit or a hard Brexit with a deal, the price, the cost that that imposes on the economy, will be pretty much 100% absorbed by exactly the demographic profile that voted Leave and then voted Boris Johnson, having never voted Tory before, in December 2019. I’m pretty sure that is almost exactly the definition of the people who are going to bear the costs of Brexit."
I've no idea what the other interviews are like, but I'm kind of surprised this one hasn't had more coverage.
Full thing here:
https://ukandeu.ac.uk/brexit-witness-archive/
I think Hammond is wrong on who gets hit most...I think the damage will be way more widespread than brexit voters and some brexit voters are pretty fireproof (pensioner homeowners were one of the most firm groups supporting brexit). Wait and see how they pay for the pandemic and the brexit fallout.
I refuse to just blame red wall ex Labour voters (and regard blanket accusations by progressives of their "racist stupidity" as dangerous)... the collective 'establishment' who had real power and should have known better let those voters down over decades, then did way too little to explain the risks of brexit and Boris. In the 2019 election there was a majority of voters not voting tory and there were a good number of remain voting progressive tories.. if people who knew the risks spoke out more, and voted tactically, Boris wouldn't have a majority let alone a safe one. The parliamentary tory party has lost nearly every experienced, genuine one-nation politician, except Hunt, in a ruthless populist power grab supported by mad and bad local constituency parties .... most moderate tory voters just ignored this!!??
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https://twitter.com/mrnickharvey/status/1349713610445094914
I so hope this is real
(i know it's not).
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I find it very strange that so many people seem to like the budget; the income tax banding is clearly a regressive tax policy affecting lower earners; if I were still working for the NHS I'd be pissed off about the pay... etc. Am I missing something? Is it just that Sunak has a smart Instagram account and makes lame jokes about coke?
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I find it very strange that so many people seem to like the budget; the income tax banding is clearly a regressive tax policy affecting lower earners; if I were still working for the NHS I'd be pissed off about the pay... etc. Am I missing something? Is it just that Sunak has a smart Instagram account and makes lame jokes about coke?
Have you seen the latest polling on voter intention? Cons are on the up again. I get the impression people have just become numb to it all. Lies, corruption and obfuscation. Do people really like the budget, or have they just stopped caring and/or thinking? Also the Instagram celebrity politics aspect is a strong influencer I suspect. He looks so cool in a hoodie.
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Our vaccine deployment has been very successful. Boris finally got Brexit done. Those will be plenty to many it would seem.
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I’m old enough to remember when negative polling was entirely the fault of the Labour leader. Whatever happened to that?!
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I find it very strange that so many people seem to like the budget; the income tax banding is clearly a regressive tax policy affecting lower earners; if I were still working for the NHS I'd be pissed off about the pay... etc. Am I missing something? Is it just that Sunak has a smart Instagram account and makes lame jokes about coke?
Have you seen the latest polling on voter intention? Cons are on the up again. I get the impression people have just become numb to it all. Lies, corruption and obfuscation. Do people really like the budget, or have they just stopped caring and/or thinking? Also the Instagram celebrity politics aspect is a strong influencer I suspect. He looks so cool in a hoodie.
Yep - some people close to me (traditionally Labour but hated Corbyn) said the other day - having just had their jabs - that they don't think the government could really have don't anything different over the last year and they didn't think there had really been any failures :tumble:
They're not uneducated at all and are keen on politics. One very good news story (the vaccine roll out which I also think is brilliant) which personally impacts you and it's like all past problems were just teething issues.
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I agree, but find it bizarre. I guess it is more stressful to keep acknowledging the reality of what's gone on than brush it under the mental carpet. Like you say, people are emotionally worn out.
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I agree, but find it bizarre. I guess it is more stressful to keep acknowledging the reality of what's gone on than brush it under the mental carpet. Like you say, people are emotionally worn out.
It won’t last.
Covid has been a distraction and one which we have yet to start paying for, in many cases.
There’s been a lot going on and very little of it has been “good” for the economy. The rosey glow of vaccination will be a distant memory by Xmas this year, let alone by the next election.
To clarify, by “paying” I was thinking of economic cost. Human costs are already astronomical.
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Our vaccine deployment has been very successful. Boris finally got Brexit done. Those will be plenty to many it would seem.
Its frustrating how the government can get away with cutting council spending massively, and basically force them to go bankrupt or hike council taxes, then people blame the council not swishy Rishi
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Our vaccine deployment has been very successful. Boris finally got Brexit done. Those will be plenty to many it would seem.
Its frustrating how the government can get away with cutting council spending massively, and basically force them to go bankrupt or hike council taxes, then people blame the council not swishy Rishi
People in my area seem more concerned at new low traffic neighbourhood schemes impeding their god given right to drive than they are about anything else to do with the council.
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Our vaccine deployment has been very successful. Boris finally got Brexit done. Those will be plenty to many it would seem.
Its frustrating how the government can get away with cutting council spending massively, and basically force them to go bankrupt or hike council taxes, then people blame the council not swishy Rishi
People in my area seem more concerned at new low traffic neighbourhood schemes impeding their god given right to drive than they are about anything else to do with the council.
Aren't LTNs done by the council though?
People will be more concerned given that 1 in 12 councils are at risk of going bankrupt; bins, road repairs etc people care about those
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People will be more concerned given that 1 in 12 councils are at risk of going bankrupt; bins, road repairs etc people care about those
I’d be interested to know which councils are at risk of bankruptcy. I’d wager they aren’t Tory held.
Cut LA funding and force council tax rises while Boris & central govt come to the rescue is just what I’d expect from the man.
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In my area, Northamptonshire, the councils have already gone bankrupt and they were/are Tory following a Tory agenda but it really does seem that no one actually cares around here.
If we were allowed to vote, and we aren't, I'm fairly sure they'd get in again.
A jaded and often uninformed electorate? Probably.
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Maybe but, believe me, several authorities who are under s114 have made utterly fool-hardy and disastrous decisions that should not be blamed on the Tories. They just did not need to do what they did.
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Maybe but, believe me, several authorities who are under s114 have made utterly fool-hardy and disastrous decisions that should not be blamed on the Tories. They just did not need to do what they did.
https://www.pressandjournal.co.uk/fp/news/aberdeen/2959552/council-150m-beach-city-centre-makeover/
Like this for example? Plans include the new football stadium being built over the climbing wall.
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Maybe but, believe me, several authorities who are under s114 have made utterly fool-hardy and disastrous decisions that should not be blamed on the Tories. They just did not need to do what they did.
https://www.pressandjournal.co.uk/fp/news/aberdeen/2959552/council-150m-beach-city-centre-makeover/
Like this for example? Plans include the new football stadium being built over the climbing wall.
To take one. Running down the reserves to almost nothing by drawing on them too heavily and too early hasn't helped.
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BBC News - Democracy is in retreat, warns Dominic Raab
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-56423716
This is really galling hypocrisy, saying that the UK needs to be a moral force, while selling arms to Saudi Arabia for them to kill Yemeni civilians and precipitate a famine and humanitarian disaster, while also cutting the aid budget.
Additionally, if Raab thinks that the UK can be a moral leader on China by trading with them, hes even more stupid than I already thought he was when he didn't understand how important the Dover to Calais route was.
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In my area, Northamptonshire, the councils have already gone bankrupt and they were/are Tory following a Tory agenda but it really does seem that no one actually cares around here.
If we were allowed to vote, and we aren't, I'm fairly sure they'd get in again.
A jaded and often uninformed electorate? Probably.
Just reading this thread and was going to mention Northampton County Council. What a shit show. I'm from East Hunsbury and mum still lives there, despairs of the council and has very little time for Andrea Leadsom (her MP - she did tell Leadsom exactly what she thought of her in Tesco when she saw her) but still voted Blue because of Corbyn. I reckon she could be convinced to lean towards Starmer as she's pretty appalled at Johnson and his cabal of rogues.
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So, the police, crime, sentencing and courts bill passes its second reading. I actually took some time to watch Paliment TV to see if any of the Tory ministers speaking would champion the bill for what was actually in it (not vaculous comments like, "Labour are going to vote against making women safer") and bar one chap, who said it needed to pass because protests outside parliament were noisy and it made it hard for him to concentrate, no one seemed to actually say anything of substance.
The Labour "speeches" were leagues above anything the Tories turned out, especially Angela Eagle (though presentation was hampered by a video link the content was very strong) and David Lammy (an impressive speaker) but I doubt it will make a difference. Our hope rests of the shoulders of the likes of Steve Baker and the hope he and his ilk will propose the necessary ammendments required. Depressing times.
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So, the police, crime, sentencing and courts bill passes its second reading. I actually took some time to watch Paliment TV to see if any of the Tory ministers speaking would champion the bill for what was actually in it (not vaculous comments like, "Labour are going to vote against making women safer") and bar one chap, who said it needed to pass because protests outside parliament were noisy and it made it hard for him to concentrate, no one seemed to actually say anything of substance.
The Labour "speeches" were leagues above anything the Tories turned out, especially Angela Eagle (though presentation was hampered by a video link the content was very strong) and David Lammy (an impressive speaker) but I doubt it will make a difference. Our hope rests of the shoulders of the likes of Steve Baker and the hope he and his ilk will propose the necessary ammendments required. Depressing times.
My feeling is that I generally just want to agree with you that it's an awful piece of legislation; however I did read Daniel Finkelstein's column in The Times today, which makes the reasonable point that the police need to be able to stop some protests, including the ones with which we might happen to agree. His example is that most people think that Piers Corbyn being stopped from protesting (against lockdown, masks and vaccines) is a good thing, but you can't approve of that but not some restrictions on other protests. He makes the point that it's only bad legislation if the police misuse it, and if you assume that they will, then they'll misuse any laws. I'm not swayed in favour of the bill, but it's a decent point.
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My feeling is that I generally just want to agree with you that it's an awful piece of legislation; however I did read Daniel Finkelstein's column in The Times today, which makes the reasonable point that the police need to be able to stop some protests, including the ones with which we might happen to agree. His example is that most people think that Piers Corbyn being stopped from protesting (against lockdown, masks and vaccines) is a good thing, but you can't approve of that but not some restrictions on other protests. He makes the point that it's only bad legislation if the police misuse it, and if you assume that they will, then they'll misuse any laws. I'm not swayed in favour of the bill, but it's a decent point.
I find Daniel Finkelstein is often pretty even handed and I agree with him, and you, to some extent. Some of my issues with the bill are:
- that it is a mishmash of a lot of things in one bill and it's being "sold" on the more agreeable sections whilst the dark authoritarian bits are swept under the carpet (this may be the case with all bills?)
- the anti protest section is not well enough defined. There seems, to me, to be large sections that are open to interpretation (and I don't trust our current Home secretary) which, as shown with the covid regs/legislation, isn't very helpful*
- The trespass section - even the police are unhappy about this
- It seems to be specifically aimed at BLM and Steve Bray (this is more a personal and gripe that I understand doesn't stand up to actual scrutiny)
I'm also not sure we should be stopping Piers Corbyn. I think being anti mask, anti lockdown and anti vaccine is an opinion people can hold. I haven't managed to quite decide on that yet.
*legal bods please correct me if I'm wrong
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You missed more Henry VIII powers being handed to Priti.
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You missed more Henry VIII powers being handed to Priti.
I did. To quote Ian Dunt:
It was a mark of how far the country has fallen that May is now the voice of liberal conscience on the government benches
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My feeling is that I generally just want to agree with you that it's an awful piece of legislation; however I did read Daniel Finkelstein's column in The Times today, which makes the reasonable point that the police need to be able to stop some protests, including the ones with which we might happen to agree. His example is that most people think that Piers Corbyn being stopped from protesting (against lockdown, masks and vaccines) is a good thing, but you can't approve of that but not some restrictions on other protests. He makes the point that it's only bad legislation if the police misuse it, and if you assume that they will, then they'll misuse any laws. I'm not swayed in favour of the bill, but it's a decent point.
Toby, yesterday driving out from the house I noticed a car in the carriageway. It had all four tyres slashed, the bonnet open and all of the windows out. It looked as if it'd been about 30 secs away from someone burning it out until they were disturbed. I called it in to Lancs Police as it was pretty darn foggy and the car was approaching a blind summit on a bit of road not wide enough to have a white line.
It was still there yesterday afternoon, so I pushed the Police a little via social media (including a photo of the vehicle). The response (within 20 mins) was to tell me that all was fine as the car was parked on a private car park and they'd attempted to contact the owner.
You might think that's just a simple mistake etc. but having dealt with them recently the level of incompetence seems pretty darn high (they're generally not very good at accepting criticism either; a heady mix).
The bill significantly lowers the threshold for Police to take action against protestors and they simply can't be trusted with it.
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It was a mark of how far the country has fallen that May is now the voice of liberal conscience on the government benches
May then voted for the legislation...
You might think that's just a simple mistake etc. but having dealt with them recently the level of incompetence seems pretty darn high (they're generally not very good at accepting criticism either; a heady mix).
The bill significantly lowers the threshold for Police to take action against protestors and they simply can't be trusted with it.
This. Perhaps if we had an excellent, light touch and socially sensitive police force this bill might not be so bad. In reality we have an incompetent and defensive force who like throwing their weight around when their authority is challenged even remotely. As Paul says, the calibre of officer that seems to be common in the force cant be trusted with this additional power.
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It was a mark of how far the country has fallen that May is now the voice of liberal conscience on the government benches
May then voted for the legislation...
They always do.......
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It was a mark of how far the country has fallen that May is now the voice of liberal conscience on the government benches
May then voted for the legislation...
You might think that's just a simple mistake etc. but having dealt with them recently the level of incompetence seems pretty darn high (they're generally not very good at accepting criticism either; a heady mix).
The bill significantly lowers the threshold for Police to take action against protestors and they simply can't be trusted with it.
This. Perhaps if we had an excellent, light touch and socially sensitive police force this bill might not be so bad. In reality we have an incompetent and defensive force who like throwing their weight around when their authority is challenged even remotely. As Paul says, the calibre of officer that seems to be common in the force cant be trusted with this additional power.
This feels like a bit of a simplistic view. I have worked closely with the majority of West Yorkshire’s senior management team over the years and they could not possibly care more, and are completely professional and compassionate in all they do.
My response would probably be ‘ don’t believe the hype’.
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It’s easy to generalise the police as one force - whereas there are many. Some are better - some are worse (depending on what you measure). The met is by far the largest force - with the most political clout. Some forces seem to be more outspoken than others - some probably have some deep running issues (eg sexism, racism) some may not. Criticism of the Met for example with the Everard vigil - tends to be generalised to all of the police forces - whereas nothing like that happened anywhere else in the country. This is also where the comparison between rangers fans and the vigil get into trouble - different forces.
Anecdote - my dad (who retired 20 years ago as a civil servant) participated and sometimes chaired many (dozens) of meetings with chief constables as part of his job. He also had to socialise with them on occasion (at residential meetings). He said some were good - but his overwhelming description of them contained the words bully and nasty bastard... he’d come back from those meetings a drained man. Some clearly - he reflected - bullied and schemed their way to the top. TL;DR the person at the top can have a real influence at shaping a force - and they may or may not be a ‘good’ person....
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It’s easy to generalise the police as one force - whereas there are many. Some are better - some are worse (depending on what you measure). The met is by far the largest force - with the most political clout. Some forces seem to be more outspoken than others - some probably have some deep running issues (eg sexism, racism) some may not. Criticism of the Met for example with the Everard vigil - tends to be generalised to all of the police forces - whereas nothing like that happened anywhere else in the country. This is also where the comparison between rangers fans and the vigil get into trouble - different forces.
Anecdote - my dad (who retired 20 years ago as a civil servant) participated and sometimes chaired many (dozens) of meetings with chief constables as part of his job. He also had to socialise with them on occasion (at residential meetings). He said some were good - but his overwhelming description of them contained the words bully and nasty bastard... he’d come back from those meetings a drained man. Some clearly - he reflected - bullied and schemed their way to the top. TL;DR the person at the top can have a real influence at shaping a force - and they may or may not be a ‘good’ person....
My father would tell you the Met has a very poor rep amongst the other forces. He is quite contemptuous of their way of doing things and doesn’t feel it’s changed much in his lifetime. He’s still active in NARPO, which is a bit like the Federation, for retired officers who can’t let go (a little dig).
After saying that last little bit, I should qualify it; they can’t let go because they are passionate about it.
It is an unfortunate fact, that the vast majority of officers are more than simply honest and caring, most go quite a way beyond that. Of course, you will only hear that when it reaches a certain level of heroism.
The job broke my father in the end.
Thirty years of accumulated baggage, broke through after a specific incident. A very remote, rural, cot death. It took well over an hour for a paramedic to arrive. My dad bounced the baby’s lifeless body and sang lullabies to it, just to try and keep the desperate mother calm and the father away from his shotgun, until help arrived.
Oh yeah, if you want to see him glaze over and drift out, before rushing from the room; just remind him of all the shotgun suicides he was first on scene for. Rural Cornwall was good for that.
Of course, things like that don’t make the news.
Just like having a gang of bikers put bricks through your window, because your dad arrested their mate (for GBH and stabbing some poor girl in a pub, in a drunken rage).
Then there’s all those fatal RTAs and the whole visiting next of kin.
Or the years as youth liaison officer, dealing with kids being abused as well as young offenders. He actually thought that would help, after the cot death (that wasn’t the first, either).
He became a security specialist, to get away from it. Designed and organised security for some fairly hefty government types. For some reason, this made more jaded, not less. Who’d a’ thunk it.
He took early retirement on medical grounds.
But, you know, it was “the public” that got to him, more than the system. There were good and bad coppers. Good and bad leaders. Good and bad policies. But there were a disproportionate number of “bad” people, or worse, good people doing bad things to other people for shit reasons.
Nothing, not even the vigil protests and arrests, is entirely black and white. Mistakes were made by both sides. Oh, and not many of dads circle think much of either this bill, or the current Home Secretary. Oddly enough, since they spend most of their time alone and unsupported, facing people who don’t have any rules to respect, they actually tend to be confrontation averse, as a group, by and large.
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That is so well said.,
Current officers have to deal with all the ACAB bollocks, some are but really very few.
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That is so well said.,
Current officers have to deal with all the ACAB bollocks, some are but really very few.
The job kind of appeals to authoritarian types you'd have thought? I mean, they arrested that woman in Sheffield for tooting on a horn at the tree protest. Completely unreasonable response from SYP, I don't see them somehow gaining any kind of insight into how to appropriately police protests after being given further powers to arrest.
P.s great post OMM
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Current officers have to deal with all the ACAB bollocks, some are but really very few.
I didn't say (or suggest) ACAB.
Having grown up with my Dad being in the Police his entire life (Durham Constabulary), it's taken me a fair amount to get to where my opinion of Lancs. Police in terms of competence is low.
...and yes, it certainly took its toll on him. His hands are about 2X normal size after deploying a stinger and it getting caught around the rear axle of the vehicle; he arrived home on my birthday with plastic bags full of burn cream taped around his elbows. He has occupational deafness (traffic, no sound insulation in the cars) and has back and neck problems as he was used by an occupant to exit a police car via the rear window.
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Current officers have to deal with all the ACAB bollocks, some are but really very few.
I didn't say (or suggest) ACAB.
Having grown up with my Dad being in the Police his entire life (Durham Constabulary), it's taken me a fair amount to get to where my opinion of Lancs. Police in terms of competence is low.
...and yes, it certainly took its toll on him. His hands are about 2X normal size after deploying a stinger and it getting caught around the rear axle of the vehicle; he arrived home on my birthday with plastic bags full of burn cream taped around his elbows. He has occupational deafness (traffic, no sound insulation in the cars) and has back and neck problems as he was used by an occupant to exit a police car via the rear window.
Hard in someways, isn’t it.
Did you have the really strange dinner conversations, when his mates were around? “My first stiff” and other stories you probably weren’t quite ready for? Humour slightly darker than Black 3.0 and not a fucking chance of getting a motorbike when all your mates did?
(Didn’t help that my mum was a road safety officer for CCC).
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Some good posts above, thanks OMM and gollum. Whats your Dad's view on the current state of policing Paul?
I think there have been some great points above, and I am of course aware that the majority of police officers care and are good at their job in the sense. However, I think its possible to think that on an individual sense but also think that policing as a whole is due some serious reform. This isn't a problem unique to the UK by any stretch. I do struggle a bit with comments like 'don't believe the hype' as they come across as dismissive and suggest that there are no real problems in the force (I know your point is more nuanced gollum). For black people it isnt hype, its a reality; and a forum of middle class white people saying there are no real problems with policing, that its a tough job and most of them try their best is not a good look. Black people have been protesting about heavy handed police treatment for years; what are we saying, that they were doing it for fun? The noise is louder this time because the heavy handedness this time related to a middle class white woman, but we are deluding ourselves if we just say there isn't a problem.
TT is right that it is the Met who have the worst reputation, but because they police the capital its inevitable that perception is far reaching. Botnik is also right that such behaviour is far from unique to that force. Derbyshire and North Yorks Police have been guilty during the pandemic of significant overreach and unilateral interpretation of guidance as law. I really don't think its enough to just say 'there is good and bad on both sides.' Of course there is, and of course there is a need for a police force, but there are clearly some bad apples running policing currently and the least we can do is acknowledge it. Hope this doesn't come across as having a go at anyone in particular- not intended that way at all.
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Some good posts above, thanks OMM and gollum. Whats your Dad's view on the current state of policing Paul?
I think there have been some great points above, and I am of course aware that the majority of police officers care and are good at their job in the sense. However, I think its possible to think that on an individual sense but also think that policing as a whole is due some serious reform. This isn't a problem unique to the UK by any stretch. I do struggle a bit with comments like 'don't believe the hype' as they come across as dismissive and suggest that there are no real problems in the force (I know your point is more nuanced gollum). For black people it isnt hype, its a reality; and a forum of middle class white people saying there are no real problems with policing, that its a tough job and most of them try their best is not a good look. Black people have been protesting about heavy handed police treatment for years; what are we saying, that they were doing it for fun? The noise is louder this time because the heavy handedness this time related to a middle class white woman, but we are deluding ourselves if we just say there isn't a problem.
TT is right that it is the Met who have the worst reputation, but because they police the capital its inevitable that perception is far reaching. Botnik is also right that such behaviour is far from unique to that force. Derbyshire and North Yorks Police have been guilty during the pandemic of significant overreach and unilateral interpretation of guidance as law. I really don't think its enough to just say 'there is good and bad on both sides.' Of course there is, and of course there is a need for a police force, but there are clearly some bad apples running policing currently and the least we can do is acknowledge it. Hope this doesn't come across as having a go at anyone in particular- not intended that way at all.
Of course, but you should be looking at the top for root causes here (despite the seeming paradox of that statement).
Policing in the UK has been underfunded and numbers cut to ridiculously low levels (currently, Torbay (permanent pop 144k, almost doubling in summer months and more than doubling on public holidays) has 11(eleven) officers on duty at any one time (one of which is a custody Seargent)).
The resulting crash in morale, departure of many personnel and siege mentality that engenders, coupled with increasing public support for “anti-police” sentiment, rising public dissatisfaction, increased inequality and loss of trust in government institutions; rather makes the life of a Bog Standard Response Officer, somewhat unpleasant.
The introduction of PCCs has rendered the forces, de facto, politically controlled entities, with the effect of suppressing most “ground up” feedback into policy.
There will always be “institutional” issues and these should, rightly, be addressed (remember South Yorkshire?), but most “policy” is currently spewing out of a certain, rather unpleasant, politician’s brain and many of the checks and balances that were meant to keep policing independent, have been eroded.
The best thing this country could see, is respite from Tory rule (not that Labour impress me greatly).
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Of course, but you should be looking at the top for root causes here (despite the seeming paradox of that statement).
Policing in the UK has been underfunded and numbers cut to ridiculously low levels (currently, Torbay (permanent pop 144k, almost doubling in summer months and more than doubling on public holidays) has 11(eleven) officers on duty at any one time (one of which is a custody Seargent)).
The resulting crash in morale, departure of many personnel and siege mentality that engenders, coupled with increasing public support for “anti-police” sentiment, rising public dissatisfaction, increased inequality and loss of trust in government institutions; rather makes the life of a Bog Standard Response Officer, somewhat unpleasant.
The introduction of PCCs has rendered the forces, de facto, politically controlled entities, with the effect of suppressing most “ground up” feedback into policy.
There will always be “institutional” issues and these should, rightly, be addressed (remember South Yorkshire?), but most “policy” is currently spewing out of a certain, rather unpleasant, politician’s brain and many of the checks and balances that were meant to keep policing independent, have been eroded.
The best thing this country could see, is respite from Tory rule (not that Labour impress me greatly).
Yes, I agree. Its a cycle isn't it; low funding, pay freezes, siege mentality, backlash against protest and demonstration from police. This creates an image of the police that is attractive to a certain, undesirable potential applicant and deeply unattractive to better ones. The bad ones apply and get any jobs going and the cycle continues. Increase funding and increase the starting salary would probably start to address this. In reality, we are going to get none of this and will instead get increased powers handed to a force with low morale and poor leadership, to put it generously. It doesn't seem likely that these new powers will be used judiciously.
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The best thing this country could see, is respite from Tory rule (not that Labour impress me greatly).
The current crop of Conservative front bench MPs anyway. I'm actually increasingly impressed by a few of the shadow front benchers, Rachel Reeves, Jonathan Ashworth, Lisa Nandy for example. Early in the pandemic, Jonathan Ashworth was calling for many things which would in retrospect have reduced its impact considerably.
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Of course, but you should be looking at the top for root causes here (despite the seeming paradox of that statement).
Policing in the UK has been underfunded and numbers cut to ridiculously low levels (currently, Torbay (permanent pop 144k, almost doubling in summer months and more than doubling on public holidays) has 11(eleven) officers on duty at any one time (one of which is a custody Seargent)).
The resulting crash in morale, departure of many personnel and siege mentality that engenders, coupled with increasing public support for “anti-police” sentiment, rising public dissatisfaction, increased inequality and loss of trust in government institutions; rather makes the life of a Bog Standard Response Officer, somewhat unpleasant.
The introduction of PCCs has rendered the forces, de facto, politically controlled entities, with the effect of suppressing most “ground up” feedback into policy.
There will always be “institutional” issues and these should, rightly, be addressed (remember South Yorkshire?), but most “policy” is currently spewing out of a certain, rather unpleasant, politician’s brain and many of the checks and balances that were meant to keep policing independent, have been eroded.
The best thing this country could see, is respite from Tory rule (not that Labour impress me greatly).
Yes, I agree. Its a cycle isn't it; low funding, pay freezes, siege mentality, backlash against protest and demonstration from police. This creates an image of the police that is attractive to a certain, undesirable potential applicant and deeply unattractive to better ones. The bad ones apply and get any jobs going and the cycle continues. Increase funding and increase the starting salary would probably start to address this. In reality, we are going to get none of this and will instead get increased powers handed to a force with low morale and poor leadership, to put it generously. It doesn't seem likely that these new powers will be used judiciously.
This isn’t actually the case. Have a look at your force’s recruitment policies.
There has been a significant increase in expectation of higher education in applicants, coupled with direct entry at senior positions for those with significant higher ed and experience. The push has been to recruit older candidates, with significant time spent in the workplace and outside of education, too. If anything, the fewer places available has lead to increased selectivity and a demand for higher standards.
This has yet to fully filter through to front line policing, I suspect.
The general feeling, I’m told, is the actual experience of frontline policing, under current conditions, is leading to increasing mental health issues, long term sickness and resignations, even within the first five years of service. The already diminished numbers are heavily impacted by further reductions due to sick leave and “light duty” postings.
I think we are somewhat lead astray by high profile “elite” unit issues.
Frankly, Elite units are a problem in almost any institution. Please see both the military and academia for examples there.
In the military, it is the principle reason officers ate restricted in their length of service in such appointments.
The Met, for possibly sound tactical and strategic reasons, seems to be a mess/mass of such units.
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This isn’t actually the case. Have a look at your force’s recruitment policies.
There has been a significant increase in expectation of higher education in applicants, coupled with direct entry at senior positions for those with significant higher ed and experience. The push has been to recruit older candidates, with significant time spent in the workplace and outside of education, too. If anything, the fewer places available has lead to increased selectivity and a demand for higher standards.
This has yet to fully filter through to front line policing, I suspect.
I'll take your word for it - interesting if so, but you could equally say that given the UK has such a big generational divide, hiring lots of older police officers is probably more likely to widen it than bridge it. Also, to state the obvious (as you acknowledge), quite clearly this demand for higher standards is not yet bearing fruit. Is it acceptable to have a 'wait and see' approach or do we accept it might need more structural reform? Again; neither you or I are part of a demographic which suffers from heavy handed policing on the whole. I can understand why BAME communities and women want more concrete action and evidence of change.
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This isn’t actually the case. Have a look at your force’s recruitment policies.
There has been a significant increase in expectation of higher education in applicants, coupled with direct entry at senior positions for those with significant higher ed and experience. The push has been to recruit older candidates, with significant time spent in the workplace and outside of education, too. If anything, the fewer places available has lead to increased selectivity and a demand for higher standards.
This has yet to fully filter through to front line policing, I suspect.
I'll take your word for it - interesting if so, but you could equally say that given the UK has such a big generational divide, hiring lots of older police officers is probably more likely to widen it than bridge it. Also, to state the obvious (as you acknowledge), quite clearly this demand for higher standards is not yet bearing fruit. Is it acceptable to have a 'wait and see' approach or do we accept it might need more structural reform? Again; neither you or I are part of a demographic which suffers from heavy handed policing on the whole. I can understand why BAME communities and women want more concrete action and evidence of change.
I don’t think they’re recruiting Boomers and most Millennials are in their 30’s already, so without actually googling “average age of new police candidates” can I assume it’s probably in the 25-40 range and not 40-65?
I don’t disagree with your point on evidence of change, particularly, though I would have thought the “direct entry” for senior officers would be quite a speedy way of changing institutional attitudes and probably a very sensible approach to addressing the need for change (despite the rancour it causes within the ranks).
What would you suggest needed to be done? I don’t mean outcome, I mean process.
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Some good posts above, thanks OMM and gollum. Whats your Dad's view on the current state of policing Paul?
TBH we avoid talking about anything that might stray towards the political (I'm 99% certain he voted BREXIT and our discussions don't end well) as my parents are currently living with us. He made it clear at the time his views on the introduction of PCSOs and the shrinking of Traffic (they obviously weren't positive).
We have discussed some parts of his job in the past. His B&O stereo was procured on overtime during the miners strike; my Mum is a miner's daughter!
Did you have the really strange dinner conversations, when his mates were around? “My first stiff” and other stories you probably weren’t quite ready for? Humour slightly darker than Black 3.0 and not a fucking chance of getting a motorbike when all your mates did?
(Didn’t help that my mum was a road safety officer for CCC).
I don't remember any TBH. It's funny, his clear love of fast cars (Escort Cosworth Police car anyone; rear wing temporarily removed) rubbed off on me but you can see his distress when I look at things like BMW 140i or mention performance bikes. I believe before I was born he worked armed response :o.
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What would you suggest needed to be done? I don’t mean outcome, I mean process.
The million dollar question! Short answer is obviously that I'm not sure, its not my area of expertise by any stretch. Long answer below, although very rambling and not very developed yet.
My perspective on the police is that there are three main issues, surrounding sexism/attitudes towards rape and sexual assault, race/profiling, and abuse of power/poor response to criticism or challenge. Obviously the first two in particular are societal issues and in no way confined to the police force, but its critical we address it in policing and justice because I think without that societal change is much, much harder.
To take the current issue of sexism and attitudes towards reports of sexual crimes. There are innumerable incidences of women reporting crimes to the police and they are not taken seriously or no action is taken. My own sister was threatened and abused on a bus in London and the police took no action whatsoever. Part of this is a funding issue, so that should in theory be an easy enough fix, although unlikely from this government. The other part is, I think, a distinct laissez faire attitude towards these reports from the forces - they are hard to investigate and so are not a priority. This requires an attitude change - how you do this, god only knows- education, incentives, better training, a big campaign? Maybe evidence of prevailing attitudes of men in general society, from which police officers are often drawn? Quite clearly it also requires societal change and the education of men but I don't think the police are completely beyond criticism here.
Race, I don't really feel qualified on this, beyond saying its very clear that there are significant issues in how the police interact with young black men in particular, and a lot of work in the community and local leaders is required. I'm sure something like this is already going on, but clearly it isn't working, which suggests that at least part of the issue is with the personnel themselves. I do think there is institutional racism in the Met from what I have read; again though, this requires an acceptance in that as a concept in order to take any action on, which this government doesn't.
How do you relieve police officers of the authoritarian streak that undoubtedly runs through some of them, from those zealously policing the vigil to Derbyshire Police at the reservoir and North Yorks at Almscliff? Again, I'm no expert, but my strong suspicion is that a good chunk of police are in it for the wrong reasons - to be in a position of authority rather than to help the public. When that authority is challenged in any way, their response is a show of power. I think this can only be resolved through a culture change, which again probably has to come from the government (unlikely) or from a new Met Commissioner - Cressida Dick has form for this kind of policing. I also think you're right that a lot of internal dissatisfaction with the way police are treated and underfunded finds its outlet in officers dealings with any members of the public who aren't immediately subservient, so perhaps addressing internal issues would make officers feel more relaxed and able to follow a light touch approach where previously they would just steam in.
Essentially, I don't know, but I am willing to listen to all ideas! I think if I was the Home Secretary, the first thing I would do would be to remove Cressida Dick, because I think the Met sets the tone for forces around the country and its poor reputation is responsible for a lot of the increasing distrust of the police that you refer to.
Edit: this is a good piece I thought. https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/feminism/2021/03/are-metropolitan-uk-police-cressida-dick-sarah-everard-institutionally-misogynist-vigil
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What would you suggest needed to be done? I don’t mean outcome, I mean process.
Perhaps a home secretary who isn't a) incompetent b)in possession of a powerful ideology of self interest and populism, would be a start?
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What would you suggest needed to be done? I don’t mean outcome, I mean process.
The million dollar question! Short answer is obviously that I'm not sure, its not my area of expertise by any stretch. Long answer below, although very rambling and not very developed yet.
My perspective on the police is that there are three main issues, surrounding sexism/attitudes towards rape and sexual assault, race/profiling, and abuse of power/poor response to criticism or challenge. Obviously the first two in particular are societal issues and in no way confined to the police force, but its critical we address it in policing and justice because I think without that societal change is much, much harder.
To take the current issue of sexism and attitudes towards reports of sexual crimes. There are innumerable incidences of women reporting crimes to the police and they are not taken seriously or no action is taken. My own sister was threatened and abused on a bus in London and the police took no action whatsoever. Part of this is a funding issue, so that should in theory be an easy enough fix, although unlikely from this government. The other part is, I think, a distinct laissez faire attitude towards these reports from the forces - they are hard to investigate and so are not a priority. This requires an attitude change - how you do this, god only knows- education, incentives, better training, a big campaign? Maybe evidence of prevailing attitudes of men in general society, from which police officers are often drawn? Quite clearly it also requires societal change and the education of men but I don't think the police are completely beyond criticism here.
Race, I don't really feel qualified on this, beyond saying its very clear that there are significant issues in how the police interact with young black men in particular, and a lot of work in the community and local leaders is required. I'm sure something like this is already going on, but clearly it isn't working, which suggests that at least part of the issue is with the personnel themselves. I do think there is institutional racism in the Met from what I have read; again though, this requires an acceptance in that as a concept in order to take any action on, which this government doesn't.
How do you relieve police officers of the authoritarian streak that undoubtedly runs through some of them, from those zealously policing the vigil to Derbyshire Police at the reservoir and North Yorks at Almscliff? Again, I'm no expert, but my strong suspicion is that a good chunk of police are in it for the wrong reasons - to be in a position of authority rather than to help the public. When that authority is challenged in any way, their response is a show of power. I think this can only be resolved through a culture change, which again probably has to come from the government (unlikely) or from a new Met Commissioner - Cressida Dick has form for this kind of policing. I also think you're right that a lot of internal dissatisfaction with the way police are treated and underfunded finds its outlet in officers dealings with any members of the public who aren't immediately subservient, so perhaps addressing internal issues would make officers feel more relaxed and able to follow a light touch approach where previously they would just steam in.
Essentially, I don't know, but I am willing to listen to all ideas! I think if I was the Home Secretary, the first thing I would do would be to remove Cressida Dick, because I think the Met sets the tone for forces around the country and its poor reputation is responsible for a lot of the increasing distrust of the police that you refer to.
Edit: this is a good piece I thought. https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/feminism/2021/03/are-metropolitan-uk-police-cressida-dick-sarah-everard-institutionally-misogynist-vigil
I think, to a large extent, the blame lies with the CPS rather than the police, who lost control of charging decisions many years ago. I think the “Police” take the flack for refusal by CPS to prosecute cases, which in turn are decisions taken within the context of the prevailing attitude in the Courts and likelihood of achieving a conviction with the standard of evidence presented. Add into that, the previously mentioned manpower issues and bingo, we get what we done got.
Here, we’ve just been through the awful parole rigmarole for the man who murdered my stepchildren’s father as he hit the 10 year mark on his sentence ( he was granted open conditions, then dragged back, because he’s not a nice person. No review for minimum of two years).
It’s quite unpleasant, even the children being pressured to submit impact statements (done under the supervision of the school’s psychologist, without parental input). There was quite some guilt tripping from the VLO that Polly refusing to address the parole board, in person, in the presence of the murderer, was why he was granted open conditions in the first place.
There was another incident, that meant we had a panic alarm fitted in the house (direct to the local nick) for the first two years after we got together (actually, it played a part in why/how we got together). We then went on to experience the issues of having charges dropped (despite “witness intimidation” on top of the initial incident), by CPS, because the suspect was a foreign national and he went home. I don’t want to go into in any detail, because it’s not my story.
So, yes, I don’t need to look very far to see that there is a problem or two, despite being only a little Olive in my complexion and a bulge in my boxers.
It’s not simply a matter of police reform or “authoritarian” police officers. Hidden behind that public facing facade is a rather over stretched, risk averse, bureaucratic, monolith of civil service inertia.
I’m still in the top down camp.
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Fair enough - different perspectives!
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Fair enough - different perspectives!
Oh no you don’t! Just because I’m grumpy today doesn’t mean you can duck out a debate that easily!
Fight me, ya barsteward!
Seriously, I don’t know what the answers are, but absolutely agree there is a problem. I also don’t believe your authoritarian arguments are wholly false, I only question the scale of that particular influence relative to the larger problems.
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This is a fascinating discussion, my two penneth....
I wonder if poor support/pay/conditions and the consequent lack of morale has led to those who have been in the force for a while leaving (someone mentioned new recruits not making it to 5 years
). You can replace these with people who are older and have higher educational attainment, however, you can't replace the experience that has been lost within the workforce. This has seemingly happened with prison officers - they lost a significant number of officers through cuts and whilst they have replaced some (although by no means all) of them, including some through graduate schemes etc. there is absolutely no way to replace that wealth of knowledge from having been doing the job for 20 years.
The justice system (and I suspect that includes the CPS) is hugely fucked up in this country. I could rant for ages and tell individual stories but instead of boring you I refer you to the Secret Barrister's books.
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This has seemingly happened with prison officers - they lost a significant number of officers through cuts and whilst they have replaced some (although by no means all) of them, including some through graduate schemes etc. there is absolutely no way to replace that wealth of knowledge from having been doing the job for 20 years.
I just can’t comprehend how anyone could think this is a sustainable solution in any department/sector. I was chatting to someone today who had worked for a large well-known construction company up until around 2008/9 when the financial crisis hit and he along with basically all the experienced (obviously higher salaried) staff were laid off leaving just a load of fresh graduates to run all the projects. Surprise surprise they all went to shit and the company went under about 6 years later.
But at least in something like construction the experience isn’t completely lost as they can just be employed by another company in that sector unlike the police, prison service, etc where it’s pretty much lost for good as they’re likely to move on to something else never to return.
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Interesting that you say that Ali. I worked for a Design and Build that expanded the number of frameworks it had very rapidly. I couldn't comprehend how they'd embed their way of doing things with so much growth. I kept thinking they'd duck out on other bids but they continued.
Essentially they didn't embed any experience and we ended up with a large amount of young staff and when the few experienced staff were on leave etc. things quickly ground to a halt.
The framework wasn't profitable and the client didn't roll it over but I guess payroll was relatively cheap though!
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there is absolutely no way to replace that wealth of knowledge from having been doing the job for 20 years.
The justice system (and I suspect that includes the CPS) is hugely fucked up in this country. I could rant for ages and tell individual stories but instead of boring you I refer you to the Secret Barrister's books.
Totally agree re Secret Barrister books. Deeply depressing.
On the above and the 'lost wealth of knowledge;' I agree up to a point, but I also think this only holds if one thinks that pre- cuts and the subsequent knowledge loss the Police broadly did a good job. Again, from my own distanced position I suspect that attitudes to sexual assault complaints and interaction with the black community was poor long before the cuts. The current zeitgeist and concepts of structural inequality has enabled discussion of these problems in a new way, but I don't think the problems are new, so I don't think that having more experienced police officers from a pre MeToo/BLM era would inevitably improve things. It might, but I think theres a better than even money chance it could make things worse, ingraining out of date attitudes even more than they already are. Thats not to say it wouldn't have helped in more abstract ways eg more manpower so more time to deal with tricky investigations, better morale so better attitude towards the public, but I think the central issues would have remained.
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You're absolutely right, with the experience there is also a possibility of the entrenched unconscious bias being an unintended consequence. As always I think the answer is probably in balance, of which there seems to be very little.
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Nothing to see here, just a casual reminder that we don't really take violence against women particularly seriously. Less so if one is a policeman, it would seem.
"An off-duty police officer who attacked a terrified woman as she walked home alone was allowed to walk free from court.
PC Oliver Banfield, a probationary officer with West Midlands Police, grabbed Emma Homer on a dark street last July.
He used techniques taught during police training to try to tackle the mum-of-two to the ground and put her in a headlock.
Miss Homer, 36, managed to flee from the scene as Banfield, who had been on a night out, branded her a “f ****** slag”.
A court heard the 25-year-old remains in his post with West Midlands Police despite admitting a charge of assault by beating.
The officer was sentenced to a 14-week curfew, banning him from leaving his house between 7pm and 7am.
Banfield was also ordered to pay his victim £500 compensation and court costs totalling £180.
The terrifying attack in Bidford-on-Avon, Warks, was caught on CCTV and shown to the court this morning.
It showed Banfield trying to perform an “unlawful arrest” on his victim and grabbing her around the neck.
Banfield, who the court heard was drunk at the time of the attack, tried to pull her to the ground as she screamed and dragged her along the pavement.
Miss Homer said the attack had a devastating effect on her.
She has suffered from anxiety, stress, panic attacks and insomnia and is undergoing therapy and counselling."
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/drunken-duty-police-officer-25-23759044?utm_source=twitter.com&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=sharebar
I looked up the offence he was charged under on a solictor's website:
"A section 39 assault can only be tried in the magistrates’ court and carries a maximum sentence of 6 months imprisonment however the sentence is usually dealt with by a fine or a community penalty unless the assault involves characteristics which make the incident more serious or the offender has a history of violent behavior."
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unless the assault involves characteristics which make the incident more serious
How much more fucking serious can you get??
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https://www.justiceinspectorates.gov.uk/hmicfrs/publications/an-inspection-of-the-metropolitan-police-services-policing-of-a-vigil-held-in-commemoration-of-sarah-everard/
Police inspecting the police and look what they conclude...
This bit I thought was particularly telling - political debate around Cressida Dick's position apparently showed a 'lack of respect' for the police. I think I mentioned police defensiveness to criticism earlier in the thread; couldn't ask for a better example than this.
"Fourth, the chorus of those condemning the Metropolitan Police, and calling for the
resignation of the Commissioner, within hours of the arrests – and presumably, with a
very limited understanding of what had happened – was unwarranted. Whereas a
certain degree of uninformed commentary, particularly on social media, is inevitable,
in this case some of the leading voices were those in positions of some responsibility.
It is one thing – as in the case of the Home Secretary – to recognise that the scenes
were worrying or upsetting (and to order an inspection such as this). It is another to
jump to conclusions – and in doing so, undermine public confidence in policing –
based on very limited evidence.
To do so shows a distinct lack of respect for public servants facing, as we have
described, a sensitive and complex situation."
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I preface what I'm about to say with the face that I haven't read the whole report... but it smacks of paying lip service to me, I don't suppose it was ever going to be critical but it allows Patel to say she's done the right thing - political genius on her part.
All evidence and testimony is from the police; the only evidence included from the public is statements from those who were arrested. It also states that they 'sifted and selected' relevant material - questionable?
The fundamental thing for me which is missing from the introduction and the narrative is that much of the anger towards the police was sparked by the fact that their response to the disappearance of Sarah Everard was to instruct women to stay at home at night.
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Re the government report on institutional racism in Britain; I wonder if they read the definition before trying to seriously convince people with their conclusions.
a policy, system of government, etc., that is associated with or originated in such a doctrine, and that favors members of the dominant racial or ethnic group, or has a neutral effect on their life experiences, while discriminating against or harming members of other groups, ultimately serving to preserve the social status, economic advantage, or political power of the dominant group.
Never hold an enquiry unless you know the conclusion first?
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There’s so much wrong with it it’s hard to know where to start...
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Agreed.
An example I spotted; I've seen quoted in the media a few times the ethnicity pay gap as being -2.3%. My first thought was that that sounds good, pretty negligible really, and potentially strong evidence to support the report's findings.
However, if you just skim through the report it turns out this includes people of White Irish ethnicity, who on average are paid 40.5% more than White British people. I imagine this massively skews the overall average (especially as I assume there are quite a lot of them), and begs the question of why any White ethnic group are included. The answer presumably being that it helps fit the conclusion the Government wanted before they'd even started.
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Is that a typo?
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Is that a typo?
I’m sure I can find some Irish antecedents for my next salary negotiations. Good tip!
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Is that a typo?
Nope. Bizarre isn't it? Page 110 of the report. Makes you wonder what else they've done to the rest of the data to make it fit the desired outcome.
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There's plenty of people who are quoted in the report or stated as stakeholders that have spent the last few days trying to put the record straight:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/apr/01/commission-race-report-used-cherry-picked-data-uk-public-health-experts-say
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/apr/01/experts-cited-in-no-10s-race-report-claim-they-were-not-properly-consulted
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This is also worth reading, although obviously most of the people who may read this read the Guardian anyway
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/apr/02/sewell-race-report-historical-young-people-britain?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other
He's not exactly a tub thumping leftie either. As far as I've paid any attention, Labour has wisely kept out of commenting on the report. It's so hard to find anything right with it, they're probably best leaving it to be criticised by others.
Munira Murza and several other advisors clearly think that culture war is a good way to keep 'red wall' votes, and distract from what should be top of the news agenda, which is how the government is failing to make anything but a disaster of leaving the EU, and continuing to beckon another winter of lockdown bullshit by utterly ignoring the necessity to have a working test and trace system, and instead wasting time on this shit.
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My basic conclusion is that at best it's a piece of fairly typical Boris politicking; trying to optimistically paint things as he and his advisers want them to be, rather than as they are.
I suppose the question is, does that work? I.e. will making things seem better than they are, actually make things better? Personally I doubt it.
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My basic conclusion is that at best it's a piece of fairly typical Boris politicking; trying to optimistically paint things as he and his advisers want them to be, rather than as they are.
I suppose the question is, does that work? I.e. will making things seem better than they are, actually make things better? Personally I doubt it.
Yes, of course it will work.
Those who want it to be “this way” will no longer have to give credence to “the other side”, because the government says they don’t have to.
The division is deeply entrenched and has been, pretty much, forever.
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At first I thought the report was just shit but the more I read it I can only see it as having been written to be intentionally controversial. I mean FFS that stuff about black people benefiting culturally from slavery just did not need to be there. Marina Hyde nails it as usual.
“The trouble with culture wars is that the entry requirements are so low but the stakes are so high. For a government supposedly big on the past, this one fails to understand even recent American history. To simplify, for their benefit: turning everything into an insanely polarised binary ends badly. Whether you play with this box of matches because it’s cheaper than real policies, or because it “energises your base”, or for some other reason, it always ends badly. Do you remember the orange man? It ended badly. It remains a mystery quite why Britain’s politicians should be stoking culture wars mere months after just one of their logical conclusions was laid bare for the world to see. Absolutely no good comes of this stuff, and governments should be bigger and better than it.”
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My basic conclusion is that at best it's a piece of fairly typical Boris politicking; trying to optimistically paint things as he and his advisers want them to be, rather than as they are.
I suppose the question is, does that work? I.e. will making things seem better than they are, actually make things better? Personally I doubt it.
Yes, of course it will work.
Those who want it to be “this way” will no longer have to give credence to “the other side”, because the government says they don’t have to.
The division is deeply entrenched and has been, pretty much, forever.
No I mean the other way round. Does gaslighting people into making them think the problem isn't that big, actually make the problem smaller in reality?
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My basic conclusion is that at best it's a piece of fairly typical Boris politicking; trying to optimistically paint things as he and his advisers want them to be, rather than as they are.
I suppose the question is, does that work? I.e. will making things seem better than they are, actually make things better? Personally I doubt it.
Yes, of course it will work.
Those who want it to be “this way” will no longer have to give credence to “the other side”, because the government says they don’t have to.
The division is deeply entrenched and has been, pretty much, forever.
No I mean the other way round. Does gaslighting people into making them think the problem isn't that big, actually make the problem smaller in reality?
No, and, as Ali's post illustrates, that isn't the intention anyway; it is an obvious attempt to engage politically on a 'anti-woke' culture war basis, because they think that discussing actual policy is probably going to lose them votes.
To be fair, on this, I think they're correct. They are failing on multiple manifesto commitments and everything except the vaccine rollout is a complete shit show. Brexit, China policy, planning, social care, foreign aid... I could go on. For them, it's probably better to keep banging on about statues than anything that matters.
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My basic conclusion is that at best it's a piece of fairly typical Boris politicking; trying to optimistically paint things as he and his advisers want them to be, rather than as they are.
I suppose the question is, does that work? I.e. will making things seem better than they are, actually make things better? Personally I doubt it.
Yes, of course it will work.
Those who want it to be “this way” will no longer have to give credence to “the other side”, because the government says they don’t have to.
The division is deeply entrenched and has been, pretty much, forever.
No I mean the other way round. Does gaslighting people into making them think the problem isn't that big, actually make the problem smaller in reality?
No, and, as Ali's post illustrates, that isn't the intention anyway; it is an obvious attempt to engage politically on a 'anti-woke' culture war basis, because they think that discussing actual policy is probably going to lose them votes.
To be fair, on this, I think they're correct. They are failing on multiple manifesto commitments and everything except the vaccine rollout is a complete shit show. Brexit, China policy, planning, social care, foreign aid... I could go on. For them, it's probably better to keep banging on about statues than anything that matters.
It certainly “lessens” the problem in a particular corner of the population.
The Government will probably get away with it, short term.
The reality is, that the minority groups that are marginalised by such behaviour, are not as negligible as they were even a decade ago. They’re substantial chunks of our society. It’s not a long term strategy.
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The reality is, that the minority groups that are marginalised by such behaviour, are not as negligible as they were even a decade ago. They’re substantial chunks of our society. It’s not a long term strategy.
Ah that may well be true but not in the seats that matter here. Many of the urban areas are very unlikely to be conservative anytime soon anyway. So many of the marginal constituencies are very white British.
I thought this was a really good piece on the report: BBC News - Race report: Was controversy part of the plan?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-56578839
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The manner of the release of the report (interviews about it before it was actually released - really unusual) and the contents - and how it’s been ‘backed up’ all feel quite Cummings like...
I know he’s gone...
But it does feel like a big middle finger.
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The manner of the release of the report (interviews about it before it was actually released - really unusual) and the contents - and how it’s been ‘backed up’ all feel quite Cummings like...
There was even a “no approach” media embargo forbidding experts or relevant parties from being contacted prior to publication so they could be sure that the initial coverage was purely on govt terms.
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Re: vaccine passports or whatever euphemism to is being used for them, I read this https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/johnson-is-in-trouble-over-vaccine-passports-and-it-s-showing
Which is possibly more damning of Johnson than the Guardian usually is.
Personally I can't see what the big problem is with them, but as the government isn't competent enough to implement it, it's all a bit silly anyway, because they won't happen in any meaningful way anyway.
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Had the pleasure of receiving a leaflet through from the Tories re: the local elections.
In the bit about the West Yorkshire mayoral election it says that by electing a Conservative mayor “we will be better placed to get funding from the Government”. Not even shy to admit it.
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Had the pleasure of receiving a leaflet through from the Tories re: the local elections.
In the bit about the West Yorkshire mayoral election it says that by electing a Conservative mayor “we will be better placed to get funding from the Government”. Not even shy to admit it.
Wow. That looks like is a corrupt mindset so normalised that it isn’t even recognised for what it is. Publicise that. National newspapers will report on it.
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Had the pleasure of receiving a leaflet through from the Tories re: the local elections.
In the bit about the West Yorkshire mayoral election it says that by electing a Conservative mayor “we will be better placed to get funding from the Government”. Not even shy to admit it.
Bloody hell, did they add "we'll make sure you're in a lower tier of restrictions next time there's an increase in coronavirus " as well?
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So, Keir Starmer, if anyone else has been paying attention do you think he's underperforming, or is that all just disenchanted left wing Twitter grumbling that he might actually be centrist enough to win something?
I'm unsure myself, which is why I ask.
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Most difficult job in politics right now. He might have his failings and come across as dull as dishwater but I get the impression he's at least realised he needs to play the long game. Anyone agitating for big policy ideas hasn't grasped the fact that it would be completely pointless as no one really cares about politics (or anything) at the moment, other than how soon things might get back to a bit of normality re: Covid.
And the likes of Owen Jones might as well just join the Conservative party as they would clearly prefer Tory rule in perpetuity than tolerate in any way sacrificing their ideology.
I think it'll be easier to judge things a lot better once the vaccine bounce has worn off and the longer term effects of Brexit and Covid aftermath have kicked in.
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Most difficult job in politics right now. He might have his failings and come across as dull as dishwater but I get the impression he's at least realised he needs to play the long game. Anyone agitating for big policy ideas hasn't grasped the fact that it would be completely pointless as no one really cares about politics (or anything) at the moment, other than how soon things might get back to a bit of normality re: Covid.
And the likes of Owen Jones might as well just join the Conservative party as they would clearly prefer Tory rule in perpetuity than tolerate in any way sacrificing their ideology.
I think it'll be easier to judge things a lot better once the vaccine bounce has worn off and the longer term effects of Brexit and Covid aftermath have kicked in.
#wakemeupwhenseptemberends
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Most difficult job in politics right now. He might have his failings and come across as dull as dishwater but I get the impression he's at least realised he needs to play the long game. Anyone agitating for big policy ideas hasn't grasped the fact that it would be completely pointless as no one really cares about politics (or anything) at the moment, other than how soon things might get back to a bit of normality re: Covid.
And the likes of Owen Jones might as well just join the Conservative party as they would clearly prefer Tory rule in perpetuity than tolerate in any way sacrificing their ideology.
I think it'll be easier to judge things a lot better once the vaccine bounce has worn off and the longer term effects of Brexit and Covid aftermath have kicked in.
Yes I largely agree with you Ali, although I think that he shouldn't expect too much in terms of disaffection with the government, and concentrate on presenting himself as more human. Unfortunately I think the government will manage to squash the current cronyism scandal and get out of it, although that shouldn't happen.
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Most difficult job in politics right now. He might have his failings and come across as dull as dishwater but I get the impression he's at least realised he needs to play the long game. Anyone agitating for big policy ideas hasn't grasped the fact that it would be completely pointless as no one really cares about politics (or anything) at the moment, other than how soon things might get back to a bit of normality re: Covid.
And the likes of Owen Jones might as well just join the Conservative party as they would clearly prefer Tory rule in perpetuity than tolerate in any way sacrificing their ideology.
I think it'll be easier to judge things a lot better once the vaccine bounce has worn off and the longer term effects of Brexit and Covid aftermath have kicked in.
#wakemeupwhenseptemberends
What? I don't understand a word of that Matt!
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If I were him I’d be working to a much longer term plan than just the next election - rebuilding the labour party completely, alongside building a coalition with the Lib Dems and an appetite among the public for PR then run on that platform in a few election’s time and lock the Tories out for good. And then I wake up...
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Seriously, fuck the lib dems, those fence sitting bastards are half the reason we're in the mess we are now. A coalition with the greens I think would be a healthy thing however.
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I'm kinda ignoring politics at the moment. As Matt aluded to - its a long game now - no election due for years and Covid is a time to keep the Government honest (ha! as if possible) but not to really play any big political point scoring IMHO.
Right now its Teflon(tm) Boris... but after 2-3 years of the same old ruffled haired game it will (probably) start to wear a bit thin...
But the elephant in the room here for Labour is Scotland. Labour has zero chance of getting a majority unless it can swing all those SNP seats back to Labour. I thought there was a chance of this with Salmons new party splitting the vote - but I'm not sure whether that would have any effect or not..
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Seriously, fuck the lib dems, those fence sitting bastards are half the reason we're in the mess we are now. A coalition with the greens I think would be a healthy thing however.
I was being vaguely pragmatic about it even in my dream. A coalition with the greens would be lovely, but just for that one election all the progressive parties would have to work together for this to happen. Even if that means greens and all others stand aside. Then afterwards they might get more of a look in.
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Most difficult job in politics right now. He might have his failings and come across as dull as dishwater but I get the impression he's at least realised he needs to play the long game. Anyone agitating for big policy ideas hasn't grasped the fact that it would be completely pointless as no one really cares about politics (or anything) at the moment, other than how soon things might get back to a bit of normality re: Covid.
And the likes of Owen Jones might as well just join the Conservative party as they would clearly prefer Tory rule in perpetuity than tolerate in any way sacrificing their ideology.
I think it'll be easier to judge things a lot better once the vaccine bounce has worn off and the longer term effects of Brexit and Covid aftermath have kicked in.
#wakemeupwhenseptemberends
What? I don't understand a word of that Matt!
Green Day song from 2005.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wake_Me_Up_When_September_Ends (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wake_Me_Up_When_September_Ends)
It became synonymous with wishing to hide/retreat from the world, until the bad times pass.
It also (the end of September) matches well with the likely “end of the vaccine bump” you mentioned.
Finally, it represents my own despair of anything changing very quickly, if ever, in this country.
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Interesting to read the above perspectives on the Labour Party and Starmer.
And the likes of Owen Jones might as well just join the Conservative party as they would clearly prefer Tory rule in perpetuity than tolerate in any way sacrificing their ideology.
Presumably the 'likes of Owen Jones' means the 'left' and you're implying that Starmer and Labour's poor performance is down to the 'left'. Well the 'left' have been firmly shoved into the naughty corner and have little influence over the 'right' that is firmly in control of the party and communications. I think it's a little more complex than you suggest, competence in opposition and what is cutting through with the public from Starmer and the LP doesn't seem to be positive stuff.
Memorable moments have been on the whole negative. (If someone can come back with positive memorable moments or positive outstanding weeks he's had I'm all ears).
We've had -
The Black Lives 'Moment'.
Unbelievably shifting rightwards of Rishi and Biden on corporation tax.
Calling for schools to stay open whilst SAGE, parents, teachers and school staff all wanted them closed. Then U-turning immediately after Boris. (Helping the Captain Hindsight label to stick).
Missing opportunities to oppose on things like the right to furlough and lack of support for those not entitled to the furlough scheme. (Literally saying 'he is happy with what the government have in place).
Having a professional footballer step in and provide the opposition for them during summer.
Amidst a incredibly corrupt and scandalous government, calling for more resignations on his own side.
The disappearance of the 10 pledges and in accordance failure to promote a vision for what the party will do in power and failure to use popular policies amongst the public such as climate change, housing, social welfare, increasing corporation tax..
'Putting the Prime Minister on notice' and other empty threats.
Talking about 'values' but failing to put any forward.
He's viewed as 'smarmy', as an 'identikit politician' and a part of the 'metropolitan elite'.
This is all backed up by the data... From IPSOS MORI polls -
Starmer began well with the public +15 net satisfaction in October but has fallen to -9 by March this year with the Conservatives holding a 7 point lead (I think this has increased further).
Amongst Labour Voters he had +66 net satisfaction in October but this is now at +19.
1 in 5 Labour Voters say they are unfavourable towards him and that he will make the party worse.
Starmer is polling at -30 net satisfaction in the North.
It's very likely that Labour are going to lose Hartlepool and will do badly in the local elections. Starmer will be toast.
Whoever ends up in charge (including if it remains Starmer) will need to do some serious work on promoting a vision and message that will cut through to the public. This is not just down to 'vaccine' bumps.
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Presumably the 'likes of Owen Jones' means the 'left' and you're implying that Starmer and Labour's poor performance is down to the 'left'.
Not the 'left', but a reference to those on the left who seem more intent on picking fault with Starmer than they do the Tories. I'm not saying that without this sniping Labour would be winning but it's certainly not helping.
I understand your frustrations Brutus. But the Labour party's problems began long before Starmer took over, and the new leadership were honest about the fact that Labour had further to fall, which is exactly what's happening. The writing was on the wall for Hartlepool before Starmer took charge so he cannot be blamed for that I'm afraid.
And looking at current opinion polls is not that helpful bearing in mind the sort of timescales that Labour might realistically have a chance at getting back into power (another 8yrs minimum?). The Tories will make gains in the upcoming local elections I've no doubt, and they'll very likely win another majority at the next general election. But promoting some utopian vision of a future under Labour or throwing out random policy ideas like sweets (a la Corbyn in 2019) at a time of major flux and when the public aren't playing a blind bit of attention isn't the way to go IMO.
Corbyn was given the benefit of the doubt for 5 years and ultimately proved to be a complete political failure, leaving the Labour party in a dire state. He has his faults but I hope Starmer can be given a bit longer than a year before he's written off.
Out of interest, who would be your preferred candidate for leader?
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Interesting to read the above perspectives on the Labour Party and Starmer.
And the likes of Owen Jones might as well just join the Conservative party as they would clearly prefer Tory rule in perpetuity than tolerate in any way sacrificing their ideology.
Presumably the 'likes of Owen Jones' means the 'left' and you're implying that Starmer and Labour's poor performance is down to the 'left'. Well the 'left' have been firmly shoved into the naughty corner and have little influence over the 'right' that is firmly in control of the party and communications. I think it's a little more complex than you suggest, competence in opposition and what is cutting through with the public from Starmer and the LP doesn't seem to be positive stuff.
Memorable moments have been on the whole negative. (If someone can come back with positive memorable moments or positive outstanding weeks he's had I'm all ears).
We've had -
The Black Lives 'Moment'.
Unbelievably shifting rightwards of Rishi and Biden on corporation tax.
Calling for schools to stay open whilst SAGE, parents, teachers and school staff all wanted them closed. Then U-turning immediately after Boris. (Helping the Captain Hindsight label to stick).
Missing opportunities to oppose on things like the right to furlough and lack of support for those not entitled to the furlough scheme. (Literally saying 'he is happy with what the government have in place).
Having a professional footballer step in and provide the opposition for them during summer.
Amidst a incredibly corrupt and scandalous government, calling for more resignations on his own side.
The disappearance of the 10 pledges and in accordance failure to promote a vision for what the party will do in power and failure to use popular policies amongst the public such as climate change, housing, social welfare, increasing corporation tax..
'Putting the Prime Minister on notice' and other empty threats.
Talking about 'values' but failing to put any forward.
He's viewed as 'smarmy', as an 'identikit politician' and a part of the 'metropolitan elite'.
This is all backed up by the data... From IPSOS MORI polls -
Starmer began well with the public +15 net satisfaction in October but has fallen to -9 by March this year with the Conservatives holding a 7 point lead (I think this has increased further).
Amongst Labour Voters he had +66 net satisfaction in October but this is now at +19.
1 in 5 Labour Voters say they are unfavourable towards him and that he will make the party worse.
Starmer is polling at -30 net satisfaction in the North.
It's very likely that Labour are going to lose Hartlepool and will do badly in the local elections. Starmer will be toast.
Whoever ends up in charge (including if it remains Starmer) will need to do some serious work on promoting a vision and message that will cut through to the public. This is not just down to 'vaccine' bumps.
I agree with you.
In particular your last paragraph.
They just aren’t very good at it and their policies don’t attract enough support.
They are not selling something the public are willing to buy and they don’t seem to be able to accept that.
Labour has had some disastrous periods in office. The 70’s were so bad an entire generation were turned off Labour and they’re still in the voting pool. The infighting and “holier than thou” attitudes are not appealing.
If they don’t find a way past that, they’ll be looking at far more than 8 years in opposition.
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Presumably the 'likes of Owen Jones' means the 'left' and you're implying that Starmer and Labour's poor performance is down to the 'left'.
Not the 'left', but a reference to those on the left who seem more intent on picking fault with Starmer than they do the Tories. I'm not saying that without this sniping Labour would be winning but it's certainly not helping.
I understand your frustrations Brutus. But the Labour party's problems began long before Starmer took over, and the new leadership were honest about the fact that Labour had further to fall, which is exactly what's happening. The writing was on the wall for Hartlepool before Starmer took charge so he cannot be blamed for that I'm afraid.
And looking at current opinion polls is not that helpful bearing in mind the sort of timescales that Labour might realistically have a chance at getting back into power (another 8yrs minimum?). The Tories will make gains in the upcoming local elections I've no doubt, and they'll very likely win another majority at the next general election. But promoting some utopian vision of a future under Labour or throwing out random policy ideas like sweets (a la Corbyn in 2019) at a time of major flux and when the public aren't playing a blind bit of attention isn't the way to go IMO.
Corbyn was given the benefit of the doubt for 5 years and ultimately proved to be a complete political failure, leaving the Labour party in a dire state. He has his faults but I hope Starmer can be given a bit longer than a year before he's written off.
Out of interest, who would be your preferred candidate for leader?
I'm way beyond frustrations AK, you don't understand my feelings, you think you understand.
I've presented some observations on the performance of the present leadership of LP and your response seems to be ah well they don't have a chance for 8 years just leave it be and stay quiet. I'm suggesting that the public don't know what Starmer's values are, what he stands for or what they'll get by supporting his party? They should know.
(Tell me where I suggested random policy ideas, sweets or even mentioned Corbyn? I think we're all bored of talking about Corbyn and it is very much over for him within the PLP).
The vultures are already circling above Starmer, he may deserve longer than a year but I don't think he'll get much longer.
Why do you want Starmer to have more time? What is about him that garners your support? What do you think he's going to do for people (what can we expect)? What does he stand for? Can you give me a top 5 KS political moments of his first year? This 'long game' that you have mentioned, how does it work and how does it end? I'm one of the 1 in 5 Labour Voters convince me to support the man
I will have a go at naming preferred leaders if you'll at least have a stab at bigging up your man Keir.
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Interesting to read the above perspectives on the Labour Party and Starmer.
And the likes of Owen Jones might as well just join the Conservative party as they would clearly prefer Tory rule in perpetuity than tolerate in any way sacrificing their ideology.
Presumably the 'likes of Owen Jones' means the 'left' and you're implying that Starmer and Labour's poor performance is down to the 'left'. Well the 'left' have been firmly shoved into the naughty corner and have little influence over the 'right' that is firmly in control of the party and communications. I think it's a little more complex than you suggest, competence in opposition and what is cutting through with the public from Starmer and the LP doesn't seem to be positive stuff.
Memorable moments have been on the whole negative. (If someone can come back with positive memorable moments or positive outstanding weeks he's had I'm all ears).
We've had -
The Black Lives 'Moment'.
Unbelievably shifting rightwards of Rishi and Biden on corporation tax.
Calling for schools to stay open whilst SAGE, parents, teachers and school staff all wanted them closed. Then U-turning immediately after Boris. (Helping the Captain Hindsight label to stick).
Missing opportunities to oppose on things like the right to furlough and lack of support for those not entitled to the furlough scheme. (Literally saying 'he is happy with what the government have in place).
Having a professional footballer step in and provide the opposition for them during summer.
Amidst a incredibly corrupt and scandalous government, calling for more resignations on his own side.
The disappearance of the 10 pledges and in accordance failure to promote a vision for what the party will do in power and failure to use popular policies amongst the public such as climate change, housing, social welfare, increasing corporation tax..
'Putting the Prime Minister on notice' and other empty threats.
Talking about 'values' but failing to put any forward.
He's viewed as 'smarmy', as an 'identikit politician' and a part of the 'metropolitan elite'.
This is all backed up by the data... From IPSOS MORI polls -
Starmer began well with the public +15 net satisfaction in October but has fallen to -9 by March this year with the Conservatives holding a 7 point lead (I think this has increased further).
Amongst Labour Voters he had +66 net satisfaction in October but this is now at +19.
1 in 5 Labour Voters say they are unfavourable towards him and that he will make the party worse.
Starmer is polling at -30 net satisfaction in the North.
It's very likely that Labour are going to lose Hartlepool and will do badly in the local elections. Starmer will be toast.
Whoever ends up in charge (including if it remains Starmer) will need to do some serious work on promoting a vision and message that will cut through to the public. This is not just down to 'vaccine' bumps.
I agree with you.
In particular your last paragraph.
They just aren’t very good at it and their policies don’t attract enough support.
They are not selling something the public are willing to buy and they don’t seem to be able to accept that.
Labour has had some disastrous periods in office. The 70’s were so bad an entire generation were turned off Labour and they’re still in the voting pool. The infighting and “holier than thou” attitudes are not appealing.
If they don’t find a way past that, they’ll be looking at far more than 8 years in opposition.
Damn right.
I hope you will agree that the LP shocked a lot of people in 2017 and induced panic amongst the 'establishment' (including dissenters within the Party). They were desperately close to forming a government against a back drop of savagery within the media and subterfuge from within. A lot of work was done on the ground by the membership building towards this election and momentum (no pun intended!) gathered and gathered right up to the election. The message cut through.
There was something to be built upon there, I believe a lot of the membership felt that Starmer would bring an element of professionalism/competence into the mix, would deliver on those 10 pledges and there would perhaps be a little compromise to get the support of big donors. It seems that they've done everything possible to distance themselves from all that came before including the stuff that worked rather than building on strengths and bringing something new. A re-run of Blairite focus group politics isn't going to work again the public saw through that the first time around. So here we are.
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I've presented some observations on the performance of the present leadership of LP and your response seems to be ah well they don't have a chance for 8 years just leave it be and stay quiet.
I didn't pick up on your observations first time around, but if you're going to bring them up again I'll answer a few...
The Black Lives 'Moment'.
This was Starmer attempting to avoid the obvious elephant trap of making him support the calls to 'defund the police'. He used the wrong word and was gutted by the media for it. But like a lot of situations he's going to find himself in with a govt obsessed with culture wars I think it's a good strategy to not play the game (e.g. don't let them weaponise the flag by Labour also adopting it).
Amidst a incredibly corrupt and scandalous government, calling for more resignations on his own side.
Not sure who you're referring to, but calling for Tory ministers to resign whilst not keeping your own house in order isn't a good look.
Having a professional footballer step in and provide the opposition for them during summer.
So what if Rashford stole his thunder on school meals? I guess he could have stomped his feet and cried foul, but I don't think that would have gone down well with the public/media?
He's viewed as 'smarmy', as an 'identikit politician' and a part of the 'metropolitan elite'.
Should we be trying to recreate our own Johnson though? These are the attack lines the Tories will use...I couldn't care less how dull he sounds as long as he's honest and competent.
Missing opportunities to oppose on things like the right to furlough and lack of support for those not entitled to the furlough scheme.
All this has been dealt with by Dodds very often through the summer - that's what she's there for. And the economy is one area where Labour are not trusted at all, so they have to tread carefully here, not just be seen to want to spend indefinitely.
failure to promote a vision for what the party will do in power and failure to use popular policies amongst the public such as climate change, housing, social welfare, increasing corporation tax..
Talking about 'values' but failing to put any forward.
This is where the long game is relevant for me and why I think he deserves more time. Apart from people already engaged with the minutae of politics do you honestly think there's an appetite right now among the public to hear about this sort of stuff? I think that time is coming, but as long as most people are just focused on getting back to the pub or seeing family or going on holiday then it just seems like the wrong time. When he does unveil his policy ideas I really hope PR is one of them. If not I may change my opinion of him.
I will have a go at naming preferred leaders if you'll at least have a stab at bigging up your man Keir.
Go on then ;) I should say, I think it's all a moot point anyway cos tomtom is correct that once Scotland goes off on its own it's Tories forever more...and I would have been equally happy with Lisa Nandy...I'm not wedded to Keir.
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The Labour left have been in charge since 2015. And before that too, when you consider the result of the block vote meant Ed, not David, Miliband became leader in 2010. So a good decade on the opposition benches and precious little effective opposition has been in view, despite lots of exploitative policies from Tory led administrations worth fighting against.
Electoral history suggests that the electorate has a preference for the political right. In this context a strongly left wing mandate might have lots of to recommend it socially, but probably not electorally. In fact the only years labour have been in power since the 1970s have been those where they took a very centrist view and blended policies from the centre left and centre right.
I really wouldn't be agitating for the removal of sharp and competent administrator in the form of Starmer after a few dull months. Clearly, Starmer will need to do a better job of selling Labour to the electorate. Treating the leader's job like that of a football manager isn't going to help him do it, especially when there isn't anyone fit to replace him.
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My partner had an online call with Starmer, Rachel Reeves and various other people who lost relatives to covid. She said Starmer was a really engaged listener, very attentive and understanding, asked questions as if he was actually listening and responding. In short, she was impressed.
Perhaps a bit dull, but clever, competent, experienced at running a large organisation. Give me a Merkel or a Biden over a Johnson or a Trump any day - let's not fall for culture war bullshit and promote a safe pair of hands. That's the only way we can win. Chanting the leader's name and going on about Palestine won't cut it.
Re Matt's comment above about Labour and the 1970s, I should point out that the median age in the UK is 40, half the voters weren't even born in the 70s. As for those that were, let's talk about the future: climate change is going to ruin your grandchildren's lives if we don't deal with the problem, and Johnson won't. You can complain about the Winter of Discontent or you can vote for a party that gives a toss about your kids' having a habitable planet. Discuss it with them sometime.
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My partner had an online call with Starmer, Rachel Reeves and various other people who lost relatives to covid. She said Starmer was a really engaged listener, very attentive and understanding, asked questions as if he was actually listening and responding. In short, she was impressed.
Perhaps a bit dull, but clever, competent, experienced at running a large organisation. Give me a Merkel or a Biden over a Johnson or a Trump any day - let's not fall for culture war bullshit and promote a safe pair of hands. That's the only way we can win. Chanting the leader's name and going on about Palestine won't cut it.
Re Matt's comment above about Labour and the 1970s, I should point out that the median age in the UK is 40, half the voters weren't even born in the 70s. As for those that were, let's talk about the future: climate change is going to ruin your grandchildren's lives if we don't deal with the problem, and Johnson won't. You can complain about the Winter of Discontent or you can vote for a party that gives a toss about your kids' having a habitable planet. Discuss it with them sometime.
I don’t disagree with that at all, it’s just those disaffected in those times still remember it clearly and still won’t vote Labour. It isn’t just that, either, the entire Foot era and the perceived sympathy for the Soviets. The Blair era ameliorated that perception, somewhat, however Corbynism dragged it right back there for many older voters. Median age isn’t the issue, either, it’s engagement.
Getting young people to engage and vote has been an uphill struggle since year dot. It probably won’t change very soon, if ever. It’s just too boring, until you realise you’re paying the price of not engaging (so, what? Mid thirties?) and you start to really lean into your political thoughts and convictions.
I don’t know, perhaps you do, what’s the median age of voter?
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It's exactly this game of we're not going to say that or challenge this because it will upset the 'red wall" or another perceived group of voters that I think turns people off.
So what was it about Keir or Lisa that you bought into I don't think you said?
I would hazard a guess that they're not going to push for PR.
I really like Zarah Sultana,, she's relatable, her politics align with my own and she's not afraid to speak her mind. Not many of her ilk around and I know just how unlikely, anyone like this, is to become leader.
Also agree with TT that we"re doomed to eternal Conservative rule. (No change there really, historically speaking Labour has held power for a tiny proportion of time in this country regardless of the faction in charge.)
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Re Matt's comment above about Labour and the 1970s, I should point out that the median age in the UK is 40, half the voters weren't even born in the 70s. As for those that were, let's talk about the future: climate change is going to ruin your grandchildren's lives if we don't deal with the problem, and Johnson won't. You can complain about the Winter of Discontent or you can vote for a party that gives a toss about your kids' having a habitable planet. Discuss it with them sometime.
I don’t disagree with that at all, it’s just those disaffected in those times still remember it clearly and still won’t vote Labour. It isn’t just that, either, the entire Foot era and the perceived sympathy for the Soviets. The Blair era ameliorated that perception, somewhat, however Corbynism dragged it right back there for many older voters. Median age isn’t the issue, either, it’s engagement.
Getting young people to engage and vote has been an uphill struggle since year dot. It probably won’t change very soon, if ever. It’s just too boring, until you realise you’re paying the price of not engaging (so, what? Mid thirties?) and you start to really lean into your political thoughts and convictions.
I don’t know, perhaps you do, what’s the median age of voter?
According to this, it's about 55: https://blogs.bath.ac.uk/iprblog/2019/05/21/the-rise-of-the-grey-vote/ (There are a lot of reasons why it's hard to work out, which the authors cover in some depth, so it's an estimate.)
There's a quite well evidenced idea (which I unforntunately don't have the papers about to hand) that people's view of politics is often shaped by the world as it was when they entered adulthood, ie about 20. That would put the "median view" at 1986, so Labour and the 1970s is still a more elderly preoccupation, ie early 60s and above. I agree that the Corbyn years were a disastrous reminder to that age group of their youth.
There was an interesting Economist piece the other week that suggested one reason for the Conservatives' success in the Red Wall seats was not just down to demographics, but that it is quite cheap to live a semi-detached, two car Tory lifestyle in England's small towns.
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So what was it about Keir or Lisa that you bought into I don't think you said?
When I was a yoof and long before I engaged with politics (about 10yrs ago!) I used to listen to Jeremy Vine, and Keir had a slot on there sometimes when he was director of DPP talking about his work and certain cases that came across his desk. I thought he was a thoroughly decent and likeable guy. I followed his career ever since and wasn’t disappointed once he’d entered politics. I thought it was a massive plus that he’d actually had a worthwhile career before entering politics but also that coming in without a lot of baggage would be important to limit the ammunition the Tory press had. If all they’ve managed to come up with so far is calling him ‘dull’ or ‘smarmy’ or a childish insult like ‘captain hindsight’ then I think he’s doing well on that front. Not to mention donkeygate which backfired spectacularly.
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Re Matt's comment above about Labour and the 1970s, I should point out that the median age in the UK is 40, half the voters weren't even born in the 70s. As for those that were, let's talk about the future: climate change is going to ruin your grandchildren's lives if we don't deal with the problem, and Johnson won't. You can complain about the Winter of Discontent or you can vote for a party that gives a toss about your kids' having a habitable planet. Discuss it with them sometime.
I don’t disagree with that at all, it’s just those disaffected in those times still remember it clearly and still won’t vote Labour. It isn’t just that, either, the entire Foot era and the perceived sympathy for the Soviets. The Blair era ameliorated that perception, somewhat, however Corbynism dragged it right back there for many older voters. Median age isn’t the issue, either, it’s engagement.
Getting young people to engage and vote has been an uphill struggle since year dot. It probably won’t change very soon, if ever. It’s just too boring, until you realise you’re paying the price of not engaging (so, what? Mid thirties?) and you start to really lean into your political thoughts and convictions.
I don’t know, perhaps you do, what’s the median age of voter?
According to this, it's about 55: https://blogs.bath.ac.uk/iprblog/2019/05/21/the-rise-of-the-grey-vote/ (There are a lot of reasons why it's hard to work out, which the authors cover in some depth, so it's an estimate.)
There's a quite well evidenced idea (which I unforntunately don't have the papers about to hand) that people's view of politics is often shaped by the world as it was when they entered adulthood, ie about 20. That would put the "median view" at 1986, so Labour and the 1970s is still a more elderly preoccupation, ie early 60s and above. I agree that the Corbyn years were a disastrous reminder to that age group of their youth.
There was an interesting Economist piece the other week that suggested one reason for the Conservatives' success in the Red Wall seats was not just down to demographics, but that it is quite cheap to live a semi-detached, two car Tory lifestyle in England's small towns.
Well, n=1, but I’m 50 and remember well the power cuts, bin men on strike, firefighters strike (and the “Green Goddess” fleet of the army taking over) and actually going hungry because public sector pay dipped so low we couldn’t afford to eat properly (the closest the UK police ever came to going on strike). Maggie was a breath of fresh air and life improved for many in 79. I would become an adult before I turned away from the Cons and was extremely opposed to Foot, softened to Kinnock. Began to move left during the Blair era, still haven’t moved left of Liberal. Most of my peer group still reliably vote Tory and are deeply, vehemently, suspicious of Labour. I would guess the group is split 20/80 Lib/Con.
The Blair era, demonstrated that a center left government could be trusted not to screw the economy, drag the nation into general strikes and drive families into misery.
The country didn’t immediately lurch to the right at the end of that time, we moved into a period of coalition and it could have been a Lib/Lab coalition if Labour hadn’t been so up it’s own arse.
Labour will always be at a disadvantage to the Tories, because the Tories will do and say what ever it takes to get into power, have few principles beyond a belief in their own superiority and Labour will self immolate at the slightest hint of deviation from ideological purity (which each faction sees constantly in every other faction).
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Where did you grow up Matt?
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SK that's a cheap caricature of Labour under JC. The giant swing in Labour's favour, the close call to a dangerous socialist government, Ian McNichol and Co. shitting themselves weren't caused by people chanting a name and going on about Palestine. If only it were that easy.. (Many people worked very hard to make that result happen). (Many people worked very hard to prevent it to).
To be clear, I am not advocating for Starmer to go, I just have an inkling that he will after the elections in May. A year isn't enough for anyone.
I'm waiting for the 'mask to come off' (his words), see what he has beyond competence and being a likeable chap. I hope the LP can pull off a victory at the next GE but I don't think the current approach will achieve that. Time will tell.
Good to see Starmer following up on the whole dodgy Dave's dodgy dealings thing today. Interesting to see where this goes and how hard it is persued.
Conservative rule appears to be the way of things here, with the rare circumstance induced Labour government here and there.
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Where did you grow up Matt?
Devon, until 75, North Cornwall from 75 to 89.
Dad was a Gas turbine Engineer with Centrax until the industry collapse ~70/71, so became a copper on his redundancy. I think the salary nadir, really bit around 76. My Grandfather was Foreman at a Foundry in Exeter then, which went under at that time.
However, most of my father’s family were from Coventry and the “Boss”, Gran Glover (Romany gypsy/My Great-grandmother) still ruled from her little terrace front room, into the early 80s...
Anyway, weird family. Dad very working class, mum was very middle/tea parties at Buck house/daddy senior mason class.
Put it this way, my dad was a copper who’d left school at 15 to become an engineering apprentice and mum was an artist, painting commissions of stately homes and dragging us from gallery to gallery around the country, wherever she was “showing” that week...
(You should have felt the tension when dad was deployed for the miners strike)...
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Thanks. We are a similar age, but different localities. Interesting what you say about Tory being the main allegiance of your circle. Maybe that is quite common to forces personnel? And the South West- a Tory-LibDem split I think? I suspect many like me who grew up in Liverpool through the 80s are very disinclined to vote Tory.
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Labour will always be at a disadvantage to the Tories, because the Tories will do and say what ever it takes to get into power, have few principles beyond a belief in their own superiority and Labour will self immolate at the slightest hint of deviation from ideological purity (which each faction sees constantly in every other faction).
Whereas the conservative party constantly seems in grave danger of doing this; being riven by probably even more contested opinions than labour. But it always manages to sublimate or otherwise stamp on infighting when the issue of retaining or gaining power becomes important. Johnson managed it by simply removing the whip from rebels but he wont be able to do that again.
They have largely neutered their perennial source of fights by leaving the EU, but will have significant problems from many of the same people over foreign policy, levelling up etc.
Starmer has had an unspectacular but competent year in my opinion. He did take over after the party's worst results in a century so he has had a pretty difficult job to do. He has dealt with antisemitism as a live issue very effectively, and has a good front bench team.
Re Brutus' recommendation of Zara Sultana, she has a tiny majority on her constituency, she has a well evidenced record of rather dubious social media posts before and after selection as a candidate, and has less than 2 years experience as an MP. I can't see what role you think she might be suitable for, unless you're just saying you like her political slant.
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I am not advocating for Starmer to go, I just have an inkling that he will after the elections in May. A year isn't enough for anyone.
What makes you think he’ll go? Aside from some fairly minor grumblings from certain factions I don’t see much evidence of an appetite to remove him. And I don’t think it’s fair to judge him based on Labour’s performance in May. These results were pretty much ‘baked in’ already. You mentioned Hartlepool as an indicator - a classic Brexit supporting ‘red wall’ area where UKIP had over 25% share of the vote last time. Given that the Tories have delivered exactly what voters there asked for and UKIP are no more, those votes are only going one way and it’s not back to Labour. How on earth could Starmer have turned that around in a year?
I hope the LP can pull off a victory at the next GE but I don't think the current approach will achieve that. Time will tell.
Brutus, let’s be honest about the situation Labour is in. Unless the Tories self-destruct in the next year or two there is very little chance of a Labour victory at the next GE under any leader or with any approach. If Labour make any gains at the next GE I would see that as a victory - so dire is the situation Starmer inherited.
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Quite a few posts have alluded to the long amount of time to the next GE - due in 2024 under the fixed term parliaments act. Its a common view in the wider commentariat. The FTP Act specifies a fixed 5 year term for parliaments and was brought in by the coalition gov elected in 2010. Since then general elections have been in:
2015, 2017, 2019
You do the maths.
Current gov has also (in December 2020) proposed a repeal bill of the FTP Act, which will pass - huge gov majority plus its in Labour's last manifesto to repeal also.
All told, it don't mean shit - next GE will be at the time of the PM's choosing...
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Absolutely. May 2023 is the latest betting
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I think Starmer will go because of increasing pressure post May elections. (I don't have a crystal ball, it's pure conjecture and of course I could be completely wrong. It is OK to be wrong sometimes right or will I get slayed if I'm wrong?)
TD Zarah was not a serious suggestion, I like her, there are very few MPs that I would politically align myself with so my pool of choice is somewhat limited.
Not many of her ilk around and I know just how unlikely, anyone like this, is to become leader.
Let's be really honest about the situation in this country. The odds are and always have been hugely in favour of Torries and Tory values whilst being heavily stacked against any Labour government with the slightest socialist tendencies.
Matt I'm not too far off 50 myself and my family are from Neath in South Wales. One of my grandfather's was a barber (he died in his 40s) and the other coal miner, fireman (he attended Aberfan and was affected by this experience for life) and latterly a steel worker. My parents 'escaped' to England in the early 70s, my father worked in local government and my mother worked in a supermarket. I attended a very Liberal Steiner style Catholic secondary school (weird I know! ). I don't know many people who would vote Conservative.
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Let's be really honest about the situation in this country. The odds are and always have been hugely in favour of Torries and Tory values whilst being heavily stacked against any Labour government with the slightest socialist tendencies.
Yep. Unfortunately you're spot on. Which is why I'd rather Labour give themselves at least a fighting chance of getting back into power by appealing to the middle ground voters, which has been the only winning formula so far. That's despite probably sharing the same values as you. From what you've posted on here I'm sure we'd have very similar views of how we'd like the world and our politics to be. We just have different views of how best to get there and I think it's a mistake to read too much into what happened in 2017, even if a lot of people worked hard towards it. I think Labour regaining the middle ground and then drifting leftwards over time, taking the electorate with them, is more likely to be succesful than tacking even further left now and hoping that voters suddenly 'see the light'.
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I think Starmer will go because of increasing pressure post May elections.
TD Zarah was not a serious suggestion, I like her, there are very few MPs that I would politically align myself with so my pool of choice is somewhat limited.
I find this hard to believe as a realistic possibility, if you look at previous opposition leaders who have later won office; most recently David Cameron, they experienced very similar high popularity followed by a significant period of decline in popularity.
I think that in the middle of last year Starmer had higher ratings than any previous opposition leader other than Tony Blair, so he has farther to fall than most.
Let's be really honest about the situation in this country. The odds are and always have been hugely in favour of Torries and Tory values whilst being heavily stacked against any Labour government with the slightest socialist tendencies.
If Labour stopped fighting itself so bitterly it would have a much better chance.
If socialist tendencies means a Corbyn era style manifesto, then the reason that the odds are stacked against it is because most people will never vote for it.
The constant references by the likes of Owen Jones to 2017 always fail to remember that they were up against a ludicrously unpopular opponent, who intoned tremulously that nothing has changed in lieu of any campaign message, at her most prominent speech the signs fell apart behind her, and most of the press railed against her flagship policy and labelled it dementia tax. Even given all that, Theresa May won.
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I don’t think it either unfair or far from the mark, to describe Labour as a party of idealists, with broadly good (even great) intentions (as opposed to Tories, who essentially preach selfishness as a virtue).
There in lies the issue. Labour are trying to sell an ideological position that, whilst they may desire such a world, the majority of people do not believe possible.
I fully agree,that if we all pulled together, we could make this world a better place etc etc. I like the potential for liberty, equality and fraternity, personally.
Society pisses me off, daily, to a teeth grinding degree, that leads to idle fantasies of ejecting much of the Earth’s “ruling class” into the vacuum of space (televised, of course).
But, until everybody “left” of the majority of Tories (and I include moderate Tories) realise their common desires and the extremists recognise they will only see fruit in their dreams, unless they play the long game (over generations, not parliaments) then nothing will change.
To really affect change, the largest single block of voters must be engaged and unified.
That block is and always will be, the centre ground. Governments are decided by where those people choose to turn, not the core party members.
If Labour moved aggressively into the centre, it would bring all but it’s most ardent communists with it, attract the disaffected middle ground (who aren’t exactly fond of current government, merely accepting it as better than the alternative). That is the road to power and the only route to affecting real societal change.
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Something which passed largely unnoticed this week was that Priti Patel managed to break immigration law by trying to deport a witness to a death, and possibly the ministerial code again. Perhaps everyone realises that nothing will happen to her anyway so it's not worth bothering with? If so that's pretty depressing.
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https://dominiccummings.com/2021/04/23/statement-regarding-no10-claims-today/
(Popcorn emoticon)
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Ohhhh baby a juicy steak!
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BBC News - Dominic Cummings: No 10 defends PM after former aide's blog post
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-56870370
Its brilliant spectator sport. Cummings very clearly has evidence of his claims, he says so and offers to testify under oath; unless hes bluffing but I seriously doubt that. You have to wonder how much further this has to go. Kuenssberg said on Newscast that she thinks that theres a lot more to come...
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I wonder what is in this cardboard box....BBC News - Dominic Cummings and Lee Cain: Exits give chance to 'reset government'
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-54941846
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Not enough time for a COVID enquiry, more than enough time to find tens of thousands of pounds for carpets and curtains. Sick.
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Not enough time for a COVID enquiry, more than enough time to find tens of thousands of pounds for carpets and curtains. Sick.
Have you seen the front page of the Mail?
BJ: “I’d rather see bodies piled high in their thousands”
Etc.
Bojo is being thrown under the bus.
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https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/boris-johnson-dominic-cummings-lockdown-b1837326.html
https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/uk-denies-report-that-pm-johnson-said-let-bodies-pile-high-2021-04-26/
It's from the Mail so I wouldn't trust them for a nano-second (aside from the fact that it's presumably from Cummings), but the phrasing certainly has a Boris-y ring to it, and I will happily watch them tear each other apart.
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Meanwhile - what did he say in the meeting with the Glazers (ManU owners) 3 or 4 days before the Super £eague was announced....?
https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/boris-johnson-urged-come-clean-20465242
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Not enough time for a COVID enquiry, more than enough time to find tens of thousands of pounds for carpets and curtains. Sick.
Have you seen the front page of the Mail?
BJ: “I’d rather see bodies piled high in their thousands”
Etc.
Bojo is being thrown under the bus.
If Cummings isn't just lying (which is entirely possible) and he has evidence of Johnson saying that which isn't deniable, then my guess is that it's bye bye PM.
It's rather depressing that The Times and The Express might as well be written by Boris Johnson for all the criticism their front pages allow. The Times does publish quite a few articles inside which are considerably more damning.
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Meanwhile - what did he say in the meeting with the Glazers (ManU owners) 3 or 4 days before the Super £eague was announced....?
https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/boris-johnson-urged-come-clean-20465242
In terms of public approval, that could be the worst thing for him, if he gave the super league his blessing, given how popular that was.
However it's probably all far too optimistic, and Johnson will probably get away with it like the rotund oaf with a sense of entitlement and no work ethic that he is.
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Meanwhile - what did he say in the meeting with the Glazers (ManU owners) 3 or 4 days before the Super £eague was announced....?
https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/boris-johnson-urged-come-clean-20465242
Oh come on, a quick chat (probably about the weather) in a corridor is suddenly approval for a significant set of plans? Bollocks.
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Agree, I know he's stupid, but not that stupid. Pure conjecture.
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Oh, iiiiiinteresting -- looks like there are multiple sources for "let the bodies pile high in their thousands" who are not Cummings:
https://www.itv.com/news/2021-04-26/robert-peston-boris-johnson-did-make-bodies-pile-high-in-their-thousands-comment
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-56890714
And we're already into the "it was just locker-room talk" school of defence:
https://twitter.com/JasonGroves1/status/1386631561265750017
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Even ze BBC are saying their sources say it’s true.
Problem is - I think many people - supporters or otherwise half expect him to make stupid statements like this. They elected a bellend, knowing he was a bellend etc...
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I kind of feel like even if I thought something like that... I'd never say it? Why would you say it? What do you think it will sound like?
The fact that he lied about it is pretty damning too cos like... he knows how awful it is and then oops caught in the lie
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Don't think he can shrug this one off quite as easily.
Looks like Rothermere wants a new PM anyway, maybe with Rishi out of the picture for now he thinks he could get Gove who'll do him more favours, so time to strike.
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Even the times this morning has Johnson's quote about bodies as a headline.
BBC News - Newspaper headlines: 'Boris on ropes' and new 'let Covid rip' claim
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-the-papers-56896604
I thought Rachel Reeves sounded good in the Commons yesterday, but Labour need to be careful here as it's easy for the general population who don't read papers think that politicians are all the same, even without any evidence.
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Therese Coffey has been on the today programme, sounding distinctly uncomfortable and pissed off for having to defend the various allegations against the PM. "What I've been told is that hes done nothing wrong " hmmm...
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Therese Coffey has been on the today programme, sounding distinctly uncomfortable and pissed off for having to defend the various allegations against the PM.
Good. No sympathy whatsoever for people like her. If you sign up to be one of Johnson's yes men (/women) you should know full well you'll have to defend the indefensible sooner or later. And if the papers truly are turning on him it's only going to get harder for them...
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Saw Therese Coffey described as a haunted tea cosy today, which seems apt. Awful woman, who incidentally was the MP I angrily emailed at the time of the Cummings affair and was only too happy to defend him then. Seems a bit convenient he's now not to be trusted.
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Anxiously awaiting the BoJo / System of a Down memes.
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more than enough time to find tens of thousands of pounds for carpets and curtains.
"Wait and see what declarations are made" seems to be the only defense coming from Johnson and his people re: funding of the refurb. Sounds to me like they know they've fucked up but don't want it to come out until after 6th May.
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Despite the investigation that's been announced, as the PM Boris will get the final say on whether he broke the ministerial code with regards to the recent expenses scandal. You couldn't make it up...
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Nice bit of poacher / gamekeeper there. On a par with Sturgeon.
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"Wait and see what declarations are made" seems to be the only defense coming from Johnson and his people re: funding of the refurb. Sounds to me like they know they've fucked up but don't want it to come out until after 6th May.
(Working a lot atm and wrote this yesterday, has aged fine today though now I've caught up...)
Well quite. Apparently this is also "under review" by the cabinet secretary for the next few weeks. Sorry, but if so it is a simple matter of dates of the ridiculous "renovation" (of the most renovated flat in existence), and who paid what when. 5 minutes with bank statements and contractor's invoices would suffice - at least it would if it was the "little people" (us) who fell under suspicion. They are covering something up. The media, and actually the select committee who questioned the cabinet secretary, are failing us here; anyone with an ounce of sense could ask the right questions and yet they don't. This could be resolved in no time. Aside - today they voted against banning leaseholders being liable for footing the bill for dangerous cladding, yet the PM can quite happily choose not to pay for new sofas for himself??? (Until of course someone acts as his conscience and tells him it might not be a good idea).
I have been working so not well up on whether there has much discussion of this out in the world, but surely the dates are important? I.e. if this flat stuff went on in July 2019 say, then it would look comparatively better than say mid-very bad-pandemic-response in 2020 when you would think it should be all hands on deck at No. 10, rather than wallpaper selection. Anyone know?
RE the alleged "let the bodies pile high" comment. Frankly the government's defence is correct - this is Westminster tittle-tattle. I.e. who may or may not have said what when in an SW postcode = nonsense, unless of course a recording emerges. The simple fact is regardless of of what words were or were not used, the bodies *have* piled high. It seems like the media have forgotten this fact and preferred to concentrate on more "Westminster tittle-tattle" about whether this is "cutting through". There are circa 150,000 families for whom it has cut through pretty definitively.
RE the Cummings factor. The man is known as a liar throughout the land since last year, so obviously we shouldn't believe him should we? However there was one notable group of people who apparently believed every word he said RE his trip to Barnard Castle....at the time......
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Well you may find Cummings to be an unreliable witness Nigel, but we have it on the PM's authority that he isn't. So presumably no 10 will shortly confirm the allegations. :)
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"Wait and see what declarations are made" seems to be the only defense coming from Johnson and his people re: funding of the refurb. Sounds to me like they know they've fucked up but don't want it to come out until after 6th May.
(Working a lot atm and wrote this yesterday, has aged fine today though now I've caught up...)
Well quite. Apparently this is also "under review" by the cabinet secretary for the next few weeks. Sorry, but if so it is a simple matter of dates of the ridiculous "renovation" (of the most renovated flat in existence), and who paid what when. 5 minutes with bank statements and contractor's invoices would suffice - at least it would if it was the "little people" (us) who fell under suspicion. They are covering something up. The media, and actually the select committee who questioned the cabinet secretary, are failing us here; anyone with an ounce of sense could ask the right questions and yet they don't. This could be resolved in no time. Aside - today they voted against banning leaseholders being liable for footing the bill for dangerous cladding, yet the PM can quite happily choose not to pay for new sofas for himself??? (Until of course someone acts as his conscience and tells him it might not be a good idea).
I have been working so not well up on whether there has much discussion of this out in the world, but surely the dates are important? I.e. if this flat stuff went on in July 2019 say, then it would look comparatively better than say mid-very bad-pandemic-response in 2020 when you would think it should be all hands on deck at No. 10, rather than wallpaper selection. Anyone know?
RE the alleged "let the bodies pile high" comment. Frankly the government's defence is correct - this is Westminster tittle-tattle. I.e. who may or may not have said what when in an SW postcode = nonsense, unless of course a recording emerges. The simple fact is regardless of of what words were or were not used, the bodies *have* piled high. It seems like the media have forgotten this fact and preferred to concentrate on more "Westminster tittle-tattle" about whether this is "cutting through". There are circa 150,000 families for whom it has cut through pretty definitively.
RE the Cummings factor. The man is known as a liar throughout the land since last year, so obviously we shouldn't believe him should we? However there was one notable group of people who apparently believed every word he said RE his trip to Barnard Castle....at the time......
The point of why the bodies comment if it is proven really matters, is surely that it was part of a heated debate about the autumn 2020 lockdown delay and Johnson's callous indifference to heath concerns at the expense of being concerned about his own popularity and the economy?
As to its veracity or otherwise, its very much like the 350 million for the NHS slogan which was obviously rubbish; similarly it's easy to imagine both Cummings making it up in his own interest, and Johnson having said it. In the end though, nothing will come out of it I suspect.
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Well quite. Apparently this is also "under review" by the cabinet secretary for the next few weeks. Sorry, but if so it is a simple matter of dates of the ridiculous "renovation" (of the most renovated flat in existence), and who paid what when. 5 minutes with bank statements and contractor's invoices would suffice - at least it would if it was the "little people" (us) who fell under suspicion. They are covering something up. The media, and actually the select committee who questioned the cabinet secretary, are failing us here; anyone with an ounce of sense could ask the right questions and yet they don't. This could be resolved in no time. Aside - today they voted against banning leaseholders being liable for footing the bill for dangerous cladding, yet the PM can quite happily choose not to pay for new sofas for himself??? (Until of course someone acts as his conscience and tells him it might not be a good idea).
I'm sure this was part of the part of an episode of The Thick of It.
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I'm sure this was part of the part of an episode of The Thick of It.
I think the current administration thought that was the instruction manual for government.
They really, really need to go. The cladding crisis is literally bankrupting thousands of people.
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RE the alleged "let the bodies pile high" comment. Frankly the government's defence is correct - this is Westminster tittle-tattle. I.e. who may or may not have said what when in an SW postcode = nonsense, unless of course a recording emerges. The simple fact is regardless of of what words were or were not used, the bodies *have* piled high. It seems like the media have forgotten this fact and preferred to concentrate on more "Westminster tittle-tattle" about whether this is "cutting through". There are circa 150,000 families for whom it has cut through pretty definitively.
As a member of one of those 150,000 families I can say the bodies comment is categorically not Westminster tittle tattle.
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RE the alleged "let the bodies pile high" comment. Frankly the government's defence is correct - this is Westminster tittle-tattle. I.e. who may or may not have said what when in an SW postcode = nonsense, unless of course a recording emerges. The simple fact is regardless of of what words were or were not used, the bodies *have* piled high. It seems like the media have forgotten this fact and preferred to concentrate on more "Westminster tittle-tattle" about whether this is "cutting through". There are circa 150,000 families for whom it has cut through pretty definitively.
As a member of one of those 150,000 families I can say the bodies comment is categorically not Westminster tittle tattle.
I'm really sorry to hear that Sean.
I think that the comment is an insight into Boris Johnson's character which is actually obvious from some of his actions; in that he is definitely not the good humoured funster which he expends a lot of effort to pretend to be. He is a rather darker, crueller character who will throw people out of the party if they disagree with him or stand in his way. He will (and does) lie, cheat and screw without caring one iota about anyone else. He appears unconcerned by how his actions might affect anyone else, and interested only in his own pleasure and enrichment. I don't, needless to say, think that these are ideal qualities in a Prime Minister.
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https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/can-boris-johnson-afford-to-be-prime-minister-m2brczgq9?shareToken=504186b82c89fd6eee54599206a6192b
£90,000 to refurbish a flat?
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The wallpaper was supplied by a Tory/VoteLeave donor too…
Though whether that meant he got it for free (should have been logged..) or was ripped off for it 😁 remain both equally possible and uncertain!
There’s one of the most gushingly effusive ‘critiques’ of Boris by Laura K on the BBC website today - that really she should be embarrassed about…
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The wallpaper was supplied by a Tory/VoteLeave donor too…
Though whether that meant he got it for free
Benefit in kind- gifts are declarable.
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There’s one of the most gushingly effusive ‘critiques’ of Boris by Laura K on the BBC website today - that really she should be embarrassed about…
I read this since you mentioned it, I generally like LK, and think that she is an extremely talented and well connected journalist. However, on this I agree with you. I have not seen any other commentary about the PM's conduct which is so mealy mouthed, he is lying, in that he's openly trying to mislead parliament. Starmer's comments at pmqs were strategically canny, as he quoted the ministers code after the PM's reply saying that ministers who knowingly misled parliament should resign.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-56624437
Unfortunately, the Conservatives will probably win in Hartlepool next week, and most of the media will spin this as a victory for Johnson and evidence that Starmer isn't cutting the mustard. This is rubbish, it's one of the strongest leave voting areas of the country, and Labour only won last time because UKIP or whatever they were called at the time split the leave / Conservative vote share. Brexit redefined voting patterns in many areas of the country and will continue to do so for years.
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The wallpaper was supplied by a Tory/VoteLeave donor too…
Though whether that meant he got it for free
Benefit in kind- gifts are declarable.
Johnson is obviously guilty of this and more, however they are obviously lining Ben Elliot up to take the rap for it.
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The builders* working for us at the moment all voted Tory last election “because the other bloke was hopeless wasn’t he” - have all been chatting about Tory sleaze and Boris lying/flat expenses this week. See what happens on Thursday but I’d be surprised if it didn’t have some effect…
*anti brexit, generally pretty sensible/centrist views on things…
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Not sure quite where to put this excerpt of Musa Okwonga’s reflection on his education at Eton, so here it goes. https://inews.co.uk/news/long-reads/eton-privilege-nurtured-uk-power-structures-systemic-racism-forged-952620
Thoughts on the undesirability of power contained within such a tight group of people.
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Not sure quite where to put this excerpt of Musa Okwonga’s reflection on his education at Eton, so here it goes. https://inews.co.uk/news/long-reads/eton-privilege-nurtured-uk-power-structures-systemic-racism-forged-952620
Thoughts on the undesirability of power contained within such a tight group of people.
I still remember the shock of arriving at university and meeting these people who had gone to such schools.
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And of hearing, after enquiring how someone's first weekend had gone, that it had been very low key, just a few mates and a few bottles of Veuve Clicquot.
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There’s one of the most gushingly effusive ‘critiques’ of Boris by Laura K on the BBC website today - that really she should be embarrassed about…
The article can be paraphrased as: “Yes he lies through his teeth, but in a good way like a loveable rogue”
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There’s one of the most gushingly effusive ‘critiques’ of Boris by Laura K on the BBC website today - that really she should be embarrassed about…
The article can be paraphrased as: “Yes he lies through his teeth, but in a good way like a loveable rogue l
ike a rogue that I'd actually quite like a highly paid media job with”
There is a strange disconnect between the reality that everyone knows that Johnson did not pay the original bills, and he and his party are scrambling to duck any responsibility, certainly not for Johnson himself.
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There is a strange disconnect between the reality that everyone knows that Johnson did not pay the original bills, and he and his party are scrambling to duck any responsibility, certainly not for Johnson himself.
We seem to have entered a Trump-style hyper-partisan post-truth world over here quicker than I’d anticipated. Imagine what will happen when GB News kicks off...
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I don't think it's nearly as bad as the US situation yet. Trump's level of corruption was so much worse, as will hopefully be investigated following the FBI investigation into Guiliani. You and very possibly I may well disagree with Andrew Neil on many things, but he is a proper journalist. Remember Johnson refused to be interviewed by him, and hes not afraid to ask difficult questions of both sides in politics. We also don't have MPs who sign up to Qanon, and noone with idiotic views like Tucker Carlson who has that much influence.
I do think that social media is helping the crazies to gain a foothold though. It really confuses me how many people will believe some bullshit on Facebook but not, say, a government health adviser.
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Came across a wonderful word last night 'kakiocacracy' (think I've got that right) which apparently means ' a nation governed by the least capable'.
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Came across a wonderful word last night 'kakiocacracy' (think I've got that right) which apparently means ' a nation governed by the least capable'.
Dictionary definition:
kakistocracy
/kakɪˈstɒkrəsi/
noun
government by the least suitable or competent citizens of a state.
"the danger is that this will reduce us to kakistocracy"
a state or society governed by its least suitable or competent citizens.
That's brilliant, thanks. Not a word I've encountered before.
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It really confuses me how many people will believe some bullshit on Facebook but not, say, a government health adviser.
Can't beat a bit of good old confirmation bias.
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Came across a wonderful word last night 'kakiocacracy' (think I've got that right) which apparently means ' a nation governed by the least capable'.
Dictionary definition:
kakistocracy
/kakɪˈstɒkrəsi/
noun
government by the least suitable or competent citizens of a state.
"the danger is that this will reduce us to kakistocracy"
a state or society governed by its least suitable or competent citizens.
That's brilliant, thanks. Not a word I've encountered before.
Yeah, sorry for the initial mis-spelling, combination of fat fingers and poor memory I suspect.
As an aside, I came across the word in 'Ducks, Newburyport' after reading comments in the books thread. Anyway off topic.
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Not sure quite where to put this excerpt of Musa Okwonga’s reflection on his education at Eton, so here it goes. https://inews.co.uk/news/long-reads/eton-privilege-nurtured-uk-power-structures-systemic-racism-forged-952620
Thoughts on the undesirability of power contained within such a tight group of people.
I still remember the shock of arriving at university and meeting these people who had gone to such schools.
I still remember the shock of arriving at university and finding people openly shocked to be meeting people like me, and doubly shocked that they'd mostly been taught that we were cunts to a man. Thankfully not all.
Can you imagine writing that about any other sector of society in 2020? I womder how far woke people will have to be before it becomes unacceptable to be openly bigoted about people whose parents happened to have more money than theirs?
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I like your contributions JB but this one seems wide of the mark tbh. I don’t think lagers is trotting out any social prejudice there, just reflecting on the socially narrow experiences he had had. I would hazard that is even more true now, our society seems to be growing increasingly siloed to me.
As for people from a well off background, hanging out with kids fresh out of Eton in the JCR who’d think nothing of blowing a load of dough on champers to liven up a dull afternoon was certainly an eye-opener to me, state school educated with free school meals.
Most people hold mental stereotypes but aren’t really prejudiced it comes to real people I think. One of my best mates at Uni was from Charterhouse, simultaneously as posh and down to earth as you could like.
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Not sure quite where to put this excerpt of Musa Okwonga’s reflection on his education at Eton, so here it goes. https://inews.co.uk/news/long-reads/eton-privilege-nurtured-uk-power-structures-systemic-racism-forged-952620
Thoughts on the undesirability of power contained within such a tight group of people.
I still remember the shock of arriving at university and meeting these people who had gone to such schools.
I still remember the shock of arriving at university and finding people openly shocked to be meeting people like me, and doubly shocked that they'd mostly been taught that we were cunts to a man. Thankfully not all.
Can you imagine writing that about any other sector of society in 2020? I womder how far woke people will have to be before it becomes unacceptable to be openly bigoted about people whose parents happened to have more money than theirs?
Well, I get your point and I’ve know a good many privately educated people, over the years. I’ve lived with one for the last decade, for instance.
On the other hand, I don’t believe you, JB, is the “type” he’s referring to and I think I know the “type” he is meaning to infer.
I’ve certainly met the “type” who are far quicker to denigrate the state educated plebs, vocally and quite indiscriminately (they often gravitate to the military). Just like every other loosely grouped social designation/criteria, “Privately Educated” (or even “Eton Educated”) covers a full spectrum of personalities, so, you’d just not realise there was a difference if it isn’t specifically mentioned, in most cases.
A bit like Vegans.
As an aside, Polly was a middle child. Her older sister was sent to an all girls boarding school (same one as her mother and grandmother etc), however her parents “moved with the times” (1991) and she was put into a school near home, as a day boarder, so she could spend more time at home, with the Nanny (younger brother went down the same route).
They would tell you that they all struggled transitioning to the wider world as they moved in to Uni.
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PS I think we have understood different things by lagers’ ‘such schools’. There is a world of difference between the most socially elite and the more ordinary independent schools.
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Sorry, not supposed to have been a pop at Lagers, he is one of the nicest guys in town.
Most people hold mental stereotypes but aren’t really prejudiced it comes to real people I think
Yes, but it was a surprise to find how widely and strongly those stereotpes are held. Having spent most of my holidays working in warehouses (and of course I'd had a gap yah) it wasn't a case of meeting the real world for the first time. Yes there is full spectrum, but having to been a school at the far end of that spectrum it's still not a stereotype I really recognise. The only kids I remember drinking champagne at uni were the normally-educated wideboy hedonist types. But perhaps Eton really is in a tier of its own.
But even if it is, and back on topic, I'm not convinced the school is the root problem the media make it out to be. The problem is the link between wealth and power in this country, and removing the school wouldn't affect that a jot.
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But even if it is, and back on topic, I'm not convinced the school is the root problem the media make it out to be. The problem is the link between wealth and power in this country, and removing the school wouldn't affect that a jot.
I think your point about inverted snobbery is a good one. I also agree that school is not in itself the issue. I would be looking for another job if I did! I posted the link because it's the narrowness of that social tier which causes problems and risks leadership by entitlement rather than talent, and look where we are now.
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JB, what part of that Okwonga piece got you riled up? I found it an interesting and entirely uncontroversial read, but perhaps I missed something?
Also I am unconvinced that addressing the obvious link between attending Eton/Harrow/Westminster schools, among others, and political power in the UK wouldn't have positive effects. Clearly you're right that it wouldn't be a panacea but I can't see how it wouldn't be an unalloyed good thing either.
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I didn't have an issue with the piece, it had many parallels with my experience. But Lager's comment reminded me of how much of my life ive spent hoping the subject of schooling won't come up. First world problem obvs.
I just think the schools are incidental. Not sure what you have in mind - shut the schools? Have some sort of quota? I think you'd quickly find they're just not a critical part of the problem. Look at Boris's famous school report - these personalities are not created or even encouraged at school despite the media image. The wealthy would soon find other ways for their kids to network.
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JB, what part of that Okwonga piece got you riled up? I found it an interesting and entirely uncontroversial read, but perhaps I missed something?
Also I am unconvinced that addressing the obvious link between attending Eton/Harrow/Westminster schools, among others, and political power in the UK wouldn't have positive effects. Clearly you're right that it wouldn't be a panacea but I can't see how it wouldn't be an unalloyed good thing either.
Easy solution.
“Service guarantees citizenship”
...
:whistle:
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I just think the schools are incidental. Not sure what you have in mind - shut the schools? Have some sort of quota? I think you'd quickly find they're just not a critical part of the problem. Look at Boris's famous school report - these personalities are not created or even encouraged at school despite the media image. The wealthy would soon find other ways for their kids to network.
I'm sure there are intelligent, reasonable people who went to Eton(Rory Stewart?) as well as the over promoted wealthy fools, like Boris Johnson. I went to a private school as a day pupil. I hated it at the time, and in retrospect to be honest, and I'm sure I'm pretty prejudiced about the issue for that reason. It was elitist, divisive and some pretty horrible bullying was endemic.
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Now I really want to know what school JB went to so I can figure out exactly where he stands in the poshness pecking order ;) :)
I haven't read the article; I'm not commenting on that.
I do get what JB is saying though. There is a huge amount of prejudice around what private schools are like and the sort of people who emerge from them. I've always been amazed at how many people who consider themselves progressive will quite happily talk about private schools and their pupils with an air of knowing when they are actually way off the mark. I always want to ask them if they'd talk about "people from council estates" the same way.
It may surprise people to learn that not all private schools are alike, and neither are the people who attend them. I can only guess that state educated people are not all carbon copies of each other: annual pilgrimages to all-inclusive Benidorm and a chippy tea every night.
I went to two private schools (one in Liverpool and one in Cheshire). The schools were different and their kids were very, very different. I could go on and on about it. Suffice to say that nobody stayed overnight, we didn't call each other by our surnames, the teachers (sorry, shouldn't that be masters?) didn't beat us with rulers, nobody ever got their head flushed down a toilet, and we only ever had one game of Pov Polo on the school fields where we rode around on working class people instead of horses.
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I went to a state school. There was a boarding side. We called each other by surnames and the head had (and used) a cane.
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Now I really want to know what school JB went to so I can figure out exactly where he stands in the poshness pecking order ;) :)
I haven't read the article; I'm not commenting on that.
I do get what JB is saying though. There is a huge amount of prejudice around what private schools are like and the sort of people who emerge from them. I've always been amazed at how many people who consider themselves progressive will quite happily talk about private schools and their pupils with an air of knowing when they are actually way off the mark. I always want to ask them if they'd talk about "people from council estates" the same way.
It may surprise people to learn that not all private schools are alike, and neither are the people who attend them. I can only guess that state educated people are not all carbon copies of each other: annual pilgrimages to all-inclusive Benidorm and a chippy tea every night.
I went to two private schools (one in Liverpool and one in Cheshire). The schools were different and their kids were very, very different. I could go on and on about it. Suffice to say that nobody stayed overnight, we didn't call each other by our surnames, the teachers (sorry, shouldn't that be masters?) didn't beat us with rulers, nobody ever got their head flushed down a toilet, and we only ever had one game of Pov Polo on the school fields where we rode around on working class people instead of horses.
Tall ex private-schoolboy in downgrading of short* plebs' problems shocker.
*presumably malnourished.
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Perhaps time for a thread split. As this is more about class, education, privilege and power than politics. Though its all clearly intertwined.
For me one of the key takeaways from the Okwonga article was that at Eton the past prefects chose the new prefects.
The transition of power from the chosen few to a chosen few - chosen by the chosen few.
And this seems to be a cycle that perpetuates much for those in power - including government(s) and especially the media ( https://www.pressgazette.co.uk/study-reveals-drop-in-privately-educated-journalists-at-top-of-media-over-last-five-years/ )
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so I can figure out exactly where he stands in the poshness pecking order
Luckily for me it was the only one of the Clarendon nine anywhere near a crag.
I've always been amazed at how many people who consider themselves progressive will quite happily talk about private schools and their pupils with an air of knowing when they are actually way off the mark. I always want to ask them if they'd talk about "people from council estates" the same way.
Exactly, the hypocrisy has always amused me. But let's not forget this is the one minority least in need of equality champions, and I hesitate to say any more on the subject lest I turn into Lawrence Fox in velcros.
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Isn't this hate the game not the player?
You can think a system that focusses a disportionate amount of spending towards the education of a small group in society who then have disproptionatly large representation within the power structures of the country, MPs, Prime Ministers, Judiciary etc is shite, whilst recognising that not everybody who has been through that education is shite.
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Isn't this hate the game not the player?
You're just saying that because your main climbing partner was privately educated.....
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He is a bit of nob, but ok once you get to know him....
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Actually, back more on topic, the current cabinet is almost completely incompetent and they didn't all go to Eton. The prime minister just happens to be a living embodiment of an amalgam of every prejudice that anyone has ever held about private education.
It looks like his legacy will be the start of the breakup of the UK. I can't see a Scottish referendum happening anytime soon, but it will. Brexit has actually made Irish reunification a distant prospect as well. In 50 years will it just be England, all on its own, still bleating about its special relationship with the USA?
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I was astonished how little discussion there was in England, before I left, about the ramifications of this.
Not even any talk about what to call the new country being created.
Retaining U.K. seems ridiculous when only one Kingdom, of the three, remains.
Is this still the case now that Scotland's departure looks so much more likely ?
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I was astonished how little discussion there was in England, before I left, about the ramifications of this.
Not even any talk about what to call the new country being created.
Retaining U.K. seems ridiculous when only one Kingdom, of the three, remains.
Is this still the case now that Scotland's departure looks so much more likely ?
Absolutely. People mostly ignore it, or just say Scotland wouldn't cope economically, or how much they dislike Nicola Sturgeon. More so with N Ireland, the total ignorance of any issues there in England is amazing. It was frankly disgusting that Boris Johnson could comment on the super league within an hour or two, and it took him nearly a week to say anything about widespread rioting and violence in Northern Ireland.
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Not even any talk about what to call the new country being created.
Why on earth would anyone spend time on what is going to be a very divisive topic when there's a referendum and then years of negotiations to come before we need an answer to the question? Talking about it before a referendum would effectively say you expect to lose and give a big boost to the 'yes' side. You can expect whatever answer came out of such a discussion would be how Sturgeon would start referring to rUK in speeches even before a yes result...
Incidentally there was a poll mentioned in I think the Times this week suggesting a majority of independence supporters believe that Westminster makes up the deficit figures and Scotland is running a surplus... :-\
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I've noticed that the Labour left contingent has already been on twitter saying that the answer to a bi election defeat is more Corbyn.
I wonder if the blatant pork barrel politics of the conservative campaign made any Labour hope of winning extremely distant whoever is up against it.
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I've noticed that the Labour left contingent has already been on twitter saying that the answer to a bi election defeat is more Corbyn.
I wonder if the blatant pork barrel politics of the conservative campaign made any Labour hope of winning extremely distant whoever is up against it.
It’s not as bad a result as I’d thought it would be. 15% swing - but on a low turnout..
Suspect there’s a lot of ‘meh’ amongst the electorate…
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I've noticed that the Labour left contingent has already been on twitter saying that the answer to a bi election defeat is more Corbyn.
I wonder if the blatant pork barrel politics of the conservative campaign made any Labour hope of winning extremely distant whoever is up against it.
It’s not as bad a result as I’d thought it would be. 15% swing - but on a low turnout..
Suspect there’s a lot of ‘meh’ amongst the electorate…
I agree, I heard more than one focus group on a political podcast, with several members who thought that Corbyn was still in charge of the party. You can't underestimate the level of apathy among a lot of people.
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I agree, I heard more than one focus group on a political podcast, with several members who thought that Corbyn was still in charge of the party. You can't underestimate the level of apathy among a lot of people.
Jesus christ!
On a similar note, I read recently that among a SNP voting focus group, all of whom were cast iron SNP supporters, a significant proportion expressed outrage that Sturgeon might call for a referendum soon. One does wonder how they arrived at the decision to vote SNP in the first place. I'll see if I can find the link.
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I agree, I heard more than one focus group on a political podcast, with several members who thought that Corbyn was still in charge of the party. You can't underestimate the level of apathy among a lot of people.
Jesus christ!
On a similar note, I read recently that among a SNP voting focus group, all of whom were cast iron SNP supporters, a significant proportion expressed outrage that Sturgeon might call for a referendum soon. One does wonder how they arrived at the decision to vote SNP in the first place. I'll see if I can find the link.
Times redbox podcast, IIRC. I think they broadly liked their policies but as you say don't want a referendum right now.
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On disengaged voters and general “meh”, I thought this was good:
https://normielisation.substack.com/p/dont-overfit-the-local-elections
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I've noticed that the Labour left contingent has already been on twitter saying that the answer to a bi election defeat is more Corbyn.
I wonder if the blatant pork barrel politics of the conservative campaign made any Labour hope of winning extremely distant whoever is up against it.
It’s not as bad a result as I’d thought it would be. 15% swing - but on a low turnout..
Suspect there’s a lot of ‘meh’ amongst the electorate…
I agree, I heard more than one focus group on a political podcast, with several members who thought that Corbyn was still in charge of the party. You can't underestimate the level of apathy among a lot of people.
I don't really get politics that much (in terms of party-direction, what voters want etc etc). But I find it crazy that people happily vote for a party which are blatantly corrupt, putting themselves first, breaking the law, not sacking ministers who break the ministerial code, lying. The list goes on.
I don't know what Labour can really do. Politics these days doesn't seem rational in the slightest. They left has quite a few parties picking up a good share of the vote (lib dem / greens) where as now UKIP has gone there's not really any choice on the right other than the conservatives. Couple that with some deflections from labour then it's hard not to see the conservatives getting healthy majorities for a while.
I noticed Momentum put out a statement comparing it to their victory in 2017 (handily ignoring their massive decrease in vote-share in 2019). Unless all of the part of Labour come together to a common goal/aim/compromise, the in-fighting will just help alienate their potential voters.
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I've zero time for Momentum. I know people in Momentum who'd rather labour lose under Starmer. They can jog on.
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I've zero time for Momentum. I know people in Momentum who'd rather labour lose under Starmer. They can jog on.
I'd agree, but they do hold quite a lot of support so they need to be brought in somehow to stop losing those votes!
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Ultimately, the Labour party has not found an answer yet to two principal problems with it ever winning now. Simplistically, first, devolution and the rise of the SNP means that they're lacking all the seats in Scotland they once had, and second, politics has ceased to be all about class, and is now far more about culture and identity.
Rightly or wrongly, many, many people see Boris Johnson as someone they can relate to.
They just don't see the news like Barnier revealing that BJ didn't understand his own Brexit policy, or that he had no idea what 'no recourse to public funds' meant when interviewed by a select committee. In my view, Johnson is lazy, corrupt, self interested and phenomenally unlikeable; however, unfortunately many don't share this view or are prepared to ignore it because he's guaranteeing their pensions, or similar.
I've heard Diane Abbott interviewed this morning, she thinks they need to readmit Corbyn to the party, and that's the answer. I really wonder sometimes about the sanity of this kind of thing. Evidence: loads of people vote for an essentially right wing free market party, so the solution is to shift to the left? Please....
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Unless all of the part of Labour come together to a common goal/aim/compromise, the in-fighting will just help alienate their potential voters.
The same principle applies to the left/centre left in general (minus the alienation). Unless Labour, Lib Dems and the Greens agree to some sort of electoral pact at some point I can’t see the Tories losing for a very long time. Even more so if Scotland goes. Basically they all need to accept that power sharing is a better prospect than permanent opposition and a one-party state, which is essentially what England is moving towards.
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The same principle applies to the left/centre left in general (minus the alienation). Unless Labour, Lib Dems and the Greens agree to some sort of electoral pact at some point I can’t see the Tories losing for a very long time. Even more so if Scotland goes. Basically they all need to accept that power sharing is a better prospect than permanent opposition and a one-party state, which is essentially what England is moving towards.
Agreed, especially as the right are now a cohesive voting block behind the tories, as the Brexit Party/UKIP/Reform or whatever have all shrivelled up and stopped splitting the right's vote.
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I find it crazy that people happily vote for a party which are blatantly corrupt, putting themselves first, breaking the law, not sacking ministers who break the ministerial code, lying. The list goes on.
The reality is that most of the electorate’s response to the above will be that “all politicians are the same” so it won’t even register. Johnson ‘saving’ football from the ESL will probably have cut through to voters much more in the last few weeks.
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The same principle applies to the left/centre left in general (minus the alienation). Unless Labour, Lib Dems and the Greens agree to some sort of electoral pact at some point I can’t see the Tories losing for a very long time. Even more so if Scotland goes. Basically they all need to accept that power sharing is a better prospect than permanent opposition and a one-party state, which is essentially what England is moving towards.
Agreed, especially as the right are now a cohesive voting block behind the tories, as the Brexit Party/UKIP/Reform or whatever have all shrivelled up and stopped splitting the right's vote.
Yep - fully agree with this.
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The same principle applies to the left/centre left in general (minus the alienation). Unless Labour, Lib Dems and the Greens agree to some sort of electoral pact at some point I can’t see the Tories losing for a very long time. Even more so if Scotland goes. Basically they all need to accept that power sharing is a better prospect than permanent opposition and a one-party state, which is essentially what England is moving towards.
Agreed, especially as the right are now a cohesive voting block behind the tories, as the Brexit Party/UKIP/Reform or whatever have all shrivelled up and stopped splitting the right's vote.
If you occupy the centre ground, in your political thinking, the Labour left are every bit, or more, as antithetical to your thinking; as the Tory right.
Tempting moderate Tories and Labourites into the centre (both voters and politicians) and shaking the cling ons at the extremes that drag the country down, seems like a much better solution.
It would be better for all but the most extreme ideologues. Unfortunately, it isn’t “sexy” enough, nor does it promise a quick, easy, fix.
Practicality is always too dull, people would rather die trying to achieve the impossible, than actually get on with being happy.
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Trouble with the centre ground thesis is that when the Tories are determinedly rooting out their centre ground MPs and moving inexorably towards a very populist form of politics, trying to stake out the centre ground risks looking anaemic and unexciting, which I think is one of Starmer's issues.
Re the one party state/20 years of Tory government, I have thought for a while that there will come a point where sheer fatigue means Labour will get back in. However the turnover of governments in the last 5 years has meant that people have essentially seen the previous government as a different party; the Tories under Cameron, May and Johnson were totally different on loads of issues. I think fatigue only sets in once you have a hegemonic and hugely popular/successful set of governments, ie Thatcher and Blair. If the Tories keep chopping and changing their leaders every 3 years Labour will need a better strategy than the one they currently have.
That said I don't think any strategy would have won this particular by election as interest in politics is so low compared to interest in peoples lives returning to normal that the incumbent government delivering the latter was always likely to have an enormous advantage as far as I can see.
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There was quite an astute analysis I read on Twitter first thing this morning. That Labour's problem is that across a lot of the remainy Home Counties people are more economically right wing that they are socially liberal, whereas in the midlands and the north many people are more socially conservative than they are economically left wing.
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I urge caution around conflating the results of local elections to the overall picture in national politics. (Obviously this point only applies to England).
Labour have lost a lot of seats in our local council and I am keeping everything crossed that they loose more today (still waiting for the results) but it is based on local issues around building industrial units on greenbelt land - our local labour councillor has backed it to the hilt and planning permission was granted yet the two local mayor's also, both labour, appose it.
However, my vote locally is different from my vote nationally. I have a lot of time for Kier Starmer who is in a no win position at the moment. And Diane Abbott on the radio today suggesting that the party should make their whole position based on what one constituency wants is not helpful to anyone.
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Yeah I didn't vote Labour locally, I voted Green. The Sheffield Labour Council is pretty rubbish but I'd vote Labour nationally.
I do think there is an issue where a lot of Labour voters basically don't want anyone who voted Tory to be on "their side" as it were. I.e they think Tory voters are scum. Unfortunately since Scotland went SNP Labour kind of needs Tory voters it appears... unless young people are suddenly going to start voting in large numbers and for Labour, which I'm not sure they would...
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Yeah I didn't vote Labour locally, I voted Green. The Sheffield Labour Council is pretty rubbish but I'd vote Labour nationally.
That's funny, that was exactly what I thought, and did. Sheffield could do with more Green councillors.
If anyone is interested in the significance of by-elections there is a great analysis and history on the most recent Politico podcast.
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Yeah I didn't vote Labour locally, I voted Green. The Sheffield Labour Council is pretty rubbish but I'd vote Labour nationally.
That's funny, that was exactly what I thought, and did. Sheffield could do with more Green councillors.
Although now I wonder about this decision, just heard a really depressing vox pop on the radio where people blamed bad local services on Labour, so voted in a conservative council. Local services are awful, because the government has spent a decade completely gutting them.
Perhaps Labour should have talked a lot more about this?
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I agree, I heard more than one focus group on a political podcast, with several members who thought that Corbyn was still in charge of the party. You can't underestimate the level of apathy among a lot of people.
Jesus christ!
On a similar note, I read recently that among a SNP voting focus group, all of whom were cast iron SNP supporters, a significant proportion expressed outrage that Sturgeon might call for a referendum soon. One does wonder how they arrived at the decision to vote SNP in the first place. I'll see if I can find the link.
That's pretty easy - there will be no referendum under Sturgeon. She's got no stomach for it.
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There was quite an astute analysis I read on Twitter first thing this morning. That Labour's problem is that across a lot of the remainy Home Counties people are more economically right wing that they are socially liberal, whereas in the midlands and the north many people are more socially conservative than they are economically left wing.
That certainly chimes with my very limited bubble of largely Home Counties based colleagues at work.
I quite like the “two votes” system for the Mayoral election here in London.
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Some commentary that Labour has become London centric…
From my scan - in its urban/city strongholds it’s fared fairly well (London, Manchester, Liverpool (and Hull)) but taken a pummelling elsewhere…
In Wales the Labour vote has had a bounce from how they handled the pandemic. The problem for a party not in power is that they have to sell a dream… Boris/tories have fucked up so so much - BUT they have succeeded with the vaccinations which is a tangible (cause = effect) way many people have seen and personally experienced a way out of the COVID mess (especially older - more likely to vote - and vote Tory)
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Some of Y'all probably don't want to hear the resident leftie's perspective but maybe you should.
Apparently the competent are now in charge, if this is what competence is it's embarrassing. The selection of the candidate for Hartlepool made by a special advisor who lost her seat as an MP was a complete failure to 'read the room', a non local who seems to have no idea what it is he would like to do should he gain the seat. If you can bare to watch Owen Jones' recent documentary on Hartlepool, check out the interview with Dr Paul his responses to simple questions are shockingly bad, demostrating a complete lack of preparation and vision.
Likewise Sir Keir seems to have no clue himself https://youtu.be/5sdceyFliXk (https://youtu.be/5sdceyFliXk)
Leading up to the elections they seemed to think a visit to buy wallpaper from John Lewis would cut through. Trying to push the Tory sleaze narrative whilst rolling out Mandy whom was forced to resign from government under dubious circumstances. :chair:
The refusal to espouse any policies seems to be completely I affective. I would suggest that a clear vision of what they are actually intending to do for the people needs to be consistently pounded out, particularly popular socialist policies that will directly benefit us. I suspect instead we will have a further lurch to the right and a continuation of the bland characterless focus group informed politics we have seen up to now. Sir Keir (untouched) pint in hand, with a 20ft high union jack as a backdrop, spouting a nonsense word salad about looking outwards and looking inwards from a changed party. I despair.
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Ignore the above post Sir Keir is taking full responsibility by firing Angela Rayner. Wtf are they playing at?.! :popcorn:
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. I would suggest that a clear vision of what they are actually intending to do for the people needs to be consistently pounded out, particularly popular socialist policies that will directly benefit us. I suspect instead we will have a further lurch to the right and a continuation of the bland characterless focus group informed politics we have seen up to now.
I appreciate your analysis Brutus, but I'd strongly suggest that Socialism died in the twentieth century, and noone will vote for it today, or at least not in anywhere near enough numbers to matter. The Labour left have been in charge before this for more than half a decade, and produced precisely no success.
Most people who aren't interested in politics will just think Socialism or anything like this represents being unpatriotic, a Russian sympathiser and financially illiterate.
The conservative party have done very well getting elected with focus group policies. Idealogical purity will never fly, elections are won from the centre.
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Look at the results TD. Where there are more progressive candidates, as the Americans would put it, Labour have done well. Check the results in RLB's constituency, an openly socialist MP. They parachuted in a remainer to stand in area that 70% voted to leave. Forensic! It's a shambles.
I think you're wrong about the centre ground, the success of Burnham and Dennett would suggest otherwise. This statement from Dennett major of Salford, whom increased his majority, is spot on.
There is a path Labour can take which unites our traditional voters with young and new alike.
"It's a path which isn't ashamed of our party's radical roots, which taps into our history and tradition, which puts forward a progressive and dynamic vision for a new and inclusive economy of the future. It's a path in which socialism is at its core.
"The centre ground no longer exists as it once did. The public now expect us to pick a side and articulate a bold ambition and progressive future for all which tackles poverty, tackles inequality, placing the needs of working people and families at its core."
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Brutus - living in Manchester I’d say that Burnham - and the Labour council are pretty much centrist. No evidence of any Derek Hatton style policies (joke).
He kowtows to Westminster to get ££ for the Metro and health service devolution - but justifies that with a for the good of Manchester narrative. Every now and then he (appears to) stand up to Westminster about something or other. Most folk here seem to go with that.
The Salford Mayor is different - in a different area - with a much lower profile. TBH I know nothing about him or his policies.
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I really think that way lies only an archaic protest movement Brutus. I think that Labour needs to change more fundamentally. The conservatives win at the moment by being socially conservative but are increasingly economically at a point which, if not liberal is certainly willing to borrow and spend.
All the talk of traditional voters, industrial heartland etc became irrelevant long ago. Its amazing how long it's taken for the Labour support in the north to be bulldozed, rather than that it's happened at all. If you think that Rebecca Long Bailey would be an electoral success you're dreaming. There is no industrial working class of any size now, unfortunately the conservatives have realised that and harnessed it. I think that the other parties need to develop a response to it that's more fundamental than that they return to their roots. That way lies obscurity and failure.
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The thing that stands out is when Burnham opposed Westminster aggressively in order to get what was best for the people of Manchester. He's the person that fired shots at Labour's London centric leadership. Agreed he's not a full on leftist but he defended his people vocally. Dennett is showing the way look into him and what he does for Salford. Also, Wales isn't down to COVID management but we must not have a narrative that suggests leftwards is successful must we?
TD you're ignoring the results and the absolute ineptitude of Starmer and his advisors. How do you explain it?
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Not ignoring anything - just not sure what he did wrong.
Manchester, Salford - easier to know your audience and how to sell yourself to them.
Labour nationally struggles with that. Perhaps it doesn’t know it’s audience any more - or (more likely) they’re trying to appeal to too many people
at once.
Part of this is also media. Local media here are all over Burnham - can’t even name a Tory counterpart… nationally we all know the Tory/Labour media is not that way…
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I don’t think Starmer is inept at all. He has a bit of the Miliband robotic presentation which he could do with working on. But I think he’s done as well as anyone given the circumstances. And bearing in mind he’s up against a shape shifting force of personality still riding a Brexit wave who’s also borrowed a vast amount of money, paid loads of people’s wages for months, and taken the credit for vaccinating the whole nation.
I’d be up for some radical policies - I agree with Brutus on that. But if you can’t see that Burnham comes straight from the Blair mould - hardworking / listening / moderate - rather than reactionary / we know better than you then I give up. Burnham couldn’t work with Corbyn. And he opposed Miliband’s mansion tax because he knew it smacked of the politics of envy.
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Intriguing scenario here in West Yorkshire as Tracy Brabin (the one surviving Labour MP round here after the last GE bloodbath) is running for West Yorkshire mayor.
I assume if she wins, this will trigger a by-election, which at the moment The Tories would likely win.
If she loses the mayoral vote, I'm guessing she "just" goes back to being our MP still?
So, errrr, go Tracy? Or not?
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Not ignoring anything - just not sure what he did wrong.
Manchester, Salford - easier to know your audience and how to sell yourself to them.
Labour nationally struggles with that. Perhaps it doesn’t know it’s audience any more - or (more likely) they’re trying to appeal to too many people
at once.
Part of this is also media. Local media here are all over Burnham - can’t even name a Tory counterpart… nationally we all know the Tory/Labour media is not that way…
What he did wrong? Not opposing, not vocally standing up for people, selection of the worst candidate possible for Hartlepool, ignoring the membership, abstaining, a human rights lawyer not opposing laws that impact on human rights, not calling for greater rewards for nurses and care workers, sacking the entire community organising team, trying to out Tory the Tories... He's now followed this all up by sacking a very well connected Northern female MP (I'm not a fan of hers at all btw) and effectively picked a fight with the Northern section of the party. He could've quietly shuffled in 6 months time, this is not forensic decision making. He has sections of the party turning on him as we speak.
Definitely, trying to appeal to too many people at once.. Start with the base, those that are dedicated will get out there and work for the cause. He's alienated a lot of the base and thus lost the 'foot soldiers'.
The media is for the most part Conservative owned and controlled so I can agree with that, particularly on a national level.
C4 conducted a poll post election and the top reason for not voting Labour is... Keir Starmer's Leadership.
Starmer's response to the question from the BBC about the concrete policy changes he would put in place after this result sums it up for me. 'I will change the things that need changing and that is the change I will bring about' :slap:
He will be toast fairly soon.
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I don’t think Starmer is inept at all. He has a bit of the Miliband robotic presentation which he could do with working on. But I think he’s done as well as anyone given the circumstances. And bearing in mind he’s up against a shape shifting force of personality still riding a Brexit wave who’s also borrowed a vast amount of money, paid loads of people’s wages for months, and taken the credit for vaccinating the whole nation.
I’d be up for some radical policies - I agree with Brutus on that. But if you can’t see that Burnham comes straight from the Blair mould - hardworking / listening / moderate - rather than reactionary / we know better than you then I give up. Burnham couldn’t work with Corbyn. And he opposed Miliband’s mansion tax because he knew it smacked of the politics of envy.
Yes. Burnham is a Blairite but when he had the opportunity to oppose the government firmly, he did so and he is rewarded with the people of Manchester getting behind him. Contrast this with Sadiq Khan's failure to oppose and his consequently falling majority against a really bad Conservative candidate.
People want something tangible that will make their lives better, there's a long list of very popular policies that the majority of people want. However, the only policy initiative that I can recall Keir and his team pushing is 'Recovery Bonds' (that one's not on the list!).
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TD you're ignoring the results and the absolute ineptitude of Starmer and his advisors. How do you explain it?
Hartlepool, totemic as it may be, was always going to lean to Brexit supporting parties. Now, that’s just the Tories.
Starmer is good forensically, but in the role of communicator and salesman is far from satisfactory. Labour needs a clear sense of direction and an effective pitch to a broad electorate and are currently rather lost.
You are going further though Brutus, accusing ineptitude. I fear you are not seeing the deeper mess the party is in. Corbyn bequeathed the weakest PLP since 1935. That is not all the fault of Blairites. A return to Corbynism will just do more of what it did last time; hugely damage the possibility of a return to power.
The answers lie in working out what they stand for and building the coalition to stand with. It is a big problem.
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Burnham is a Blairite but when he had the opportunity to oppose the government firmly, he did so and he is rewarded with the people of Manchester getting behind him. Contrast this with Sadiq Khan's failure to oppose and his consequently falling majority against a really bad Conservative candidate.
People want something tangible that will make their lives better,
Yes, this, absolutely. Fight to represent the interests and concerns of local people. A coalition could form because localism is diverse.
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The answers lie in working out what they stand for and building the coalition to stand with. It is a big problem
They are elected politicians and they need to work out what they stand for? :lol: That's ineptitude right there.
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TD you're ignoring the results and the absolute ineptitude of Starmer and his advisors. How do you explain it?
Hartlepool, totemic as it may be, was always going to lean to Brexit supporting parties. Now, that’s just the Tories.
Starmer is good forensically, but in the role of communicator and salesman is far from satisfactory. ...
The answers lie in working out what they stand for and building the coalition to stand with. It is a big problem.
I agree probably most with this. Brutus I just can't see where you're coming from. It seems emblematic of the traditional Labour party contingent that 'Blair' has become to them perjorative, yet he's the only living Labour party winner, the only one who's won a solid majority in over half a century.
Even if you think Blair did not represent Labour, don't you think that was part of his success?
I don't think it's contraversial to say that Boris Johnson doesn't represent the traditional Conservative party. Theresa May, on the other hand is very much a traditional Conservative and nearly lost them the government. The party realised that and ruthlessly went about picking a winner.
On the positive side, I don't think Johnson is unassailable. His success is very much transactional. His government has been paying people to not work, handing out vaccines and promises levelling up. If they're seen as not delivering, he'll be toast. Perhaps Starmer's quietly competent, unremarkable approach is correct? After all, opposition parties don't win elections, governments lose them.
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Fight to represent the interests and concerns of local people
Sounds like socialism to me. :great:
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Even if you think Blair did not represent Labour, don't you think that was part of his success?
I don't think it's contraversial to say that Boris Johnson doesn't represent the traditional Conservative party. Theresa May, on the other hand is very much a traditional Conservative and nearly lost them the government. The party realised that and ruthlessly went about picking a winner.
Blair and his team successfully got into bed with Murdoch and big business, he was ruthless and won the backing of the power brokers. The whole 'there's no point in voting their all the bloody same' resulted from this. Keir and his team have tried to do the same but the power brokers aren't interested.. Financially speaking, with a greatly reduced membership and the failure to attract big business money Labour is struggling. I think people see straight through this kind of politician and the electoral success of Blair and co. can't be repeated... the damage has been done.
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Even if you think Blair did not represent Labour, don't you think that was part of his success?
I don't think it's contraversial to say that Boris Johnson doesn't represent the traditional Conservative party. Theresa May, on the other hand is very much a traditional Conservative and nearly lost them the government. The party realised that and ruthlessly went about picking a winner.
Blair and his team successfully got into bed with Murdoch and big business, he was ruthless and won the backing of the power brokers. The whole 'there's no point in voting their all the bloody same' resulted from this. Keir and his team have tried to do the same but the power brokers aren't interested.. Financially speaking, with a greatly reduced membership and the failure to attract big business money Labour is struggling. I think people see straight through this kind of politician and the electoral success of Blair and co. can't be repeated... the damage has been done.
That's exactly what I'm talking about. You are only critical of the only time that Labour has managed to win lots of votes in more than 50 years.
If they go down your route, they'll never get more than 15-20% of the vote.
Professional media marketing and management is part of politics now, not selling out. Appealing only to Twitter will not get you anywhere.
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What about all the, "You picked the wrong brother then picked Corbyn. When you show you've changed I'll vote for you again" types? I think there are a lot more of those than you realise....
And re "people see straight through this kind of politician", again, I think your (laudable btw) conviction in the mass population's seemingly incisive / forensic political judgement is extremely optimistic. At the last election vast swaths of people voted for an administration who basically hold them in complete contempt. If you read Twitter or the Guardian you have massive failings and epic corruption laid bare every day, but to all these genius political observers it's all "Well, Boris deserves some fancy wallpaper after all he's done for us". Johnson may as well be wrapped in political teflon.
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Even if you think Blair did not represent Labour, don't you think that was part of his success?
I don't think it's contraversial to say that Boris Johnson doesn't represent the traditional Conservative party. Theresa May, on the other hand is very much a traditional Conservative and nearly lost them the government. The party realised that and ruthlessly went about picking a winner.
Blair and his team successfully got into bed with Murdoch and big business, he was ruthless and won the backing of the power brokers. The whole 'there's no point in voting their all the bloody same' resulted from this. Keir and his team have tried to do the same but the power brokers aren't interested.. Financially speaking, with a greatly reduced membership and the failure to attract big business money Labour is struggling. I think people see straight through this kind of politician and the electoral success of Blair and co. can't be repeated... the damage has been done.
On the other hand, Labour hasn’t won an election since (general), so, there’s that.
Getting “more” votes, doesn’t necessarily correspond to “getting enough votes” and the latter is what is required to achieve power. If the party is not winning, they are not offering what the people want. That’s the end of it. All that this last episode has proved, is that their current offering is possibly even less appealing than the previous.
All you have said is “what we had under Corbyn was more popular than what we have under Starmer, but still not popular enough to win an election”.
Which is a good time to trot out that axiom that goes along the lines of “doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting different results, is the definition of insanity”.
I would love the country to move back to the left. The Blair era, for all it’s faults, was a better time for the underdog and the lower income community than the current administration.
Edit:
The “there’s not point voting, they’re all the same” argument predates Blair by some margin.
I’m not sure how much margin, but I wouldn’t be surprised if wasn’t carved into an Athenian wall somewhere beside a rude (and more recent) cartoon of Pericles.
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It's not much of a democracy is it when we essentially all have to capitulate with the powers that be in order to be thrown a few scraps?
I have DanM's post on the climbing in caves thread in mind... Whilst we're all squabbling but essentially after the same things we are heading at pace for global catastrophe. The need for radical political and societal change is beyond urgent. There is a need to remove financial interests and influence from the political sphere, a need to focus all political decision making on ecological and environmental protection on a global sale. The world is changing and our so called democracy seems unfit to address it seriously.
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It's not much of a democracy is it when we essentially all have to capitulate with the powers that be in order to be thrown a few scraps?
I have DanM's post on the climbing in caves thread in mind... Whilst we're all squabbling but essentially after the same things we are heading at pace for global catastrophe. The need for radical political and societal change is beyond urgent. There is a need to remove financial interests and influence from the political sphere, a need to focus all political decision making on ecological and environmental protection on a global sale. The world is changing and our so called democracy seems unfit to address it seriously.
So, bearing in mind Bojo and the Con’s success in selling gilded shit to the masses, whilst blatantly dipping their sticky paws into the public purse; from which position is it easier (or even possible) to sell some major changes and uncomfortable truths from? Power or opposition?
Your faith in humanity is misplaced.
To achieve your goal (ours, if I’m honest), you must begin with baby steps and proceed with incremental, almost invisible, shuffling.
It’s a binary choice. Ease humanity into change or fail to implement change completely.
Unfortunately, if it’s already too late for the gentle response, then it is simply too late. Any other approach simply creates a back pressure that arrests flow. Equally unfortunate is our collective inability to understand that the term and concept “conservative” applies to both left and right equally.
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I don't disagree with your sentiment. The unfortunate problem is that there are loads of people like going on holiday / like buying mountains of disposable fashion, new cars, etc. And how do you communicate a progressive green agenda to them and make it sound appealing? There are loads of these people living in the same street as me, in a town that has been described as a run-down seaside ghetto, which was held by Labour under Blair, but which has been Tory since 2010 with a current MP who in the run-up to the last election said that people with learning difficulties shouldn't be paid as much because they don't understand money. They're not gin and jag old school Tories - they're the people who would've voted for Thatcher. Plumbers and demolition guys who won't pay someone to trim the brambles growing out of their hedge across the pavement, but who'll spunk their covid business loan on an Audi R8.
I think Labour need to concentrate on what they're going to give people (Corbyn's broadband idea would be a start), rather than taking stuff away. And with any luck, Sunak might start doing the latter and then things will rebalance.
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The Tories at the moment sell something aspirational and dynamic, for you, your community, and your country. "Let's move forward so we can be global competitors like we once were." You can see that in, for example, the new(ish) teeside mayor, who is a young Tory, from the area, believes in making local businesses successful, believes in interventionist government in the local economy, and has the full support of the PM and the Chancellor in that. Wants to spent money, wants to get local people employed etc. Specifically is promoting green policies. All that stuff.
Meanwhile Labour is caught between the somewhat socially conservative and basically patriotic remnants of the unions and young, progressive types who hold patriotism to be disturbing and even vaguely offensive. They seem to have very little local impact outside of young, diverse urban areas in Manchester, London and so on, outside those areas they're seen as not really present, not engaged, and definitely not dynamic. They're not selling anything nationally either; where's the sense of ambition and dynamism? But of course it is tricky; Labour appeals to making the country an ambitious international market dealer sound specifically negative to young anti-capitalists, who have no interest in the UK being a global economic power. They want Labour to be challenging ingrained and long-running views on Empire, race etc which yeah I agree with but that is driving a wedge between them and Labour's other supporters and indeed from everyone else.
So basically Labour needs to sell something to people outside it's usual remit which appeals to people within it's usual remit. The Tories have ditched Thatcherism and have gone all in on populist interventionalist government spending policies and are unified behind aggressively sacking off the last remnants of EUism and going with full force international pacific involvement capitalism and Labour are strugging to get the party to agree what form of democratic socialism they will present to get rejected next, riven by factionalism and culture war struggles, and facing off against the electoral disadvantage of the Lib Dems, Greens and in Scotland SNP dragging votes largely from them.
I feel like it's not that Keir Starmer is a bad leader (he's alright, and also probably the best on offer); but how can you be a good, dynamic, confident leader when your party is obsessed with having shouting matches with itself in the public eye? How can you sell something dynamic and ambitious when your party can't even agree on whether thinking that the UK is a good country that deserves to do well or not? It also doesn't help that Labour seemingly cannot have realistic estimates of their own performance. They massively overstated how they did in 2017, were blindsided by 2019, in the local elections it was obvious that without UKIP splitting the Tory vote then they'd win as between them they had more votes than Labour, they did manage to make inroads in a number of places and they did really well in Wales, but they come out sounding like a bunch of morose, angry losers who will promptly start arguing with each other again.
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Yes, I'd agree with this. The Tories are selling something positive, whether it's snake oil or real will be seen down the line. Labour under Brown offered benefits, tax credits and the chance to be part of a client state beholden to Labour, but then he let the mask slip with his 'bigoted woman' incident. Since then under Miliband and Corbyn and through Brexit many Labour members have't held back on the contempt and lack of empathy they obviously have for the aspirational working class electorate. Starmer (nice but ineffectual) now has the Corbynite rump as his version of John Major's Eurosceptic 'bastards' group. I suspect Labour are only now entering their IDS/Howard/Hague phase after the damage Corbyn has wrought and there may have to be a more or less a generational change in the Labour PLP before they are electable again.
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Intriguing scenario here in West Yorkshire as Tracy Brabin (the one surviving Labour MP round here after the last GE bloodbath) is running for West Yorkshire mayor.
I assume if she wins, this will trigger a by-election, which at the moment The Tories would likely win.
If she loses the mayoral vote, I'm guessing she "just" goes back to being our MP still?
So, errrr, go Tracy? Or not?
The conservatives will obviously win this seat. When it happens, it will be pointless, and wrong trying to frame it as a failure of Starmer. As others have said and many commentators observe, all of these seats have been going this way since before Corbyn. He certainly repelled a lot of people but isn't solely responsible for the socio-cultural shifts which made all of this inevitable.
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I feel very disconnected from British politics, though certainly not disinterested or uninterested - just remote. And increasingly I realize I have little idea of what it feels like to live there, what daily life is like (I was last in the country, very briefly, in Jan 2020, when poor old Widnes looked even more down on its luck than normal and I was horrified by the number of rough sleepers in Liverpool). So I appreciate this thread, which has had some thoughful posts and good debate over the last couple of days.
Rather than being a matter of this leader or that, it seems clear that Labour's issues are structural, but I would push back on the idea that you can't build a social democratic movement (which is really what we're talking about, not socialism) in the absence of a traditional mass industrial working class. Labour's immediate roots lay in trade unionism but beyond that there was a rich environment of local associational activity: coops, friendly societies, burial clubs, etc. etc. Maybe those precise forms don't need to replicated but local grassroots associational activity might be the source of a viable future (though slow and difficult to build). I've been thinking about this quite a bit recently, but the always interesting John Harris makes precisely this point in this piece: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/may/09/labour-crisis-politics-people-work-left
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I feel very disconnected from British politics, though certainly not disinterested or uninterested - just remote. And increasingly I realize I have little idea of what it feels like to live there, what daily life is like (I was last in the country, very briefly, in Jan 2020, when poor old Widnes looked even more down on its luck than normal and I was horrified by the number of rough sleepers in Liverpool). So I appreciate this thread, which has had some thoughful posts and good debate over the last couple of days.
Rather than being a matter of this leader or that, it seems clear that Labour's issues are structural, but I would push back on the idea that you can't build a social democratic movement (which is really what we're talking about, not socialism) in the absence of a traditional mass industrial working class. Labour's immediate roots lay in trade unionism but beyond that there was a rich environment of local associational activity: coops, friendly societies, burial clubs, etc. etc. Maybe those precise forms don't need to replicated but local grassroots associational activity might be the source of a viable future (though slow and difficult to build). I've been thinking about this quite a bit recently, but the always interesting John Harris makes precisely this point in this piece: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/may/09/labour-crisis-politics-people-work-left
Labour grew out of offering and delivering real, tangible, improvements to ordinary peoples everyday lives.
Maggie promised and (to some extent) delivered, the same; when Labour lost it’s way in the 70s.
(Actually, they “ran out” of major reforms to deliver and started to disappear up their own ideological arses).
I know many of my parents generation, who paid a few fuckalls for their council house and immediately became die hard Tory, lower middle class, simply by shifting to a very low mortgage payment, new credit standing and a new sense of self.
I think the “Labour left” in all it’s generational guises, has alway deluded itself into a belief in some common bond, fraternity and shared sympathy across the downtrodden masses, blah, blah, blah.
All that most people want is “a better life” and they want it with as little personal effort as possible. Our current society would not exist, if any other truth prevailed.
The Tories simply allow people to be selfish, tout it as virtue and their biggest internal rifts grow out of minor arguments about how much selfishness is acceptable. The winning formula “we will pay you to support us and we won’t force you to carry that loser down the road”.
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...
Rather than being a matter of this leader or that, it seems clear that Labour's issues are structural, but I would push back on the idea that you can't build a social democratic movement (which is really what we're talking about, not socialism) in the absence of a traditional mass industrial working class. Labour's immediate roots lay in trade unionism but beyond that there was a rich environment of local associational activity: coops, friendly societies, burial clubs, etc. etc. Maybe those precise forms don't need to replicated but local grassroots associational activity might be the source of a viable future ...
I was thinking, looking at the results from last week, that although it's been overshadowed by the reshuffle and Johnson's problems with the union, that the Labour results in all the mayoralties were actually really good. The Conservative party only hold two of them. Perhaps the way to stay relevant is not to push for national government at all, and push for increased devolution to the regions and greater powers for the mayors and regional government. The Conservative party talks the talk on this, but is pathologically predisposed to centralise and desperate to control everything. It sounds negative, but I wonder if this is what Andy Burnham decided some time ago.
OMM, I agree with basically all of what you've said.
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Whilst we're all squabbling but essentially after the same things we are heading at pace for global catastrophe. The need for radical political and societal change is beyond urgent. There is a need to remove financial interests and influence from the political sphere, a need to focus all political decision making on ecological and environmental protection on a global sale. The world is changing and our so called democracy seems unfit to address it seriously.
Sounds a lot like you should be voting Green then. Labour simply isn't single-minded enough on these big issues, and a vote for them in many northern cities is just a vote for the status quo. While there might be some truth in the turkeys/ xmas angle on Hartlepool, too long in unchallenged power is often a recipe for poor governance and particularly the arrogance that you can afford to ignore dissent. This is certainly why they've just lost control of Sheffield, where their reaction to the Green councillor's protest at their street tree fiasco was to try to imprison her.
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Intriguing scenario here in West Yorkshire as Tracy Brabin (the one surviving Labour MP round here after the last GE bloodbath) is running for West Yorkshire mayor.
I assume if she wins, this will trigger a by-election, which at the moment The Tories would likely win.
If she loses the mayoral vote, I'm guessing she "just" goes back to being our MP still?
So, errrr, go Tracy? Or not?
The conservatives will obviously win this seat. When it happens, it will be pointless, and wrong trying to frame it as a failure of Starmer. As others have said and many commentators observe, all of these seats have been going this way since before Corbyn. He certainly repelled a lot of people but isn't solely responsible for the socio-cultural shifts which made all of this inevitable.
Sadly I think you're right - Tracy's 3.5k majority won't hold up I assume.
The only viable option open here would be to persuade Jo Cox's sister to run, but I think even that may come across as cynical, and people have short memories as it is.
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Intriguing scenario here in West Yorkshire as Tracy Brabin (the one surviving Labour MP round here after the last GE bloodbath) is running for West Yorkshire mayor.
I assume if she wins, this will trigger a by-election, which at the moment The Tories would likely win.
If she loses the mayoral vote, I'm guessing she "just" goes back to being our MP still?
So, errrr, go Tracy? Or not?
The conservatives will obviously win this seat. When it happens, it will be pointless, and wrong trying to frame it as a failure of Starmer. As others have said and many commentators observe, all of these seats have been going this way since before Corbyn. He certainly repelled a lot of people but isn't solely responsible for the socio-cultural shifts which made all of this inevitable.
Sadly I think you're right - Tracy's 3.5k majority won't hold up I assume.
The only viable option open here would be to persuade Jo Cox's sister to run, but I think even that may come across as cynical, and people have short memories as it is.
Indeed. The Conservative party will clearly pour everything into winning here while the narrative is going their way.
This is interesting, however from Katy Balls in the Guardian:
But for all the heady forecasts of Tory wins for years to come, not everyone is on the same page. As more results have come in over the weekend, the picture has become more complicated. The Tories aren’t the only incumbents enjoying success. Welsh Labour held firm despite Tory efforts, Labour metro mayors such as Andy Burnham boosted their vote share, and the SNP enjoyed electoral success in Scotland.
The question some Tories are beginning to ask: is this down to a political realignment or part of a wider political trend in which incumbents across the UK are benefiting from a vaccine bounce and a loosening of restrictions? If it’s the latter, it’s harder to say how long it will last. “My colleagues have very short memories,” says one sceptical MP. “Just six months ago they were all talking about how long [Johnson] would last. Things can change fast.”
About 2 years ago, everyone was forecasting the breakup of the conservative party and the death of the two party system. At the moment, I could easily see Labour dying entirely, but things can, indeed change fast.
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Missed quite a bit since yesterday morning
AP - The grass roots activism you described as a Labour strength is in full flow in Preston and the very strong election performance there reflects this 'Community Wealth Building' approach. https://www.preston.gov.uk/article/1339/What-is-Preston-Model-, (https://www.preston.gov.uk/article/1339/What-is-Preston-Model-,) Much to be celebrated and built upon here. Social democracy is written on the LP membership card!
JB - I voted Green this election. I am a former LP member and activist (my membership subs now go to the local food bank) , hence my interest. (This statement maybe grounds for purging me should I ever join again! )
Labour are in with a shout in the upcoming by election, they should win but mustn't attempt to parachute in an out of towner... Those days are over.
So we discover the Dark Lord Mandleson is pulling Keir's strings and he is calling for a further shift right. The newly shuffled Shadow Chancellor appears to sit to the right of Sunak!
More embarrassing nonsense and back peddling on the sacking of AR yesterday. It's not a sacking, it's a promotion apparently. A broad coalition of mostly northern MPs seems to be exerting force upon the leadership. :popcorn:
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The newly shuffled Shadow Chancellor appears to sit to the right of Sunak!
I think Reeves is quite unfairly maligned by the left, of which I would consider myself part. I think people's views develop over time and I found this interview quite persuasive. I don't think the anti-welfare, IDS-esque caricature of her that is common on the Labour left is fair.
https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk/2021/02/comeback-rachel-reeves
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The newly shuffled Shadow Chancellor appears to sit to the right of Sunak!
I think Reeves is quite unfairly maligned by the left, of which I would consider myself part. I think people's views develop over time and I found this interview quite persuasive. I don't think the anti-welfare, IDS-esque caricature of her that is common on the Labour left is fair.
https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk/2021/02/comeback-rachel-reeves
I agree, I like Rachel Reeves, she is well qualified as a chancellor (as was Dodds incidentally); but Rachel Reeves is a good media performer. To my mind she had been better than Starmer in this respect by some margin. She is able to be very strongly critical of government policy without sounding hectoring. Starmer is bloody good at PMQs but has a habit of sounding irritated by interviewers. I lived in her constituency about ten years ago, and she may actually be the only Labour MP I've actually voted for, and I would do again.
Labour are in with a shout in the upcoming by election, they should win but mustn't attempt to parachute in an out of towner... Those days are over.
So we discover the Dark Lord Mandleson is pulling Keir's strings and he is calling for a further shift right.
They really aren't. Pretending as much will only lead to more problems. All available evidence suggests that the conservatives will get a large majority.
It really isn't helpful describing people as a 'dark lord'. I have any number of deeply unpleasant things I could write about the views and disposition of some politicians, but I don't think this is really fair. They are all human beings with strengths and weaknesses. I'm really sorry if that sounds all bloody worthy but they are just people after all, not a different species.
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Sheffield council referendum result just out: 65% for change to committee model, 35% for current 'strong leader' model. Incumbent Labour council getting bashed from both directions.
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My bad.. I meant to say the deeply cynical and unpleasant Lord Mandleson.
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What I found most notable about the local elections was the absence of campaigning. There was barely anything through the door yet alone anyone at the door. I would struggle to state what Labour stand for at present (some vague guff about addressing inequalities and injustices). I don’t feel that Labour’s poor showing is either a surprise or of particular significance. The Tories had a massive GE victory on the back of Brexit and nothing’s happened since then except Covid. Why would voters have changed their minds in the interim? The negative effects of Brexit are masked by all the massive negatives of Covid. The Tories inevitably get some credit for the vaccine success though to my mind they deserve very little, the success being largely due to very effective and well established interconnections between UK academia and UK pharmaceutical industries. That combined with an NHS capable of delivering a rollout programme. Kate Bingham was definitely a very capable organiser and deserves credit, though the main point I’d make there is that even a Chumocracy can sometimes select somebody who is not shit.
I’m continually astonished by the vitriol that spews forth from the Labour left to anyone on the Labour right. They hate Starmer et al with a vengeance that should probably be reserved for Nazi war criminals, and present 2017 as hard evidence of the solidity and viability of the whole Corbyn project, simply because the result wasn’t as shit as everybody thought it would be. They need reminding that Dunkirk wasn’t actually a victory. I can’t see anyone waiting in the wings who looks like a better leader than Starmer at present. We just have to hope he can stop the infighting and pull things together sufficiently to present a credible vision to offer people at the next GE. I live in hope but I won’t be betting my house on it.
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n=1
My area of West Yorkshire/Bradford almost never votes Labour, in either general or local elections. The Bingley ward has (spoiler: had) three Conservative councillors elected. The Labour candidate has chipped away at his rivals over the last couple of local elections and this time won. I've no idea why this might be.
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The vitriol that the Labour left feels towards the right of the party is everything to do with the active briefing, undermining and counter campaigning that took place esp. during general election campaigns.
Assume you know about this Nails?
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I've no idea why this might be.
Good local candidate who has worked hard over the long run?
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I've no idea why this might be.
Good local candidate who has worked hard over the long run?
That's certainly one of the reasons (and probably very significant). I'm not sure it completely explains the overturning of what is normally a fairly comfortable Conservative majority though - there are still lots of people locally who I can't imagine would ever vote Labour regardless of the candidate.
Changing demographics maybe? The census data will be an interesting read.
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The vitriol that the Labour left feels towards the right of the party is everything to do with the active briefing, undermining and counter campaigning that took place esp. during general election campaigns.
Assume you know about this Nails?
And so it continues? Political infighting that keeps the Tories in power indefinitely.
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Is everyone not reading too much into all this?
The Hartlepool Labour vote had massively dropped between 2017 and 2019, they would have lost in 2019 if the Brexit and Tory vote was combined and the turnout was poor. Obviously this is not a win for the Starmer era of the party but it's no reason to enact a scorched earth policy (thought the political cock up that was the reshuffle/Angela Rayner debacle seems there are some Corbyn-era traits Kier has decided are worth persevering with).
Re the Manchester region votes, Burnham is popular because he sells the "sticking up for GM" line very well, "if it's good enough for London, it's good enough for GM" etc with the buses as well as publicly trying to sort out the homelessness/housing issues. Having said that, he hasn't achieved that much. And to however thinks the Manchester council is pretty much all red is that we all want a socialist paradise, you may not realise that Sir Richard Leese, our beloved mayor, seems solely focussed on selling off council land to middle eastern and far eastern investors to build apartment blocks for investors that have a pitifully poor occupancy rate whilst building no affordable homes nor social housing whilst the numbers in sleeping bags under bridges is on the up. People are voting Labour, I'm assuming, for the same reason as me, is that my local councillor is working bloody hard to enact change.
Paul Dennet, however, is a very different kettle of fish, I grant you. A very impressive man who I believe very much has the good of the local people at the core of everything he does and very much a socialist. You can see a marked difference in how housing is tackled in Salford compared to Manchester. I would very much like Manchester to follow his vision but I doubt we will unfortunately.
Anyway, I'm rambling, but basically, people vote for different reasons in local elections than a GE, Kier's Labour did better than Corbyn's did in the council elections in 2017 so maybe the Corbynistas should stop crowing quite so loudly, Kier's brand of leadership has so far been pretty uninspiring and his political instinct looking questionable but lets give him and his team a chance for one GE* without trying to burn Labour to the ground for some cult run socialist ideal which the electorate told us they didn't want twice.
*I agree he needs to sort his shit out and how the pandemic is nominally getting under control they need to banging on about what their vision for Britain is, not just whinging about dodgy Boris.
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The vitriol that the Labour left feels towards the right of the party is everything to do with the active briefing, undermining and counter campaigning that took place esp. during general election campaigns.
Assume you know about this Nails?
And there it is.
These are not the reasons Labour has failed to achieve power.
Labour policies and personalities are simply not attractive to enough people.
It isn’t because the electorate are too right wing, either. The Tories only to took 43.6% of the vote. A significant majority of voters are “progressive” through to “centrist” and Labour could have easily won, had they appeared credible to the 7/8% middle ground (the ones you hate even more than your own moderates, in your own party, that you disparagingly refer to as “right” when they are anything but right wing).
The SNP excuse does not hold water, since they accounted for 3% of the vote.
Perhaps Labour should have supported the Proportional representation referendum a little better, I mean, they’d probably be in power now, in coalition with the Libs and Tory hegemony would be all but over.
Honestly, every time I hear these arguments rehashed, I reassure myself by looking back through as many prior GE results as I can stomach and it’s clear, that by vote %, progressive and moderate voters make a little more than 50% of the votes cast and sometimes a little more, in every election.
You want change? Scrap FTP. We’d be a true social democracy and probably always have been, if FTP wasn’t a thing.
However, YOU HAVE TO WIN A GE TO AFFECT CHANGE.
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Is everyone not reading too much into all this?
The Hartlepool Labour vote had massively dropped between 2017 and 2019, they would have lost in 2019 if the Brexit and Tory vote was combined and the turnout was poor.
That sentence is correct, but only so as far as it goes. If you go further back than 2017 then a different picture emerges.
From seat inception in 70's until 2010 - labour vote share consistently around 50%, with a slight tick upwards to around 60% (infamous Mandleson was the MP btw). Not much to see, as you might expect.
However in 2010 the labour vote dropped considerably, while both Tory and UKIP vote increased. In 2015 the UKIP vote increased again; they came a reasonably close second to Labour. If UKIP and Tory votes had been combined then, they would have won then too, by miles. This was pre-Brexit and pre-Corbyn. Post referendum in 2017 GE the UKIP vote collapsed, Tories ticked up, and Labour vote rocketed. 2019 was largely a repeat of the 2015 results but with the Brexit party in the place of UKIP.
It is shown most easily in the graph halfway down this page: https://electionresults.parliament.uk/election/2019-12-12/results/Location/Constituency/Hartlepool (can't find a way to link directly - anyone?).
Its n=1 for this one seat, but the general picture is one of gradual labour decline over a decade from 2005 to 2015, with a corresponding increase in the "anti-EU/Labour" vote, until a huge abberation result in 2017 in which Corbyn got back to early Blair-era levels, before it then switches back to the previous pattern. The Tory strategy to all this appears to have been to "combine" these anti-EU (or anti-London/ anti-globalistion/ insert your choice) votes by effectively becoming UKIP/Brexit party with respect to the EU. Labour have never had a good answer to this.
I would say its possible that 2017 was an aberration because it was one of the few elections that wasn't as much predicated on Brexit-like opinions.
Possible conclusion - the 2021 result in Hartlepool isn't a "hangover" from the Corbyn years. Its been on the cards for much longer than that. To be clear- you're correct Corbyn did loose votes in 2019, but from Blair levels to Milliband levels. I.e. nothing which hadn't already happened. In reality he actually reversed that direction of travel in 2017, but only briefly. Which is why the "I'm not Jeremy Corbyn" strategy is not exactly working for Starmer. He's just reverted things back to the long term mean, which with Brexit "settled" is actually now worse than ever. Being the architect of Labour's second ref strategy and parachuting a die-hard remainer to stand for the seat probably didn't help either?
If you look at the numbers in 2021, it may be even worse than that. Obviously byelections always have worse turnout, but Tory vote = 75% of total Tory+Brexit amount from 2019. Labour vote = c.50% of 2019 amount. So not only are Labour under Starmer not turning the so-called "white working class" over to them, they are actually losing their core vote as well.
I don't know what the answer is, but the strategy, if there is one, isn't working.
Of course, it could just be the vaccine bounce.
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That's a good look at it Nigel, boringly, I think it's multi-causal. 2017 massively affected by May's awful campaign, and a protest vote when people couldn't see that we'd left the EU yet. Remember the party conference where all the letters fell off, and her slogan 'nothing has changed'.
The inexorable decline in the Labour vote is socio cultural change and in the reason why people vote, from class to culture, to oversimplify it a bit.
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2017. We respect the result of the referendum and will seek to negotiate a deal. Best results for Labour in England for 20 years. Corbyn actually got more votes in England than Blair did in 1997.
2019. We don’t respect the referendum and want to rerun it. Loss of 50 leave seats. Loads more, like Hartlepool, left in the balance.
The biggest problem for Labour now is that 400 odd of the 650 constituencies had leave majorities, because of how concentrated younger remainers are geographically, and a lot of leave voters won’t vote for Labour again.
Because we don’t respect the referendum result = we don’t respect you, and you can’t trust us.
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I agree with Nigel, it is a long term shift (either of the electorate away from Labour or the other way round) rather than being purely Corbyn or Brexit, with the Brexit vote being a symptom of the same shift. In Hartlepool, I think (as with the Labour mayors elsewhere), the positive work of the Tees Valley mayor with support for Teeside Net Zero and similar projects will have had a local effect in favour of the Tories.
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Yes, it's nothing like as basic as SF depicts above.
Slightly more positively, I saw this on Twitter:
https://twitter.com/rosepoet/status/1390791674817912835?s=09
I'd be interested to know if this is bollocks, or actually reasonable. There doesn't appear to be any source given. It's a random tweet by a person I don't know at all, so chances are it's the former. ??
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It certainly seems reasonable, but are you sure it's the right link?
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It certainly seems reasonable, but are you sure it's the right link?
JB, I'm assuming Toby means:
Cut out the triumphalist gloating, please.
If this were a general election
BBC House of Commons projection based on local election results
CON: 327 (-38)
LAB: 226 (+23)
LDM: 24 (+13)
OTH: 73 (+2)
A Tory majority of 4- compared to the 80 they have now.
We need to ditch FPTP.
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What a bloody awful lot of bullshit in the Queen's speech yesterday, irrespective of anything that's wrong with Labour.
Basically, mostly culture war crap in a flagrant attempt to preserve voters. Is trying to ban foie gras, fine universities etc really more important than any sort of a plan of social care? I'll answer that, no!
PS thanks Galpinos that's the tweet
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O,I forgot about the voter ID to further cement a massive conservative advantage. Voter fraud basically doesn't exist by impersonation at the ballot station.
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O,I forgot about the voter ID to further cement a massive conservative advantage. Voter fraud basically doesn't exist by impersonation at the ballot station.
I think this is a red herring / to give the opposition something to moan about then it will be withdrawn.
Can’t see the likes of David Davis etc.., going along with this.
But - who the fuck knows anymore!!
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O,I forgot about the voter ID to further cement a massive conservative advantage. Voter fraud basically doesn't exist by impersonation at the ballot station.
I think this is a red herring / to give the opposition something to moan about then it will be withdrawn.
Can’t see the likes of David Davis etc.., going along with this.
But - who the fuck knows anymore!!
I don't know... it's less worrying than the proposals to stop government decisions being challenged in court, but DD is, I think the most rebellious MP in parliament, of any party so him disagreeing isn't a deal breaker. It is obviously a mendacious act, as Johnson disagrees with ID cards generally, although he probably changes his mind about that every 5 minutes. The proposals on immigration are appalling, as is the bill to recognise foreign qualifications. The latter will lead to some very poorly qualified medical professionals working in the NHS. I don't doubt that the medical training in some countries can be as good or better than here, but sometimes it is a lot worse as well.
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O,I forgot about the voter ID to further cement a massive conservative advantage. Voter fraud basically doesn't exist by impersonation at the ballot station.
I think this is a red herring / to give the opposition something to moan about then it will be withdrawn.
Can’t see the likes of David Davis etc.., going along with this.
This is deeply troubling. In-person voter fraud in this country is effectively nonexistent.
This legislation is pure gerrymandering; designed for the sole purpose of disenfranchising the demographics who are least likely to vote Conservative.
There's such a strong majority that a few dissenting voices within the party isn't enough to stop it. There's hardly anyone left in the parliamentary party with a conscience so I expect it will pass easily unless there's a legal challenge.
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So we're on for a by-election in Batley & Spen then...and I wasn't a million miles away:
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/may/12/jo-cox-sister-labour-batley-spen-byelection-kim-leadbeater (https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/may/12/jo-cox-sister-labour-batley-spen-byelection-kim-leadbeater)
Interestingly we had a "personalised" letter from Kier yesterday surveying us on what was important to us in the area etc etc. I get the feeling that our little ward is going to be getting a lot of love from the Labour big hitters in the near future.
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O,I forgot about the voter ID to further cement a massive conservative advantage. Voter fraud basically doesn't exist by impersonation at the ballot station.
I think this is a red herring / to give the opposition something to moan about then it will be withdrawn.
Can’t see the likes of David Davis etc.., going along with this.
This is deeply troubling. In-person voter fraud in this country is effectively nonexistent.
This legislation is pure gerrymandering; designed for the sole purpose of disenfranchising the demographics who are least likely to vote Conservative.
There's such a strong majority that a few dissenting voices within the party isn't enough to stop it. There's hardly anyone left in the parliamentary party with a conscience so I expect it will pass easily unless there's a legal challenge.
Not sure whether they will really go through with this but whichever way you look at it this is a terrible proposal which demonstrates the total lack of principles and deeply cynical attitude of this government.
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O,I forgot about the voter ID to further cement a massive conservative advantage. Voter fraud basically doesn't exist by impersonation at the ballot station.
This along with proposals to enforce 'freedom of speech' upon our universities and colleges are disturbing developments.
Presumably designed to create further division within our society, continued 'dog whistle' politics and stirring the 'culture war' pot. There'll be strong student resistance for sure, could get messy. :no:
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O,I forgot about the voter ID to further cement a massive conservative advantage. Voter fraud basically doesn't exist by impersonation at the ballot station.
This along with proposals to enforce 'freedom of speech' upon our universities and colleges are disturbing developments.
Presumably designed to create further division within our society, continued 'dog whistle' politics and stirring the 'culture war' pot.
:agree:, while I probably don't share your views on how Labour on should best face its challenges I think most on the left and centre can agree that this is a really terrible government that is seemingly willing to do anything to entrench it's position in power.
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It's like 'A Hand Maids Tale' in real life, gently sliding into fascism. I'm sure that there is a broad coalition of people that will resist this shit but 'they' are now in a position to push it through and have enough of the general public on message to be able to do so. Scary times. :'(
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O,I forgot about the voter ID to further cement a massive conservative advantage. Voter fraud basically doesn't exist by impersonation at the ballot station.
This along with proposals to enforce 'freedom of speech' upon our universities and colleges are disturbing developments.
Presumably designed to create further division within our society, continued 'dog whistle' politics and stirring the 'culture war' pot. There'll be strong student resistance for sure, could get messy. :no:
For once, I completely agree with you. What the fuck are they doing? Is this really more important than doing something about exams etc post covid? NO!
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It's like 'A Hand Maids Tale' in real life, gently sliding into fascism. I'm sure that there is a broad coalition of people that will resist this shit but 'they' are now in a position to push it through and have enough of the general public on message to be able to do so. Scary times. :'(
Yup the bill to restrict protests will sort that out for them...
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But you could argue that public protest is effectively futile - in my lifetime the Poll Tax protests / riots were the only thing I've ever seen where "people power" won the day.
Whether it's the Iraq War, Student Fees, Austerity, or more recently BLM or Sarah Everard - the powers that be seem impervious to the need to recognise or react to strength of public opinion.
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the powers that be seem impervious to the need to recognise or react to strength of public opinion.
They don't need to recognise or react to public opinion.
Even before this legislation, the electoral system was rigged so much in their favour that they knew they would get re-elected regardless.
This provides an additional buffer to cement their advantage for generations to come.
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But you could argue that public protest is effectively futile - in my lifetime the Poll Tax protests / riots were the only thing I've ever seen where "people power" won the day.
Whether it's the Iraq War, Student Fees, Austerity, or more recently BLM or Sarah Everard - the powers that be seem impervious to the need to recognise or react to strength of public opinion.
I'd argue that the Iraq war protests changed the way it is now seen to some extent, though they may not have directly influenced policy at the time. It has occurred to me that what has made a significant difference to government policy in recent times is celebrity, rather than public protest. Marcus Rashford on school meals, Jamie Oliver on err school meals again, various people on plastic bag charges etc etc.
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This is a powerful article, probably the best description of the problems of Boris Johnson's tenure as PM that I've read. I'm afraid you'll have to have a times subscription to read it though:
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/clock-is-ticking-on-johnsons-people-pleasing-knpsbffj8?shareToken=a54dbf9e3496df8d279ceda0c3f767d7
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Here you go...
https://twitter.com/MarcDavenant/status/1396734685351383042?s=20 (https://twitter.com/MarcDavenant/status/1396734685351383042?s=20)
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Whether it's the Iraq War, Student Fees, Austerity, or more recently BLM or Sarah Everard - the powers that be seem impervious to the need to recognise or react to strength of public opinion.
Things that lots of voters (if not lots of the public) think are good:
High and increasing house prices.
Policies that make life harder for welfare claimants.
Leaving the European Union.
Deficit reduction.
I think the powers that be are quite well attuned to the opinion of large parts of the public...
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Whether it's the Iraq War, Student Fees, Austerity, or more recently BLM or Sarah Everard - the powers that be seem impervious to the need to recognise or react to strength of public opinion.
Things that lots of voters (if not lots of the public) think are good:
High and increasing house prices.
Policies that make life harder for welfare claimants.
Leaving the European Union.
Deficit reduction.
I think the powers that be are quite well attuned to the opinion of large parts of the public...
Sadly I think you're right on the money there Sean. Although it may not be that many of the population it's a larger proportion of the population who actually vote.
Politics has become a lot more transactional now, and people want their house to be worth more, or pensions to be triple locked etc etc.
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And policies to make it harder to enter and remain in the country.
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And don't forget tougher sentences for crimes (despite the fact that our prison system is already bursting at the seams, isn't for for purpose and does more harm than good in the vast majority of cases).
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If only there were a word to describe the sort of lowest common denominator policies to make politicians popular :-\
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And don't forget tougher sentences for crimes (despite the fact that our prison system is already bursting at the seams, isn't for for purpose and does more harm than good in the vast majority of cases).
Prisons don't really work, as a deterrent or as rehabilitation; prohibition of recreational drugs is counterproductive, wealthy western countries depend economically on immigration, yet their people reject it. Will the current trend of politics change any of this?
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From a Times report on the latest home office announcement;
Only a radical overhaul of the immigration system that “slams the door on dangerous criminals” will meet the demands of the British people, Priti Patel will say today.
Sigh.
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The absolute hypocrisy of the government laying into the BBC for employing a journalist who obtained an interview on false pretences, when the prime minister was a journalist who was sacked from the Times for wait for it... making up a source for a story.
Manufactured culture war bullshit, and Labour should be telling him that.
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The absolute hypocrisy of the government laying into the BBC for employing a journalist who obtained an interview on false pretences, when the prime minister was a journalist who was sacked from the Times for wait for it... making up a source for a story.
Manufactured culture war bullshit, and Labour should be telling him that.
Agree with almost everything you say around this sort of stuff, unfortunately unsure what the best approach against it is. This government does not even attempt to hide its approach / hypocrisy and is seemingly completely willing to pick up whatever culture war position it thinks can get it a few extra votes but I do worry that arguing against it passes by the majority of the electorate.
I hate the nasty populist politics of the Johnson government, a position that is shared by many on here but how does the labour party best attack this without be viewed by a significant part of the electorate as the sort of 'woke' politics they don't like as against Johnson 'saying it like it is'?
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The absolute hypocrisy of the government laying into the BBC for employing a journalist who obtained an interview on false pretences, when the prime minister was a journalist who was sacked from the Times for wait for it... making up a source for a story.
Manufactured culture war bullshit, and Labour should be telling him that.
Agree with almost everything you say around this sort of stuff, unfortunately unsure what the best approach against it is. This government does not even attempt to hide its approach / hypocrisy and is seemingly completely willing to pick up whatever culture war position it thinks can get it a few extra votes but I do worry that arguing against it passes by the majority of the electorate.
I hate the nasty populist politics of the Johnson government, a position that is shared by many on here but how does the labour party best attack this without be viewed by a significant part of the electorate as the sort of 'woke' politics they don't like as against Johnson 'saying it like it is'?
Go after his government's failure to a) manage COVID effectively b)have a functioning justice system- look at how long you might have to wait for a trial of any sort c) manage the prison system d) develop anything, even a fucking sentence on social care which isn't along the lines of the dog ate my fucking homework which is all Johnson can say e) do anything about Zaghari Radcliffe despite Raab being slightly more competent than most of his team of utter halfwits.
Apologies to anyone reading, I'm angry about the government at the moment, I should go do some work to chill out a bit !
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No apology required, I share your pain!! It's good to be clear that the dislike of this government is shared by the centre left as much as the Corbyn wing of the labour party.
Agree that there is plenty of substance to attack Johnson on, hopefully once the positive spin they put on the vaccination program starts to dissipate some of it can make some impact.
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I've really no idea what to make of this.
https://metro.co.uk/2021/05/23/keir-starmer-breaks-down-in-tears-talking-about-his-mum-with-piers-morgan-14630187/ (https://metro.co.uk/2021/05/23/keir-starmer-breaks-down-in-tears-talking-about-his-mum-with-piers-morgan-14630187/)
I fear it could make quite painful viewing for some.
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No apology required, I share your pain!! It's good to be clear that the dislike of this government is shared by the centre left as much as the Corbyn wing of the labour party.
Whilst we're on a ranty tip. This annoys the shit out of me. It's not the Corbyn wing of the party, it is the left wing of the party, the root of party and for that matter the core of activism within the party. The Corbyn (tm) brand has been successfully toxified to the extent that I feel the sense of hatred and bile when the name is mentioned. The left will be here forever, Corbyn is from it not the core of it...
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Was talking to my 90 year old, daily express reading neighbour and tried to point out some of the lies, crookedness and general incompetence of the government to be met only with a 'Boris has done alright, he's got us out of that Europe, and it's all just labour sleaze tactics and fake news' type response. Politics has become a faith rather than a reasoned decision.
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No apology required, I share your pain!! It's good to be clear that the dislike of this government is shared by the centre left as much as the Corbyn wing of the labour party.
Whilst we're on a ranty tip. This annoys the shit out of me. It's not the Corbyn wing of the party, it is the left wing of the party, the root of party and for that matter the core of activism within the party. The Corbyn (tm) brand has been successfully toxified to the extent that I feel the sense of hatred and bile when the name is mentioned. The left will be here forever, Corbyn is from it not the core of it...
(https://media.newyorker.com/photos/5e74cfaface85e000886314a/master/pass/A24010-dailycartoon.jpg)
“This will never work, Tom. We’re from opposite ends of the same wing of the same political party.”
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No apology required, I share your pain!! It's good to be clear that the dislike of this government is shared by the centre left as much as the Corbyn wing of the labour party.
Whilst we're on a ranty tip. This annoys the shit out of me. It's not the Corbyn wing of the party, it is the left wing of the party, the root of party and for that matter the core of activism within the party. The Corbyn (tm) brand has been successfully toxified to the extent that I feel the sense of hatred and bile when the name is mentioned. The left will be here forever, Corbyn is from it not the core of it...
Fair enough maybe, but would you really have been much happier if I'd said the left wing of the labour party? Left wing or left of centre, isn't the fight against a horrible right wing populist government more important? Why pick on this rather than considering what you might share with Toby (and me) in your antipathy to the current government :shrug:
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No apology required, I share your pain!! It's good to be clear that the dislike of this government is shared by the centre left as much as the Corbyn wing of the labour party.
Whilst we're on a ranty tip. This annoys the shit out of me. It's not the Corbyn wing of the party, it is the left wing of the party, the root of party and for that matter the core of activism within the party. The Corbyn (tm) brand has been successfully toxified to the extent that I feel the sense of hatred and bile when the name is mentioned. The left will be here forever, Corbyn is from it not the core of it...
Fair enough maybe, but would you really have been much happier if I'd said the left wing of the labour party? Left wing or left of centre, isn't the fight against a horrible right wing populist government more important? Why pick on this rather than considering what you might share with Toby (and me) in your antipathy to the current government :shrug:
Some of that is particularly interesting; the current government isn't really Conservative, in the way that Theresa May is, or the party used to be. They are right wing on culture and lean towards the left on economics.
My main argument with them is less about their ideology, it's the fact that they're fucking useless, they're virtually all shit at their jobs. Boris didn't even really do Brexit; Theresa May did much of the work, and he merely dropped Northern Ireland in the shit to make it easier, knowing that few people in England pay much attention to it.
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No apology required, I share your pain!! It's good to be clear that the dislike of this government is shared by the centre left as much as the Corbyn wing of the labour party.
Whilst we're on a ranty tip. This annoys the shit out of me. It's not the Corbyn wing of the party, it is the left wing of the party, the root of party and for that matter the core of activism within the party. The Corbyn (tm) brand has been successfully toxified to the extent that I feel the sense of hatred and bile when the name is mentioned. The left will be here forever, Corbyn is from it not the core of it...
Fair enough maybe, but would you really have been much happier if I'd said the left wing of the labour party? Left wing or left of centre, isn't the fight against a horrible right wing populist government more important? Why pick on this rather than considering what you might share with Toby (and me) in your antipathy to the current government :shrug:
Because I feel it is a contribitative part of the same problem. It is more than just a Political problem, our culture and the populism we are appalled with is fed to the masses, the narratives are driven by those with the wealth and power necessary to be able to control them.
:shrug:
From where I'm sitting it doesn't look like there is any strength, passion or commitment to resistance coming from those at the helm of HMs opposition. It would appear they don't wish to do or say anything that could be associated with Corbyn name, that they are seeking the backing of the MSM which won't be forthcoming. And the further we slide
...
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.....It would appear they don't wish to do or say anything that could be associated with Corbyn name, that they are seeking the backing of the MSM which won't be forthcoming. And the further we slide
...
I'm sorry to say that this post just reads like a confused conspiracy theory that characterises both of the sides of political debate in the UK and the US. They both rely on claims of victimhood, that all the media and the establishment are against them. I don't think it was a terribly useful response to Ian's post. Corbyn was indubitably the most unpopular politician to lead a party for some time. His attitudes on foreign affairs on their own made him fundamentally unelectable, as well as being poorly thought out and articulated. I'd certainly say that not all of his ideas were bad, but he was totally unsuited to leading a party, let alone a country.
Starmer is not exactly a spectacular or inspirational figure and I doubt that he will ever lead the country, but he may provide a good caretaker to edge the Labour party back to being electable. You cannot win an election in this country by promising radicalism and revolution, its not what most people want.
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Cummings is being questioned now, hes surprisingly contrite, and has repeatedly apologised for his own actions, but still laying into the government:
But, he says, the government was “not operating on a war footing” on this in February. Lots of people were “literally skiing”.
Q: Were you operating on a war footing?
Cummings says the PM “went on holiday for two weeks”.
(Boris Johnson was at Chevening at the time. No 10 has always denied he was on holiday. They claim he was working.)
Theres a live stream on the Guardian website.
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It's live on the beeb, all very interesting. The field of behavioural science getting a drubbing.
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Still going on... possibly the only person who comes out of this worse than the PM is Hancock...
Wonder if he'll get thrown under the bus
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Whatever you think of Cummings it is bizarre to see that there has been such a void of leadership or responsibility in the government that again Cummings is being given his own platform (again) to show case all the shortcomings and failings.
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Whatever you think of Cummings it is bizarre to see that there has been such a void of leadership or responsibility in the government that again Cummings is being given his own platform (again) to show case all the shortcomings and failings.
apparently Cummings' Damascene moment has occurred after he was forced out of his powerful position by Carrie Symonds, Johnson's current fiancé. Murdoch who owns the Times and employs Gove (who wants Johnson's job) and the Daily Mail (who employ Gove's wife) are fanning the anti-Johnson flames whilst The Telegraph (who used to employ Johnson) and the BBC are trying to mitigate these stories. It's like a really boring GoT with no dragons and sex scenes that turn you off (but probably a higher body count)
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Party politics aside (I really don't care how good or bad anyone looks), listening to the testimony I quite like Cummings's attitude. He's obviously one of life's do'ers who just wants to make things happen and he obviously has a hatred of - what he considers - unnecessary rules and restrictive bureaucracy. He appears to see things in a fairly black/white way, almost the antithesis of the way politics works. Probably totally unsuited to a life in politics! I recognise his outlook. His descriptions of trying to get things done through the sludge of shambolic government and civil service organisations with few people prepared to take responsibility and take the lead will be familiar with anyone who's ever worked in any large organisation. The descriptions of trying to get actions fast-balled are the same old stories you can read about through history in various narratives of civil or military organisations in highly pressured situations requiring action (commandeering aircraft, 'bulldozing' through legalities surrounding the vaccine etc.). It's often the people who have the strength of character to ignore a failing system who make things happen. The lead of the vaccine group, former head of the SAS asked to set up manufacturing supply etc. Lions led by donkeys nicely sums up. Good point he made about how fortunate we were that covid didn't hit back in autumn with the state of the paralysed government during the brexit debates; as it was they were paralysed enough anyway.. I hope the dog is OK.
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Yeah, I think it is abundantly clear he is a snake but in certain roles he could be very effective. The plausibility of his testimony is being damaged for me because he is going out of his way to avoid criticising Sunak when seemingly everybody else is fair game. I think we know enough about Sunak's views to know that he was equally culpable and its revealing that DC is avoiding it.
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A good little thread around what Cummings' idea of cutting through red tape and getting the job done looked like
https://twitter.com/BarristerSecret/status/1397468485597515776
It's amazing what he's come up with after having months to think about it, and where to point the fingers (and also where not to point the fingers as SM said). Thought he could have tired harder on his Co. Durham bit, that was still a bit lacking. If it was a security issue all along surely that would have been easier to say at the time, and he didn't manage to improve his eye test drive story at all!
Impossible to prove if large parts of it are any where near the truth, or complete fabrication, as what he was saying often seemed to rely on off the record meetings or things that weren't recorded in any official capacity, how convenient.
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The below quote is possibly why it will likely come to nothing to many people (from a fairly normal friend on FB)
Why is everybody fretting about Dominic Cummings now? Nobody believed him when he sat in a garden and told us about his essential trip to Durham during the first lockdown, whilst we cancelled our weddings, our holidays and closed our businesses.
We didn’t believe in him 20 mins after the Brexit result was called and we were told that the £350m we were told would be saved a week wouldn’t, in fact, be going to the NHS. Bus? What bus?
But now he’s being reported as fact. They’re all liars. All of them. The only difference is that he’ll hide behind the others and only when dragged out of the dark will look you in the eye and lie to your face. Better? Or worse?
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I think that for a lot of British people, raised to believe they live in one of the best governed and fairest countries on earth, the fact that a series of avoidable errors killed 30 or 40 *thousand* people is too much to contemplate.
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He's obviously one of life's do'ers who just wants to make things happen
Is he? That's the rhetoric he loves to project, the iconoclastic outsider - but what has it ever amounted to? What has he been very effective at (I'll give him that he was campaign director for Vote Leave, but we can hardly say he alone made Brexit happen)? He has been very successful at riding the inside track for a long time now, giving him far more opportunity to make things happen than any of us. If bureaucracy is such a problem has he put really serious work into reforming the civil service? I see mostly conniving and feuds. Ultimate emperor's new clothes.
So, yes, he loves the image of the outsider thwarted by the system when he's actually an integral part of the system and an integral part of the catastrophic response of the UK government last year.
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I think that for a lot of British people, raised to believe they live in one of the best governed and fairest countries on earth, the fact that a series of avoidable errors killed 30 or 40 *thousand* people is too much to contemplate.
I think it is a very small section of society that was raised this way - maybe the ruling white elite and that's it. The working classes going through the miners strikes in the 80s, the overt racism of the sus laws, repatriation attempts, Hillsborough... They left a large proportion of society under no illusions about whose side the government was on and what lengths they would go to to get what they want.
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Cummings talks a good game and is trying to sound contrite but his inabiltiy to apologise for or acknowledge specific incidents is weird. He appears to be able to apologise in the abstract but not for a specific thing. His whole schtick seems to be he's saying sorry for being SO right but not managing to convince the government how right he was so they made bad decisions. Add that to the fact he's "gone after" Johnson and Hancock but left the rest of them squeaky clean it undermines a lot of what he says.
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Party politics aside (I really don't care how good or bad anyone looks), listening to the testimony I quite like Cummings's attitude. He's obviously one of life's do'ers who just wants to make things happen and he obviously has a hatred of - what he considers - unnecessary rules and restrictive bureaucracy. He appears to see things in a fairly black/white way, almost the antithesis of the way politics works.
Hmmm, really? If you want a do-er, it's Gove imho. Like him or not, when he decides to implement policy and change, it happens. Look at education and justice (especially justice, he was only in post 12 months). What has Cummings actually implemented? He's seems more like an "ideas guy" and for someone who has been in the government inner circle since 2007 at least what has he done? Been a part of Brexit?
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Cummings as a person aside, I think he was telling the truth about what happened and the truth is deeply, deeply horrifying. Until the middle of march the plan was that we should let 400,000 people die in the next six months. Extraordinary.
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Party politics aside (I really don't care how good or bad anyone looks), listening to the testimony I quite like Cummings's attitude. He's obviously one of life's do'ers who just wants to make things happen and he obviously has a hatred of - what he considers - unnecessary rules and restrictive bureaucracy. He appears to see things in a fairly black/white way, almost the antithesis of the way politics works.
Hmmm, really? If you want a do-er, it's Gove imho. Like him or not, when he decides to implement policy and change, it happens. Look at education and justice (especially justice, he was only in post 12 months). What has Cummings actually implemented? He's seems more like an "ideas guy" and for someone who has been in the government inner circle since 2007 at least what has he done? Been a part of Brexit?
But wasn’t Cummings Gove’s spad at education? There were some tweets by Sam Freedman (or maybe it was an article in last weekends papers) which were quite illuminating about Cummings’ approach.
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I thought one TV journalists almost throw away view on Cummings testimony was quite important. They said that Cummings testimony made much of #10’s narrative about what happened make sense. In other words it fitted what we were told by the government better than the governments feeble explanation.
This was going on even on Monday - with the ridiculous situation around the local lockdowns. Ministers trying to bluff out some bullshit instead of just saying it was a cock up.
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Party politics aside (I really don't care how good or bad anyone looks), listening to the testimony I quite like Cummings's attitude. He's obviously one of life's do'ers who just wants to make things happen and he obviously has a hatred of - what he considers - unnecessary rules and restrictive bureaucracy. He appears to see things in a fairly black/white way, almost the antithesis of the way politics works.
Hmmm, really? If you want a do-er, it's Gove imho. Like him or not, when he decides to implement policy and change, it happens. Look at education and justice (especially justice, he was only in post 12 months). What has Cummings actually implemented? He's seems more like an "ideas guy" and for someone who has been in the government inner circle since 2007 at least what has he done? Been a part of Brexit?
Hes very good at winning elections. Hes got rid of 2 Conservative leaders in the past (IDS and Cameron). I think that Cummings is far less intelligent than he thinks he is, and hes probably a sociopath and very poor himself at government.
What's weird is that I'd say the same about Johnson: good at elections, awful at government, has few if any friends and a serial liar.
If he has actual proof of his claims, Johnson is screwed, if not all of it will be brushed aside by the whole bunch of fucking incompetent self serving pompous twats in a week.
Cummings' claim that has the most resonance for me is that there is something broken about a system that gives the electorate a choice of Corbyn or Johnson in a general election.
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I think that for a lot of British people, raised to believe they live in one of the best governed and fairest countries on earth, the fact that a series of avoidable errors killed 30 or 40 *thousand* people is too much to contemplate.
I'm not so sure. The populist politics game is to get groups of people upset with other groups of people instead of focussing on the c*nts in charge. The political classes are obsessed with the soap opera but too many people know unnecessary death, suffering and economic damage from this government's incompetent covid response.
This is a recent positive example of what can happen if you look at public policy with the public:
https://fabians.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/Going-with-the-grain-Fabian-Society-lowres.pdf
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Bring back General Franco, I say. #OneOfLifesDoers
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I think that for a lot of British people, raised to believe they live in one of the best governed and fairest countries on earth, the fact that a series of avoidable errors killed 30 or 40 *thousand* people is too much to contemplate.
I'm not so sure. The populist politics game is to get groups of people upset with other groups of people instead of focussing on the c*nts in charge. The political classes are obsessed with the soap opera but too many people know unnecessary death, suffering and economic damage from this government's incompetent covid response.
This is a recent positive example of what can happen if you look at public policy with the public:
https://fabians.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/Going-with-the-grain-Fabian-Society-lowres.pdf
I can't see anything positive in this debacle, unfortunately. I really don't like Cummings or respect him but he gives voice to a lot of self evident truths.
The most important is that the PM is a lazy, chaotic incompetent individual obsessed by his own media image. His administration is poorly selected, also incompetent and between them, they've facilitated the deaths of thousands of people.
But the depressing fact is that they'll all get off Scot free, and retire to corporate sinecures and live in luxury, penning crap op eds for the Telegraph to try to tear up their political successors.
I didn't need Dominic Cummings to tell me that, but its satisfying to see it splashed all over the place for a day or two.
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I just agree with what you say but believe in the good in most ordinary people. The two positions are not contradictory.
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Bring back General Franco, I say. #OneOfLifesDoers
General? Wow. He's done well for himself since his bold sandstone headpointing days. :P #Oneoflifesdeckers
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But wasn’t Cummings Gove’s spad at education?
He caused untold harm at DfE. The pseudo-privatisation, fragmentation, loss of oversight and accountability that is the hugely expanded academisation programme was their legacy. As is the billions squandered in free schools.
He’s just angling for a return to a position of power. That does not make his testimony invalid, but it should be treated with great care. I don’t think he is doing this because he believes the public deserves better, but because he thinks he does.
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I find the whole thing a bit strange. Part of me is pleased that he's sticking one to the present government and airing all their dirty laundry, but at the same time it feel like he's in full confession mode in the hope of atonement and redemption, which all feels a bit "methinks the lady doth protest" and doesn't quite ring true.
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It seems highly unlikely that he was lying in that testimony. 7 hours of it, with a lot of detail, names dates etc, and a lot of stuff that an inquiry will extremely easily confirm or deny. I think he is doing image rehab, and that he is in many ways an unpleasant person... but I think he was telling the truth in that testimony.
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I don't think he's lying, just "presenting a creatively selected suite of facts" to show himself in the best possible light and damn others.
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I don't think he's lying, just "presenting a creatively selected suite of facts" to show himself in the best possible light and damn others.
Agreed. He was being selectively candid.
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I don't think he's lying, just "presenting a creatively selected suite of facts" to show himself in the best possible light and damn others.
Agreed. He was being selectively candid.
To be honest, I still think he's a rather unpleasant character, but I don't blame him for doing this; if anyone had been part of a government that had dealt with the pandemic as they did, I think they would want to distance themselves from it as much as possible! We were the second best country in the world after the USA for pandemic preparation before 2020. It's sobering where we ended up.
On another note, Johnson meeting Orban is bloody disgraceful. He is essentially a racist dictator. Maybe he's having a tea party with Putin, Xi Jin Ping and Lukashenko next week? (Apologies for spelling btw)
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Boris gets £200k renovation paid by a doner and it’s all fine.
Hancock doesn’t declare a family business which gets an NHS contract and breaches ministerial code, also okay…
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Boris gets £200k renovation paid by a doner and it’s all fine.
That's one valuable kebab. (Sorry)
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Hopefully this will be successful BBC News - Conservative rebels to force vote on reversing aid cuts
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-57338465
Cutting the aid budget and DFID are two of the stupidest things that this government has done so far, and they've done quite a few.
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On another note, Johnson meeting Orban is bloody disgraceful. He is essentially a racist dictator. Maybe he's having a tea party with Putin, Xi Jin Ping and Lukashenko next week? (Apologies for spelling btw)
Theresa May had him over to tea when she was PM as well didn't she?
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On another note, Johnson meeting Orban is bloody disgraceful. He is essentially a racist dictator. Maybe he's having a tea party with Putin, Xi Jin Ping and Lukashenko next week? (Apologies for spelling btw)
Theresa May had him over to tea when she was PM as well didn't she?
If so, then it was when she was head of a fellow EU nation. Boris is surely under much less obligation to meet him now. The EU's response to Orban's regime has been very weak.
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Apologies if it’s been posted about previously, but there’s not much time left to opt out of having your medical records ‘shared’ (aka sold). Lack of any warning of what’s happening all part of the plan obviously. If it doesn’t work first time around then the lesson is to do it by stealth.
https://bylinetimes.com/2021/05/19/the-government-wants-to-sell-your-gp-medical-records-heres-how-to-opt-out/
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Apologies if it’s been posted about previously, but there’s not much time left to opt out of having your medical records ‘shared’ (aka sold). Lack of any warning of what’s happening all part of the plan obviously. If it doesn’t work first time around then the lesson is to do it by stealth.
https://bylinetimes.com/2021/05/19/the-government-wants-to-sell-your-gp-medical-records-heres-how-to-opt-out/
Thanks Ali, didn't know about this. Incidentally, being the cynic I am I would guess you're wrong that these would be "sold". They'll just give them away for nothing (except the promise of a US trade deal).
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Apologies if it’s been posted about previously, but there’s not much time left to opt out of having your medical records ‘shared’ (aka sold). Lack of any warning of what’s happening all part of the plan obviously. If it doesn’t work first time around then the lesson is to do it by stealth.
https://bylinetimes.com/2021/05/19/the-government-wants-to-sell-your-gp-medical-records-heres-how-to-opt-out/
Thanks Ali, didn't know about this. Incidentally, being the cynic I am I would guess you're wrong that these would be "sold". They'll just give them away for nothing (except the promise of a US trade deal).
This has been reported by several newspapers, but thanks Ali that's a useful link.
I would have thought that Nigel's assertion about a US trade deal was likely, although I seriously doubt that the UK will get such a deal for quite a long time. But the desperate Johnson government would probably give anyone who might give them a trade deal virtually anything, so that they can say that the country has made a success out of Brexit. Its well known that US health insurance companies are extremely covetous of the vast accumulated data in the NHS.
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On another note, Johnson meeting Orban is bloody disgraceful. He is essentially a racist dictator. Maybe he's having a tea party with Putin, Xi Jin Ping and Lukashenko next week? (Apologies for spelling btw)
Theresa May had him over to tea when she was PM as well didn't she?
If so, then it was when she was head of a fellow EU nation. Boris is surely under much less obligation to meet him now. The EU's response to Orban's regime has been very weak.
I agree re the EU, they should have kicked Hungary out years ago. However, Johnson meeting Orban within days of the whitewash "islamaphobia investigation " being released was particularly tawdry. As was his mealy mouthed non apology for his own language in past newspaper articles.
On a different note, it seems to becoming a habit for an advisor/ tsar to be appointed, who recommends something which Johnson doesn't like , (sack Priti Patel, spend 15bn on education) adviser then resigns when their advice is totally ignored: I don't blame them. However, with any luck Rashford will start tweeting about school spending and then there'll be a U turn.
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Apologies if it’s been posted about previously, but there’s not much time left to opt out of having your medical records ‘shared’ (aka sold). Lack of any warning of what’s happening all part of the plan obviously. If it doesn’t work first time around then the lesson is to do it by stealth.
https://bylinetimes.com/2021/05/19/the-government-wants-to-sell-your-gp-medical-records-heres-how-to-opt-out/
Thanks Ali, didn't know about this. Incidentally, being the cynic I am I would guess you're wrong that these would be "sold". They'll just give them away for nothing (except the promise of a US trade deal).
This has been reported by several newspapers, but thanks Ali that's a useful link.
I would have thought that Nigel's assertion about a US trade deal was likely, although I seriously doubt that the UK will get such a deal for quite a long time. But the desperate Johnson government would probably give anyone who might give them a trade deal virtually anything, so that they can say that the country has made a success out of Brexit. Its well known that US health insurance companies are extremely covetous of the vast accumulated data in the NHS.
Is anyone more knowledgeable than me able to breakdown in to simple English exactly what each of the two opt outs do?
I tried to work it out but am none the wiser.
There's plenty in the media (FT, Guardian, Register, medConfidential etc) advising people to complete both opt outs but nothing that actually explains what the implications of each opt out are.
This is my best guess at understanding:
1) To prevent your records from ultimately finding their way to third parties, it is necessary to complete both the Type 1 GP Data opt out and the non-GP Data opt out. With the Type 1 having to be completed before 23 June or it will be too late and all past data will already be included with no option to have it removed.
2) Completing both opt outs will have no adverse effect or your treatment either by your GP or other health services.
3) It will have an adverse effect on future medical research. I do not trust the current or future governments to keep people's data away from third parties who will use it against them and I do not think they will be willing or able to keep the pseudonymised data anonymous. Sadly, harming future research efforts is a price I think we have to pay unless better protections are put in place.
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Vaccinate the world, says Boris Johnson. https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/jun/05/share-vaccines-or-climate-deal-will-fail-rich-countries-are-told?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other
Only, much like his wallpaper, he'd rather someone else paid for it.
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Is anyone more knowledgeable than me able to breakdown in to simple English exactly what each of the two opt outs do?
I tried to work it out but am none the wiser.
There's plenty in the media (FT, Guardian, Register, medConfidential etc) advising people to complete both opt outs but nothing that actually explains what the implications of each opt out are.
This is my best guess at understanding:
1) To prevent your records from ultimately finding their way to third parties, it is necessary to complete both the Type 1 GP Data opt out and the non-GP Data opt out. With the Type 1 having to be completed before 23 June or it will be too late and all past data will already be included with no option to have it removed.
2) Completing both opt outs will have no adverse effect or your treatment either by your GP or other health services.
3) It will have an adverse effect on future medical research. I do not trust the current or future governments to keep people's data away from third parties who will use it against them and I do not think they will be willing or able to keep the pseudonymised data anonymous. Sadly, harming future research efforts is a price I think we have to pay unless better protections are put in place.
I am not making any claims to wisdom but what I understand is this:
Point 1 - you are correct about both the 2 categories of data and opt out dates, the key point is that if you do not opt out of GP data transfer by 23 June, you can NEVER opt out. It’s irreversible- for you that is. But not for those with access to the database as it will be ‘pseudonymised’ ie anonymised, but reversible so you could be identified as an individual from your data in future which includes physical, mental, sexual health records. Every interaction through your GP.
Point 2. Correct, this transfer of data is unrelated to your medical care.
Point 3. Not correct. I can only view this as authoritarian and commercially motivated because access to data for genuine research purposes ALREADY EXISTS. It’s here:
https://digital.nhs.uk/coronavirus/coronavirus-data-services-updates/trusted-research-environment-service-for-england
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Vaccinate the world, says Boris Johnson.
Only, much like his wallpaper, he'd rather someone else paid for it.
Hancock says we don’t have any spare doses to give to Covax. UK govt won’t say how much it’ll donate until other countries have committed…even though US, France, Germany, Japan etc have already put a number on it. What with the cuts to foreign aid as well other world leaders must piss themselves every time Johnson opens his mouth and uses his formidable ‘soft power’.
Front page of the express today makes it sound like Sunak single-handedly brokered the tech tax agreement. What is fucking wrong with these people?!
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...
Front page of the express today makes it sound like Sunak single-handedly brokered the tech tax agreement. What is fucking wrong with these people?!
I listened to an excellent episode of the Bunker books podcast today where Matthew D'Ancona makes the observation that this government is a purely populist one, governing without any plans or real policy objectives, merely for the sake of cultivating popularity.
It obviously works well for the Express but he also makes the point that populist governments have a time limit, eventually the hollow promises fall flat and their support starts to crumble. Unfortunately, that could be a while.
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...although as reported in the Sunday papers, Dido Harding may be running for the soon to be vacated role of head of the NHS.
Given that she screwed up at talk talk with customers data, and that T&T has had no meaningful success despite being more expensive than several aircraft carriers and Boris' wallpaper put together, this is likely to be a roaring success, no?
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Regarding the GP Data opt out: some surgeries are requiring a paper copy of the opt out forms so don't leave it until close to the 23 June deadline.
My surgery will complete the opt out form for you after a 30 second phonecall.
If anyone would like to opt out but does not have access to a printer or pdf editor, medConfidential will post a copy of the forms to you free of charge which may be useful for parents/grandparents. There is an option to make a donation on their website.
https://medconfidential.org/how-to-opt-out/ (https://medconfidential.org/how-to-opt-out/)
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Interesting article: https://inews.co.uk/news/politics/how-proposed-new-constituency-boundaries-could-give-the-greens-a-boost-1041191
Based on a rather dubious projection, Sheffield Central could gain a Green MP.
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https://inews.co.uk/news/politics/boris-johnson-claims-eu-leaders-dont-understand-northern-ireland-brexit-row-rages-g7-summit-1048797
Boris Johnson claimed EU leaders “misunderstand that the UK is a single country” as rows over the Brexit deal threatened to overshadow the G7 summit in Cornwall.
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He added: “I’ve talked to some of our friends here today, who do seem to misunderstand that the UK is a single country, a single territory. I just need to get that into their heads.” The Prime Minister told Channel 5 that the EU was being “theologically draconian” and causing “unnecessary barriers to trade”.
Except that the UK ceased to be a homogenous trade area when Johnson signed the treaty... its clear that someone is either stupid or feigning stupidity here, and I'm pretty sure it's not the EU.
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I'm wondering (hoping?) this becomes this governments Suez moment, because what is clear is that although having
your negotiator wear Union Jack socks and your Prime Minister repeating nationalistic statements plays well with a certain gallery domestically, it will soon grate with a US President who needs all his allies on side and working together to face up to the challenges of climate change and China. A President who also considers themselves Irish and can bank on a resumption of any conflict there being the one thing his domestic opponents also would find unpalatable. This could be one glorious smackdown in the making....
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A couple of interesting things I came across.
Chris Dillow looks at why Johnson is popular:
https://stumblingandmumbling.typepad.com/stumbling_and_mumbling/2021/06/johnsons-appeal.html
Duncan Wheldon on why Britain is at heart an economically liberal state:
https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/podcasts/the-prospect-interview-183-why-britain-is-condemned-to-be-liberal
It would be good to get the perspective of the more Corbynite posters on the Prospect podcast... :worms:
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Apologies if it’s been posted about previously, but there’s not much time left to opt out of having your medical records ‘shared’ (aka sold). Lack of any warning of what’s happening all part of the plan obviously. If it doesn’t work first time around then the lesson is to do it by stealth.
https://bylinetimes.com/2021/05/19/the-government-wants-to-sell-your-gp-medical-records-heres-how-to-opt-out/
I just phoned my GP practice to ask for a form, and according to their practice manager it's not required, they were happy to do it on my phone request.
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It was the same when I did it.
I had to talk to the Practice Manager because the receptionist didn't know anything about the changes. Once I got through to the Practice Manager, it just took 30 seconds of security questions to confirm my identity, then she completed the form for me and emailed a copy for my records.
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BBC News - Boris Johnson calls Matt Hancock hopeless in texts revealed by Dominic Cummings
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-57498845
You really couldn't make it up.
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The best thing about this story is the claim from Cummings that Bojo would swan off after the next election to make some money and have more fun. Forcing No10 to deny that’s the case, and thus also effectively denying Johnson the escape route he’s probably been planning since he took on the job.
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The best thing about this story is the claim from Cummings that Bojo would swan off after the next election to make some money and have more fun. Forcing No10 to deny that’s the case, and thus also effectively denying Johnson the escape route he’s probably been planning since he took on the job.
It really does all ring quite true, the useless chairing of meetings, innane jokes. It's no evidence unfortunately, but it does show that Boris and his cabinet were behaving like a bunch of 11 year olds when they were supposed to be running a country.
Unfortunately, it seems many people are happy to vote for 11 year olds. Just another case of if you hold an election, you get boaty mcboatface.
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Isn't it rare to see some good news for once
BBC News - Chesham and Amersham by-election won by Lib Dems
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-beds-bucks-herts-57472032
Not only one fewer seat in parliament for this government but a credible performance from the Greens too.
Also, the swift departure of a creationist anti abortion politician must be a good thing, I don't imagine he'll be replaced by a liberal feminist, but surely they can't do much worse. BBC News - Northern Ireland: DUP looking for new leader as Edwin Poots quits
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-57521972
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Isn't it rare to see some good news for once
BBC News - Chesham and Amersham by-election won by Lib Dem’s
Maybe a warning that if you base your policies around the average Express reader it doesn’t sit well in the Tory shires.
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I understand local issues regarding housing planning and HS2 played a huge part in the vote swing so I would be wary of reading too much in to it on a national scale.
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I understand local issues regarding housing planning and HS2 played a huge part in the vote swing so I would be wary of reading too much in to it on a national scale.
I do agree, although as Sir John Curtice was saying on the radio this morning, it had a lot to do with the fact that this was a strongly remain seat in the referendum; although held by the Conservatives in 2019 the LDs put in a strong performance then. According to him, as apparently the country's 'election guru' this is still a persistent division in UK politics, in Hartlepool, and we will likely see in Bately and Spen that the latter two strongly leave voting areas go to the Conservatives, but that any urban or Southern contests are increasingly likely to go to the Lib Dems, Labour or possibly even the Greens.
I don't think it means anything in the broader context of party leaderships or overall policies other than on local issues, or that either Boris Johnson or Keir Starmer are suddenly diminished as party leaders, it's just nice to see the Conservatives lose something for once, especially such a huge majority. If it has any effect it will be to worry a number of the southern conservative MPs who had already been unhappy with the proposed planning laws.
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Not only one fewer seat in parliament for this government but a credible performance from the Greens too.
The Green’s share of the vote actually dropped and given the national polling I expect the local issues local factors were the most significant; Nimbyism not a desire for a more global, sharing world.
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I read a LD activist giving a bunch of reasons voters gave when campaigning:
https://twitter.com/BridgetFox/status/1405773253705011211
There's also the small matter of a low turnout and the overall Labour/LD vote size staying the same, so we don't know whether it's unhappy Tories staying home and some tactical voting, or a more serious reallignment in previous safe Tory seats as One Nation Conseratives shift away from a populist government. My total guess is it's a bit more the later but I don't think we can say quite how much at this point.
This thing on cities and productivity is good in light of Johnson's levelling up promises:
https://www.centreforcities.org/reader/so-you-want-to-level-up/what-is-the-problem/
tl;dr - many of Britain's cities drastically underperform for their size, particularly Manchester and Birmingham, and the way to reduce (but not eliminate) regional disparities is to increase city productivity. Makes the decision to put the Treasury-outside-London in Darlington look silly, as it always was.
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This is interesting:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jun/18/chesham-amersham-tory-mps-boris-johnson-conservatives?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other
The article is ok, but just scanning a couple of the comments, purportedly from C&A voters who say that they have been Conservative voters, but voted LD this time because of Boris and the government's performance. Its hardly surprising if they're Guardian readers, but a small indicator I guess.
It seems that BJ does well with people who aren't really interested in politics or current affairs, and badly with people who are. Keir Starmer probably the opposite, but the issue for him is that not all that many people are interested in politics.
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Makes the decision to put the Treasury-outside-London in Darlington look silly, as it always was.
How does that conclusion follow from the article?
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Lack of agglomeration effects because there are no other firms or organisations there that cover the same ground, making cross-fertilisation of ideas or staff impossible. They should have put the Treasury North in Leeds where there is an existing finance industry. Or at the very least in another major city.
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Lack of agglomeration effects because there are no other firms or organisations there that cover the same ground, making cross-fertilisation of ideas or staff impossible. They should have put the Treasury North in Leeds where there is an existing finance industry. Or at the very least in another major city.
Ultimately the whole thing that Johnson has about trying to move government departments around the country in the name of levelling up is f_ ing stupid. Levelling up might be investing in areas to improve education, local infrastructure and housing by improving local authority funding. But they won't do that because Boris Johnson likes building big shiny things instead.
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I’d argue that moving large parts of the BBC to Salford* has had a big effect on the area. Not just house prices and new salaries - also makes the area feel more important - that it matters.
*this was largely a govt steered decision non?
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I think the idea of less London centric government has merit done intelligently. Random scattering of offices isn't that, obviously.
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I’d argue that moving large parts of the BBC to Salford* has had a big effect on the area. Not just house prices and new salaries - also makes the area feel more important - that it matters.
To me “levelling up” doesn’t mean just creating a few ‘mini Londons’ in Manchester and Leeds with inflated house prices and swanky bars surrounding a flagship HQ. It’s got to be more than that, surely…but as Toby says it’s unlikely to be done properly by this lot. It’s just not glamorous enough.
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That’s what I was trying to communicate.
It has a positive effect in all sorts of ways. Eg with BBC >> Salford You see on the various BBC programs and news feeds based there - now there are interviews with people in Manchester and the North - not just talking heads in London. This elevates the self esteem / self value of an area.
Having a foot in both Hull and Manchester the city of culture had a really positive impact in Hull increasing the cities self confidence as it were. That’s nothing to do with moving things from London but an example of how influential shifting a positive spotlight to an area can be. Similar can be done by ‘having the belief’ in an area that shifting a major department/government thing there might.
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However it appears to have no lasting impact on on Dull. Unless you live there, there is no reason to visit. Shit old museums that haven’t been updated in years. A city centre that’s unbelievably destitute and doesn’t even run to most of standard chain stores. It hasn’t even got a M & S these days.
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I’d argue that moving large parts of the BBC to Salford* has had a big effect on the area. Not just house prices and new salaries - also makes the area feel more important - that it matters.
*this was largely a govt steered decision non?
This might be the case, however, I wonder how many of the employees moved from London, and big shiny things plus people on higher income moving in in relatively small numbers equals higher house prices, and if you have lived there all your life you're levelled down. I think the answers are more complicated, and probably a bit of both would be ideal.
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Ultimately the whole thing that Johnson has about trying to move government departments around the country in the name of levelling up is f_ ing stupid. Levelling up might be investing in areas to improve education, local infrastructure and housing by improving local authority funding. But they won't do that because Boris Johnson likes building big shiny things instead.
Afraid I have to disagree with you here - putting high performing bits of the UK government outside of London could work really well in terms of boosting productivity. But putting HMT N in Leeds or Manchester would have meant working with a Labour local authority, so it wasn't going to happen. Poor value for money for taxpayers a result. Obviously improving infrastructure and education is going to help, but people need to be educated for and travelling to good jobs, and it's clear that some large UK cities totally underperform in this respect. In the long run, improving productivity is the only thing that leads to increasing real incomes.
To me “levelling up” doesn’t mean just creating a few ‘mini Londons’ in Manchester and Leeds with inflated house prices and swanky bars
But.... having a "mini London" is exactly what these cities need! I honestly have no idea how many "good jobs" you would need to see an increase in house prices across a city of 2.7m people but really, this is a problem of success, not failure.
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I think we'll have to agree to disagree about this, moving departments around and big infrastructure might have some positive effects but in my opinion a lot of negatives compared to spending on unsexy things like skills training, and local transport.
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I think we'll have to agree to disagree about this, moving departments around and big infrastructure might have some positive effects but in my opinion a lot of negatives compared to spending on unsexy things like skills training, and local transport.
I honestly don't think it's an either/or. Moving a department is a lot less expensive than building a tram system, and I'm not sure what the negatives actually are other than the fear that 300 well paid people are going to cause house price inflation in a large city. (As opposed to say, 130,000 over 50's in the city with cash to invest who can find no better performing asset class than rental property...) But we need better skills training and transport as well.
Clearly all this is too complex and requires too much sustained focus for Mr Johnson's tadpole-like concentration span, but it's nice to dream.
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If the future is remote working (or “hybrid” working), why not just set up a few “touchdown” hubs around the country and let people live and work where they want? A decent % would choose to move away from London purely for the draw of more affordable housing and nicer environment. The vast majority of civil servants aren’t from London, so may even prefer being nearer family. Mandating hundreds to move to Darlington feels like a very dated and backward-looking approach.
However much they de-centralise the civil service they will always try to centralise decision making in the executive.
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I've only worked in Whitehall once, and only on a short contract, but it was the sort of place which seemed to run on a fair bit of face time. The team I was on only saw "our" minister once a week but if you wanted to progress it was clear you needed to chat to SPADs and other senior people on an informal basis fairly frequently. I hear from friends that the civil service is keen on moving to more homeworking but they're still expected in some of the time.
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If the future is remote working (or “hybrid” working), why not just set up a few “touchdown” hubs around the country and let people live and work where they want?
OH half is a Civil Servant working at Holyrood. She started in September and has never been into the office, neither is there much benefit to her in work terms of being in a central office, since most meetings would still be remote. A hub would suit her perfectly. She would be able to work from home a couple of days a week in normal times anyway, but she would get a wellbeing benefit from having office days. In Scotland most government roles are in Glasgow or Edinburgh, understandably, but there would seem to be particular benefit for Scotland in having hubs in Inverness, Perth, Stirling, Dundee, Aberdeen and even further afield in the Highlands. At the moment, roles in these areas are quite specific.
We'd love to move up to near Perth (and at current house prices could buy a mansion compared to Edinburgh) but it's not really an option unless there is a hub office nearby with only occasional days in Glasgow or Edinburgh. It is something being talked about internally.
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Clearly all this is too complex and requires too much sustained focus for Mr Johnson's tadpole-like concentration span, but it's nice to dream.
I think we essentially agree really, at least on the same principles. It's complicated and much harder than tweeting about footballers, what pictures students have in their common rooms or whatever useless bullshit Johnson is wasting his time with. I increasingly feel that he actually isn't actually very intelligent, and really can't deal with the demands of the job. I politically dislike people like Gove but I'd certainly not call him stupid.
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https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/jun/22/cummings-told-officials-to-bypass-procedures-on-530k-grant-to-data-team-leak-reveals?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other
Is Hancock actually going to have to go now?
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Have you SEEN how the Tory Party has been operating over the last decade or so?!
We are existing in a post-shame Tory majority. No transgression is too great to warrant a resignation, and even if they do go, they're back in 9-12 months in the next reshuffle.
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Have you SEEN how the Tory Party has been operating over the last decade or so?!
We are existing in a post-shame Tory majority. No transgression is too great to warrant a resignation, and even if they do go, they're back in 9-12 months in the next reshuffle.
My question was somewhat rhetorical. Hancock's best horse racing chum Dido Harding is even worse: failed career in business, underachieving at several supermarkets, totally screwed up talk talk, losing thousands of people's data, wasted 37 billion pounds on test and trace; and married to John Penrose who is, wait for it, the government's anti corruption champion.
Now on for head of the NHS; I hope you've all opted out on data sharing, everyone....
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On the data sharing thing, I'm sure I've missed something but I kind of don't mind. I can see the obvious advantages for research and for making the NHS function better. If the data gets sold to a private company I'm fairly nonplussed provided that the data is anonymised. That's a big if, and I don't really trust the government to get that right, but I don't know whether the risk of unanonymised data getting out is worth limiting the advantages of having it shared.
Explain to me like I'm five.
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They hope people need to think like five year olds.
The issues around governance, democracy, contracts for mates and data security have been warned about for many months.
https://www.digitalhealth.net/2020/11/data-contracts-with-palantir-risk-undermining-core-values-of-nhs/
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/ournhs/why-were-suing-over-the-23m-nhs-data-deal-with-palantir/
Plus warnings that the data isn't fully anonymous.
https://theconversation.com/your-nhs-data-is-completely-anonymous-until-it-isnt-22924
Which are turning out to be true enough for the government to try and hide the issues
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/ournhs/fresh-concerns-over-privacy-and-profit-nhs-covid-data-deals/
I speak as someone who massively supports the medical benefits of an anonymous NHS database used under good governance. When we are dealing with known bad actors like Palantir under special covid regulations that bypass democratic scrutiny and normal civil service checks this could be an utter disaster.
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OK, good links.
Playing devil's advocate: is it naive to think that a big data company actually needs your medical history to figure out your medical history? Sure, it would help, but most people already give up a huge amount of information about themselves anyway through using Google/Facebook/virtually anything online. Remember the Cambridge Analytica story where they could basically figure out exactly who you were if you had liked Wu-Tang Clan? Even if you think that your data has only been handled by companies that you trust, what makes you think those companies haven't been hacked? What's the expression? If you think you've been hacked then you've been hacked; if you don't think you've been hacked then you've been hacked but just don't realise it.
Also, reading that third link, is it not futile to say that one wants to have a central NHS database and all the medical benefits that go with it AND to have anonymity and privacy assured, since any useful database will not be anonymous.
I wonder whether we ought to just accept that, as computing power increases, everything about us will be known and we should concentrate instead on legislating against that knowledge being used against us. i.e. we don't insist that interviews be blind, but it isn't lawful to reject a candidate on the basis of their sex.
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I wonder whether we ought to just accept that, as computing power increases, everything about us will be known and we should concentrate instead on legislating against that knowledge being used against us. i.e. we don't insist that interviews be blind, but it isn't lawful to reject a candidate on the basis of their sex.
Because an interviewer will always be fully conscious of the reasons they didn't hire someone, and honest in how they report them :-\
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OK, good links.
Playing devil's advocate: is it naive to think that a big data company actually needs your medical history to figure out your medical history? Sure, it would help, but most people already give up a huge amount of information about themselves anyway through using Google/Facebook/virtually anything online. Remember the Cambridge Analytica story where they could basically figure out exactly who you were if you had liked Wu-Tang Clan? Even if you think that your data has only been handled by companies that you trust, what makes you think those companies haven't been hacked? What's the expression? If you think you've been hacked then you've been hacked; if you don't think you've been hacked then you've been hacked but just don't realise it.
Also, reading that third link, is it not futile to say that one wants to have a central NHS database and all the medical benefits that go with it AND to have anonymity and privacy assured, since any useful database will not be anonymous.
I wonder whether we ought to just accept that, as computing power increases, everything about us will be known and we should concentrate instead on legislating against that knowledge being used against us. i.e. we don't insist that interviews be blind, but it isn't lawful to reject a candidate on the basis of their sex.
Although I agree that being too protective of data is pointless as more or less everyone uses Facebook, WhatsApp, Google, Apple or something like that; Dido Harding has a proven record of losing thousands of data records and then lying about it repeatedly at Talk Talk. My brother interviewed her shortly after it and she lied about it to his face. (He's a business journalist).
I'd rather that unknown corporations didn't know if I had a terminal disease or a history of severe depression for example (both hypothetical incidentally). I'm more worried about pure incompetence than malign intent to be honest.
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OK, good links.
Playing devil's advocate: is it naive to think that a big data company actually needs your medical history to figure out your medical history? Sure, it would help, but most people already give up a huge amount of information about themselves anyway through using Google/Facebook/virtually anything online. Remember the Cambridge Analytica story where they could basically figure out exactly who you were if you had liked Wu-Tang Clan? Even if you think that your data has only been handled by companies that you trust, what makes you think those companies haven't been hacked? What's the expression? If you think you've been hacked then you've been hacked; if you don't think you've been hacked then you've been hacked but just don't realise it.
Also, reading that third link, is it not futile to say that one wants to have a central NHS database and all the medical benefits that go with it AND to have anonymity and privacy assured, since any useful database will not be anonymous.
I wonder whether we ought to just accept that, as computing power increases, everything about us will be known and we should concentrate instead on legislating against that knowledge being used against us. i.e. we don't insist that interviews be blind, but it isn't lawful to reject a candidate on the basis of their sex.
Although I agree that being too protective of data is pointless as more or less everyone uses Facebook, WhatsApp, Google, Apple or something like that; Dido Harding has a proven record of losing thousands of data records and then lying about it repeatedly at Talk Talk. My brother interviewed her shortly after it and she lied about it to his face. (He's a business journalist).
I'd rather that unknown corporations didn't know if I had a terminal disease or a history of severe depression for example (both hypothetical incidentally). I'm more worried about pure incompetence than malign intent to be honest.
I just can't get excited about this. Why does it matter that any given organisation could know my medical history?
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I just can't get excited about this. Why does it matter that any given organisation could know my medical history?
I’m no data expert but I’m led to believe it wouldn’t be too difficult to de-anonymise the records even now, let alone in 10, 15, 20 yrs time. Adding in the not-uncommon data breaches (both malicious and accidental) personally it makes me not too keen on third parties holding my medical records. Once data is out there it tends to have a habit of being sold or passed on to other interested parties - any one of which could then be subject to a data breach.
If you’re happy for your medical records to be out there that should be up to you. But I don’t think it’s on for the govt to presume everyone is happy for their records to be scraped and the default be to have to opt out. There’s already enough hesitancy among a lot of people in even going to see the GP without adding in the fear of, say, your employer finding out you’ve got 7 testicles and a gambling addiction.
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That still doesn't answer the question of why it matters that anyone might have medical history data? What could anyone possibly do with it that makes it a bad thing for it to be shared?
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Buy it and pick which parts of the NHS they are going after as a private medical business. The tentacles medical businesses are far too interwoven into it already and trade deals with the US will increase access. I certainly don’t think that’s far fetched, looking at the shower in power.
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That still doesn't answer the question of why it matters that anyone might have medical history data? What could anyone possibly do with it that makes it a bad thing for it to be shared?
You mean as in worst case scenarios if the data was freely available online due to a data breach and de-anonymised? Just off the top of my head…employers, insurance companies, mortgage lenders discriminating against people with certain conditions. People not going to see the GP for fear of the above. Without even removing anonymity there are countless reasons why private health companies would want this data to seek out the most profitable areas of the NHS and ditch the rest. I’m sure far more knowledgeable and greedy people with a stake in this could come up with a thousand things to do with it to make money.
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It’s pseudonymised data. Not irreversibly anonymised.
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It’s pseudonymised data. Not irreversibly anonymised.
Forgive me if I've missed something, but does this not belie how de-anonymisation will work? It won't be that some clever nerd figures out an algorithm that turns your pseudonym back into a name, rather, by a process of elimination they will figure out who you are, since each individual's information will contain clues as to their identity.
So (paraphrasing the 3rd link that OW posted above) they'll get a good idea of your age by when you received certain vaccinations, or maybe they'll be able to lump you into a particular age bracket by what treatment you've received in the past. They'll know roughly where you live because of who your GP is, they'll know your previous address history and roughly when you moved, they'll know who your immediate family is because their movement history will match your own etc etc etc. Pair that up against a load of other available data that's out there and you've matched the medical data to an individual.
The reason that I think the method of de-anonymisation is relevant is that decrypting a pseudonym would be the result of incompetence or maliciousness on the part of an insider, while large-scale de-anonymising of medical data is an inevitability - just a matter of applying the right amount of computing power to it.
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I'd rather that unknown corporations didn't know if I had a terminal disease or a history of severe depression for example (both hypothetical incidentally).
I think my point is, what makes you think that this information isn't already known? I'd hazard a guess that Google knows more about my health than my GP does.
I probably will opt out, but I think it's a shame. Giving access to big datasets has potentially huge benefits for medical research. Anecdotally, I remember hearing a researcher speak who had led a study that looked at the incidence of SIDS (cot death). They noticed that there was a significantly lower incidence of this in Birmingham. After investigating further they found that mothers from the large (if I remember correctly) Indian community were doing as their mothers had taught them and laying their babies to sleep on their backs, which greatly reduces the incidence of SIDS. The advice given to parents was changed and we now have a far lower rate of SIDS.
Take all the GP data in the country and throw some machine learning at it and who knows what you'll find out.
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That still doesn't answer the question of why it matters that anyone might have medical history data? What could anyone possibly do with it that makes it a bad thing for it to be shared?
As Ali said above, employers could refuse job applications based on medical conditions, insurance companies hiking up premiums, aggressive sales / advertising ...
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It’s pseudonymised data. Not irreversibly anonymised.
Forgive me if I've missed something, but does this not belie how de-anonymisation will work?
https://www.grcworldforums.com/systems-security/data-masking-anonymisation-or-pseudonymisation/12.article
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Reading this news:
BBC News - Russian jets and ships shadow British warship
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-57587777
Isn't it a coincidence that the Royal Navy seems to come out shortly before elections which matter to the government? I'm sure this is nothing but a pea brained conspiracy theory, but it does seem to happen. They probably aren't actually competent enough to do something like that.
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As regards insurance companies
, lenders etc. You will be asked to make a health declaration (this is also true for many professions and vocations, many already require medical examinations anyway) and, should it become apparent that you were hiding a disqualifying condition, you would be denied insurance payout, or dismissed from your employment.
If you are in employment and you become a burden to your employer through extended absence, inability to perform etc, they will find a way to get rid of you. Interviews are not blind (whether they should be or not, is a different story), so employers will (and do) assess on several things that they are not legally allowed to. All the law can ever hope to achieve is preventing employers from stating a proscribed reason for rejection or dismissal.
I’m not sure why this data usage should be seen as so ominous. The costs of processing such data, in such volumes, would seem quite prohibitive. So probably a third party investment, with the aim of selling the decrypted data for profit. This would mean that only very insurances or very highly remunerated roles, would be subject to such prior investigation (when I was in the process of joining Lurssen as a senior project manager, I was presented with a four page health declaration, an appointment for a full medical and a contract that required me to refrain from participation in “dangerous sports” such as skiing or rock climbing. I didn’t pursue the application any further).
So, for instance, my mother and father, both cancer survivors, find holiday insurance very hard to obtain or expensive. If they chose to hide their survior status, they could certainly save money and effort, however, should they ever need to actually use their insurance, they might very well not only not receive the cover they need, they might find themselves in some legal hot water, too boot.
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Reading this news:
BBC News - Russian jets and ships shadow British warship
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-57587777
Isn't it a coincidence that the Royal Navy seems to come out shortly before elections which matter to the government? I'm sure this is nothing but a pea brained conspiracy theory, but it does seem to happen. They probably aren't actually competent enough to do something like that.
It never happened.
The reports arose from some Russian News agencies. MOD has denied it happened. The ~200 crew members all said “uh, what?” When their worried families started bombarding them with phone calls and the MOD asked relatives to stop calling them, too.
We routinely escort “Warships of hostile nations” through places like the Channel, with both ships and aircraft.
Edit.
To clarify. Yes, they heard shots.
The Russian gunnery exercise was scheduled, promulgated in good time through the normal channels and went as described.
It was “purely coincidental” that an RN ship was within earshot (read observation range) of a Russian exercise and they were not in anyway threatened. One paper (the Mail? Don’t recall) even tried to suggest bombs had been dropped in the ships path. It’s just bollocks.
We have always taken quite provocative actions with hostile Navies. I spent several very boring days in total silence, in the run up to Desert Storm, whilst the ship I was on, charged at Russian ships anchored in the Black Sea, cut power and coasted between vessels at unsafe distances, whilst listening intently with some fairly advanced passive sonar. There will have been “diplomatic protests” for sure, just as we return the favour.
That’s not even half the story, either. Vessels are often damaged in these silly games.
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That still doesn't answer the question of why it matters that anyone might have medical history data? What could anyone possibly do with it that makes it a bad thing for it to be shared?
As Ali said above, employers could refuse job applications based on medical conditions, insurance companies hiking up premiums, aggressive sales / advertising ...
As Matt pointed out, if you're hiding something of relevance from your insurance company you are committing fraud, and at best will not be able to claim on your policy. If you have previous conditions then you genuinely are more of an insurance risk and the potential cost to the firm is greater, ergo you pay a higher premium. They're not charities!
My point is there seems to be this instinctive ideal that data should be retained and preserved, when data is good and useful and often leads to highly positive outcomes. It strikes me as a sort of double think where people want help with their problems, but don't want to give other people the tools to do something, because there's a microscopic risk of.....what? The potential negative outcomes just don't make any sense in the real world.
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As regards insurance companies
, lenders etc. You will be asked to make a health declaration (this is also true for many professions and vocations, many already require medical examinations anyway) and, should it become apparent that you were hiding a disqualifying condition, you would be denied insurance payout, or dismissed from your employment.
If you are in employment and you become a burden to your employer through extended absence, inability to perform etc, they will find a way to get rid of you. Interviews are not blind (whether they should be or not, is a different story), so employers will (and do) assess on several things that they are not legally allowed to. All the law can ever hope to achieve is preventing employers from stating a proscribed reason for rejection or dismissal.
I’m not sure why this data usage should be seen as so ominous. The costs of processing such data, in such volumes, would seem quite prohibitive. So probably a third party investment, with the aim of selling the decrypted data for profit. This would mean that only very insurances or very highly remunerated roles, would be subject to such prior investigation (when I was in the process of joining Lurssen as a senior project manager, I was presented with a four page health declaration, an appointment for a full medical and a contract that required me to refrain from participation in “dangerous sports” such as skiing or rock climbing. I didn’t pursue the application any further).
So, for instance, my mother and father, both cancer survivors, find holiday insurance very hard to obtain or expensive. If they chose to hide their survior status, they could certainly save money and effort, however, should they ever need to actually use their insurance, they might very well not only not receive the cover they need, they might find themselves in some legal hot water, too boot.
There's a big difference between what you already have to declare to insurance companies, employers etc and having private companies being able to purchase your entire medical history (cross referenced with that of all of your relatives, and deanonymised thanks to your social media, google accounts etc).
It wouldn't just be your parents who may have to pay more for their health/travel insurance, it could be you and your children too. Maybe you can't get a mortgage because they deem you to be at a higher risk of death/not being able to work before your mortgage is paid off/in positive equity.
On the other hand, someone who has a family with a relatively clean family health history may find themselves in a position of having to pay much more for a pension annuity or care in their old age because they are likely to live longer.
Employers could overlook someone who has received fertility advice/treatment because they don't want to take someone on who then goes off on maternity/paternity leave. Or they'll just overlook anyone who has a history of mental health issues etc. All of this would be illegal but isn't something you would ever be able to prove.
Paternity and family law could be a huge problem. Cross referencing an entire family history would allow companies to assess whether two people are related.
A reasonable expectation of anonymity is essential to ensure that people seek the help they need. Without that, vulnerable people are likely to avoid getting help for mental or sexual health problems or domestic abuse because of concerns over future blowback.
People in vulnerable positions could be targeted by unscrupulous companies. Alcohol or gambling adverts could be targeted to recovering addicts. Scams, dodgy loans, extreme politics/religions/cults etc could be targeted to people who are desperate and more likely to fall for them.
There are too many situations where a person's health history could be used against them and, with the records of big data companies, I don't see any reason to think that this won't happen. With sufficient legal safeguards, it is possible to get the research benefits of a centralised system while avoiding many of the concerns above. Without those safeguards, I felt I had no choice than to opt out. Your medical data is guaranteed to end up in the wrong hands, either by design or by poor security.
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My point is there seems to be this instinctive ideal that data should be retained and preserved, when data is good and useful and often leads to highly positive outcomes.
But it can also have some highly negative outcomes which might be hard to appreciate in the early days. When facebook was born and it was all about connecting with friends around the world (positive outcome), did anyone really imagine that 20yrs later it would become a tool that could be used to manipulate elections by micro-targeting different people with different adverts based on their prejudices and vulnerabilities using the data they had accumulated (I would argue disastrously negative outcome). Same could be said for a lot of social media companies, which were started with only good intentions but are now having to firefight to try and contain the negative outcomes.
there's a microscopic risk of.....what? The potential negative outcomes just don't make any sense in the real world.
Maybe it's hard to perceive any negatives at this point in time if you're confident it will only make health research and outcomes better. But personally I think it's naive to think that the way insurance companies (or employers, mortgage lenders and the rest) go about their actuarial activities at this point in time might not be affected in a negative way once they have access to reams and reams of medical data. See sdm's post (cross-posted).
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Anyone who finds it hard to imagine the potential negative consequences of having their NHS data shared with commercial interests would be wise to get talking to data scientists from one of the large American insurance companies. Allstate, for example, run a data analysis operation from their offices in Northern Ireland (low wages for high skills). My ex worked as a data scientist and I learned about some of Allstate's methods of sifting terabytes of 'anonymised' data to identify and target individuals in the US. Completely scary the length these organisations go to to tilt the market slightly in their favour, so that they can either sell more products, assume less risk, or pay people less. While the data collected from the Northern Ireland offices is used to target individuals in the US and Canadian insurance markets (along with god knows what else..), you can bet the UK won't be untouched for much longer by operations like these, if it isn't already. As sdm correctly says the only sensible option is to complete the NHS online type-1 opt out (https://www.nhs.uk/your-nhs-data-matters/manage-your-choice/). Which is what I've done.
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The costs of processing such data, in such volumes, would seem quite prohibitive.
It might seem like this is the case now, but as Pete points out, it isn't. And even if it wasn't, to assume that it would remain the case would be naïve.
Insurers might ask you now for your medical history. How far away are we from a world where an insurer can make a reasonable stab at guessing your medical future? They could easily have your medical history and that of your family, and from that they can guess whether you're likely to get cancer in the next 5 years. You might find yourself being denied insurance (and thus the right to travel safely etc) based on a possible future illness. Hold onto your tin foil hats, but if we continue to make advances in genome sequencing then who's to say that an insurer can't analyse this and immediately deem you unsuitable for insurance? Consider this in a healthcare system not free-at-the-point-of-need.
As Ali pointed out, nobody would have thought 15 years ago that Facebook could be used to deliver personalised political messages based on a person's accurately inferred values. You don't have to mention politics on Facebook for somebody to figure out exactly what you think about politics.
Worth ten minutes of your time if you think this is all sci-fi nonsense:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8Dd5aVXLCc
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NHS data can already be used for research, for free; it it just a matter of demonstrating that all data protection, anonymity and ethical considerations will be met.
So if these companies only intend to do the same then why are they willing to pay for the data?
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the only sensible option is to complete the NHS online type-1 opt out (https://www.nhs.uk/your-nhs-data-matters/manage-your-choice/). Which is what I've done.
Is this all you have to do for the opt out? I was thinking I had to send a form to my GP?
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did anyone really imagine that 20yrs later...
As Ali pointed out, nobody would have thought 15 years ago that Facebook could be used to deliver personalised political messages...
How did I get my maths so wrong?! It was actually only 12 years between Facebook starting and the 2016 US election and Brexit referendum. Another 5 years on and god only know what's possible today...
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the only sensible option is to complete the NHS online type-1 opt out (https://www.nhs.uk/your-nhs-data-matters/manage-your-choice/). Which is what I've done.
Is this all you have to do for the opt out? I was thinking I had to send a form to my GP?
Hmm..
This page - https://digital.nhs.uk/your-data/opting-out-of-data-sharing - explains there are two types of opting out:
1. opt out of data being shared with third parties (but your GP will still share your data with NHS digital)
2. opt out of all data being shared by your GP to NHS digital.
Online to opt out of 1. Letter to GP to opt out of 2.
It may be that option 1 doesn't stop the risk of your data leaching to commercial interests.
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Is this all you have to do for the opt out? I was thinking I had to send a form to my GP?
I printed out and returned form ('Type 1' form) to GP and also the online thing for full opt out. Sure others upthread said they just phoned and the receptionist completed the form for them. But I thought the deadline for returning the form was yesterday? Or did they extend it?
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The deadline has been extended to August 25th.
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Thanks for the info.
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Reading this news:
BBC News - Russian jets and ships shadow British warship
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-57587777
Isn't it a coincidence that the Royal Navy seems to come out shortly before elections which matter to the government? I'm sure this is nothing but a pea brained conspiracy theory, but it does seem to happen. They probably aren't actually competent enough to do something like that.
It never happened.
The reports arose from some Russian News agencies. MOD has denied it happened. The ~200 crew members all said “uh, what?” When their worried families started bombarding them with phone calls and the MOD asked relatives to stop calling them, too.
We routinely escort “Warships of hostile nations” through places like the Channel, with both ships and aircraft.
Edit.
To clarify. Yes, they heard shots.
The Russian gunnery exercise was scheduled, promulgated in good time through the normal channels and went as described.
It was “purely coincidental” that an RN ship was within earshot (read observation range) of a Russian exercise and they were not in anyway threatened. One paper (the Mail? Don’t recall) even tried to suggest bombs had been dropped in the ships path. It’s just bollocks.
We have always taken quite provocative actions with hostile Navies. I spent several very boring days in total silence, in the run up to Desert Storm, whilst the ship I was on, charged at Russian ships anchored in the Black Sea, cut power and coasted between vessels at unsafe distances, whilst listening intently with some fairly advanced passive sonar. There will have been “diplomatic protests” for sure, just as we return the favour.
That’s not even half the story, either. Vessels are often damaged in these silly games.
I'm sure you're right Matt, in that its essentially fairly routine; but it does seem pretty drastic when the Russian captain is clearly heard on the radio in the BBC report threatening to fire on them if they don't change course.
The way its been reported by many newspapers is horribly jingoistic and rather unpleasant.
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“Nobody is questioning Brexit. It was self-evidently the right thing to do” - says Frosty.
This one statement sums up perfectly the groupthink within this government, and the gaslighting of half the country’s population who didn’t want any of it.
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I couldn't work out whether that quote was a masterly ironic trolling of remainers or a demo of abject stupidity and lack of irony sensor
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I'm sure you're right Matt, in that its essentially fairly routine; but it does seem pretty drastic when the Russian captain is clearly heard on the radio in the BBC report threatening to fire on them if they don't change course.
The way its been reported by many newspapers is horribly jingoistic and rather unpleasant.
I think the simple fact that a BBC journalist (or "mouthpiece of state TV" as I am sure we would have it if the tables were turned!) happened to be on hand to record anything on the bridge of this ship tells you everything you need to know i.e. its theatrics. Sailing a RN warship within a few miles of Russia's main Black Sea naval base at Sebastopol (always thus regardless of status of Crimea btw) was never going to be regarded as anything other than a provocation and a polite phone call warning about a couple of loud noises does not seem "drastic" in the least. I expect we would do nothing different if the Russian's "innocently" sailed a warship within a few miles of Portsmouth with an RT journo onboard to record the reaction. We certainly did when it was French fishermen that were the problem. The whole thing is ridiculous and not in anyway newsworthy, imo. Not that that will stop the jingoistic UK press, as you say...
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I'm sure you're right Matt, in that its essentially fairly routine; but it does seem pretty drastic when the Russian captain is clearly heard on the radio in the BBC report threatening to fire on them if they don't change course.
The way its been reported by many newspapers is horribly jingoistic and rather unpleasant.
I think the simple fact that a BBC journalist (or "mouthpiece of state TV" as I am sure we would have it if the tables were turned!) happened to be on hand to record anything on the bridge of this ship tells you everything you need to know i.e. its theatrics. Sailing a RN warship within a few miles of Russia's main Black Sea naval base at Sebastopol (always thus regardless of status of Crimea btw) was never going to be regarded as anything other than a provocation and a polite phone call warning about a couple of loud noises does not seem "drastic" in the least. I expect we would do nothing different if the Russian's "innocently" sailed a warship within a few miles of Portsmouth with an RT journo onboard to record the reaction. We certainly did when it was French fishermen that were the problem. The whole thing is ridiculous and not in anyway newsworthy, imo. Not that that will stop the jingoistic UK press, as you say...
Absolutely. I am agreeing with both you and Toby. Possibly that wasn’t clear. Nothing unusual happened and no attack was threatened.
A quick google will show you several “Royal Navy escorts Russian vessel through English channel” type media reports, in only the last 12 months. You would, if you reviewed firing schedules for the various south coast ranges (Artillery, Tank and Naval) note a curious correspondence to those escort activities and the schedules. If you were to look at the traffic info for those days, you would also note that the Russian vessel was unusually slow, for a vessel capable of 30knts or so and as close to the coast as traffic separation in the channel allows.
If you’d been out fishing, you’d have noticed that your fish finder wasn’t working as well as it should within a significant radius of those escort vessels etc etc etc.
As for “provocative” there will have been so many Russian aircraft that have flown directly at our airspace border and then abruptly turned to skirt them within a few meters, all the while keeping their IFF off and sometimes making significant incursions into UK airspace; that nobody even reports it anymore. They especially love keeping an eye on the North Sea oil and gas installations…
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I think the simple fact that a BBC journalist (or "mouthpiece of state TV" as I am sure we would have it if the tables were turned!)
...a polite phone call warning about a couple of loud noises does not seem "drastic" in the least.
Have you actually watched the report? Its definitely not a polite phone call. I'm sure you have a point about the theatrics of these encounters though, and I generally agree with your post.
However the direct comparison of the BBC and RT is plain wrong. If you go out and criticise Putin and the Russian government, then you get poisoned and or imprisoned in Russia, RT will never broadcast open criticism of the government. If you think that the BBC is the same, you are completely wrong, whatever its flaws, it is not a mouthpiece of an autocratic regime.
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The last week has seen a number of media pieces on UK military movements.
Piece about the QE aircraft carrier in eastern med.
Piece about F35 raptor jets on said QE carrier.
Piece about British paras carrying out an airborne assault exercise in Jordan with Jordanian troops - with the threat posed by Russia/Syria made explicit.
The piece about the HMS defender in the Black Sea.
All with a week. Not coincidence. Obviously there’s at least some signalling going on. Signalling to who though.. I think a bit of both directions - UK/NATO signalling intent to Russia but also perhaps to own citizens by shifting the window along a notch.
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I try and avoid coverage of our clown PM as much as possible, but wasn’t there pics of him this week in an APC and a Lynx too? All seems very theatrical.
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Have you actually watched the report? Its definitely not a polite phone call.
The one I saw seemed polite. Does it really matter anyway? No phone call at all would have been the impolite option.
If you think that the BBC is the same, you are completely wrong, whatever its flaws, it is not a mouthpiece of an autocratic regime.
Of course not! They just happened to be covering a human interest story of RN crew / cat stuck in a cannon barrel and then this happened...
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The last week has seen a number of media pieces on UK military movements.
All with a week. Not coincidence. Obviously there’s at least some signalling going on. Signalling to who though...
Citizens of Batley & Spen of course!
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I'm honestly stunned to see an affair reported not as an infidelity but as a breach of social distancing rules.
"Hancock admits breaking social distance rules with aide"
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-57612441
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Apparently he also personally appointed her to a non-exec director role in public health england (£15k / year, 15-20 days work). If that's not a conflict of interest I don't know what is.
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Might we finally see the first sacking of a minister by the spineless one? Murdoch's clearly had enough of him now anyway...
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Might we finally see the first sacking of a minister by the spineless one? Murdoch's clearly had enough of him now anyway...
I'm not sure Johnson is going to rush to punish someone for shagging around...
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Just on a practical note. How has The Sun got hold of CCTV footage from inside Whitehall?
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Radio 4 just ran an excellent piece on this, they dug out an interview with Matt Hancock after a scientific advisor was caught in a very similar situation. He's pretty clear in the interview that the advisor's position is untenable...
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Not as interesting as shagging, but this piqued my interest, partly at least because I was definitely wrong on something and it's always good to revise these things.
From Lewis Goodall's Twitter, a poll on the EU.
Become a member: 49%
Stay out: 51%
Surprisingly close, but also an interesting age break down:
Become a member
18-24: 75%
25-34: 67%
35-44: 58%
45-54: 57%
55-64: 44%
65+: 32%
My original view on a hard Brexit is that it was sensible if you believed the Brexit bullshit, because it was fundamentally a fairly stable equilibrium. Staying the CU/SM was clearly much better, but Brexiters could then actually rightfully complain they lived in a "vassal state" taking rules they had no say in making, so hard Brexit makes sense on their own terms, and the rest of us would have to take it. Five years on and a majority for returning to the EU amongst the under 55s means the current status is perhaps less stable than I imagined it would be. That is of course assuming that we ever live in a political system responsive to the needs of the majority of people who are actually working - but then if we don't, I'm not sure that's a particularly stable situation either.
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That is of course assuming that we ever live in a political system responsive to the needs of the majority of people who are actually working - but then if we don't, I'm not sure that's a particularly stable situation either.
The fact is that we almost certainly don't, because it was the self-same older demographic who handed the Tories their 80 seat majority, as per the British Election Study https://www.britishelectionstudy.com/bes-findings/age-and-voting-behaviour-at-the-2019-general-election/#.YNYYcOhKjIU (https://www.britishelectionstudy.com/bes-findings/age-and-voting-behaviour-at-the-2019-general-election/#.YNYYcOhKjIU) . The analysis only takes a glance if graphs are your thing.
Its a big problem.
I agree that this is not sustainable, and is diametrically opposed to the Tories' professed agenda i.e. levelling up, house building etc. Something tells me they're probably fibbing about this stuff anyway.
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Radio 4 just ran an excellent piece on this, they dug out an interview with Matt Hancock after a scientific advisor was caught in a very similar situation. He's pretty clear in the interview that the advisor's position is untenable...
The number of clips being played and replayed of Hancock telling people to avoid any close contact, calling for the Scottish health adviser to go etc is fairly amusing. The more serious issue is that she is an advisor to the health department who is supposed to be scrutinising their performance. If a police officer, teacher or a hospital consultant was shagging a junior member of staff who was supposed to be assessing their work, you'd be sacked, no?
No chance he will go unless public opinion goes the way of Cummings.
In which case he'll probably be gifted a seat in the lords by Johnson on the excuse that he needs a rest or something.
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Just on a practical note. How has The Sun got hold of CCTV footage from inside Whitehall?
I wonder if Cummings might have something to do with it, hes been going after Hancock and feasibly would have had access.
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https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7QFOWdZbVac was a tough wank, but managed to crack one off in the end 8)
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Johnson will want to keep him till the public enquiry and then sack him so he can he distance himself from the inevitable focus on the failings of the pandemic response.
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Loving the mundanity of the setting: the hideous blue corporate/institutional carpeting, the weird umber wall colour of the walls, the inevitable pot plant and flat screen tv that never gets used bolted to the wall. Perfect.
Also, did anyone else think they were going to start dancing at one point?
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Johnson will want to keep him till the public enquiry and then sack him so he can he distance himself from the inevitable focus on the failings of the pandemic response.
I used to think this, but if it doesn’t even get under way until next year, is it feasible for him to be kept in post for several years beyond that while the various people are appointed to lead the enquiry and details start to emerge. It won’t be concluding until well after the next GE, possibly even the one after that. Is Johnson still realistically going to be PM then? Who knows, but it’s a long time for him to be kept on as a human shield. Particularly as whenever Hancock (inevitably) fucks up again in the future people will rightly ask why he’s still there when Johnson is known to think him hopeless.
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Loving the mundanity of the setting: the hideous blue corporate/institutional carpeting, the weird umber wall colour of the walls, the inevitable pot plant and flat screen tv that never gets used bolted to the wall. Perfect.
Its the hi-vis and hard hat on the coathook that gets me.
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Loving the mundanity of the setting: the hideous blue corporate/institutional carpeting, the weird umber wall colour of the walls, the inevitable pot plant and flat screen tv that never gets used bolted to the wall. Perfect.
Its the hi-vis and hard hat on the coathook that gets me.
And random stuff on the floor, next to the bin.
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I'm honestly stunned to see an affair reported not as an infidelity but as a breach of social distancing rules.
"Hancock admits breaking social distance rules with aide"
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-57612441
This is bizarre, totally agree. At least the newspapers seem to be focusing more on the issues of infidelity and conflict of interest, which are far more serious in my opinion. Really strange approach from the BBC. I suppose with the social distancing rules there are at least some easy soundbites to go for.
Just on a practical note. How has The Sun got hold of CCTV footage from inside Whitehall?
I wonder if Cummings might have something to do with it, hes been going after Hancock and feasibly would have had access.
This is also really interesting. Clearly they didn't know the camera was there, which indicates it was hidden in his office. Raises all sorts of security issues!
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I'm honestly stunned to see an affair reported not as an infidelity but as a breach of social distancing rules.
"Hancock admits breaking social distance rules with aide"
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-57612441
This is bizarre, totally agree. At least the newspapers seem to be focusing more on the issues of infidelity and conflict of interest, which are far more serious in my opinion. Really strange approach from the BBC. I suppose with the social distancing rules there are at least some easy soundbites to go for.
It's an issue because Hancock was telling people directly on the TV on many occasions how important the rules were and to avoid any close contact etc etc. Many people will have suffered emotionally because they couldn't see people; they thought they were doing the right thing, and the man issuing the instructions was doing whatever he felt like doing.
I agree that in reality the conflict of interest is far more important but I think that the rules thing will have far more public cut through.
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Don’t know where this should go, but having recently taken out a 2 year contract with EE it was annoying to see they’ve introduced roaming charges in the EU again. Fucking Brexit. The gift that keeps giving…
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I'm honestly stunned to see an affair reported not as an infidelity but as a breach of social distancing rules.
"Hancock admits breaking social distance rules with aide"
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-57612441
This is bizarre, totally agree. At least the newspapers seem to be focusing more on the issues of infidelity and conflict of interest, which are far more serious in my opinion. Really strange approach from the BBC. I suppose with the social distancing rules there are at least some easy soundbites to go for.
It's an issue because Hancock was telling people directly on the TV on many occasions how important the rules were and to avoid any close contact etc etc. Many people will have suffered emotionally because they couldn't see people; they thought they were doing the right thing, and the man issuing the instructions was doing whatever he felt like doing.
I agree that in reality the conflict of interest is far more important but I think that the rules thing will have far more public cut through.
Oh yeah not saying it's not an issue, just that it's a shame how today's morality has changed such that these things are apparently lower on the pecking order.
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Don’t know where this should go, but having recently taken out a 2 year contract with EE it was annoying to see they’ve introduced roaming charges in the EU again. Fucking Brexit. The gift that keeps giving…
Pretty sure this is new contracts only. Don't think they could change existing contracts on the fly like that..
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Don’t know where this should go, but having recently taken out a 2 year contract with EE it was annoying to see they’ve introduced roaming charges in the EU again. Fucking Brexit. The gift that keeps giving…
Pretty sure this is new contracts only. Don't think they could change existing contracts on the fly like that..
I just checked with them and you’re right, thanks. Same for any new contract taken out before 7th July.
Planning to spend as much time away next year as corona/Brexit allows and that would have been quite an extra hit!
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Oh yeah not saying it's not an issue, just that it's a shame how today's morality has changed such that these things are apparently lower on the pecking order.
From when? Cabinet ministers have been caught getting their end away for donkeys’ years, they’ve only taken scalps when the minister involved has lied about it.
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I'm honestly stunned to see an affair reported not as an infidelity but as a breach of social distancing rules.
"Hancock admits breaking social distance rules with aide"
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-57612441
This is bizarre, totally agree. At least the newspapers seem to be focusing more on the issues of infidelity and conflict of interest, which are far more serious in my opinion. Really strange approach from the BBC. I suppose with the social distancing rules there are at least some easy soundbites to go for.
It's an issue because Hancock was telling people directly on the TV on many occasions how important the rules were and to avoid any close contact etc etc. Many people will have suffered emotionally because they couldn't see people; they thought they were doing the right thing, and the man issuing the instructions was doing whatever he felt like doing.
I agree that in reality the conflict of interest is far more important but I think that the rules thing will have far more public cut through.
Oh yeah not saying it's not an issue, just that it's a shame how today's morality has changed such that these things are apparently lower on the pecking order.
Personally, I'm blazingly furious that any of these elements might be what takes him down, when turning the care homes into slaughterhouses (either through a conscious decision to sacrifice them to protect the NHS or just through sheer fucking incompetence) wasn't.
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No chance he will go unless public opinion goes the way of Cummings.
In which case he'll probably be gifted a seat in the lords by Johnson on the excuse that he needs a rest or something.
Well I'm very happy to admit that being a political seer is perhaps not my strongest suit. Apparently theres more dirt on Hancock in the papers tomorrow.
I'd never have predicted Sajid Javid for the new health secretary either; I'm not saying he's not competent at all though. Better him than Gove or virtually any of the other candidates.
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I'm honestly stunned to see an affair reported not as an infidelity but as a breach of social distancing rules.
"Hancock admits breaking social distance rules with aide"
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-57612441
This is bizarre, totally agree. At least the newspapers seem to be focusing more on the issues of infidelity and conflict of interest, which are far more serious in my opinion. Really strange approach from the BBC. I suppose with the social distancing rules there are at least some easy soundbites to go for.
It's an issue because Hancock was telling people directly on the TV on many occasions how important the rules were and to avoid any close contact etc etc. Many people will have suffered emotionally because they couldn't see people; they thought they were doing the right thing, and the man issuing the instructions was doing whatever he felt like doing.
I agree that in reality the conflict of interest is far more important but I think that the rules thing will have far more public cut through.
Oh yeah not saying it's not an issue, just that it's a shame how today's morality has changed such that these things are apparently lower on the pecking order.
Personally, I'm blazingly furious that any of these elements might be what takes him down, when turning the care homes into slaughterhouses (either through a conscious decision to sacrifice them to protect the NHS or just through sheer fucking incompetence) wasn't.
Couldn't agree more. What kind of fucked up world do we live in where social distancing Trumps genocide in the sack race.
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Couldn't agree more. What kind of fucked up world do we live in where social distancing Trumps genocide in the sack race.
What is even worse is that neither thing appeared to bother his boss, or the fact that he was shagging his adviser behind the backs of his wife and 3 kids.
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People have affairs. It’s tawdry, but not a matter of life and death. Incompetence and dishonesty as Health Sec is exactly that though.
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People have affairs. It’s tawdry, but not a matter of life and death. Incompetence and dishonesty as Health Sec is exactly that though.
I subscribe to the unfashionable belief that having an extra marital affair is pretty grubby. There was an article, I think in the Spectator, believe it or not, on an analysis of politicians who had affairs being very significantly more likely to lie about other things and be poor at their jobs.
Hancock's worst offence, if you regard pandemic response as the responsibility of the whole government, actually sounds like it was using a private email account to hire his friends on government contracts obviously knowing it would be harder to trace.
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Personally, I think his worst offence was his failure to protect the vulnerable residents of care homes, especially in the first wave. His claiming a 'protective ring' had been 'thrown around' care homes when residents with Covid were being discharged into them straight from hospital is disgusting imo.
Some data here. https://www.nuffieldtrust.org.uk/news-item/covid-19-and-the-deaths-of-care-home-residents
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No implied criticism of your point btw Toby, i think the level of corruption we have seen is shocking and very serious. But the contempt for care home residents who are the definition of a highly vulnerable population, it's just awful.
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Personally, I think his worst offence was his failure to protect the vulnerable residents of care homes, especially in the first wave. His claiming a 'protective ring' had been 'thrown around' care homes when residents with Covid were being discharged into them straight from hospital is disgusting imo.
Some data here. https://www.nuffieldtrust.org.uk/news-item/covid-19-and-the-deaths-of-care-home-residents
The details make it even worse: care homes were forced to take untested residents, because of the desperate push to clear hospital beds (because of the fear that the NHS was going to very publicly collapse):
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/may/29/patients-were-sent-back-to-care-homes-without-covid-test-despite-bosses-plea
Simultaneous with that, the NHS was prioritized for the (wildly inadequate) PPE supply, so the care homes couldn't get any and had minimal chance of stopping Covid spreading to everyone in a home once it got in.
For a bonus that probably(?) can't be blamed on Hancock: blanket DNRs often being imposed on everyone in a home without consent or family discussion, and a tacit consensus in a lot of places that "DNR" meant not only "do not attempt CPR" but also "we won't send you to hospital if you're ill". And GPs and paramedics refusing to visit.
Basically, they didn't want Lombardy scenes of doctors having to do triage in hospital corridors and decide who'd get treated and who wouldn't.
The triage still happened, just outside the hospitals and behind closed doors:
https://twitter.com/DevanSinha/status/1397504326873096193
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Personally, I think his worst offence was his failure to protect the vulnerable residents of care homes, especially in the first wave. His claiming a 'protective ring' had been 'thrown around' care homes when residents with Covid were being discharged into them straight from hospital is disgusting imo.
Some data here. https://www.nuffieldtrust.org.uk/news-item/covid-19-and-the-deaths-of-care-home-residents
The details make it even worse: care homes were forced to take untested residents, because of the desperate push to clear hospital beds (because of the fear that the NHS was going to very publicly collapse):
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/may/29/patients-were-sent-back-to-care-homes-without-covid-test-despite-bosses-plea
Simultaneous with that, the NHS was prioritized for the (wildly inadequate) PPE supply, so the care homes couldn't get any and had minimal chance of stopping Covid spreading to everyone in a home once it got in.
For a bonus that probably(?) can't be blamed on Hancock: blanket DNRs often being imposed on everyone in a home without consent or family discussion, and a tacit consensus in a lot of places that "DNR" meant not only "do not attempt CPR" but also "we won't send you to hospital if you're ill". And GPs and paramedics refusing to visit.
Basically, they didn't want Lombardy scenes of doctors having to do triage in hospital corridors and decide who'd get treated and who wouldn't.
The triage still happened, just outside the hospitals and behind closed doors:
https://twitter.com/DevanSinha/status/1397504326873096193
I am not excusing Hancock at all, but I was working in quite a few care homes for the entire period of the first wave of coronavirus, and there are several significant differences between things that I saw on a daily basis. No doubt many homes couldn't get ppe, but all of the ones i saw had enough, indeed probably more than the NHS therapy team i was working for. Despite this i did go to several where very few of the staff actually wore it properly, despite it being available.
There was certainly no protective ring around any care homes, and this was a stupid thing for him to say and fits with Cummings accusation of him lying repeatedly; but not every detail was Hancock's fault. He certainly appears likely to have given millions of pounds of taxpayers money to his friends, family and acquaintances, which would be very much directly his fault.
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Despite this i did go to several where very few of the staff actually wore it properly, despite it being available.
This was unfortunately the case at the home I worked at, lots of constant fiddling with masks, sitting too close to workmates, mouth covered but not nose.
We had several residents discharged from hospital. None came back with Covid, but a few came back without a test, or with missing results. They were able to quarantine to an extent, but the only way meant that essentially all staff had some contact with them. For a few others quarantine was easier because they'd had hip ops and couldn't move anyway, but it was a struggle convincing my managers that we had to treat them as if they had covid. I was told on one shift that I was to sit in the room with a recent discharged patient for the entire shift, which I refused to do.
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When the B&S byelection is won by the conservatives, as it probably will be, the usual no hopers will be baying for a change of leadership. They are wrong, and will only harm the party's reputation and chances even further.
Much better to concentrate on the moral bankruptcy of the current government and stop obsessing over internal party politics.
Starmer needs to ask Johnson at PMQs if the PM thinks it is acceptable to conduct an extra martial affair in a place of work, and lie about it afterwards.
https://inews.co.uk/opinion/george-galloway-has-galvanised-muslim-hoodlums-in-batley-and-spen-to-further-erode-our-failing-democracy-1077385
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/jun/30/chance-of-holding-batley-and-spen-as-low-as-5-say-key-labour-figures?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other
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the usual no hopers
Practice what you preach TD..They are human beings with strengths and weaknesses. I'm really sorry if that sounds all bloody worthy but they are just people after all, not a different species
Also.. I am mystic Meg.!
Labour are in with a shout in the upcoming by election, they should win but mustn't attempt to parachute in an out of towner..
Positive but very close win for the LP, I am sure they appreciate the help from Matt Hancock and the lack Tory presence on the ground in Batley n Spen. I notice that the MSM is trying to equate the nastiness surrounding George Galloway's campaign with the 'Corbynist' wing of the party this is terrible and dishonest journalism the 'left' have no time for GG.
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The only viable option open here would be to persuade Jo Cox's sister to run, but I think even that may come across as cynical, and people have short memories as it is.
Not as much of a Mystic Meg as I am Brutus!
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The only viable option open here would be to persuade Jo Cox's sister to run, but I think even that may come across as cynical, and people have short memories as it is.
Not as much of a Mystic Meg as I am Brutus!
Fair play. Between us, we had it pinned weeks ago. If only I were a gambling man.
Very pleased to see GG making crap excuses and saying he will mount a legal challenge today though. (First he votes Conservative now he wants to legally challenge on their behalf :chair:).
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the usual no hopers
Practice what you preach TD..They are human beings with strengths and weaknesses. I'm really sorry if that sounds all bloody worthy but they are just people after all, not a different species
I didn't say I was referring to political figures when I said no hopers did I? They are after all elected by their constituents, even the ones I disagree with or dislike. I was more referring to columnists or commentators on Twitter etc.
On the subject of politicians I don't like, I feel that Hancock will be swiftly unelected by his constituency if he stands again.
I'm very happy that I was wrong about the B&S byelection result, perhaps I can influence events by predicting results the other way; Trump will definitely not be successfully prosecuted for fraud and imprisoned and instead be reelected in 2024?
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The only viable option open here would be to persuade Jo Cox's sister to run, but I think even that may come across as cynical, and people have short memories as it is.
Not as much of a Mystic Meg as I am Brutus!
Fair play. Between us, we had it pinned weeks ago. If only I were a gambling man.
Very pleased to see GG making crap excuses and saying he will mount a legal challenge today though. (First he votes Conservative now he wants to legally challenge on their behalf :chair:).
Quite agree re Galloway, hes trying to behave like some sort of small town low rent Trump tribute act.
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I feel that Hancock will be swiftly unelected by his constituency if he stands again.
Do you think he would stand again though, even if recent events hadn't come to light? It would be a bit like the inside man continuing to work at the bank after the robbery.
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Fair play. Between us, we had it pinned weeks ago. If only I were a gambling man.
Very pleased to see GG making crap excuses and saying he will mount a legal challenge today though. (First he votes Conservative now he wants to legally challenge on their behalf :chair:).
Didn’t realise how big a vote share GG had taken, wonder how many of these might have been conservative voters had he not been present?
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I didn't say I was referring to political figures when I said no hopers did I?
Just so I have this straight TD, in order to not upset you... It's not OK to refer to a politician, that was upto his shoulders in an illegal war that resulted in the deaths of thousands of civilians, as the Dark Lord. However, it is OK to refer to a whole swave of people that I politically disagree with in a generalised statement as a bunch of 'No hopers'.
If that is the case.. I would like to say that people still thinking Starmer is a good leader and still supporting him/ his team are a bunch of no hopers.
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Fair play. Between us, we had it pinned weeks ago. If only I were a gambling man.
Very pleased to see GG making crap excuses and saying he will mount a legal challenge today though. (First he votes Conservative now he wants to legally challenge on their behalf :chair:).
Didn’t realise how big a vote share GG had taken, wonder how many of these might have been conservative voters had he not been present?
Well some of the rhetoric coming from G G's campaign particularly around gender/sexuality would certainly be attractive to a certain Conservative voting demographic.
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I didn't say I was referring to political figures when I said no hopers did I?
Just so I have this straight TD, in order to not upset you... It's not OK to refer to a politician, that was upto his shoulders in an illegal war that resulted in the deaths of thousands of civilians, as the Dark Lord. However, it is OK to refer to a whole swave of people that I politically disagree with in a generalised statement as a bunch of 'No hopers'.
If that is the case.. I would like to say that people still thinking Starmer is a good leader and still supporting him/ his team are a bunch of no hopers.
Sigh.
Labour has never been elected with an explicitly left wing / socialist agenda. The only times that they have been elected have been a very centrist one. This is why there is no hope in offering the British people socialism, if they do then they will not be elected, ever.
I'm not nor have ever been a Labour party member, but it is a party I'd like to vote for, if it was a serious party of government, which it is on its way to being, having been a protest organisation for a few years under its previous leader.
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Sigh indeed. The point I am making is that you have berated me for calling a politician a name. Then you go on to call a whole group of people, that you happen to disagree with, 'no hopers'. There is a word for when we judge a group of people and use derogatory words about them. It's prejudice. You are being a hypocrite. That is my point.
I know what you think about the LP and I know your views on electability/ what British people think about socialism. Your views are valid, I don't agree with you, that probably really annoys you. Doesn't make me or anyone else a no hoper though does it?
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Toby you're coming across as patronising, and increasingly tedious.
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Toby you're coming across as patronising, and increasingly tedious.
I apologise, disjointed online forum discussions are usually not the best place for an argument/ debate
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Sigh indeed. The point I am making is that you have berated me for calling a politician a name. Then you go on to call a whole group of people, that you happen to disagree with, 'no hopers'. There is a word for when we judge a group of people and use derogatory words about them. It's prejudice. You are being a hypocrite. That is my point.
I know what you think about the LP and I know your views on electability/ what British people think about socialism. Your views are valid, I don't agree with you, that probably really annoys you. Doesn't make me or anyone else a no hoper though does it?
It was because I believe that it's a path which does not have any hope of them forming a government, rather than name calling; but anyway I may be entirely wrong. I also happen to believe that Starmer is politically naive, whilst hes clearly extremely intelligent and probably a nice person, i don't think he'll ever be a prime minister, but he might be a decent transition to someone who can be.
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Labour has never been elected with an explicitly left wing / socialist agenda. The only times that they have been elected have been a very centrist one.
Um, 1945.
Not saying that is (or isn't) a guide for strategy today.
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Labour has never been elected with an explicitly left wing / socialist agenda. The only times that they have been elected have been a very centrist one.
Um, 1945.
Not saying that is (or isn't) a guide for strategy today.
I did think about that, I just listened to a history podcast recently which convincingly argued that their agenda was economically close to the government at the moment, and socially quite conservative (small c)
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In 1945 Labour campaigned and won on a manifesto promising a) the creation of welfare state and b) sweeping nationalization of industry, both of which were enacted during a single term (worth noting that though Labour lost the 1951 election they did win the popular vote). The Attlee government was probably the most profoundly transformative of the C20th, though, obviously, there is an argument to be made for the Thatcher administrations of the 1980s.
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In 1945 Labour campaigned and won on a manifesto promising a) the creation of welfare state and b) sweeping nationalization of industry, both of which were enacted during a single term
Isn't that more or less what the government is doing at the moment? I understand your point, and I don't know if I agree or disagree; but they've just basically nationalized the railways and are increasingly centralizing control of services. They've been paying half of the country's wages for the last year or so. Obviously I know that there are profound differences, the generosity of welfare is somewhat different for a start; getting anything on universal credit is incredibly difficult etc.
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In 1945 there were similar tensions in the LP and similar treatment from the press to pre Starmer times to nowbut nonetheless they ran and won on a very 'socialist' agenda.
If you take socialist policies and present them to people individually they poll very well the world over. The ideas are popular but there are other forces at play in our (so called) democracies so us people don't get to choose what we want (that choice is largely never presented), we get to choose who we want based on a very limited/filtered window of information that avoids discussion of truths and/or things that would positively impact on our lives.
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Labour has never been elected with an explicitly left wing / socialist agenda. The only times that they have been elected have been a very centrist one.
Um, 1945.
Glad someone said it!
Toby are you arguing that the post-war establishment of the NHS and welfare state, plus nationalisation of large swathes of industry, was not at least somewhat rooted in socialism? You're dancing on the head of a pin if so imho, but I'll happily hear your argument.
In 1945 Labour campaigned and won on a manifesto promising a) the creation of welfare state and b) sweeping nationalization of industry, both of which were enacted during a single term
Isn't that more or less what the government is doing at the moment? I understand your point, and I don't know if I agree or disagree; but they've just basically nationalized the railways and are increasingly centralizing control of services.
No, it isn't what they are doing. They haven't nationalised the railways at all despite what they say, they have changed the franchising arrangement, unified the planning and fares, and rebadged it. But the rolling stock is still operated by private providers, who now have their income largely guaranteed. Centralising services (not sure what you refer to here) is not nationalisation if they are still outsourced, which by and large most things are. If they've nationalised anything else I must have missed it...
They love to gaslight the nation this bunch, so lets be frank. The NHS is socialist (in essence) and as near to a national religion as the British have. Its about all that's left. The Tories sold off loads of stuff - British Telecom, British Gas, British Steel etc. basically name a service, put British in front of it - it probably used to exist and belong to all of us, they sold it. If you think this government is anywhere near socialism, again, I would love to hear the argument!
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If you take socialist policies and present them to people individually they poll very well the world over. The ideas are popular but there are other forces at play in our (so called) democracies so us people don't get to choose what we want (that choice is largely never presented), we get to choose who we want based on a very limited/filtered window of information that avoids discussion of truths and/or things that would positively impact on our lives.
The last half dozen posts from everyone have indulged in what I view as all the faults and vices of the contemporary left. But this gem here shows the far left's two problems quite starkly. Firstly, why they are prone to anit-semitism, all that "other forces" stuff. And secondly, why they are often so bloody second rate* - it's all someone elses fault, never that they simply aren't very good at selling their amazing product. If you're not willing to be ruthlessly self-critical you're doomed to be crap.
Not picking on Brutus particularly here, this line is common on the left and it's fairly obvious. My criticisms of other posters points take more involvement on my part and a friend has just arrived; I'll post later hopefully.
* reading the Gulag Archipeligo is quite an eye-opener in this regard, but Grossman touches on it too, according to this piece by Adam Tooze (I've not read Life and Fate so going on second hand sources here):
https://adamtooze.substack.com/p/chartbook-21
"What Grossman describes is a victory that was far harder than it should have been. What he indicts is a regime that was wasteful and destructive of its people, their extraordinary talents and commitment."
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Solzhenitsyn is a hard read, emotionally.
But living in countries that survived and with the people who lived through that era, is equally eye opening. It also means that, I, personally, see the post war UK brand of “Socialism” as really nothing more extreme than that of our Scandinavian cousins (the UK being a somewhat odd Saxon/Dane/Norman/Latin/Celtic bastard child of every European culture ( and, somehow, none of them) with a whole host of “Isolated Islander Community” issues rolled in for good measure).
A very genteel socialism, nothing to cause too much of a scene. Let the socialists set up a few useful things, then go back to “normal”, until the next time we need a quick societal reset.
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But this gem here shows the far left's two problems quite starkly. Firstly, why they are prone to anit-semitism
This is straight out the playbook of the right, isn't it? Wait until 'the left' raise concerns about 'powerful forces' and then claim this as evidence of hatred of the Jews and therefore any political party these people support cannot be fit to govern.
Is it not possible to be concerned about the influence of the very few people wealthy enough to make significant donations to our political parties, or to run newspaper groups, without this being some slippery slope to anti-semitism?
I would add that I think people on the left should be very careful state who they are pointing the finger at to avoid this kind of trap.
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But this gem here shows the far left's two problems quite starkly. Firstly, why they are prone to anit-semitism
This is straight out the playbook of the right, isn't it?
Labour Party member here. My initial reaction is to tell you - as I would tell all far left types keen to portray their fellow left wingers as conservatives - to go fuck yourself, but this is UKB and such things are frowned upon, so I'll simply point out that this kind of unthinking response gets your clique approximately nowhere, whilst causing the left in general no end of problems.
Wait until 'the left' raise concerns about 'powerful forces' and then claim this as evidence of hatred of the Jews and therefore any political party these people support cannot be fit to govern.
Staw man - I said this is what makes the far left "prone" to racism, not automatically guilty of it.
Is it not possible to be concerned about the influence of the very few people wealthy enough to make significant donations to our political parties, or to run newspaper groups, without this being some slippery slope to anti-semitism?
Recent evidence suggests this requires some self-discipline and self-awareness, my previous post suggests why this is lacking, but then I'm trying to explain something that has already happened.
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Not picking on Brutus particularly here, this line is common on the left and it's fairly obvious. My criticisms of other posters points take more involvement on my part and a friend has just arrived; I'll post later hopefully.
Thank god your not picking on me today.. .This statement is very patronising though...
SK your aggressive approach to me and statements made in the past and your approach to C8All today identify you as being from a particular faction within the party that would like to purge all 'far left' (anything from centre leftwards by the looks of things) elements from the party.
Your approach appears to be to bully anyone that has opinions differing from yours into submission/silence with assertions that are largely unsubstantiated. Referring to cliques you're full of prejudice and you're in the thick of a clique yourself.
I would tell you you're r full of shit and to go fuck yourself but this is UKB.....
Keep posting Colin don't let SK shut you down.
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The NHS is socialist (in essence) and as near to a national religion as the British have. Its about all that's left. The Tories sold off loads of stuff - British Telecom, British Gas, British Steel etc. basically name a service, put British in front of it - it probably used to exist and belong to all of us, they sold it. If you think this government is anywhere near socialism, again, I would love to hear the argument!
Having worked in the NHS for more than a decade, I'm very sure that it is not socialist. I wont go into its many problems at length, but rules are handed down by non clinical managers with no consultation or knowledge of the services which they change. Having discussed it with family members who worked in the NHS 40 years ago, this isn't a recent thing either, so don't try to blame it on a specific conservative government.
I know little of the exact historical context and I can't recall what the book was called which argued that Labour had never won with socialism it was convincing but I can concede that the original idea of the NHS may have had its roots in socialism but its reality is more like an anti-meritocratic autocracy.
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The NHS has never been socialist as Toby states above. It was originally run like one of the armed forces with senior staff being called such things as nursing officer. It’s current run on a business model buying and selling services to its self.
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...
If you take socialist policies and present them to people individually they poll very well the world over. The ideas are popular but there are other forces at play in our (so called) democracies so us people don't get to choose what we want (that choice is largely never presented),...
Right up until they have to pay for them. Then they vote conservative instead.
You seem to be saying that people would believe in socialism if only they listened?
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Toby, Webbo, you are both talking about the day-to-day management / operational aspect of the NHS. Fair enough, I will take your point and defer to you on what its like.
But on a macro level the NHS is "socialist in essence" (in my opinion, and that of many others) because it is owned and run by the democratic state (i.e. us) and paid for by state money (i.e. ours) on a universal insurance basis i.e. it is free at the point of use for any UK citizen regardless of need. Its redistributive in nature, as opposed to say the US system. Yes it is not "100% socialist" and never has been - GP surgeries are the obvious glaring exception. And things have slipped somewhat over the years since 1948 e.g. prescription charges, the NHS internal market. But then again I said "in essence".
Socialism seems to have become a dirty word over the years but it wasn't always. Bevan, who created the NHS, was quite clear on describing its inception as part of the "British Socialist programme". As Oldmanmatt identified a few posts ago, British socialism does not equal the Soviet Union, its a bit more Scandinavian. These things are not "either/or" but a continuum from fully fledged communism at one end to laissez-faire free-market capitalism at the other. I would say that the NHS leans definitively towards the left hand end of that, but its not all the way "far left", hence the reality on the ground not involving workers cooperatives with everyone on equal pay voting on every decision, as you no doubt rightly identify.
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If you take socialist policies and present them to people individually they poll very well the world over. The ideas are popular but there are other forces at play in our (so called) democracies so us people don't get to choose what we want (that choice is largely never presented),...
Right up until they have to pay for them. Then they vote conservative instead.
You seem to be saying that people would believe in socialism if only they listened?
You seem to have interpreted what I said as that TD.. If only the stupid people would listen it would all be so simple. :lol:
I'm talking about the conscious and unconscious filtering of information.
The age old we can't afford to do this and people want it all until they realise they have to pay argument. :yawn:
There is plenty of tax revenue and would be plenty more if loopholes were tightened. Then of course we can discuss how that tax revenue is spent, the amount of waste, the dodgy over priced private contracts, the jobs for pals, the corruption etc. etc.
The LP proposals in 2017 were presented as 'hard left' by those opposed to them, the reality of the proposals was much closer to (as OMM suggests) the genteel socialist democracies of our Scandinavian Friends.
On the NHS... The NHS in and of itself is most definitely not a socialist organisation but the idea of a health service for everyone that is free at the point of service is 100% a socialist concept as is the welfare state. Both of which are, in my 'hard left Trot mind', bloody good ideas.
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Which leaves most people wondering the obvious - why on earth would we want a socialist government as espoused by those on the more lefty left, if we already have some of those good core features of socialism anyway :shrug:
We have an NHS and we have a welfare state, and they aren't shit. In fact, grumbles aside, they're actually quite good (yeah yeah could do better etc.). Somehow the UK has managed to have these things despite choosing not to vote for a socialist government for the majority of the last 60 years.
edit: those whose politics are socialist-leaning talk a lot about people 'not wanting to pay for it', as if we don't pay a lot of tax in the UK... A lot of people don't realise that the basic rate of income tax in the UK, over the first approx £12k, is 32% (20% +12%). If you think that isn't enough I'd be interested in hearing what rate it should be? Maybe the higher rate should be more as the higher earner's rate is 42% (40% + 2%), little more than the basic rate really. Of course you can always become one of those contractors who pay themselves a dividend @ 9% dividend tax and skip on the usual NI contributions. Lots of lefties I know do this.
As Sean the Bully said, the arguments of the more lefty left so often seem to come back to them not being good enough to stand on their own merits so they resort to 'everyone else is guilty of wrong-thinking' and 'powerful forces against us'.
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SK your aggressive approach to me and statements made in the past and your approach to C8All today identify you as being from a particular faction within the party that would like to purge all 'far left' (anything from centre leftwards by the looks of things) elements from the party.
This comes awfully close to calling me some kind of Conservative, in my view. I am not of "the centre", I am on the left: a lifelong Labour voter, I give my own money into the Labour Party, I marched against the Iraq war, when a BNP guy came to my London tower block distributing his odious shite I physically chucked him out, so yours and Colin's snide little insinuations are way out of order.
But here's a thing more interesting than a personal spat. I recognise the far left and indeed the crank left are parts of the Labour movement - one of my favourite writers on economics is a Marxist! - whereas the far left do everything they can to exclude those they disagree with. Your post about "purging" is really just a projection of what the far left does itself, such as trying to pretend the last Labour government wasn't "real Labour".
Naturally however, I would like to see Corbyn kicked out of the PLP, for two very good and principled reasons:
He's either a racist, or an enabler of racism, which has besmirched the reputation of the political party which has done more to fight racism in this country than any other. (It's no surprise to me that the initial anti-racist legislation came from Roy Jenkins, who hated your faction so much that he left the party when you got control - this is the kind of thing I was touching on in a recent post on the Books thread.)
Doing so would undoubtedly turn some voters in our favour, and I'm hold the principle that getting and holding power is the point of a political party and would do more to help the people of this country than any amount of far left posturing.
I'd probably do the same for McDonnell, for waving a copy of Mao's book in Parliament. Mao was a fucking murderous psychopath, no one to be admired. I'd be appalled if a Tory got a copy of Mein Kampf out in the House, this is no different.
You'd call this a purge, but I don't believe racism and support for Maoism are acceptable within a mainstream British left wing party.
Your approach appears to be to bully anyone that has opinions differing from yours into submission/silence with assertions that are largely unsubstantiated. Referring to cliques you're full of prejudice and you're in the thick of a clique yourself.
I would tell you you're r full of shit and to go fuck yourself but this is UKB.....
Keep posting Colin don't let SK shut you down.
The far left: we are full of ideas and vim, we can deal with climate change, overthrow capitalism, make a fairer world, negotiate for the workers.
Also the far left: a man was nasty to me on the internet.
Post on, chaps. But if you try to excommunicate people who fundamentally want some of the same things as you do then expect a bit of pushback.
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It was because I believe that it's a path which does not have any hope of them forming a government, rather than name calling; but anyway I may be entirely wrong. I also happen to believe that Starmer is politically naive, whilst hes clearly extremely intelligent and probably a nice person, i don't think he'll ever be a prime minister, but he might be a decent transition to someone who can be.
Okay, the first problem with mainsteam left wingers in the UK.
We're a bit fucking wet.
I am perfectly clear that it is a long road for Labour to win any kind of power, but I am also aware that we are living in a very turbulent time in which electorally unlikely things have occured. So why not the electorally unlikely thing that I want?
Starmer could make a perfectly good PM - certainly better than Johnson, Sunak, Javid or Gove, better indeed than some flacid over promoted twat like Cameron. So let's not talk our man down, we need to show some drive for power not pussy footing about. If we don't believe in our offer, no one else will. We won in Bately, some Conservative voters are clearly fed up of the government, we need to improve our communications for sure, but this is not impossible stuff to do. We need to respect Johnson as a very good winner of elections and copy some of what he does (iron will on messaging) whilst disparaging absolutely everything else. I was watching a BBC doc on Mrs Thatcher and in opposition she simply wasn't very good at first. That's fine, it's a tough job. We need improvements but we also need to be clear these are not impossible to achieve.
The other thing that's been on evidence in this thread and that I think is totally fucking stupid is going on and on and on and on about 1945. It was 75 years ago! The world was a totally different place back then, and there was a lot we know now that we don't know then. Soviet style central planning had been in place for barely 20 years and seemed successful, Keynsian demand management had only been invented a little time before, very few countries had industrialised, etc etc. Constantly harping back to this time reveals a paucity of thought on the broader left.
Fwiw, though I find the "look how socialist the Atlee government was" discussions tedious, I'd tend to side with Duncan Wheldon in this Prospect article: https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/essays/condemned-to-be-liberal-why-britain-cant-easily-break-with-economic-laissez-faire
tl;dr - path dependency matters, Britain kept a lot of its liberal heritage in 1945, even trade unions were against a socialist style command economy and the Atlee govt was the same, prefering Keynesian approaches over something more Gosplan-esque. (Keynes was a member of the Liberal Party, fwiw.) Plus there are the small matters of the Atlee govt enthusiastically joining NATO, building its own atomic bomb and the chaotic and botched withdrawal from India, which seem to be glossed over by those declaring themselves Atlee's heirs. One strongly suspects Atlee would have seen Putin for what he is, rather than making excuses for his vileness.
Finally, let's stop doing the Conservatives' work for them by repeating their favourite talking points, the most insidious of which is the proposal that Johnson and co are going to go all big state and do all the stuff that Labour would. Sure, they had to run a furlough scheme, but it was a massive crisis and even the US Republicans did something. The Conservative government have spent a decade shrinking the state and Johnson sees it as a tool to buy him popularity rather than increase the long term prosperity of the country.
A while ago OMM posted something about "the Conservatives see themselves as sensible and Labour as a party of fantasists". It lodged in my head as I've no doubt this is a common enough view, but it's also completely and utterly wrong, topsy turvy, insane. The Conservatives are fantasists par excellence, do I need to say more than the B-word? Those guys are out to lunch, we on the left are by far the best option for the UK.
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I did say “see themselves” …
But, seriously, comparing Mao to Hitler?
Hitler was a rank amateur in the ”murderous” professional rankings, by that comparison.
I suppose proximity magnifies his “accomplishments” in the Western imagination.
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It was because I believe that it's a path which does not have any hope of them forming a government, rather than name calling; but anyway I may be entirely wrong. I also happen to believe that Starmer is politically naive, whilst hes clearly extremely intelligent and probably a nice person, i don't think he'll ever be a prime minister, but he might be a decent transition to someone who can be.
Starmer could make a perfectly good PM - certainly better than Johnson, Sunak, Javid or Gove, better indeed than some flacid over promoted twat like Cameron. So let's not talk our man down, ...
SK I was not saying that Starmer wouldn't be a good PM, and I agree that he'd be a lot better than Johnson, especially in a pandemic.
My pessimism was more to do with the likelihood of it happening within his political career.
However I don't, like you, think that a more left leaning liberal government is a doomed hope. The weakness of Johnson's party is that it's almost become entirely a populist personality cult, and when he gets bored of politics or is deposed they'll have serious problems. Populism is also pretty finite. If stuff gets actually bad for the country in case of serious effects of Brexit becoming prominent, another financial crash or similar, popularity will soon wane.
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SK I was not saying that Starmer wouldn't be a good PM, and I agree that he'd be a lot better than Johnson, especially in a pandemic.
My pessimism was more to do with the likelihood of it happening within his political career.
However I don't, like you, think that a more left leaning liberal government is a doomed hope. The weakness of Johnson's party is that it's almost become entirely a populist personality cult, and when he gets bored of politics or is deposed they'll have serious problems. Populism is also pretty finite. If stuff gets actually bad for the country in case of serious effects of Brexit becoming prominent, another financial crash or similar, popularity will soon wane.
I agree that Starmer could potentially be a decent prime minister, but I don't think he's a particularly good or inspiring leader of the opposition which doesn't make it likely that we will ever find out.
On the more general situation re a left leaning government in the future it seems to me that the near disappearence of Labour in Scotland means that the chance of a majority labour government in the short/medium term is pretty much zero. The only option would then seem to be an informal or formal alliance with the SNP, difficult from a Labour perspective and also gives the the Tories a real target to attack if polls get tighter. Overall I'm not particularly hopeful even if Labour can sort out their internal arguments.
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Excellent article by Starmer (paywalled I'm afraid)
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/keir-starmer-boris-johnson-is-putting-northern-irelands-peace-at-risk-over-brexit-qwswrnbs9?shareToken=e4454488e48c39c3e7cff10db4ac6a1e
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I am baffled as to why Hancock, caught on cctv in a compromising position, grabbed the headlines, but not Gove?
(https://i.ibb.co/2c4HnGs/BB233-F0-D-E5-EC-41-F2-843-D-7-B48-AA4549-F8.jpg)
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A small piece of a recent rant: https://twitter.com/Dominic2306/status/1413439428681424897?s=19
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On Priti Patel, it beggars belief that she thinks that she has a right to try to tell the world why she thinks that footballers take the knee, and then to get all affronted when violent racists beat up anyone who doesn't look like them at Wembley and daub images of Rashford with racist graffiti. Boris Johnson looks slightly less stupid, but I don't know how he can start whining about racism on Twitter when he has written the sort of articles that he has written in the past.
It has become a matter of expectation for the government to handle the messaging on their coronavirus response with total incompetence, but the constant investment in trying to stoke cultural division at the expense of coming up with any policies at all, or indeed doing anything useful is getting pretty frustrating.
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Is it giving them too much credit to assume they knew exactly the sort of dogs their whistling would attract, but they obviously still need to give out a ‘racism bad, etc.’ press release for the optics?
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Is it giving them too much credit to assume they knew exactly the sort of dogs their whistling would attract, but they obviously still need to give out a ‘racism bad, etc.’ press release for the optics?
You might be right, Baroness Warsi said that on twitter more or less. I think Patel has misjudged public opinion on this one though.
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I did say “see themselves” …
But, seriously, comparing Mao to Hitler?
Hitler was a rank amateur in the ”murderous” professional rankings, by that comparison.
I suppose proximity magnifies his “accomplishments” in the Western imagination.
Hitler industrialised murder in the millions with slave labour death not so far behind but was removed relatively quickly. The Japanese invasion of China around WW2 wasn't far behind in deaths. Stalin killed more millions directly and sent millions of people to die in the gulags in Siberia. Mao had several million death pogroms and played out an ideological experiment that starved to death tens of millions and topped the other two in sheer numbers. All horrible stuff and very difficult to compare the evils involved but a reminder of why modern democracy is so important.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_killings_under_communist_regimes
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I did say “see themselves” …
But, seriously, comparing Mao to Hitler?
Hitler was a rank amateur in the ”murderous” professional rankings, by that comparison.
I suppose proximity magnifies his “accomplishments” in the Western imagination.
Hitler industrialised murder in the millions with slave labour death not so far behind but was removed relatively quickly. The Japanese invasion of China around WW2 wasn't far behind in deaths. Stalin killed more millions directly and sent millions of people to die in the gulags in Siberia. Mao had several million death pogroms and played out an ideological experiment that starved to death tens of millions and topped the other two in sheer numbers. All horrible stuff and very difficult to compare the evils involved but a reminder of why modern democracy is so important.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_killings_under_communist_regimes
I’m pretty sure that’s what I said.
You know, rather than some sort of advocacy for the “Murderous Dictators of the 20th Century Academy Awards”…
Anyway, you still missed out Pol Pot, I mean, really, Hitler was definitely tier 2 in his category.
This is called “Dark Humour”. All of the above mentioned creatures and several others, of pretty much every possible ethnic origin, were/are (there are several still active) utter scum and a stain upon humanity.
My primary point, was simply that we (in the UK) have a habit of citing Hitler as the apex example of evil, when he was not even the worst of his own era, just the one that threatened us directly. Obviously, he had the potential to be much worse; however, all of them were/will be curtailed by their own mortality. Something (such as the case with Hitler) often determined by who they choose to try and dominate.
Honestly, if Hitler had confined his ambitions to the East and South, not poked the Bear to his North, chased off the elderly Lion and angered the Eagle across the ocean; he probably would have had many decades to indulge in his sickening shit, with little more than hand wringing amongst the major powers. Let’s be honest, the West doesn’t get very worked up about the sufferings of Brown people (of any hue) or even the Slavic peoples on our doorstep…
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If we're going down this route, then big shoutout to the British Empire.
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Yup, It's a team effort, not just individuals.
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If we're going down this route, then big shoutout to the British Empire.
Yes. In part that was factored into my “Brown people” comment.
Which ignores what we did to the Boers, of course….
And the Irish…
Wasn’t there something about “clearing the Highlands” too?
Not sure if I Am(ritsar) about that…
(Edit: this is why history lessons, that are anything more than reciting the “English” monarchs in order, get certain sections of the British public so irritated).
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It was because I believe that it's a path which does not have any hope of them forming a government, rather than name calling; but anyway I may be entirely wrong. I also happen to believe that Starmer is politically naive, whilst hes clearly extremely intelligent and probably a nice person, i don't think he'll ever be a prime minister, but he might be a decent transition to someone who can be.
Okay, the first problem with mainsteam left wingers in the UK.
We're a bit fucking wet.
I am perfectly clear that it is a long road for Labour to win any kind of power, but I am also aware that we are living in a very turbulent time in which electorally unlikely things have occured. So why not the electorally unlikely thing that I want?
Starmer could make a perfectly good PM - certainly better than Johnson, Sunak, Javid or Gove, better indeed than some flacid over promoted twat like Cameron. So let's not talk our man down, we need to show some drive for power not pussy footing about. If we don't believe in our offer, no one else will. We won in Bately, some Conservative voters are clearly fed up of the government, we need to improve our communications for sure, but this is not impossible stuff to do. We need to respect Johnson as a very good winner of elections and copy some of what he does (iron will on messaging) whilst disparaging absolutely everything else. I was watching a BBC doc on Mrs Thatcher and in opposition she simply wasn't very good at first. That's fine, it's a tough job. We need improvements but we also need to be clear these are not impossible to achieve.
The other thing that's been on evidence in this thread and that I think is totally fucking stupid is going on and on and on and on about 1945. It was 75 years ago! The world was a totally different place back then, and there was a lot we know now that we don't know then. Soviet style central planning had been in place for barely 20 years and seemed successful, Keynsian demand management had only been invented a little time before, very few countries had industrialised, etc etc. Constantly harping back to this time reveals a paucity of thought on the broader left.
Fwiw, though I find the "look how socialist the Atlee government was" discussions tedious, I'd tend to side with Duncan Wheldon in this Prospect article: https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/essays/condemned-to-be-liberal-why-britain-cant-easily-break-with-economic-laissez-faire
tl;dr - path dependency matters, Britain kept a lot of its liberal heritage in 1945, even trade unions were against a socialist style command economy and the Atlee govt was the same, prefering Keynesian approaches over something more Gosplan-esque. (Keynes was a member of the Liberal Party, fwiw.) Plus there are the small matters of the Atlee govt enthusiastically joining NATO, building its own atomic bomb and the chaotic and botched withdrawal from India, which seem to be glossed over by those declaring themselves Atlee's heirs. One strongly suspects Atlee would have seen Putin for what he is, rather than making excuses for his vileness.
Finally, let's stop doing the Conservatives' work for them by repeating their favourite talking points, the most insidious of which is the proposal that Johnson and co are going to go all big state and do all the stuff that Labour would. Sure, they had to run a furlough scheme, but it was a massive crisis and even the US Republicans did something. The Conservative government have spent a decade shrinking the state and Johnson sees it as a tool to buy him popularity rather than increase the long term prosperity of the country.
A while ago OMM posted something about "the Conservatives see themselves as sensible and Labour as a party of fantasists". It lodged in my head as I've no doubt this is a common enough view, but it's also completely and utterly wrong, topsy turvy, insane. The Conservatives are fantasists par excellence, do I need to say more than the B-word? Those guys are out to lunch, we on the left are by far the best option for the UK.
Couldn't agree more. I am a solid lefty and I despair at how much the left comes off as being wet, divided, argumentative and petulant. We need to at some point all sit down, and agree to come together and properly work as team for the good of the nation. Otherwise we'll just fail over and over again.
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If we're going down this route, then big shoutout to the British Empire.
Yes. In part that was factored into my “Brown people” comment.
Which ignores what we did to the Boers, of course….
And the Irish…
Wasn’t there something about “clearing the Highlands” too?
You forget the Aboriginals too. And the aftermath of the Indian Mutiny while we are at it.
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Anyway, you still missed out Pol Pot, I mean, really, Hitler was definitely tier 2 in his category.
This is called “Dark Humour”. All of the above mentioned creatures and several others, of pretty much every possible ethnic origin, were/are (there are several still active) utter scum and a stain upon humanity.
My primary point, was simply that we (in the UK) have a habit of citing Hitler as the apex example of evil, when he was not even the worst of his own era, just the one that threatened us directly. Obviously, he had the potential to be much worse; however, all of them were/will be curtailed by their own mortality. Something (such as the case with Hitler) often determined by who they choose to try and dominate.
Honestly, if Hitler had confined his ambitions to the East and South, not poked the Bear to his North, chased off the elderly Lion and angered the Eagle across the ocean; he probably would have had many decades to indulge in his sickening shit, with little more than hand wringing amongst the major powers. Let’s be honest, the West doesn’t get very worked up about the sufferings of Brown people (of any hue) or even the Slavic peoples on our doorstep…
The irony is I was pretty much agreeing with you (and wasn't Pol Pot in the link?). History is always centred on the nation telling the stories and so for us Hitler obviously becomes the biggest villain. This is partly why I linked the communist atrocities: the scale and structure of death in Russia and China isn't well known in the UK (and an educated person actually said to me "did people die in Cambodia?") I don't think evil points top trumps is useful.
Our history is that even for the second half of the twentieth century, when we should have known better, we regularly turned a blind eye to murderous and sometimes genocidal tendancies in the world while puffing up the problems of regimes with less threat. Even now there are big problems: my pet hate is how we are best buds with Saudi Arabia despite it providing the murderous islamist theology, and much of the funding, behind endless atrocities.
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Just as a momentary aside from genocide top trumps, is the current situation with masks and covid regulations an attempt by the Johnson government to politicise masks further so that the situation ends up like the US where it seems to be a badge of identity?
The knees culture war seems to be going badly for them, so perhaps they needed a new one?
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Yes.
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Just as a momentary aside from genocide top trumps, is the current situation with masks and covid regulations an attempt by the Johnson government to politicise masks further so that the situation ends up like the US where it seems to be a badge of identity?
The knees culture war seems to be going badly for them, so perhaps they needed a new one?
Masks might go the same way...wearing them is a socially conservative thing to do, as well as sensible science. It was reported on the BBC that mask compulsion has 70% public support (in an Economist poll?)
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Just as a momentary aside from genocide top trumps, is the current situation with masks and covid regulations an attempt by the Johnson government to politicise masks further so that the situation ends up like the US where it seems to be a badge of identity?
The knees culture war seems to be going badly for them, so perhaps they needed a new one?
Masks might go the same way...wearing them is a socially conservative thing to do, as well as sensible science. It was reported on the BBC that mask compulsion has 70% public support (in an Economist poll?)
The issue I could forsee is that polls usually capture more elderly people who may be more motivated to wear them.
I can't see the bloody fuss to be honest wearing a mask doesn't bother me in the least, and it's not exactly a hassle. As someone who has a potentially weaker immune system enough to mean I get covid vaccines a lot earlier, I'd rather everyone wore them really, and it pisses me off that the government wants to make it all someone else's problem.
In fact trying to make it someone else's problem is pretty much their answer to everything. Immigration, food formulation/ strategy, online racism, Brexit...
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It was a Mori poll properly adjusted to match the population profile.
https://www.ipsos.com/ipsos-mori/en-uk/majority-britons-support-extending-certain-covid-19-restrictions-not-forever
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The knees culture war....
As stoked by Priti Patella.
(Not mine but made me chuckle).
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I can't see the bloody fuss to be honest wearing a mask doesn't bother me in the least, and it's not exactly a hassle.
Agree. The only time they have been a hassle is when I forget to take the bloody things. Of all the changes in the last 18 months, it's been the least hassle to deal with.
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That ipsos mori poll on the question of 'should restrictions remain in place permanently?' almost looks like it could be broken down by right/left political split. I'd be interested to see the correlation.
I can see both sides.. It appears sensible to keep regulations in place for the wearing of masks in the short term. But I can understand concern over keeping regulations in place for the longer term which could lead to a certain level of public expectation and more fear of change the longer we get used to things being a certain way.
Need to keep in mind what is the actual risk now, in perspective with all other health risks that society, including people with compromised immune system, typically live with? If the risk to the 'vulnerable' - depending on the definition of vulnerable - is significantly higher due to this latest covid wave, then taking measures such as keeping masks in crowded indoor spaces seems sensible. If the overall risks revert to some mean that society deems acceptable, then why should people wear masks? I'm not sure which is the case, and it doesn't seem easy to work it out.
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I'm pleased with the polling. I'd expected the mass of misinformation on the subject to have led to lower levels of support.
The time to drop mask compulsion seems pretty obvious to me: when we were out of this wave. Cases are expected to come close to and possibly exceed UK record levels in two weeks time so there have never been as many infectious people out there, just at the time when most restrictions have gone. The epidemiological benefit of mask use is very well established now (the barrier physics was always obvious): the benefit in protecting people indoors from an asymptomaticly infected mask wearer is as significant as the most equal effect covid measure, vaccination. The benefits to the economy of stopping compulsion are effectively zero. It's all very well the backbench tories blathering on about freedom when that means freedom to risk infecting others (especially when those others have to be there for transport or it's their place of work).
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Probably one of the few times you and I are in full agreement.
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I'm pleased with the polling. I'd expected the mass of misinformation on the subject to have led to lower levels of support.
The time to drop mask compulsion seems pretty obvious to me: when we were out of this wave. Cases are expected to come close to and possibly exceed UK record levels in two weeks time so there have never been as many infectious people out there, just at the time when most restrictions have gone. The epidemiological benefit of mask use is very well established now (the barrier physics was always obvious): the benefit in protecting people indoors from an asymptomaticly infected mask wearer is as significant as the most equal effect covid measure, vaccination. The benefits to the economy of stopping compulsion are effectively zero. It's all very well the backbench tories blathering on about freedom when that means freedom to risk infecting others (especially when those others have to be there for transport or it's their place of work).
I just don’t understand the fuss. I frequently forget I’m wearing a mask, even when training/working out; or, more embarrassingly, when drinking coffee…
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As far as I understood it, all the restrictions were about not allowing the virus to run riot in order to ensure the NHS was not overwhelmed.
Having visited A&E twice in the last 2 months (bloody kids!) it is busier than I have ever seen it - I spent 30 minutes at 9.30 last night waiting in a corridor to even get into paediatric A&E and be triaged. The board said it was early 8 hours wait to be seen in the main A&E.
The staff were amazing and are trying their hardest but easing restrictions knowing that it is going to put more patients in hospital seems cruel, thoughtless, ungrateful to the NHS staff and just misjudged.
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As far as I understood it, all the restrictions were about not allowing the virus to run riot in order to ensure the NHS was not overwhelmed.
Having visited A&E twice in the last 2 months (bloody kids!) it is busier than I have ever seen it - I spent 30 minutes at 9.30 last night waiting in a corridor to even get into paediatric A&E and be triaged. The board said it was early 8 hours wait to be seen in the main A&E.
The staff were amazing and are trying their hardest but easing restrictions knowing that it is going to put more patients in hospital seems cruel, thoughtless, ungrateful to the NHS staff and just misjudged.
Torbay has 24 Covid patients with 4 serious/ventilated. Or, it did on Monday.
The Royal Devon and Exeter, is “swamped” according to my sister. She works in Oncology there, however, she’s currently on a ward having had a heart attack last Friday…
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I don't think that it's in dispute that obesity is a significant risk factor for more serious covid as well as its numerous other implications. So, having commissioned an independent report on a strategy for dealing with it, Boris Johnson says he'll probably ignore it before he's actually read it: https://inews.co.uk/news/politics/national-food-strategy-tax-sugar-salt-plans-boris-johnson-henry-dimbleby-1105129
I give it a few months before Dimbleby resigns in frustration.
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To be fair, he’s only dismissed one of the many recommendations before reading it as yet. Still time for him to reject the others too. For me the worst part of this is Johnson opting to give yet another vacuous rambling speech about “levelling up” on the same day as its release in an attempt to overshadow such an important report. Shamefully disrespectful.
And what did we learn in that speech?…that he’s sort of inclined towards more devolution, but only if it means giving more power to Tory leaders. And that he’s open to ideas about how to level up if anyone’s got any.
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To be fair, he’s only dismissed one of the many recommendations before reading it as yet. Still time for him to reject the others too. For me the worst part of this is Johnson opting to give yet another vacuous rambling speech about “levelling up” on the same day as its release in an attempt to overshadow such an important report. Shamefully disrespectful.
And what did we learn in that speech?…that he’s sort of inclined towards more devolution, but only if it means giving more power to Tory leaders. And that he’s open to ideas about how to level up if anyone’s got any.
You're quite right about that speech, I happened to listen to a Specator podcast, and a bit of Times radio which discussed it and both mocked it remorselessly.
The Times radio presenter commented that the only reason that Johnson is still so fat despite running every day is because he doesn't do any work. These are both supposed to be Conservative supporting publications aren't they?
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The Royal Devon and Exeter, is “swamped” according to my sister. She works in Oncology there, however, she’s currently on a ward having had a heart attack last Friday…
Really sorry to hear that Matt, terrible. I hope she's doing as well as can be hoped for/expected.
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I hope your sis has a good recovery Matt.
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She seems good, thanks guys.
She was re-stented and sent home to recover.
Expecting her down tomorrow for a BBQ.
Quite sobering, mind, when something like that happens to your younger sibling…
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Best wishes for your sister's recovery Matt.
https://inews.co.uk/opinion/boris-johnson-self-isolation-ping-u-turn-rishi-sunak-leaders-contempt-1109564
We have also learned from a book by Sage member Sir Jeremy Farrar that the Prime Minister does not really support anything he is asking the public to do in this pandemic. “I’m with Bonkers,” he said reportedly, referring to The Mail on Sunday’s anti-lockdown columnist Peter Hitchens. “I don’t believe in any of this, it’s all bullshit. I wish I’d been the mayor in Jaws and kept the beaches open.” If people were not suffering and dying, this might all be comedic. But this farce over self-isolation in Downing Street exposes the alarming attitude this Government has towards its fellow citizens.
We are led by a selfish and entitled man who talks about levelling up society yet believes rules are for the little people. He has shown this repeatedly, from his support for a home secretary who bullied her staff through to the peerage for a disgraced donor against official advice.
Johnson sees himself as a cavalier character, unshackled by petty societal mores, something witnessed in both his private and professional life, yet such an outlook is corrosive when running a nation that has lost faith in its politicians – and lethally toxic in a pandemic.
We still need clarity of message and collective response. Instead, we get confusion and these displays of contempt from our leaders
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Further. This rather disappointing from Tom Randall at the end :whistle:
https://youtu.be/PkRkoPDIkH4
MP Dawn Butler may have been asked to leave one house, but I suspect she'd be warmly welcomed in to quite a few others.
:yes:
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:clap2: Dawn Butler.
I wondered who would take up the mantle sinceThe Beast of Bolsover lost his seat.
How can we have a functioning democracy if, at the very heart of it, there are no consequences for lying and you are removed for telling the truth?
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I admire her sentiment, and agree that Boris Johnson is a liar; however I also agree with the fact that MPs aren't allowed to say this outright in the chamber.
The house of commons may be rowdy at times, but if you watch any of the political debate in the US House of representatives, it often seems to deteriorate into really puerile name calling and insults.
Our system has some anachronisms, like having to say honourable member for... which seem silly, but the limit on being directly offensive I agree with.
I should add, it really angers me how much Johnson lies, he's always been a liar in his poor quality journalism, to his unfortunate partners and now as PM. He's also never answered a question in his life, he's an embarrassment to this country and he needs to go.
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I admire her sentiment, and agree that Boris Johnson is a liar; however I also agree with the fact that MPs aren't allowed to say this outright in the chamber.
I think this needed to be done at some point. If only to expose the hypocrisy of the speaker enforcing the convention of not calling another MP a liar, but repeatedly failing to enforce the convention of coming to parliament and correcting the record if it has been misled.
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His lying annoys me too, but the fact that it appears to be politically effective is what really gets me. The guy acts with impunity and is happy to debase our political landscape. I agree that it needed to be called out. I doubt it will have much impact though, as like with Trump, voters have a pretty good idea of his personal shortcomings by now and therefore it's already been factored into their decision making. I think the opposition need a stronger line of attack.
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Unfortunately, I think many people would rather believe whatever fluff their sold.
What I really despised - and do in general - was the way that the deputy speaker seemed more intent on exerting her position.
Feel like sending the MP an email for standing up. It's what we need in politics.
There were reasons for the intervention - it is a debating chamber afterall - but not in that "truth needs to know it's place" kind of way.
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Unfortunately, I think many people would rather believe whatever fluff their sold.
What I really despised - and do in general - was the way that the deputy speaker seemed more intent on exerting her position.
Feel like sending the MP an email for standing up. It's what we need in politics.
There were reasons for the intervention - it is a debating chamber afterall - but not in that "truth needs to know it's place" kind of way.
Unfortunately its a standard Parliamentary rule, so the speaker had no choice. A dumb one when the lie is clear but the point could have been worded in a way that avoided forcing the speaker's hand. Peter Oborne's website used to document each and every lie Boris made but stopped a while ago now. Anyone know anywhere else other than this?
https://costofjohnson.com/
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...the speaker had no choice...the point could have been worded in a way that avoided forcing the speaker's hand.
I presume that was the intention behind it. Johnson has been called out numerous times for 'misleading' the house to no effect. If she hadn't been kicked out it wouldn't have even been reported. Not that it got much coverage anyway.
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This is one of those historic things that hasn't changed since times were clearly a lot different - I saw somewhere a list of the things that MPs aren't allowed to call each other, which alongside "liar" included "idiot", "git" and "swine"!
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Calling someone a 'Guttersnipe' is also not allowed!
The whole system needs updating to fit modern circumstances. The expectation is that MPs found to be lying aka 'misleading' parliament should return and correct the record ASAP. Current government cares little about expectations.
Having seen an interview with Dawn Butler, she knew she would be removed and felt that she would use that to highlight the issue.
Imagine, in any other workplace, if you could just endlessly bullshit and there were no consequences. That's basically what our democracy has become.
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The thing is, it spills over into other workplaces. I was pretty aghast when I left the a previous job that it was normalised for people to just say things that were provably false.
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Calling someone a 'Guttersnipe' is also not allowed!
The whole system needs updating to fit modern circumstances. The expectation is that MPs found to be lying aka 'misleading' parliament should return and correct the record ASAP. Current government cares little about expectations.
Having seen an interview with Dawn Butler, she knew she would be removed and felt that she would use that to highlight the issue.
Imagine, in any other workplace, if you could just endlessly bullshit and there were no consequences. That's basically what our democracy has become.
I agree, I think the main problem is that a lot of our system relies on the nice person principle; ie that the person in power is essentially decent. Unfortunately the PM is what you get, when people will also vote for boaty mcboatface. There is a good article in the Times today by Max Hastings about why we don't get better leaders.
The speaker has repeatedly told the PM off in parliament but it doesn't come to anything, and millions of people still really like him for reasons that I find increasingly baffling.
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The thing is, it spills over into other workplaces. I was pretty aghast when I left the a previous job that it was normalised for people to just say things that were provably false.
The same seems to be true of competence. In my experience, a large number of NHS managers are totally incompetent, have no clinical knowledge or understanding of the services that they then make decisions on.
The current cabinet and PM are almost entirely without talent or obvious signs of intelligence, indeed this is my main problem with them.
Its obvious that there will often be administrations with which you disagree, but this lot are just not very good at their jobs.
Meritocracy is dead?
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The current cabinet and PM are almost entirely without talent or obvious signs of intelligence, indeed this is my main problem with them.
Its obvious that there will often be administrations with which you disagree, but this lot are just not very good at their jobs.
I see it differently to this. My main problem with them is not that they’re lacking intelligence or competence (which clearly a lot of them are). It’s that Johnson is the first PM, along with his cabinet, whose motivation seems to be primarily one of self-interest. Even though I disagreed with their methods and ideology, I do think the likes of May, Cameron, Major, even Thatcher, were trying to do the best for the country and at least had a plan of how to go about it. This lot just do or say whatever they think will benefit their future prospects and that’s as far as their efforts take them.
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I’d go a step further still. Whilst incompetence in cabinet is now rife it’s not previously unheard of (remember Chris Grayling? Or Rhodes-Boyson? Or any number of previously over- promoted fools) but it creates a smokescreen for an approach mired in cynical cronyism and authoritarianism.
The appearance of incompetence is a political tool for the current incumbent of No10. It has served him well.
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I’d go a step further still. Whilst incompetence in cabinet is now rife it’s not previously unheard of (remember Chris Grayling? Or Rhodes-Boyson? Or any number of previously over- promoted fools) but it creates a smokescreen for an approach mired in cynical cronyism and authoritarianism.
The appearance of incompetence is a political tool for the current incumbent of No10. It has served him well.
I think that self interest was a prominent feature of the Cameron administration, although less blatantly than it is now. He mishandled the remain campaign to pander to his own Eurosceptic party members to try to preserve his political position, assuming he'd win anyway. He absolutely shat on his coalition partners, putting huge resources into unseating their MPs at the subsequent election. The greensill affair only underlines this aspect of his character.
But I do still think that Cameron, though foolish, had a good amount of intelligence. I'm not entirely convinced that Johnson's Homer Simpson persona is an act, I'm torn as to whether his incompetence is sheer laziness or actual lack of intelligence. I'm quite sure he doesn't understand the NI protocol, but don't know if he hasn't tried or if he kind of has, but just can't really understand it because he's thick.
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Further on government incompetence, Raab not only doesn't seem to understand how important the Dover Calais crossing is but also the location of French colonies.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jul/29/ministers-under-fire-putting-france-england-amber-plus-list?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other
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If there was any justice in the world, a foreign secretary who buggered off on holiday abroad against the strict advice of his department during the pullout from Afghanistan and then stayed there for a week until it had all gone tits up should have been sacked. Plus ca change....
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I'm not sure the errors of absence and omission are better or worse that what Raab might come up with if were actually here!
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Biden is on holidays also. Who needs a Commander-in-chief in these times 🙄
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I'm not sure the errors of absence and omission are better or worse that what Raab might come up with if were actually here!
Accepted. I'm entirely sure he'd have made no difference whatsoever. Afghanistan illustrates perfectly the utter folly of Brexit and the myth of global Britain. We're a tiny country really, and when the US decides to act we're completely incapable of doing anything about it.
Notwithstanding, I still think that it looks shabby for most of the cabinet to be on holiday, maybe firing off the odd tweet.
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Biden is on holidays also. Who needs a Commander-in-chief in these times 🙄
He just made a major speech about it however.
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Biden is on holidays also. Who needs a Commander-in-chief in these times 🙄
He just made a major speech about it however.
That should settle that then!
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Biden is on holidays also. Who needs a Commander-in-chief in these times 🙄
He just made a major speech about it however.
Saying it was all the Afghan leadership's fault - they gave up and ran away. Not the US's fault for the massive withdrawal, no siree Bob, don't blame us. Maybe another terror attack will wake him up to the reality.
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Bit of a joke really. Whatever one's feelings on the withdrawal happening, the way it happened was a disaster.
Apparently when the US forces at Bagram left during the night, they switched off the power... leaving the ANA guards outside standing in the fucking darkness with no idea what was going on, and with no radio contact with the base command cos they'd all left. It took the guard posts two hours to realise that the base had been emptied and they had no back-up, no security etc.
Morale in the ANA was very low recently I wonder why.
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Biden is on holidays also. Who needs a Commander-in-chief in these times 🙄
He just made a major speech about it however.
Saying it was all the Afghan leadership's fault - they gave up and ran away. Not the US's fault for the massive withdrawal, no siree Bob, don't blame us. Maybe another terror attack will wake him up to the reality.
The ball has been dropped.
Ripping off a bandaid and getting a painful, inevitable, task out of the way; is fine when it’s just between you and the bandaid. Abandoning the mess you created and leaving tens of thousands of your dependents to the tender mercies of murderous religious fruitcakes, long before the weaning process is complete? Not fine.
My partial, peripheral, involvement with wounded veterans here, has been quite distressing the last three days. Even people who I thought were dealing well with their disabilities are wobbling. After all, what was the point of them losing limbs, friends and peace of mind? They feel betrayed.
The mood amongst my fiercely Democrat military friends across the Atlantic is, well, furious. The Biden administration has lost the next election. It seems highly unlikely very many veterans or active duty personnel will be supporting the Dems anytime soon.
Let’s face it, leading your nation into a very public, ignominious, utter, defeat; out of simple wishful thinking, is probably not going to play out well amongst the electorate.
The similarities between Chinooks lifting people off embassy roofs in 1975 and 2021, is an image that will be hard to shake and the moment desperate people clinging to the outside of USAF C-17, were filmed plummeting to their deaths as their erstwhile protectors took flight; made 1975 seem like the off Broadway, workup version, for Biden’s 2021 Hollywood blockbuster.
Incidentally, the pilot and crew, who crammed 600+ refugees into their Globemaster, were apparently disobeying orders (at least, that’s the scuttlebutt).
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The ball has been dropped.
Ripping off a bandaid and getting a painful, inevitable, task out of the way; is fine when it’s just between you and the bandaid. Abandoning the mess you created and leaving tens of thousands of your dependents to the tender mercies of murderous religious fruitcakes, long before the weaning process is complete? Not fine.
That's a good way of putting it. Although it seems to be the universal view that the US has mishandled the withdrawal, it seems strange to exclusively blame Biden. It is after all, Trumps policy, except that he'd have done it in May instead. I'd argue it represents a wider political failure of the powers (the UK and the US) to think about their future in foreign policy because they've been myopically obsessed with domestic politics for years, often pouring concentration into piffling issues which governments should not be wasting their time on; Raab, for example seemed to have plenty of time to go on TV to criticise England players taking the knee, but not so much for Afghanistan.
If he wanted to comment on football, shouldn't we boycott the Qatar world cup, as they also host the closest thing that the Taliban have to an official base in Doha.
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The ball has been dropped.
Ripping off a bandaid and getting a painful, inevitable, task out of the way; is fine when it’s just between you and the bandaid. Abandoning the mess you created and leaving tens of thousands of your dependents to the tender mercies of murderous religious fruitcakes, long before the weaning process is complete? Not fine.
That's a good way of putting it. Although it seems to be the universal view that the US has mishandled the withdrawal, it seems strange to exclusively blame Biden. It is after all, Trumps policy, except that he'd have done it in May instead. I'd argue it represents a wider political failure of the powers (the UK and the US) to think about their future in foreign policy because they've been myopically obsessed with domestic politics for years, often pouring concentration into piffling issues which governments should not be wasting their time on; Raab, for example seemed to have plenty of time to go on TV to criticise England players taking the knee, but not so much for Afghanistan.
If he wanted to comment on football, shouldn't we boycott the Qatar world cup, as they also host the closest thing that the Taliban have to an official base in Doha.
Given the policy to withdraw US presence from Afghanistan, which has been underway prior to this administration, it is Biden's execution of the final stages in which he precipitously withdrew that is under scrutiny. He stands "squarely behind" his decision. The buck stops with him on this one as commander-in-chief - there is no deflecting from this. The unfolding scenes from Afghanistan are so serious that they speak for themselves and the evitable human rights violations and humanitarian catastrophe will mark his foreign policy score card. Biden has failed here.
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The ball has been dropped.
Ripping off a bandaid and getting a painful, inevitable, task out of the way; is fine when it’s just between you and the bandaid. Abandoning the mess you created and leaving tens of thousands of your dependents to the tender mercies of murderous religious fruitcakes, long before the weaning process is complete? Not fine.
That's a good way of putting it. Although it seems to be the universal view that the US has mishandled the withdrawal, it seems strange to exclusively blame Biden. It is after all, Trumps policy, except that he'd have done it in May instead. I'd argue it represents a wider political failure of the powers (the UK and the US) to think about their future in foreign policy because they've been myopically obsessed with domestic politics for years, often pouring concentration into piffling issues which governments should not be wasting their time on; Raab, for example seemed to have plenty of time to go on TV to criticise England players taking the knee, but not so much for Afghanistan.
If he wanted to comment on football, shouldn't we boycott the Qatar world cup, as they also host the closest thing that the Taliban have to an official base in Doha.
Given the policy to withdraw US presence from Afghanistan, which has been underway prior to this administration, it is Biden's execution of the final stages in which he precipitously withdrew that is under scrutiny. He stands "squarely behind" his decision. The buck stops with him on this one as commander-in-chief - there is no deflecting from this. The unfolding scenes from Afghanistan are so serious that they speak for themselves and the evitable human rights violations and humanitarian catastrophe will mark his foreign policy score card. Biden has failed here.
This.
Unfortunately, regardless or which side of the political spectrum you fall, there has been adequate time to mitigate any inadequacy of Trump foreign policy and given most liberally minded people are unlikely to take a sympathetic line to “it was the the previous administration’s fault” type of argument, from (for instance) the current UK Tory government (even when referring to the last Tory government), trying to take that line in this case seems rather silly.
It was a “go/no go” decision that could have been countermanded upto the final seconds.
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Apparently when the US forces at Bagram left during the night, they switched off the power... leaving the ANA guards outside standing in the fucking darkness with no idea what was going on, and with no radio contact with the base command cos they'd all left. It took the guard posts two hours to realise that the base had been emptied and they had no back-up, no security etc.
Morale in the ANA was very low recently I wonder why.
Hold on, the members of the ANA were presumably Afghans, right? Men brought up in the "graveyard of empires", a world of violence and fighting, capable of destroying superpower armies whilst wearing only pyjamas and sandals (or more realistically the sons and grandsons of men capable of underdressed asymmetric warfare, but grant me some poetic licence here).
Now are we saying these mighty warriors failed because it was dark?
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The ball has been dropped.
Ripping off a bandaid and getting a painful, inevitable, task out of the way; is fine when it’s just between you and the bandaid. Abandoning the mess you created and leaving tens of thousands of your dependents to the tender mercies of murderous religious fruitcakes, long before the weaning process is complete? Not fine.
That's a good way of putting it. Although it seems to be the universal view that the US has mishandled the withdrawal, it seems strange to exclusively blame Biden. It is after all, Trumps policy, except that he'd have done it in May instead. I'd argue it represents a wider political failure of the powers (the UK and the US) to think about their future in foreign policy because they've been myopically obsessed with domestic politics for years, often pouring concentration into piffling issues which governments should not be wasting their time on; Raab, for example seemed to have plenty of time to go on TV to criticise England players taking the knee, but not so much for Afghanistan.
If he wanted to comment on football, shouldn't we boycott the Qatar world cup, as they also host the closest thing that the Taliban have to an official base in Doha.
Realistically most nations should be boycotting that WC but none of them will.
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Apparently when the US forces at Bagram left during the night, they switched off the power... leaving the ANA guards outside standing in the fucking darkness with no idea what was going on, and with no radio contact with the base command cos they'd all left. It took the guard posts two hours to realise that the base had been emptied and they had no back-up, no security etc.
Morale in the ANA was very low recently I wonder why.
Hold on, the members of the ANA were presumably Afghans, right? Men brought up in the "graveyard of empires", a world of violence and fighting, capable of destroying superpower armies whilst wearing only pyjamas and sandals (or more realistically the sons and grandsons of men capable of underdressed asymmetric warfare, but grant me some poetic licence here).
Now are we saying these mighty warriors failed because it was dark?
I'm saying that the US withdrew from that base in the middle of the night without informing their allies, and in fact it was looted before the ANA even got there, and that's pretty dire and pathetic of them. A lot more ANA guys have died bravely fighting the Taliban than NATO guys have, and the US didn't even do a flag handover ceremony, didn't even tell them they were leaving, just nothing. When you leave the allies who guarded your base stood outside with all the floodlights suddenly turning off because you hold them in such contempt you didn't think or bother to actually say "btw we are leaving" then I feel like that's shameful to say the least.
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Apparently when the US forces at Bagram left during the night, they switched off the power... leaving the ANA guards outside standing in the fucking darkness with no idea what was going on, and with no radio contact with the base command cos they'd all left. It took the guard posts two hours to realise that the base had been emptied and they had no back-up, no security etc.
Morale in the ANA was very low recently I wonder why.
Hold on, the members of the ANA were presumably Afghans, right? Men brought up in the "graveyard of empires", a world of violence and fighting, capable of destroying superpower armies whilst wearing only pyjamas and sandals (or more realistically the sons and grandsons of men capable of underdressed asymmetric warfare, but grant me some poetic licence here).
Now are we saying these mighty warriors failed because it was dark?
I'm saying that the US withdrew from that base in the middle of the night without informing their allies, and in fact it was looted before the ANA even got there, and that's pretty dire and pathetic of them. A lot more ANA guys have died bravely fighting the Taliban than NATO guys have, and the US didn't even do a flag handover ceremony, didn't even tell them they were leaving, just nothing. When you leave the allies who guarded your base stood outside with all the floodlights suddenly turning off because you hold them in such contempt you didn't think or bother to actually say "btw we are leaving" then I feel like that's shameful to say the least.
It isn’t much of a surprise.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/afghan-security-forces-capabilities/2021/08/15/052a45e2-fdc7-11eb-a664-4f6de3e17ff0_story.html?utm_campaign=wp_post_most&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&wpisrc=nl_most&carta-url=https%3A%2F%2Fs2.washingtonpost.com%2Fcar-ln-tr%2F346abb3%2F611a90b09d2fda2f47f76c1a%2F59728dacade4e21a847fa816%2F9%2F68%2F611a90b09d2fda2f47f76c1a&fbclid=IwAR1HDPrknVS6UmPdUdR4cEM1qI4f9vwuZJVx4HR5g96bO19IRWIOriSRC40 (https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/afghan-security-forces-capabilities/2021/08/15/052a45e2-fdc7-11eb-a664-4f6de3e17ff0_story.html?utm_campaign=wp_post_most&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&wpisrc=nl_most&carta-url=https%3A%2F%2Fs2.washingtonpost.com%2Fcar-ln-tr%2F346abb3%2F611a90b09d2fda2f47f76c1a%2F59728dacade4e21a847fa816%2F9%2F68%2F611a90b09d2fda2f47f76c1a&fbclid=IwAR1HDPrknVS6UmPdUdR4cEM1qI4f9vwuZJVx4HR5g96bO19IRWIOriSRC40)
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Apparently when the US forces at Bagram left during the night, they switched off the power... leaving the ANA guards outside standing in the fucking darkness with no idea what was going on, and with no radio contact with the base command cos they'd all left. It took the guard posts two hours to realise that the base had been emptied and they had no back-up, no security etc.
Morale in the ANA was very low recently I wonder why.
Hold on, the members of the ANA were presumably Afghans, right? Men brought up in the "graveyard of empires", a world of violence and fighting, capable of destroying superpower armies whilst wearing only pyjamas and sandals (or more realistically the sons and grandsons of men capable of underdressed asymmetric warfare, but grant me some poetic licence here).
Now are we saying these mighty warriors failed because it was dark?
I'm saying that the US withdrew from that base in the middle of the night without informing their allies, and in fact it was looted before the ANA even got there, and that's pretty dire and pathetic of them. A lot more ANA guys have died bravely fighting the Taliban than NATO guys have, and the US didn't even do a flag handover ceremony, didn't even tell them they were leaving, just nothing. When you leave the allies who guarded your base stood outside with all the floodlights suddenly turning off because you hold them in such contempt you didn't think or bother to actually say "btw we are leaving" then I feel like that's shameful to say the least.
If that's what happened, that's shameful. I wasn't really trying to stick up for Biden above; more to say that it's rank opportunism for the Republicans to make out as though it'd have been all rosy if they were in power. I'm sure Mitch McConnell will try however.
Pretty much as shameful was the kneejerk UKHO response that they didn't want any Afghan refugees given special consideration as it might sent out the wrong message to other migrants, as reported in the Sunday Times. They clearly wanted to make it clear that the UK isn't a humane country.
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Apparently when the US forces at Bagram left during the night, they switched off the power... leaving the ANA guards outside standing in the fucking darkness with no idea what was going on, and with no radio contact with the base command cos they'd all left. It took the guard posts two hours to realise that the base had been emptied and they had no back-up, no security etc.
Morale in the ANA was very low recently I wonder why.
Hold on, the members of the ANA were presumably Afghans, right? Men brought up in the "graveyard of empires", a world of violence and fighting, capable of destroying superpower armies whilst wearing only pyjamas and sandals (or more realistically the sons and grandsons of men capable of underdressed asymmetric warfare, but grant me some poetic licence here).
Now are we saying these mighty warriors failed because it was dark?
I'm saying that the US withdrew from that base in the middle of the night without informing their allies, and in fact it was looted before the ANA even got there, and that's pretty dire and pathetic of them. A lot more ANA guys have died bravely fighting the Taliban than NATO guys have, and the US didn't even do a flag handover ceremony, didn't even tell them they were leaving, just nothing. When you leave the allies who guarded your base stood outside with all the floodlights suddenly turning off because you hold them in such contempt you didn't think or bother to actually say "btw we are leaving" then I feel like that's shameful to say the least.
If that's what happened, that's shameful. I wasn't really trying to stick up for Biden above; more to say that it's rank opportunism for the Republicans to make out as though it'd have been all rosy if they were in power. I'm sure Mitch McConnell will try however.
Pretty much as shameful was the kneejerk UKHO response that they didn't want any Afghan refugees given special consideration as it might sent out the wrong message to other migrants, as reported in the Sunday Times. They clearly wanted to make it clear that the UK isn't a humane country.
If you delve into any comments sections that accompany any one of the various social media posting of refugees loaded into (or falling off) aeroplanes, it’s quite apparent that many, many, Brits really are not “humane” or, possibly, even human.
It’s worth following the links in the WP article above. It’s clear that this should have been foreseen and that the intelligence services were certainly aware of it’s likelihood and reporting such.
It’s clear they were aware since the Feb 2020 deal was signed.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/08/15/afghanistan-military-collapse-taliban/ (https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/08/15/afghanistan-military-collapse-taliban/)
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"The Taliban takeover of Afghanistan took us by surprise" - everyone at the apex of the Western powers.
Really?? Can I reduce my taxes by the percentage that goes on the intelligence services & Ministry of War then please? 20 years there and billions of UK pounds and this is the best they can come up with.
Suspect there's a vast amount of Americans feeling similar about their $2 trillion dollar investment. 2001 - Taliban in control. 20 years of US blood and treasure to 2021 and....Taliban in control. Not least the military personnel from the front line. There will of course by a very few Americans in the "nation destroying" and also "nation building" trade who took receipt of most of that $2tn who are laughing whatever happens.
$88bn of that went on equipping and training a 300,000 strong modern army and air force with modern US planes / weaponry. These were meant to fight an 80,000 strong bunch of backward peasants with AK47s, pick ups, no air support, and no money, never mind $88bn! One of these sides overwhelmed the other completely, taking over a country of 38 million people largely bloodlessly, and in a matter of weeks. It appears not much actual fighting went on, which is frankly not a bad thing, given that the end result was evidently inevitable.
That's a good way of putting it. seems strange to exclusively blame Biden. It is after all, Trumps policy, except that he'd have done it in May instead.
Trump's deal was to withdraw troops in exchange for the Taliban not hosting Al-Qaeda and generally being nicer. The Afghan govt were not signatories. That points to the US presumption that upon withdrawal the Taliban will take control. That was the US strategy under Trump. Could Biden have reversed this policy? Yes absolutely. He didn't. Though yes he tinkered with the timings / tactics. So, are we surprised the Taliban took control? That seems to be the agreed deal, and it has happened largely peacefully - cf any western takeover of a country for comparison. The speed of the takeover is a detail.
Will it actually happen? The Taliban rhetoric so far matches the deal. In terms of actions time will tell. I suspect the Taliban are not daft and will not invite another US invasion or any variety of trouble by hosting Al-Qaeda. They are probably being similarly advised by other countries too i.e. Russia & China, upon whose support they will be relying in future.
Overall another foreign adventure gone tits-up. As usual no-one involved will suffer even the mildest cross-word or hard question, but "lessons will be learnt". Largely because as expected our elected representatives were almost as one in voting for the invasion in the first place. The 13 exceptions you can probably guess - think "student politics".
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It is, to present a counter argument, very easy to criticize all intervention in foreign policy. However, we have left Syria and Yemen to it and they're huge humanitarian disasters. Obviously, Afghanistan doesn't seem to have gone well, but it's hard to ignore what an awful lot of troops who've been there say which is that they did a lot of good and gave an opportunity to a generation of Afghan people, especially women.
I'm not trying to argue that it's a success, but I also don't think intervention of any kind is wrong. I don't know what the answer is though.
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Nigel_ 'think student politics'? The implication being that being opposed to violent intervention is what? A less than serious or mature position to hold?
I despise this portrayal... if anything those that think they can somehow impose their morality and superior way of life upon others around the world through the barrel of gun are extremely immature in their thinking.
The idea that we are somehow 'better' is absurd, speak to anyone with a disability in this country and ask them about humane treatment. Whilst we're all looking the other way at the dispicable behaviour of other states our own country is quietly engaged in it's own humanitarian disaster.
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It is, to present a counter argument, very easy to criticize all intervention in foreign policy.
Nice euphemism! An intervention in foreign policy, I would argue, might be withdrawing an ambassador, say. You will recall that this involved bombing the place, invading it, and occupying it for 20 years while fighting the very people who we have now left in charge. All to kill a Saudi Arabian man allegedly camping in the hills, who sent other Saudi Arabian men flying to the US. Who promptly moved a very short distance to US ally Pakistan, to a nice big house next to a military base.
Obviously, Afghanistan doesn't seem to have gone well, but it's hard to ignore what an awful lot of troops who've been there say which is that they did a lot of good and gave an opportunity to a generation of Afghan people, especially women.
Equally it is hard to ignore that we can come up with all sorts of post-hoc justifications for these violent disasters. No doubt we did do some good, I don't deny it. If you can remember back to 2001 the justification for the "intervention" was definitively NOT to send women to school. That is not a justification for war yet AFAIK? Otherwise some of our allies should start sweating! This is changing the goalposts. The original motivation / strategy was as I say above.
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On a domestic UK issue, namely the tenure of the Met Police Commissioner, I spotted this in The Times this morning:
"Home Office sources said there was no clear candidate and so an extension for Dick was looking likely, although no final decision has been made."
Perhaps their subs are all on holiday?
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Brutus - respectfully you have missed the sarcasm! I attempted to denote that with the quotation marks. Obviously it failed - the perils of the internet! Sorry...
My intention was to highlight that usually those opposing these violent ventures are always in the tiny minority, usually on the left, and criticised as "not adult" / "student politics" / "not patriotic" / "foreign subversives" / "rebels" etc. After much loss of life, national wealth, and opportunity cost to direct resources to more productive endeavours, they usually turn out to have been right. Again.
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I read it as 'and these are the ones dismissed as such' rather than an endorsement of that label. But then I do know you.
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... meanwhile, in France there is very little opposition to the fact that the French military fighting insurgencies and small wars all over the Sahel, often on behalf of quite questionable governments. Even though Macron has promised to decrease the French military presence in the Sahel to around 2500-3000 soldiers, there is currently no plan, and no hope for a complete withdrawal. Fighting wars in Sahel is usually presented as a way to secure French borders and for domestic safety.
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it is hard to ignore that we can come up with all sorts of post-hoc justifications for these violent disasters. No doubt we did do some good, I don't deny it. If you can remember back to 2001 the justification for the "intervention" was definitively NOT to send women to school. That is not a justification for war yet AFAIK?
But the idea that you can impose a 2021 perspective on the actions of 2001 isn't reasonable. I'm not arguing, as I have said before that the intervention was a success, and the withdrawal is clearly a total debacle.
But the idea that it would have been an option to do nothing after the September 11 attacks isn't really credible, especially if Al Qaeda had launched another attack, emboldened by Western inaction. It was effective in dispersing the network of training camps Al Qaeda had and noone can know if we might have had further similar attacks otherwise.
However, the situation is now completely different as a terrorist group now just needs people with access to the internet to radicalise individuals to carry out lone wolf attacks, not a network of training camps. No amount of military intervention can prevent that, and it now looks like an anachronism. This wasn't the case in 2001.
The troops who've been in Afghanistan certainly seem to say that an awful lot of what they were doing was extremely valuable and I'm willing to take them at their word on that. The political management of their withdrawal by our government and the US is obviously a complete disaster though.
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No doubt we did do some good, I don't deny it. If you can remember back to 2001 the justification for the "intervention" was definitively NOT to send women to school. That is not a justification for war yet AFAIK? Otherwise some of our allies should start sweating! This is changing the goalposts. The original motivation / strategy was as I say above.
Well, we have the text of Blair's speech to the Labour Party conference in October 2001, which he gave a week before the invasion of Afghanistan:
"Look for a moment at the Taliban regime. It is undemocratic. That goes without saying.
"There is no sport allowed, or television or photography. No art or culture is permitted. All other faiths, all other interpretations of Islam are ruthlessly suppressed. Those who practice their faith are imprisoned. Women are treated in a way almost too revolting to be credible. First driven out of university; girls not allowed to go to school; no legal rights; unable to go out of doors without a man. Those that disobey are stoned.
"There is now no contact permitted with western agencies, even those delivering food. The people live in abject poverty. It is a regime founded on fear and funded on the drugs trade....
"To the Afghan people we make this commitment. The conflict will not be the end. We will not walk away, as the outside world has done so many times before.
"If the Taliban regime changes, we will work with you to make sure its successor is one that is broad-based, that unites all ethnic groups, and that offers some way out of the miserable poverty that is your present existence.
"And, more than ever now, with every bit as much thought and planning, we will assemble a humanitarian coalition alongside the military coalition so that inside and outside Afghanistan, the refugees, millions on the move even before September 11, are given shelter, food and help during the winter months."
To me that looks pretty close to saying that improving the lot of Afghan women was, if not a reason for invading, a desired outcome of doing so.
Blair also argues in this speech that the international community should have intervened in Rwanda in 1994. Doing so would undoubtedly have been difficult, expensive and violent. Question for all the far left wingers on here - should that have happened?
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Are they all just going to ignore the crisis in Haiti, and spend a few days kicking the Afghanistan political football around parliament for a few days?
Edit - I see some support has now been promised.
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My intention was to highlight that usually those opposing these violent ventures are always in the tiny minority, usually on the left, and criticised as "not adult" / "student politics" / "not patriotic" / "foreign subversives" / "rebels" etc. After much loss of life, national wealth, and opportunity cost to direct resources to more productive endeavours, they usually turn out to have been right. Again.
I visited Afghanistan in 2001 when it was under the control of the Taliban. In the twenty years since I've visited several very poor countries suffering conflict or humanitarian crises and despite what I've seen, the state of Afghanistan back then continues to haunt me. I only went to Jalalabad and Kabul so can't pretend to have had a broad view of the country, but even so I think most people struggle to comprehend how absolutely fucked it was. In the 150 mile journey from Pakistan to Kabul there was barely 50 yards of paved, unshelled road remaining. You'd drive past limbless men begging by the side of the road, the victims of the extensive minefields. In the countryside every building within 50 metres of the road was a ruin, as the Soviets had carpet bombed them to remove places for snipers. In Jalalabad I remember walking across a bridge and when a cart passed by the bridge vibrated, there were holes in the pavement and you could see the river below. Everything was in pieces. I stayed in a hotel there and if you wanted to turn the light on, you took two wires coming out of the wall that had been pared down to the metal and shaped into hooks, and put the hooks together.
We're talking about a country too poor and decrepit to afford light switches.
Unfortunately I don't have many pictures of the trip as photography was illegal under the Taliban and they were kind of scary. Driving from Jalalabad to Kabul, the taxi driver had a Bollywood tape in his glovebox, the Talibs at a checkpoint found it, pulled him from the car and started roughing him up. Obviously I didn't talk to any women because I didn't see any women, but I'd spoken to women activists in Peshawar and they were having a truly awful time.
I was lucky enough to visit Afghanistan again in 2008, to Kabul and then the rural north east, accompanying a photographer. (The trip produced this picture: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/may/20/alixandra-fazzina-best-photograph-afghan-mother-breastfeeding) Kabul was a different city, there was reconstruction, women on the streets, lighting, people were clearly just better off. Out in the countryside things were still pretty grim, but there were actual clinics for pregnant women which just hadn't existed before. One woman told me how previously she'd given birth in winter onto a mud floor in an unheated room with six foot snowdrifts outside. Just brutal conditions, and whilst things are still bad (https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SH.STA.MMRT?contextual=region&locations=AF) they were improving.
Now I'm not saying the western intervention was perfect by any means. It has been very violent. There have been huge problems with injecting so much money into such a basket case of a country. Building a state has also enabled massive corruption. We empowered many of the worst people in Afghan society, to the point that US soldiers were told *not* to intervene in cases where commanders had been sexually abusing boys. It turns out that perhaps 20 years was not enough time to create anything like a well-functioning country.
Much of this has been covered very well by Adam Tooze here, helpfully including some stats on the Soviet time which are worth ingesting: https://adamtooze.substack.com/p/adam-toozes-chartbook-29-afghanistans
Clearly things were going backwards before the summer of 2021 and it's hard to feel hopeful for the future. But when I read posts from left wingers saying we should have put money into "more productive" endeavours, I'm struggling to think of something less worthy of our attention than the ruined place Afghanistan was in 2001. What, from a left wing point of view, could be more productive than stopping women in childbirth bleeding out onto mud-strewn floors? (If you think other countries with similarly terrible maternal mortality rates would have soaked up that money better, then I have a bridge to sell you.)
If we'd have followed the path advocated by the far left, we'd never have gone to Afghanistan in the first place and it would just have limped on as it had been for years. We've finally done what the Stop the War guys want, ie leave, and it's so popular with Afghans that some are willing to cling onto a plane's fusilage to avoid it, and die trying.
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My intention was to highlight that usually those opposing these violent ventures are always in the tiny minority, usually on the left, and criticised as "not adult" / "student politics" / "not patriotic" / "foreign subversives" / "rebels" etc. After much loss of life, national wealth, and opportunity cost to direct resources to more productive endeavours, they usually turn out to have been right. Again.
I visited Afghanistan in 2001 when it was under the control of the Taliban. In the twenty years since I've visited several very poor countries suffering conflict or humanitarian crises and despite what I've seen, the state of Afghanistan back then continues to haunt me. I only went to Jalalabad and Kabul so can't pretend to have had a broad view of the country, but even so I think most people struggle to comprehend how absolutely fucked it was. In the 150 mile journey from Pakistan to Kabul there was barely 50 yards of paved, unshelled road remaining. You'd drive past limbless men begging by the side of the road, the victims of the extensive minefields. In the countryside every building within 50 metres of the road was a ruin, as the Soviets had carpet bombed them to remove places for snipers. In Jalalabad I remember walking across a bridge and when a cart passed by the bridge vibrated, there were holes in the pavement and you could see the river below. Everything was in pieces. I stayed in a hotel there and if you wanted to turn the light on, you took two wires coming out of the wall that had been pared down to the metal and shaped into hooks, and put the hooks together.
We're talking about a country too poor and decrepit to afford light switches.
Unfortunately I don't have many pictures of the trip as photography was illegal under the Taliban and they were kind of scary. Driving from Jalalabad to Kabul, the taxi driver had a Bollywood tape in his glovebox, the Talibs at a checkpoint found it, pulled him from the car and started roughing him up. Obviously I didn't talk to any women because I didn't see any women, but I'd spoken to women activists in Peshawar and they were having a truly awful time.
I was lucky enough to visit Afghanistan again in 2008, to Kabul and then the rural north east, accompanying a photographer. (The trip produced this picture: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/may/20/alixandra-fazzina-best-photograph-afghan-mother-breastfeeding) Kabul was a different city, there was reconstruction, women on the streets, lighting, people were clearly just better off. Out in the countryside things were still pretty grim, but there were actual clinics for pregnant women which just hadn't existed before. One woman told me how previously she'd given birth in winter onto a mud floor in an unheated room with six foot snowdrifts outside. Just brutal conditions, and whilst things are still bad (https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SH.STA.MMRT?contextual=region&locations=AF) they were improving.
Now I'm not saying the western intervention was perfect by any means. It has been very violent. There have been huge problems with injecting so much money into such a basket case of a country. Building a state has also enabled massive corruption. We empowered many of the worst people in Afghan society, to the point that US soldiers were told *not* to intervene in cases where commanders had been sexually abusing boys. It turns out that perhaps 20 years was not enough time to create anything like a well-functioning country.
Much of this has been covered very well by Adam Tooze here, helpfully including some stats on the Soviet time which are worth ingesting: https://adamtooze.substack.com/p/adam-toozes-chartbook-29-afghanistans
Clearly things were going backwards before the summer of 2021 and it's hard to feel hopeful for the future. But when I read posts from left wingers saying we should have put money into "more productive" endeavours, I'm struggling to think of something less worthy of our attention than the ruined place Afghanistan was in 2001. What, from a left wing point of view, could be more productive than stopping women in childbirth bleeding out onto mud-strewn floors? (If you think other countries with similarly terrible maternal mortality rates would have soaked up that money better, then I have a bridge to sell you.)
If we'd have followed the path advocated by the far left, we'd never have gone to Afghanistan in the first place and it would just have limped on as it had been for years. We've finally done what the Stop the War guys want, ie leave, and it's so popular with Afghans that some are willing to cling onto a plane's fusilage to avoid it, and die trying.
I feel like this should be printed in most of todays papers.
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I visited Afghanistan in 2001 when it was under the control of the Taliban. ...
...
We've finally done what the Stop the War guys want, ie leave, and it's so popular with Afghans that some are willing to cling onto a plane's fusilage to avoid it, and die trying.
That's a great account Sean. Really appreciated reading that It seems to reflect what many of the soldiers say who've served there. It's complicated, messy and imperfect, but the troop presence in Afghanistan did an awful lot of good. I listened to this on Afghan history:
https://open.spotify.com/episode/5kQcWXvgCoMmWInMxfGMwQ?si=mez-pzbkQMmoswq7ADGQwQ&utm_source=copy-link&dl_branch=1
Apparently the practice of abuse of young boys has been commonplace in some castes of Afghan society for a long time, and it was part of the reason for the rise of the Taliban, who might leave the boys alone but treat anyone female even worse, if that's possible.
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My intention was to highlight that usually those opposing these violent ventures are always in the tiny minority, usually on the left, and criticised as "not adult" / "student politics" / "not patriotic" / "foreign subversives" / "rebels" etc. After much loss of life, national wealth, and opportunity cost to direct resources to more productive endeavours, they usually turn out to have been right. Again.
I visited Afghanistan in 2001 when it was under the control of the Taliban. In the twenty years since I've visited several very poor countries suffering conflict or humanitarian crises and despite what I've seen, the state of Afghanistan back then continues to haunt me. I only went to Jalalabad and Kabul so can't pretend to have had a broad view of the country, but even so I think most people struggle to comprehend how absolutely fucked it was. In the 150 mile journey from Pakistan to Kabul there was barely 50 yards of paved, unshelled road remaining. You'd drive past limbless men begging by the side of the road, the victims of the extensive minefields. In the countryside every building within 50 metres of the road was a ruin, as the Soviets had carpet bombed them to remove places for snipers. In Jalalabad I remember walking across a bridge and when a cart passed by the bridge vibrated, there were holes in the pavement and you could see the river below. Everything was in pieces. I stayed in a hotel there and if you wanted to turn the light on, you took two wires coming out of the wall that had been pared down to the metal and shaped into hooks, and put the hooks together.
We're talking about a country too poor and decrepit to afford light switches.
Unfortunately I don't have many pictures of the trip as photography was illegal under the Taliban and they were kind of scary. Driving from Jalalabad to Kabul, the taxi driver had a Bollywood tape in his glovebox, the Talibs at a checkpoint found it, pulled him from the car and started roughing him up. Obviously I didn't talk to any women because I didn't see any women, but I'd spoken to women activists in Peshawar and they were having a truly awful time.
I was lucky enough to visit Afghanistan again in 2008, to Kabul and then the rural north east, accompanying a photographer. (The trip produced this picture: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/may/20/alixandra-fazzina-best-photograph-afghan-mother-breastfeeding) Kabul was a different city, there was reconstruction, women on the streets, lighting, people were clearly just better off. Out in the countryside things were still pretty grim, but there were actual clinics for pregnant women which just hadn't existed before. One woman told me how previously she'd given birth in winter onto a mud floor in an unheated room with six foot snowdrifts outside. Just brutal conditions, and whilst things are still bad (https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SH.STA.MMRT?contextual=region&locations=AF) they were improving.
Now I'm not saying the western intervention was perfect by any means. It has been very violent. There have been huge problems with injecting so much money into such a basket case of a country. Building a state has also enabled massive corruption. We empowered many of the worst people in Afghan society, to the point that US soldiers were told *not* to intervene in cases where commanders had been sexually abusing boys. It turns out that perhaps 20 years was not enough time to create anything like a well-functioning country.
Much of this has been covered very well by Adam Tooze here, helpfully including some stats on the Soviet time which are worth ingesting: https://adamtooze.substack.com/p/adam-toozes-chartbook-29-afghanistans
Clearly things were going backwards before the summer of 2021 and it's hard to feel hopeful for the future. But when I read posts from left wingers saying we should have put money into "more productive" endeavours, I'm struggling to think of something less worthy of our attention than the ruined place Afghanistan was in 2001. What, from a left wing point of view, could be more productive than stopping women in childbirth bleeding out onto mud-strewn floors? (If you think other countries with similarly terrible maternal mortality rates would have soaked up that money better, then I have a bridge to sell you.)
If we'd have followed the path advocated by the far left, we'd never have gone to Afghanistan in the first place and it would just have limped on as it had been for years. We've finally done what the Stop the War guys want, ie leave, and it's so popular with Afghans that some are willing to cling onto a plane's fusilage to avoid it, and die trying.
I feel like this should be printed in most of todays papers.
True. Interesting on the ground perspective. Maybe the go/no go dichotomy has various shades of grey that would have been better. A minimum US presence supporting Afghan army with backup air support could have maintained the stalemate. It is secondary also a useful base for the US in the region and monitoring terrorism. A lot of pros and cons no doubt ... nearly anything is better than that playing out with Biden's 'strategy'. And this current route makes the US look weak, allies confidence losing, and most importantly a step back to the ways of old as outlined by Sean's post... plus the retaliation punishment beating on its own populous and other human rights violations for bad measure. :(
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My intention was to highlight that usually those opposing these violent ventures are always in the tiny minority, usually on the left, and criticised as "not adult" / "student politics" / "not patriotic" / "foreign subversives" / "rebels" etc. After much loss of life, national wealth, and opportunity cost to direct resources to more productive endeavours, they usually turn out to have been right. Again.
I visited Afghanistan in 2001 when it was under the control of the Taliban. In the twenty years since I've visited several very poor countries suffering conflict or humanitarian crises and despite what I've seen, the state of Afghanistan back then continues to haunt me. I only went to Jalalabad and Kabul so can't pretend to have had a broad view of the country, but even so I think most people struggle to comprehend how absolutely fucked it was. In the 150 mile journey from Pakistan to Kabul there was barely 50 yards of paved, unshelled road remaining. You'd drive past limbless men begging by the side of the road, the victims of the extensive minefields. In the countryside every building within 50 metres of the road was a ruin, as the Soviets had carpet bombed them to remove places for snipers. In Jalalabad I remember walking across a bridge and when a cart passed by the bridge vibrated, there were holes in the pavement and you could see the river below. Everything was in pieces. I stayed in a hotel there and if you wanted to turn the light on, you took two wires coming out of the wall that had been pared down to the metal and shaped into hooks, and put the hooks together.
We're talking about a country too poor and decrepit to afford light switches.
Unfortunately I don't have many pictures of the trip as photography was illegal under the Taliban and they were kind of scary. Driving from Jalalabad to Kabul, the taxi driver had a Bollywood tape in his glovebox, the Talibs at a checkpoint found it, pulled him from the car and started roughing him up. Obviously I didn't talk to any women because I didn't see any women, but I'd spoken to women activists in Peshawar and they were having a truly awful time.
I was lucky enough to visit Afghanistan again in 2008, to Kabul and then the rural north east, accompanying a photographer. (The trip produced this picture: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/may/20/alixandra-fazzina-best-photograph-afghan-mother-breastfeeding) Kabul was a different city, there was reconstruction, women on the streets, lighting, people were clearly just better off. Out in the countryside things were still pretty grim, but there were actual clinics for pregnant women which just hadn't existed before. One woman told me how previously she'd given birth in winter onto a mud floor in an unheated room with six foot snowdrifts outside. Just brutal conditions, and whilst things are still bad (https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SH.STA.MMRT?contextual=region&locations=AF) they were improving.
Now I'm not saying the western intervention was perfect by any means. It has been very violent. There have been huge problems with injecting so much money into such a basket case of a country. Building a state has also enabled massive corruption. We empowered many of the worst people in Afghan society, to the point that US soldiers were told *not* to intervene in cases where commanders had been sexually abusing boys. It turns out that perhaps 20 years was not enough time to create anything like a well-functioning country.
Much of this has been covered very well by Adam Tooze here, helpfully including some stats on the Soviet time which are worth ingesting: https://adamtooze.substack.com/p/adam-toozes-chartbook-29-afghanistans
Clearly things were going backwards before the summer of 2021 and it's hard to feel hopeful for the future. But when I read posts from left wingers saying we should have put money into "more productive" endeavours, I'm struggling to think of something less worthy of our attention than the ruined place Afghanistan was in 2001. What, from a left wing point of view, could be more productive than stopping women in childbirth bleeding out onto mud-strewn floors? (If you think other countries with similarly terrible maternal mortality rates would have soaked up that money better, then I have a bridge to sell you.)
If we'd have followed the path advocated by the far left, we'd never have gone to Afghanistan in the first place and it would just have limped on as it had been for years. We've finally done what the Stop the War guys want, ie leave, and it's so popular with Afghans that some are willing to cling onto a plane's fusilage to avoid it, and die trying.
I feel like this should be printed in most of todays papers.
True. Interesting on the ground perspective. Maybe the go/no go dichotomy has various shades of grey that would have been better. A minimum US presence supporting Afghan army with backup air support could have maintained the stalemate. It is secondary also a useful base for the US in the region and monitoring terrorism. A lot of pros and cons no doubt ... nearly anything is better than that playing out with Biden's 'strategy'. And this current route makes the US look weak, allies confidence losing, and most importantly a step back to the ways of old as outlined by Sean's post... plus the retaliation punishment beating on its own populous and other human rights violations for bad measure. :(
Biden's 'strategy ' has clearly been awful for Afghanistan, and makes him look incompetent to the rest of the world; but apparently polls in the US showed more than 70% approval for the withdrawal. I suspect he's more worried about the mid term election than with the probable reality that a couple of thousand US troops in Afghanistan not engaged in combat was a minimal expenditure to stabilise a country.
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I have just emailed my MP asking her to speak in favour of granting asylum to the interpreters and security staff we have abandoned in Kabul. Much good may it do: she has a 100% record in Hansard of voting with the government. At least she knows what her constituents think of the current spineless response to the crisis.
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For being foreign secretary, Dominic Raab has a salary of over £70,000. He couldn't be bothered to make a phone call last week as part of his job.
I wonder how many NHS staff had leave cancelled during the pandemic or indeed during annual winter pressures, and said nah, I think I'll go to a beach in the Mediterranean instead?
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That call was to arrange asylum for people who have helped the UK and will be fearing for their lives now. It never took place because he refused it. People will die as a consequence.
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My intention was to highlight that usually those opposing these violent ventures are always in the tiny minority, usually on the left, and criticised as "not adult" / "student politics" / "not patriotic" / "foreign subversives" / "rebels" etc. After much loss of life, national wealth, and opportunity cost to direct resources to more productive endeavours, they usually turn out to have been right. Again.
I visited Afghanistan in 2001 when it was under the control of the Taliban. In the twenty years since I've visited several very poor countries suffering conflict or humanitarian crises and despite what I've seen, the state of Afghanistan back then continues to haunt me. I only went to Jalalabad and Kabul so can't pretend to have had a broad view of the country, but even so I think most people struggle to comprehend how absolutely fucked it was. In the 150 mile journey from Pakistan to Kabul there was barely 50 yards of paved, unshelled road remaining. You'd drive past limbless men begging by the side of the road, the victims of the extensive minefields. In the countryside every building within 50 metres of the road was a ruin, as the Soviets had carpet bombed them to remove places for snipers. In Jalalabad I remember walking across a bridge and when a cart passed by the bridge vibrated, there were holes in the pavement and you could see the river below. Everything was in pieces. I stayed in a hotel there and if you wanted to turn the light on, you took two wires coming out of the wall that had been pared down to the metal and shaped into hooks, and put the hooks together.
We're talking about a country too poor and decrepit to afford light switches.
Unfortunately I don't have many pictures of the trip as photography was illegal under the Taliban and they were kind of scary. Driving from Jalalabad to Kabul, the taxi driver had a Bollywood tape in his glovebox, the Talibs at a checkpoint found it, pulled him from the car and started roughing him up. Obviously I didn't talk to any women because I didn't see any women, but I'd spoken to women activists in Peshawar and they were having a truly awful time.
I was lucky enough to visit Afghanistan again in 2008, to Kabul and then the rural north east, accompanying a photographer. (The trip produced this picture: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/may/20/alixandra-fazzina-best-photograph-afghan-mother-breastfeeding) Kabul was a different city, there was reconstruction, women on the streets, lighting, people were clearly just better off. Out in the countryside things were still pretty grim, but there were actual clinics for pregnant women which just hadn't existed before. One woman told me how previously she'd given birth in winter onto a mud floor in an unheated room with six foot snowdrifts outside. Just brutal conditions, and whilst things are still bad (https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SH.STA.MMRT?contextual=region&locations=AF) they were improving.
Now I'm not saying the western intervention was perfect by any means. It has been very violent. There have been huge problems with injecting so much money into such a basket case of a country. Building a state has also enabled massive corruption. We empowered many of the worst people in Afghan society, to the point that US soldiers were told *not* to intervene in cases where commanders had been sexually abusing boys. It turns out that perhaps 20 years was not enough time to create anything like a well-functioning country.
Much of this has been covered very well by Adam Tooze here, helpfully including some stats on the Soviet time which are worth ingesting: https://adamtooze.substack.com/p/adam-toozes-chartbook-29-afghanistans
Clearly things were going backwards before the summer of 2021 and it's hard to feel hopeful for the future. But when I read posts from left wingers saying we should have put money into "more productive" endeavours, I'm struggling to think of something less worthy of our attention than the ruined place Afghanistan was in 2001. What, from a left wing point of view, could be more productive than stopping women in childbirth bleeding out onto mud-strewn floors? (If you think other countries with similarly terrible maternal mortality rates would have soaked up that money better, then I have a bridge to sell you.)
If we'd have followed the path advocated by the far left, we'd never have gone to Afghanistan in the first place and it would just have limped on as it had been for years. We've finally done what the Stop the War guys want, ie leave, and it's so popular with Afghans that some are willing to cling onto a plane's fusilage to avoid it, and die trying.
I feel like this should be printed in most of todays papers.
True. Interesting on the ground perspective. Maybe the go/no go dichotomy has various shades of grey that would have been better. A minimum US presence supporting Afghan army with backup air support could have maintained the stalemate. It is secondary also a useful base for the US in the region and monitoring terrorism. A lot of pros and cons no doubt ... nearly anything is better than that playing out with Biden's 'strategy'. And this current route makes the US look weak, allies confidence losing, and most importantly a step back to the ways of old as outlined by Sean's post... plus the retaliation punishment beating on its own populous and other human rights violations for bad measure. :(
Biden's 'strategy ' has clearly been awful for Afghanistan, and makes him look incompetent to the rest of the world; but apparently polls in the US showed more than 70% approval for the withdrawal. I suspect he's more worried about the mid term election than with the probable reality that a couple of thousand US troops in Afghanistan not engaged in combat was a minimal expenditure to stabilise a country.
One can 'withdraw' and leave a skeleton presence like Syria, hell even still in Europe, S Korea, and Japan to this day. As mentioned before, it isn't that he withdrew, it is how he withdrew and endangered lives of Americans civilians and diplomats, allies, and the regular Afghan people.
Biden approval is slipping fast unsurprisingly https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/biden-approval-rating/
Democrats should be worried. If Biden withdrew to win approval from the public for political/election purposes that has backfired hard.
Rank and file Democrats must be questioning his foreign policy and national political credentials + capabilities.
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Rank and file Democrats must be questioning his foreign policy and national political credentials + capabilities.
As indeed are many Conservative party backbenchers. Biden has been a sceptic of US involvement in Afghanistan for many years, he was during the Obama administration and it should not have been a surprise to our government that this happened. Johnson's government have completely failed to do something competently, again; just to add to the management of the pandemic response, Brexit, the NI situation etc.
Its funny how our ministers of state are always too busy to do important things but have plenty of time to devote to statues, taking the knee, or what pictures some students have in their common room.
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The Greens are to play a formal role in government for the first time in the UK, working with the SNP in Scotland. I think this is noteworthy. I've been a Green supporter for a long time, and know others who would support the Greens but don't because they believe it's a wasted vote, at least within the UK's first past the post system. I hope this marks the start of the Greens wielding more power and influence throughout the UK's political establishments, and I also (obviously) hope they can navigate the challenge of being the smaller party in a power sharing structure.
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Rank and file Democrats must be questioning his foreign policy and national political credentials + capabilities.
As indeed are many Conservative party backbenchers. Biden has been a sceptic of US involvement in Afghanistan for many years, he was during the Obama administration and it should not have been a surprise to our government that this happened. Johnson's government have completely failed to do something competently, again; just to add to the management of the pandemic response, Brexit, the NI situation etc.
Its funny how our ministers of state are always too busy to do important things but have plenty of time to devote to statues, taking the knee, or what pictures some students have in their common room.
I think we have found some common ground! Especially the last paragraph in not seeing the wood from the trees.
Again, and I feel I am harping on so will stop after this, it is not that the Biden withdraw has happened that is a surprise but it is a surprise how it happened. I wont carry water for the UK government, but most have been caught off guard by this US strategy (plus the resulting swift takeover by the Taliban) and sent into reactive mode .. which is never a good thing militarily or politically speaking.
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I found this short essay, written by an American woman who's lived in Kandahar for a decade and speaks Pashto, to be insightful:
https://www.sarahchayes.org/post/the-ides-of-august
In short - too much corruption in the Afghan state, enabled by the US. The negative role of Pakistan and its intelligence services. Karzai being too close to the Taliban.
And whilst I'm appalled at Dominic Raab and think he should resign, this is clearly a failure that's been building for years. That it hasn't been flagged particularly well shows a big hole in our democratic system. We have the systems in place to investigate ongoing issues which aren't necessarily in the public eye, eg select committees whose very job is to oversee and interogate the government. Why didn't we see this coming? Were we too bound up with Brexit (another opportunity cost of this idiotic policy)? This isn't just policy wonk stuff - the likely future path of climate change is going to create plenty of failing states not that far from us, so we need to work out how to fix things better than we have been doing.
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The Greens are to play a formal role in government for the first time in the UK, working with the SNP in Scotland. I think this is noteworthy. I've been a Green supporter for a long time, and know others who would support the Greens but don't because they believe it's a wasted vote, at least within the UK's first past the post system. I hope this marks the start of the Greens wielding more power and influence throughout the UK's political establishments, and I also (obviously) hope they can navigate the challenge of being the smaller party in a power sharing structure.
I agree that it seems like a good thing, except for perhaps the union, but honestly, climate change is far more important. The greens did well in Sheffield in the last election, in the local and general ones.
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The Greens are to play a formal role in government for the first time in the UK, working with the SNP in Scotland. I think this is noteworthy. I've been a Green supporter for a long time, and know others who would support the Greens but don't because they believe it's a wasted vote, at least within the UK's first past the post system. I hope this marks the start of the Greens wielding more power and influence throughout the UK's political establishments, and I also (obviously) hope they can navigate the challenge of being the smaller party in a power sharing structure.
I agree that it seems like a good thing, except for perhaps the union, but honestly, climate change is far more important. The greens did well in Sheffield in the last election, in the local and general ones.
Careful of confusing the English Greens with the Scottish. The latter seem to me to be a fairly extreme hard left nationalist incarnation of the party, as opposed to the moderate centrist version we're more familiar with in England.
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the only sensible option is to complete the NHS online type-1 opt out (https://www.nhs.uk/your-nhs-data-matters/manage-your-choice/). Which is what I've done.
Is this all you have to do for the opt out? I was thinking I had to send a form to my GP?
Hmm..
This page - https://digital.nhs.uk/your-data/opting-out-of-data-sharing - explains there are two types of opting out:
1. opt out of data being shared with third parties (but your GP will still share your data with NHS digital)
2. opt out of all data being shared by your GP to NHS digital.
Online to opt out of 1. Letter to GP to opt out of 2.
It may be that option 1 doesn't stop the risk of your data leaching to commercial interests.
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/aug/22/nhs-data-grab-on-hold-as-millions-opt-out
some (hopefully) good news
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Brutus - respectfully you have missed the sarcasm! I attempted to denote that with the quotation marks. Obviously it failed - the perils of the internet! Sorry...
My intention was to highlight that usually those opposing these violent ventures are always in the tiny minority, usually on the left, and criticised as "not adult" / "student politics" / "not patriotic" / "foreign subversives" / "rebels" etc. After much loss of life, national wealth, and opportunity cost to direct resources to more productive endeavours, they usually turn out to have been right. Again.
Apologies Nigel.. I posted and then headed into the wilds of Scotland without reception/WiFi.. Totally missed your sarcasm :slap:
Totally with you.. Another classic, and sadly missed by most, method of undermining leftwards and/or anti violent political thought is to dismiss it as childish, less than serious etc.. Leave it to the adults in the room indeed. To quote Elbow 'the leaders of the free world are just little boys throwing stones.'.
The lack of maturity of thought is astounding and yet when it is challenged we are told to we are immature whilst our sons and daughters are sent to their deaths in order to sate the egos of people whom genuinely haven't grown up.
Pisses me off massively.
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The lack of maturity of thought is astounding and yet when it is challenged we are told to we are immature whilst our sons and daughters are sent to their deaths in order to sate the egos of people whom genuinely haven't grown up.
So you disagree with the policy of humanitarian intervention*. Fair enough. Does that mean you think western powers were right not to interfere in the Rwandan Genocide?
* Feel free to call it "so called" humanitarian intervention if it makes you feel better.
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Always feels a bit different when you’re standing there, watching people die, but hey, obviously I’m not “mature” enough to understand the principles of non-intervention. I never got it/understood it in Yugoslavia, for instance.
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Are they all just going to ignore the crisis in Haiti, and spend a few days kicking the Afghanistan political football around parliament for a few days?
Edit - I see some support has now been promised.
That was never the case. We always have a large vessel deployed to that region, year round, for disaster relief and drug interdiction.
Wave Knight is there right now, iirc. When the fleet was restructured around the then determined “modern needs” (circa 1995), we massively reduced the number of “Warships” in favour of multirole vessels like her. They are civilian vessels, actually. Though their crews wear RN style uniforms, they are Civil Servants (part of the RN reserve, for sure and “become” military when activated). The vessels carry military personnel and equipment and are lightly/defensively armed (think air defence and no missiles). They have hospital and casualty receiving facilities, but due to the weapons are not “Hospital ships” and are therefor not protected under the Geneva convention. That was a deliberate decision, since it also allows the vessels to enter conflict zone and actually get close enough to provide meaningful assistance.
Most of the tier 2 operation and the Commando/Assault type units of the British military have been heavily reoriented to humanitarian relief, for around two decades now. Most Royal Marines, for instance, will have spent almost as much time rebuilding schools and infrastructure in disaster zones, as they have on patrol in war zones, during that time. Just as they are now.
There is a naivety in certain people’s perception of so called “violent” response that conveniently seems to gloss over the true nature of the role.
War is shit and shit happens in war. Innocent people die. One principle difference between “Us” and “Them” in most modern situations, is that the killing of innocents is accidental, because something or someone has fucked up, they were never deliberately targeted.
Just ask yourself, as a little exercise in comparative philosophy, how many Taliban fighters will be prosecuted by their own government for war crimes?
Then, bear in mind every UK serviceman so prosecuted, was reported by his own comrades.
Also, with regards to Afghanistan in particular, there seems to be a great deal of conflation between the initial US invasion and it’s objective, with the subsequent/concurrent UN mission there. Which is odd, given a eye witness account posted in this thread.
There is also a significant difference between those who conduct such missions and those who exploit these conflicts and disasters for personal gain or political advancement, of which there are many, from as low as the likes of Farage through to heads of state. A fair few have been Labour party politicians, incidentally.
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That's a great post Matt. It seems to me that British forces do an enormous amount of invaluable work in many areas of the world and that a kneejerk anti intervention response is rather myopic, especially given that as many problems intervention runs into at times, you can never know the counterfactual to it. Even if the most the allied presence in Afghanistan has produced is a generation of young Afghans who are more aware that greater rights for women, better education and a slightly more culturally liberal society isn't the end of civilisation then that's surely worth something.
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I think you misunderstood my post, I was saying parliament at the time had priorities wrong, and were debating who should have done what in Afghanistan, while the crisis in Haiti unfolded without comment, which I edited shortly afterwards.
The rest of your post is interesting but tangential to my comment.
Anyway, it looks like the US have not only pulled out, but also given the Taliban a considerable arsenal for free.
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/money/technology/taliban-fighters-gloat-with-newly-stolen-us-weaponry-significant-threat-to-us/ar-AANI99L?ocid=entnewsntp&pc=U531
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Anyway, it looks like the US have not only pulled out, but also given the Taliban a considerable arsenal for free.
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/money/technology/taliban-fighters-gloat-with-newly-stolen-us-weaponry-significant-threat-to-us/ar-AANI99L?ocid=entnewsntp&pc=U531
I know bugger all about guns and ammo but won't most of the fancier ordnance be 'bricked'?
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I'm sure they have remote access /lockdown for some of the higher tech stuff, but not all of it. Guess not everyone can jump straight in a Blackhawk and go for a spin.
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Good article in The Economist on corruption and failed states here:
https://www.economist.com/international/2021/08/22/why-america-keeps-building-corrupt-client-states
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Good article in The Economist on corruption and failed states here:
https://www.economist.com/international/2021/08/22/why-america-keeps-building-corrupt-client-states
I found this article on France's military inventions in the Sahel to be interesting as well
https://tnsr.org/2020/11/frances-war-in-the-sahel-and-the-evolution-of-counter-insurgency-doctrine/
I am in no position to evaluate the scholarship, but I liked the insistence on that the military should know if they fight a colonial or a post-colonial war.
It seems fairly straightforward to criticise the economist article using the French post-colonial framework as presented in the Texas National Security Review article.
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Anyway, it looks like the US have not only pulled out, but also given the Taliban a considerable arsenal for free.
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/money/technology/taliban-fighters-gloat-with-newly-stolen-us-weaponry-significant-threat-to-us/ar-AANI99L?ocid=entnewsntp&pc=U531
I know bugger all about guns and ammo but won't most of the fancier ordnance be 'bricked'?
Well there's that, but also one of the factors in the collapse of the government was the general complexity of a lot of it meant that even the Afghan army, who'd been trained to use the equipment, weren't then able to work it all effectively once the Americans packed up and left!
Not to mention that the Taliban also seem to have systematically targeted pilots in their offensive, meaning again there just won't be anyone with the skills to use the aircraft they've inherited.
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Anyway, it looks like the US have not only pulled out, but also given the Taliban a considerable arsenal for free.
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/money/technology/taliban-fighters-gloat-with-newly-stolen-us-weaponry-significant-threat-to-us/ar-AANI99L?ocid=entnewsntp&pc=U531
I know bugger all about guns and ammo but won't most of the fancier ordnance be 'bricked'?
Well there's that, but also one of the factors in the collapse of the government was the general complexity of a lot of it meant that even the Afghan army, who'd been trained to use the equipment, weren't then able to work it all effectively once the Americans packed up and left!
Not to mention that the Taliban also seem to have systematically targeted pilots in their offensive, meaning again there just won't be anyone with the skills to use the aircraft they've inherited.
This is also why they're desperate to stop Afghans leaving the country, because they really can't run a competent government if their previous administration is anything to go by. An effective guerilla insurgency they may be, but I wonder how many of the Taliban can run a government department, or a bank etc?
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https://inews.co.uk/opinion/ian-botham-trade-envoy-australia-boris-johnson-lost-plot-1166008
Comments on Johnson's latest appointment to his ability devoid administration. The quotes from Botham are most amusing.
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Are they all just going to ignore the crisis in Haiti, and spend a few days kicking the Afghanistan political football around parliament for a few days?
Edit - I see some support has now been promised.
That was never the case. We always have a large vessel deployed to that region, year round, for disaster relief and drug interdiction.
Wave Knight is there right now, iirc. When the fleet was restructured around the then determined “modern needs” (circa 1995), we massively reduced the number of “Warships” in favour of multirole vessels like her. They are civilian vessels, actually. Though their crews wear RN style uniforms, they are Civil Servants (part of the RN reserve, for sure and “become” military when activated). The vessels carry military personnel and equipment and are lightly/defensively armed (think air defence and no missiles). They have hospital and casualty receiving facilities, but due to the weapons are not “Hospital ships” and are therefor not protected under the Geneva convention. That was a deliberate decision, since it also allows the vessels to enter conflict zone and actually get close enough to provide meaningful assistance.
Most of the tier 2 operation and the Commando/Assault type units of the British military have been heavily reoriented to humanitarian relief, for around two decades now. Most Royal Marines, for instance, will have spent almost as much time rebuilding schools and infrastructure in disaster zones, as they have on patrol in war zones, during that time. Just as they are now.
There is a naivety in certain people’s perception of so called “violent” response that conveniently seems to gloss over the true nature of the role.
War is shit and shit happens in war. Innocent people die. One principle difference between “Us” and “Them” in most modern situations, is that the killing of innocents is accidental, because something or someone has fucked up, they were never deliberately targeted.
Just ask yourself, as a little exercise in comparative philosophy, how many Taliban fighters will be prosecuted by their own government for war crimes?
Then, bear in mind every UK serviceman so prosecuted, was reported by his own comrades.
Also, with regards to Afghanistan in particular, there seems to be a great deal of conflation between the initial US invasion and it’s objective, with the subsequent/concurrent UN mission there. Which is odd, given a eye witness account posted in this thread.
There is also a significant difference between those who conduct such missions and those who exploit these conflicts and disasters for personal gain or political advancement, of which there are many, from as low as the likes of Farage through to heads of state. A fair few have been Labour party politicians, incidentally.
A good friend of mine that is a commando was on 24hr notice to head out to Haiti for this very humanitarian reason last year. The role our military play in this respect is outstanding and anecdotally something the personnel gain huge amount of amount esteem from.
Whilst civilian casualties may be unintentional, 40% of the victims of our airstrikes were children. A shocking statistic.
Your final point about Labour politicians is bang on and to see those self same individuals being rolled out as 'serious' commentators in all of this is outrageous yet tiresomely predictable.
This veteran says it all and illustrates the 'leftist' position better than I ever could...
https://youtu.be/6fMX72z8gp8
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I emailed my MP (Paul Blomfield, Labour) recently to encourage him to hold the home office to account about the housing that refugees are sent to after the recent death in Sheffield. I received this reply, it may be from his office but I am impressed anyway and may actually vote for him next time:
Thank you for your email about the tragic death of Mohammed Munib Majeedi, which has profoundly affected our city.
Our thoughts are with the Majeedi family through this awful time and supporting them has been my priority; you might be interested in this appeal launched by family friends. After fleeing the harrowing situation in Afghanistan they sought asylum and protection in our country and it is devastating that this young boy lost his life in this way and here in the UK’s first City of Sanctuary.
Clearly the tragedy raises questions for the Home Office and, with the other Labour MPs in Sheffield, I wrote to the Home Secretary calling for an independent investigation into the circumstances surrounding Mohammed Munib Majeedi’s death and the processes used in determining the suitability of accommodation for vulnerable refugee families.
The UK must be a safe haven for those fleeing the appalling horrors in Afghanistan, and we must see a clear commitment from the Government to ensure this is the case.
Thanks again for writing.
With best wishes,
Paul
Paul Blomfield
Labour MP for Sheffield Central
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The lack of maturity of thought is astounding and yet when it is challenged ...
So you disagree with the policy of humanitarian intervention*. Fair enough. Does that mean you think western powers were right not to interfere in the Rwandan Genocide?
* Feel free to call it "so called" humanitarian intervention if it makes you feel better.
Well this is depressing but not unexpected. Our resident leftists want to be taken seriously yet can't be bothered to answer a fairly obvious question that's an attempt to probe their views on foreign policy beyond their preferred narrative. I'm put in mind of this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HXDpflcKvTo
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The lack of maturity of thought is astounding and yet when it is challenged ...
So you disagree with the policy of humanitarian intervention*. Fair enough. Does that mean you think western powers were right not to interfere in the Rwandan Genocide?
* Feel free to call it "so called" humanitarian intervention if it makes you feel better.
Well this is depressing but not unexpected. Our resident leftists want to be taken seriously yet can't be bothered to answer a fairly obvious question that's an attempt to probe their views on foreign policy beyond their preferred narrative. I'm put in mind of this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HXDpflcKvTo
Not particularly enthusiastic to intervene in your private battle with Brutus and inquiry into his views on foreign policy.
But just in response to your post about your 2008 Afghanistan adventure and advocacy for humanitarian intervention. Military historians on here will be more familiar than me with some of the operations by the British through the 1950s, 60s and 70s to erode regional terrorist capability in Borneo, Yeman, Oman, Kenya and other former British colonies. Also Columbia through the 80s and 90s, Sierra Leonne in the late 90s early 2000s. And various small scale interventions against terrorist groups that have gone on under the public radar through the 2000s. Admittedly some of those labelled 'terrorist' were so simply by virtue of being the opposition to the UK's preferred actor.
None of these are examples of humanitarian interventions or exemplars of virtuous military behaviour - you can find stories of war crimes and damage to civilian institutions committed by the British in most of those as per most military actions. But to my layman's knowledge of events those interventions against regional 'terrorist' forces took on a far smaller and precise focus than the US and UK's military interventions following the 9/11 attacks, which had the same purported aim of eroding/destroying terrorist capability. In other words - it's a fallacy that massive military interventions are necessary to tackle small scale 'terrorist' or regional problems.
I'd suggest it's a narrative created by the Bush administration and vested interests in the US, cheered on by a sometimes quite idiotic and navel-gazing population, who opened the floodgates post 9/11 for massive-scale military intervention to fight terrorists by using standing armies and invasion/occupation of foreign countries. Anyone who viewed the interview with Bush the other night (9/11 lookback series) and felt anything other than profound unease at his mindset and the wisdom of the US's decision-making following the 9/11 attacks would need to be blind to what alternative courses of action the US could have taken to fight Islamic terrorism, instead of sending standing armies to invade.
I've always held the view that regional Islamic terrorist groups such as IS, Al-Qaeda etc. could have been eroded and contained (captured/destroyed in the case of Bin Laden) by using a *tiny* amount of force, backed by good intelligence, compared to the massive deployment of conventional force used in Iraq and Afghanistan.
I clearly remember my thoughts as a soldier just about to leave service in 2002, on hearing the US's and UK's case for invading Iraq. I remember thinking this was utter madness and couldn't understand why more people in the public and military weren't shouting out that Iraq posed near zero direct threat to the West and which could be contained without needing to occupy the whole bloody country. I thought then that the US and UK were embellishing a bullshit intelligence case in order to enact vengeance for the US's bloody nose of 9/11. Unfortunately it was taken up with enthusiasm by a 'hand-of-history' idealistic and righteous PM. Nothing that's happened since in Irag or Afghanistan has convinced me my initial reaction was wrong.
What would have followed if a much smaller-scale focussed use of force was used to contain regional Islamic-extremist terrorist organisations in Iraq and Afghanistan? Things would probably most likely look similar to what Afghanistan looks like currently. Just without the loss of life, money and (western) status that the intervening 20 years has seen. And without giving some Afghan women a 20-year window into how life could be different for them if they didn't have the misfortune to be born into a country run by Islamist zealots. But the last 20 years has seen communications and media technology change beyond recognition and it's far harder now than it was in 2002 for a government to control what its population sees in the wider world. If decision-makers in the US back in the early 2000s had some foresight they'd realise that change and progress happens anyway, if slowly.
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Re the post 9/11 intervention I'd add Blair's enthusiasm for it, misguided by the relative success of then recent events in Kosovo.
Blair does seem now to have learned from his mistakes, although he might not admit to them.
You might be right Pete, but I wonder if just leaving the handful of troops who've been in Afghanistan there would have stabilised the country for longer. Despite the experience that the population have had, my feelings are that the Taliban have a sufficient amount of ruthless violence that they can repress any internal opposition to them, and return the country to it's previous state.
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Well, the last paragraph, I suspect; is somewhat prophetic and the ‘Northern Alliance” will be feeling the benefit of the change in strategy.
I suspect it was more important, politically, to make a grand response, post 9/11 than any of the other incidents, insurrections and emergencies you mentioned, though.
The “Hawks” probably held a fairly strong hand, so “logic” and history, were outvoted. You know plenty of our illustrious rulers are there out of nepotism and patronage, not ability. They’re often of the overly simplistic bent. I also expect plenty of senior military leaders opposed the action, but, ultimately, follow orders.
Frankly, I’d rather they did. Often turns out a bit Rum when military leaders decide they know better than democratically elected morons, uh, sorry, officials.
I’d be surprised if any of the “Leaders” had planned much beyond looking good for the remainder of their term of office and so left cleaning up to their successors. Afghan probably dragged on as long as it did, because it needed a US leader who only sought a single term, to take the hit. Occupation never really works and everybody knows that.
I also think the “public” could/should be forgiven, after all, 9/11 was pretty damn big, as was 6/6, so…
Then, there’s that thing about “Britain & the US”. That’s actually a 95% US decision, 2% British resolve and 3% Britain doing what daddy told it to do. We punch above our weight, militarily and politically, but ultimately we don’t call the shots. We are simply not a Superpower.
Edit:
Toby. Don’t think they have all left. I bet there’s a fair few pale looking chaps knocking around certain places where the Taliban can rely on a less than enthusiastic welcome.
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This is an interesting view: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/sep/03/biden-president-war-intervention-military-adventurism?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other
I'm not posting it because I agree with every word incidentally.
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The lack of maturity of thought is astounding and yet when it is challenged ...
So you disagree with the policy of humanitarian intervention*. Fair enough. Does that mean you think western powers were right not to interfere in the Rwandan Genocide?
* Feel free to call it "so called" humanitarian intervention if it makes you feel better.
Well this is depressing but not unexpected. Our resident leftists want to be taken seriously yet can't be bothered to answer a fairly obvious question that's an attempt to probe their views on foreign policy beyond their preferred narrative. I'm put in mind of this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HXDpflcKvTo
Not particularly enthusiastic to intervene in your private battle with Brutus and inquiry into his views on foreign policy.
:worms:
What would have followed if a much smaller-scale focussed use of force was used to contain regional Islamic-extremist terrorist organisations in Iraq and Afghanistan? Things would probably most likely look similar to what Afghanistan looks like currently.
Ahhh, but this is my point. I struggle to see a path from the Afghanistan of 2001 to the Afghanistan of today with the Taliban remaining in power after 2001, that's how different the country is, and a measure of what a terrible situation it was in back then. I'm talking here in terms of income, infrastructure, maternal mortality, literacy rates and so on. There was just no way the Taliban state could have absorbed the amounts of money required to get to where Afghanistan is now. The had no international recognition, no technocrats capable of running a state in any meaningful way, half the population basically imprisoned at home, and four million (iirc) Afghan citizens living as refugees in Pakistan and Iran. The place was hobbling along on life support. Even as it was, with the creation of an urban middle class capable of running things, the Afghan state could barely contain the money we pumped into it. The Taliban's finance ministry was a bloke with a box of cash.
Politically of course it's very hard to say, but the Pakistani journalist Ahmad Rashid's book on the rise of the Taliban in the 1990s finishes with his view that the situation in Afghanistan was fundamentally unstable. Obviously we know that it actually *was* unstable, as you can't host Osama bin Laden without some trouble coming your way, but there were plenty of other sources of instability: opium, radicalised refugees, links to Kashmir, support for terrorists targeting Russia/CIS states, etc. So perhaps it's fanciful to assume that the Taliban would just have carried on ruling indefinitely even if the west hadn't intervened.
If decision-makers in the US back in the early 2000s had some foresight they'd realise that change and progress happens anyway, if slowly.
I think this is a misnomer. Countries can and do suffer periods of stagnating GDP per capita, or indeed falling income. There's often some social change within that, of course, but fundamentally living standards can and do stagnate. Note that I'm using GDP per capita here as it's fairly closely correlated with life expectancy and generally gives a good idea of where a state is at in terms of development. I'm afraid I can't see Afghan incomes nearly trippling (which is what happened) without the US intervention.
And I guess this is where I want to probe those left-wingers who were always opposed to the Afghan conflict, is where do you place those gains with respect to the costs? They never even figure in their narrative.
re Iraq, completely agree with what you've written.
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I have a close friend, who “worked for the US Government” and spent much of the 90s “Teaching English” to both the Gilgit Scouts and their Chitral equivalent; on the Northwest Frontier of Pakistan. He actually spent most of that time brokering peace between these rival units of the Pakistani military, which just isn’t the cohesive body we in the West might imagine, local commanders being more akin to Warlords than our idea of a Colonel of a regiment. Even then the border was largely academic and tribalism more prominent than nationalism.
He retired to teach English at Sheikh Zayed University, which is where we met in 99/2000.
He was recruited to reprise his role, in Afghanistan, in 2007 and spent five years there, trying to get individual ANA units to actually play nice together. Retired, finally, to a beach on Mindoro, he’s been reminiscing on FB; the last week or so.
Given some of his shared experiences, this was always going to happen; always a when, not if. He’s also fairly clear that he thinks that what is happening is largely at the direction of Islamabad and certain factions in Pakistan. Mainly, though, he thinks the current Taliban regime unlikely to last. He was talking about their prior incarnation being largely foreigners, from various Islamic nations (like ISIS, I suppose) and them having been a useful tool for those factions to the south, looking to control ever greater territory. He talks of the Afghan civil war being between largely foreign factions and indigenous Warlords, rather than a civil war at all. The Taliban probably don’t have that foreign financial backing, anymore and that their “soldiers” will likely begin to evaporate as the victory celebrations die down and the lack of payment begins to bite as winter draws in and families need feeding.
I’m interested to see if that pans out.
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I have a close friend, who “worked for the US Government”
...
I’m interested to see if that pans out.
I'm a little confused about what this predicted outcome is then, that Afghanistan descends into a civil war? Or that the hardline Taliban administration won't resurface and it'll be more moderate because they lack the outside help to brutally repress the population?
I have no special knowledge but the mere fact that the Taliban have a communications hub in Quatar seems to indicate that they have some pretty wealthy backers doesn't it?
I've said it before but, its absolutely disgusting that the world cup is being held in Quatar, for any number of reasons, but not least because the only thing that Quatar has to do with football is pouring money into it, and it seems like it'll be a horrible place to try to run around for 90 minutes or more for the players.
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I think a fizzle out of Taliban “rule”, decent into disorganised, tribally oriented, semi autonomous regions, bickering and low grade civil war until equilibrium is reached. Was what he’s anticipating.
I suppose, it depends on how invested the outside players remain and how much cash they invest in their proxies.
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The Taliban very quickly announced that China is their 'primary partner', following the west's departure. The country has worthwhile mineral wealth - some would say vast (https://edition.cnn.com/2021/08/18/business/afghanistan-lithium-rare-earths-mining/index.html)...
..while others in the mining and investment industries would dispute this as an American spin to sell the war effort (https://www.mining.com/how-afghanistans-1-trillion-mining-wealth-sold-the-war/)...
I think the most likely 20-year outlook is the country will resemble a south Asia version of one of the poor but mineral rich third-world central African countries, which has had half a decade of first world meddling. China will want a long term return on its Belt and Road investment and won't accept civil wars impacting its plans too much. It's the most obvious path and the Taliban will do well out of Chinese investment provided they can convince the Muslim population to stomach the hypocrisy of the great atheist state, which reportedly murders its Uyghurs, stimulating the development of their country.. But then much of the UK population seems to accept Chinese money when it suits so I'd expect Afghans to lap it up too.
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On domestic politics rather than foreign affairs for a moment, the regressive potential policy of raising national insurance seems to be receiving criticism from almost every part of the spectrum. Curiously, I find much to agree with here: https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/why-raise-tax-to-subsidise-the-wealthy
And, its remarkably similar to many of the arguments from Labour: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/sep/04/pressure-grows-on-starmer-to-back-tax-on-rich-to-pay-for-social-care?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other
And, former prime ministers: https://inews.co.uk/news/john-major-warns-over-increasing-national-insurance-to-pay-for-social-care-1183956
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On domestic politics rather than foreign affairs for a moment, the regressive potential policy of raising national insurance seems to be receiving criticism from almost every part of the spectrum. Curiously, I find much to agree with here: https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/why-raise-tax-to-subsidise-the-wealthy
And, its remarkably similar to many of the arguments from Labour: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/sep/04/pressure-grows-on-starmer-to-back-tax-on-rich-to-pay-for-social-care?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other
And, former prime ministers: https://inews.co.uk/news/john-major-warns-over-increasing-national-insurance-to-pay-for-social-care-1183956
While I agree that using an increase in national insurance is obviously wrong and reqressive, in particularly since it is only paid by those in employment, I don't think the main thurst of Spectator argument has much merit. The requirement for long term care is a chance based health outcome - if the argument is that the well off shouldn't get help then exactly the same argument should apply to other chance based health outcomes such as cancer treatment. There seems to be no sign of a working insurance based system to cover social care costs (the other solution to these type of chance based very significant costs) so it seems some sort of funded government system is much better than the current health lottery.
The increase in household wealth identified is true, with a signiifcant number of pensioners now holding large amounts of wealth in property. Doesn't this point to the possibility of taxing that unearned and untaxed growth in household weath in some way to pay for social care - maybe via a much less avoidable inheritance tax at lower rate but kicking in at much lower threshold. Of course the Spectator view wouldn't go for this because this impacts the really wealthy with their multi-million pound houses who can afford their own high quality care easily while hardly impacting their assests as opposed to the middle income moderately wealthy who can see savings depleted down to £14,000 and then have to sell their houses.
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I thought that was pretty much what Fraser Nelson is saying. The wealthy can just pay or sell their property to fund a care home, after all most elderly care home residents don't live more than a couple of years and don't return home. Frankly I think one of the main problems is that hardly anyone knows how social care works until they desperately need it, and then they're pissed off because it isn't on the NHS.
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To avoid care home fees, you need get yourself sectioned under section 3 of the Mental Health Act. Following this the local authority in which you reside are responsible for your aftercare.
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To avoid care home fees, you need get yourself sectioned under section 3 of the Mental Health Act. Following this the local authority in which you reside are responsible for your aftercare.
I assume that underpants on head, pencils up your nostrils and repeating the word “whibble” is insufficient to obtain such aftercare?
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Anything’s worth a try to avoid watching your assets ( or your parent’s assets) disappear.
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Nels
I thought that was pretty much what Fraser Nelson is saying. The wealthy can just pay or sell their property to fund a care home, after all most elderly care home residents don't live more than a couple of years and don't return home. Frankly I think one of the main problems is that hardly anyone knows how social care works until they desperately need it, and then they're pissed off because it isn't on the NHS.
Yes, he's saying that, which means the wealthy afford it with no problem, the moderately/averagly wealthy who are unlucky enough to need long term care see savings depleted and are forced to sell houses at difficult times etc. My argument is that such costs should be shared across the population by some sort of proper wealth/inheritance tax - but the wealthy may not be so keen since they would pay more, wonder why Nelson is all in favour of the staus quo?
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Nels
I thought that was pretty much what Fraser Nelson is saying. The wealthy can just pay or sell their property to fund a care home, after all most elderly care home residents don't live more than a couple of years and don't return home. Frankly I think one of the main problems is that hardly anyone knows how social care works until they desperately need it, and then they're pissed off because it isn't on the NHS.
Yes, he's saying that, which means the wealthy afford it with no problem, the moderately/averagly wealthy who are unlucky enough to need long term care see savings depleted and are forced to sell houses at difficult times etc. My argument is that such costs should be shared across the population by some sort of proper wealth/inheritance tax - but the wealthy may not be so keen since they would pay more, wonder why Nelson is all in favour of the staus quo?
Because, as he says hes against the National Insurance rising to pay for it because that only increases the inequality over the status quo. In a way it doesn't matter at the moment if you're very wealthy or just own say, a detatched house in Sheffield worth a few hundred grand, if you go into a care home you're unlikely to be coming out, the changes planned by the government only safeguard inheritance for some of these families at the expense of people who currently rely on the council care homes.
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Because, as he says hes against the National Insurance rising to pay for it because that only increases the inequality over the status quo. In a way it doesn't matter at the moment if you're very wealthy or just own say, a detatched house in Sheffield worth a few hundred grand, if you go into a care home you're unlikely to be coming out, the changes planned by the government only safeguard inheritance for some of these families at the expense of people who currently rely on the council care homes.
Obviously a National Insurance rise to pay for social care is a terrible idea as I stated at the start, that doesn't mean that the status quo is a any good either. Why is alzheimer's different to cancer? Why is it sensible to have a public health lottery system for older people dependent on the specifics of their health problems.
I do have a decent understanding of how the social care system works having helped to look after my father in law for 8 years after a stroke - fortunately with the help of some excellent carers we were able to support him in his wish to stay at home to end, he still spent tens of thousands of his savings on care costs. He had dropped below the savings limit for funding when the got so ill his care became palliative at which point he NHS would have started to pick up the cost if we didn't have more important things to think of than filling in paperwork.
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Because, as he says hes against the National Insurance rising to pay for it because that only increases the inequality over the status quo. In a way it doesn't matter at the moment if you're very wealthy or just own say, a detatched house in Sheffield worth a few hundred grand, if you go into a care home you're unlikely to be coming out, the changes planned by the government only safeguard inheritance for some of these families at the expense of people who currently rely on the council care homes.
Obviously a National Insurance rise to pay for social care is a terrible idea as I stated at the start, that doesn't mean that the status quo is a any good either. Why is alzheimer's different to cancer? Why is it sensible to have a public health lottery system for older people dependent on the specifics of their health problems.
I do have a decent understanding of how the social care system works having helped to look after my father in law for 8 years after a stroke - fortunately with the help of some excellent carers we were able to support him in his wish to stay at home to end, he still spent tens of thousands of his savings on care costs. He had dropped below the savings limit for funding when the got so ill his care became palliative at which point he NHS would have started to pick up the cost if we didn't have more important things to think of than filling in paperwork.
To be clear, palliative care for cancer patients (amongst others) is largely handled by charitable hospices, not the NHS. You might receive, for instance, palliative treatment, chemo etc, on the NHS, however your “care” will be down to family or a hospice/hospice nurse. District Nurse visits are about checking meds, not helping you shower.
I think most people are unaware of such things until they have to face it themselves (I know how much crap I had to listen to from people who couldn’t understand why I had to stop work and how shocked I was at how much the “respite” at the charities expense, was needed).
The principal difference is, of course, the duration of such care.
But, both of those examples pale compared to those who’s “lottery” throws up a chronically disabled child or experience life changing events that result in a similar long term chronic disability. Again, these families and individuals will become hugely reliant on charities, since the gap between NHS provision and actual need is simply Grand Canyon in scale.
This is not the fault of the NHS, but we are ignoring the Elephant in the room and I actually don’t see any way of addressing it without increasing National Insurance. The reality is that it’s not just old age provision that needs addressing, though, so probably the measures don’t go far enough. Obviously, how the burden is shared, is something that requires careful consideration and I doubt the current crop of clowns are capable of doing that.
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To be clear, palliative care for cancer patients (amongst others) is largely handled by charitable hospices, not the NHS. You might receive, for instance, palliative treatment, chemo etc, on the NHS, however your “care” will be down to family or a hospice/hospice nurse. District Nurse visits are about checking meds, not helping you shower.
I think most people are unaware of such things until they have to face it themselves (I know how much crap I had to listen to from people who couldn’t understand why I had to stop work and how shocked I was at how much the “respite” at the charities expense, was needed).
Charities do provide suport for palliative care at home as well, but general care was still provided by the care providers already in place. We did find out that once he was in that stage of end of life care he was no longer required to pay for that care - however by the time we got round to following that up it wasn't really relevant.
This is not the fault of the NHS, but we are ignoring the Elephant in the room and I actually don’t see any way of addressing it without increasing National Insurance. The reality is that it’s not just old age provision that needs addressing, though, so probably the measures don’t go far enough. Obviously, how the burden is shared, is something that requires careful consideration and I doubt the current crop of clowns are capable of doing that.
This is where I disagree (and agree with Toby and the Spectator), National Insurance is definitely the wrong way to raise money. In fact NI is just used so that the Tories can argue that they are no raising income tax - if you want to raise money via direct taxation on earning it should definitely be from income tax which is paid by everyone including plenty of well off pensioners. Though as above I think we should be looking a raising such money from wealth in other ways - in particular the growth of property wealth which is basically untaxed for majority of of people in the UK.
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I'm ambivalent about the proposed NI increase. The figures say the proportion of pay taxed increases for the wealthier (a result of the lower tax threshold):
A 1% NI increase results in the following extra payments, as a proportion of the following salaries:
£20,000 extra £104 per year or 0.52% of salary
£40,000 extra £304 per year or 0.76% of salary
£60,000 extra £504 per year or 0.84% of salary
A 1.5% increase widens the gap in proportions.
But I suppose a more important metric is what proportion of spending money, following essential living costs, is the increase? A person on £20,000 per year will have much less spare money than somebody on £60,000. So the £104 increase will likely be higher proportionally.
Seems madness that pensioners who still work don't need to pay NI, this seems like it should be the first change. Then a banded increase in NI perhaps to target the most well-off. They'd pay an even higher proportion of their salary as per above.. but more in line with proportion of spare money.
Tories seem to be cynically protecting the short term grey vote.. probably wise from a short term stay in power point of view but it's the usual short-termism bullshit in politics.
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As I understand they are proposing a 1% increase in both employer and employee NI contributions i.e. 2% in total.
In practice the employer contributions will get passed on to the employee through lower pay rises.
So I wonder if a motivation for targeting NI is that they get a 2% increase for the political cost of a 1% increase.
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I think the main reason is that older people don't pay NI and older people vote Tory by and large. They don't mind young people paying, but they hate it. So it's a political calculation, and it'll probably go down well; young people are not politically aware by and large, they'll cough up and just be worse off.
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But I suppose a more important metric is what proportion of spending money, following essential living costs, is the increase? A person on £20,000 per year will have much less spare money than somebody on £60,000. So the £104 increase will likely be higher proportionally.
And on this theme. People with more disposable may be able to negate the increase by salary sacrificing more of their salary into their pension. A luxury the young and lower paid can rarely afford.
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So I wonder if a motivation for targeting NI is that they get a 2% increase for the political cost of a 1% increase.
Make the NHS look profitable before it's sold off....
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I think the main reason is that older people don't pay NI and older people vote Tory by and large. They don't mind young people paying, but they hate it. So it's a political calculation, and it'll probably go down well; young people are not politically aware by and large, they'll cough up and just be worse off.
Historically true, but the divisions in voting solely by class and age are beginning to be eroded by small c conservative people voting Conservative especially if they haven't been to university and more socially liberal, further educated people voting for another party. I'm not saying that age isn't still extremely important but as the recent by elections indicate, if not prove, this may change.
Re the NI hike, I don't think that the actual loss of income to an individual is necessarily the issue although it will really matter to some, it's the unfairness of paying for the social care of pensioners who have never contributed, and may be extremely wealthy
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The benchmark for credible policy these days is whether the plans pass muster in the House of Marcus Rashford.
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The benchmark for credible policy these days is whether the plans pass muster in the House of Marcus Rashford.
Apparently so, unless its animal related in which case the court of Carrie Johnson takes precedence.
Further on the social care system funding system, it seems that the main problem is that "a plan to fix social care " involves both funding it, and actually having a good system to deliver it. At the moment the latter is very much not the case, nowhere near enough care workers, or social workers and a totally ad hoc system of integration with the NHS.
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The benchmark for credible policy these days is whether the plans pass muster in the House of Marcus Rashford.
Given the lack of a credible opposition party, I'll take criticism of policy by St. Marcus of Wythenshawe any day of the week over unfettered freedom for the Tory leadership to give the nation a proper shafting.
Just imagine Rashford and Thunberg together, it would be like Ghostbusters but vs capitalists - never cross the beams of environmentalism and inequality.
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So they've done it, 1.25% increase on NI, at least both lower and higher threshold rates so higher earners will also pay on income abover £50,000.
Leaving aside arguments around reform of care system and more complex solutions to funding I still haven't seen anyone even attempt to justify raising funds by NI rather than income tax. In an aging society where pensioner income is similar to the general working age population and providing funds significantlty biased to the older how can it be justifiable to raise money using a tax only payable by the working?
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It isn't justifiable at all, but it's more justifiable to the Tory membership and aging, wealthy Tory voters. Its entirely the wrong decision for the country to do it this way, but if the aim is securing their voters short term, it makes perfect sense. If I was the Tories strategist and that was my brief, I think it's probably correct from that incredibly narrow perspective.
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So they've done it, 1.25% increase on NI, at least both lower and higher threshold rates so higher earners will also pay on income abover £50,000.
Leaving aside arguments around reform of care system and more complex solutions to funding I still haven't seen anyone even attempt to justify raising funds by NI rather than income tax. In an aging society where pensioner income is similar to the general working age population and providing funds significantlty biased to the older how can it be justifiable to raise money using a tax only payable by the working?
This isn't entirely correct. The 1.25% tax is also to be paid by working pensioners. That at least makes a lot of sense.. although haven't looked up the proportion of working pensioners earning over the threshold (of £9k).
Also a 1.25% increase in share dividend tax. A lot of pensioners receive share dividends, more than the young. Although many will be in tax shelters. Glad mine are in an ISA...(no I'm not a pensioner!)
So it's not true that pensioners will be unaffected, and it's also the case that the wealthy will pay by far the most of the extra cost - approx 50% of the total cost will be paid by the top 14% of earners according to the tories.. (fact check..).
But I share some concerns.. However I'd like to see Labour's or a.n.other opposition's ideas clearly spelt out in black and white.
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Another group that will not to have to pay will be landlords - profits are liable for income tax but not National Insurance.
Generally, the very wealthy will also be exempt as few currently pay significant NI as a result of various tax avoidance schemes. Having said that they probably don't pay much income tax either.
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This isn't entirely correct. The 1.25% tax is also to be paid by working pensioners. That at least makes a lot of sense.. although haven't looked up the proportion of working pensioners earning over the threshold (of £9k).
Is that the case? If you are working over the state retirement age you are currently exempt from NI contributions*. I guess paying 1.5% instead of nothing is something......
Unless I'm massively out of date, you used to be Category C?
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I'm ambivalent about the proposed NI increase. The figures say the proportion of pay taxed increases for the wealthier (a result of the lower tax threshold):
A 1% NI increase results in the following extra payments, as a proportion of the following salaries:
£20,000 extra £104 per year or 0.52% of salary
£40,000 extra £304 per year or 0.76% of salary
£60,000 extra £504 per year or 0.84% of salary
A 1.5% increase widens the gap in proportions.
But I suppose a more important metric is what proportion of spending money, following essential living costs, is the increase? A person on £20,000 per year will have much less spare money than somebody on £60,000. So the £104 increase will likely be higher proportionally.
Seems madness that pensioners who still work don't need to pay NI, this seems like it should be the first change. Then a banded increase in NI perhaps to target the most well-off. They'd pay an even higher proportion of their salary as per above.. but more in line with proportion of spare money.
Tories seem to be cynically protecting the short term grey vote.. probably wise from a short term stay in power point of view but it's the usual short-termism bullshit in politics.
This bit in bold is key (and having read I've realised my last post was unnecessary) as I understand why they are going after NI (politically)* but it would be a simple adjustment to make NI12% across all amounts, instead of it dropping of to 2% above £50K.
*Boris has also got Labour to brief against a tax rise for the NHS which is quite the coup for the Tory press officer.
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So they've done it, 1.25% increase on NI, at least both lower and higher threshold rates so higher earners will also pay on income abover £50,000.
Leaving aside arguments around reform of care system and more complex solutions to funding I still haven't seen anyone even attempt to justify raising funds by NI rather than income tax. In an aging society where pensioner income is similar to the general working age population and providing funds significantlty biased to the older how can it be justifiable to raise money using a tax only payable by the working?
This isn't entirely correct. The 1.25% tax is also to be paid by working pensioners. That at least makes a lot of sense.. although haven't looked up the proportion of working pensioners earning over the threshold (of £9k).
Also a 1.25% increase in share dividend tax. A lot of pensioners receive share dividends, more than the young. Although many will be in tax shelters. Glad mine are in an ISA...(no I'm not a pensioner!)
So it's not true that pensioners will be unaffected, and it's also the case that the wealthy will pay by far the most of the extra cost - approx 50% of the total cost will be paid by the top 14% of earners according to the tories.. (fact check..).
But I share some concerns.. However I'd like to see Labour's or a.n.other opposition's ideas clearly spelt out in black and white.
I was aware of that but its a small amount that working pensioners will pay (£100 million out of £12 billion I believe has been quoted) so barely worth mentioning. And of course higher earners will pay more of any increase since they earn more.
As I said, nobody has even attempted to provide a justification for why NI is better than Income Tax (other than the comments here about Torys wanting to protect their grey vote).
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As I said, nobody has even attempted to provide a justification for why NI is better than Income Tax (other than the comments here about Torys wanting to protect their grey vote).
... as previously mentioned, the motivation for targeting NI is that they get a 2% increase (employee+employer) for the political cost of a 1% increase.
... except, and this and is where the real political genius lies, the increase is now 1.25%. It is so close to the previously mooted 1% that no one has quibbled it, yet the total increase is now 2.5%.
If they tried increasing income tax by 2.5% it would have raised a few eyebrows.
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As I said, nobody has even attempted to provide a justification for why NI is better than Income Tax (other than the comments here about Torys wanting to protect their grey vote).
... as previously mentioned, the motivation for targeting NI is that they get a 2% increase (employee+employer) for the political cost of a 1% increase.
... except, and this and is where the real political genius lies, the increase is now 1.25%. It is so close to the previously mooted 1% that no one has quibbled it, yet the total increase is now 2.5%.
If they tried increasing income tax by 2.5% it would have raised a few eyebrows.
Not wanting to argue, but thats motivation not justification ;). Worth noting that employee and employer NI rates are not aligned, there's nothing stoping them raising income tax by 1.25% and employer NI by 1.25% if they want to spread the rise (and assume they wouldn't need as big an increase in income tax since it has a significantly bigger payment base).
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As I said, nobody has even attempted to provide a justification for why NI is better than Income Tax (other than the comments here about Torys wanting to protect their grey vote).
... as previously mentioned, the motivation for targeting NI is that they get a 2% increase (employee+employer) for the political cost of a 1% increase.
... except, and this and is where the real political genius lies, the increase is now 1.25%. It is so close to the previously mooted 1% that no one has quibbled it, yet the total increase is now 2.5%.
If they tried increasing income tax by 2.5% it would have raised a few eyebrows.
Not wanting to argue, but thats motivation not justification ;). Worth noting that employee and employer NI rates are not aligned, there's nothing stoping them raising income tax by 1.25% and employer NI by 1.25% if they want to spread the rise (and assume they wouldn't need as big an increase in income tax since it has a significantly bigger payment base).
The justification could be that if the people think that taxes have only increased by 1% then they carry on spending accordingly, the economy thrives and they get a pay rise which covers the increase.
If however, people think tax has gone up by 2.5%, their wallets snap shut like clam shells, the economy tanks and there will be job losses and pay freezes.
quite Machiavellian
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I gather that the average 25 year old will pay an extra 12,600 over their working lives, whilst a retired pensioner, unless they have lots of share, will pay nothing. :doubt:
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Notwithstanding the arguments on intergenerational unfairness, although I do think it's unfair, this money isn't actually for care at all yet, doesn't it all go to the NHS initially?
Wait 6 months after it's brought in before there are newspaper investigations into how it's all been paid to managers and hasn't reduced waiting lists. Without any workforce strategy or reorganization I think that it's fairly likely it's going to be wasted.
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Additional to the above, I was slightly wrong, over the next 3 years 5.4bn of the 36bn raised by the tax goes to social care, the rest to the NHS.
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Additional to the above, I was slightly wrong, over the next 3 years 5.4bn of the 36bn raised by the tax goes to social care, the rest to the NHS.
It's the polar opposite of a Labour policy! Labour are keen for uncosted policy, the Tories appear to sort the financing but not policy as to what to do with the extra money.
I agree that it will all be "lost in the system" and make no significant change.
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Additional to the above, I was slightly wrong, over the next 3 years 5.4bn of the 36bn raised by the tax goes to social care, the rest to the NHS.
It's the polar opposite of a Labour policy! Labour are keen for uncosted policy, the Tories appear to sort the financing but not policy as to what to do with the extra money.
I agree that it will all be "lost in the system" and make no significant change.
You only have to look at the piss poor back of a fag packet plan where a huge wad of the money goes on 'day to day costs'. Seriously?
That's going on away days and conferences for senior management.
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To be clear, palliative care for cancer patients (amongst others) is largely handled by charitable hospices, not the NHS. You might receive, for instance, palliative treatment, chemo etc, on the NHS, however your “care” will be down to family or a hospice/hospice nurse. District Nurse visits are about checking meds, not helping you shower.
I think most people are unaware of such things until they have to face it themselves (I know how much crap I had to listen to from people who couldn’t understand why I had to stop work and how shocked I was at how much the “respite” at the charities expense, was needed).
Charities do provide suport for palliative care at home as well, but general care was still provided by the care providers already in place. We did find out that once he was in that stage of end of life care he was no longer required to pay for that care - however by the time we got round to following that up it wasn't really relevant.
This is not the fault of the NHS, but we are ignoring the Elephant in the room and I actually don’t see any way of addressing it without increasing National Insurance. The reality is that it’s not just old age provision that needs addressing, though, so probably the measures don’t go far enough. Obviously, how the burden is shared, is something that requires careful consideration and I doubt the current crop of clowns are capable of doing that.
This is where I disagree (and agree with Toby and the Spectator), National Insurance is definitely the wrong way to raise money. In fact NI is just used so that the Tories can argue that they are no raising income tax - if you want to raise money via direct taxation on earning it should definitely be from income tax which is paid by everyone including plenty of well off pensioners. Though as above I think we should be looking a raising such money from wealth in other ways - in particular the growth of property wealth which is basically untaxed for majority of of people in the UK.
Possibly I’m misreading what you have written, but you appear to imply that NHS care (and I mean care, rather than treatment) was available? Which seems to negate the point where you implied that (for instance) Cancer patients would receive NHS “care” but Alzheimers wouldn’t be. It certainly isn’t, in fact.
Also, your antagonistic implications around “Landlords”, is rather disingenuous isn’t it?
Landlords who make greater than x are simply classed as self employed and taxed etc in exactly the same way as any other self employed person (I’d guess that the initial investment and prior tax contributions of buying a property are somewhat higher than most small businesses, too).
https://www.gov.uk/renting-out-a-property/paying-tax (https://www.gov.uk/renting-out-a-property/paying-tax)
Further, the lack of contribution/liability to the NI increase only applies to Cat2 NI payers, so very small incomes, anyone who crosses the threshold into Cat4 is still liable for the increase. That will sweep up any “professional” landlords. As an aside, most of those within the small income threshold will have alternative income streams that will boost then over the Cat2 threshold anyway. You get taxed on your entire individual income, not bit by bit.
https://www.gov.uk/self-employed-national-insurance-rates (https://www.gov.uk/self-employed-national-insurance-rates)
And, this NI increase is a stopgap, for one year, not a permanent change, from 2023 there will be a separate levy and NI (should) revert. The levy is applicable under all the same conditions, except, it will also apply to earners over state pension age.
So, it’s a stopgap to cover an urgent need, for one year, to be replaced by what seems like a reasonable, new, levy, asap.
I’m struggling to find it all as offensive as I’m being told I should.
(https://i.ibb.co/QHW2z12/A6-EA6-DD9-0229-4078-9790-BB8-C66-F49-E71.jpg)
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I’m struggling to find it all as offensive as I’m being told I should.
I'm struggling with not becoming increasingly despondent about what sort of country this is becoming to be honest. I find it quite hard not to agree with Hillary Mantel. (Widely reported) From the attitude towards asylum seekers to the ignorance of the current slow demise of the farming and fishing industry, totally unethical foreign policy and general populist bullshit, I am really sad that anyone has any enthusiasm for this government, which is certainly not Conservative and has become a vehicle for Boris Johnson's fabricated personality.
Phew, I needed to get that off my chest.
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I’m struggling to find it all as offensive as I’m being told I should.
I'm struggling with not becoming increasingly despondent about what sort of country this is becoming to be honest. I find it quite hard not to agree with Hillary Mantel. (Widely reported) From the attitude towards asylum seekers to the ignorance of the current slow demise of the farming and fishing industry, totally unethical foreign policy and general populist bullshit, I am really sad that anyone has any enthusiasm for this government, which is certainly not Conservative and has become a vehicle for Boris Johnson's fabricated personality.
Phew, I needed to get that off my chest.
Don’t get me wrong, I pretty much agree with most of that, except I don’t think it’s a matter of what have become/are becoming. We’ve always been like this and none of the things you mentioned are new, if anything we’re slightly better these days than we were a couple of decades ago. Possibly things felt better ten years ago and have regressed somewhat since, but still better than it used to be.
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Oldmanmatt, that's a bit of an epic reply and since I'm now away with just my phone difficult to give you a full response :)
But quickly. NHS care was only available at the point he was in 'end of life' and needed appropriate medication to keep him comfortable (ish) in the last few weeks.
Landlords? Never mentioned landlords , the vast majority of property wealth is held by owner occupiers, the growth of property value has produced a big growth in that wealth and since we have no captital gains and very little inheritance tax for most this growth is basically untaxed.
On NI, average pensioner incomes after house costs are now similar to those in work, my argument is just that we should use income tax rather than NI , paid by all who have income rather than just by those who are working. Why is NI a better choice than Income Tax to raise this money?
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I’m struggling to find it all as offensive as I’m being told I should.
I'm struggling with not becoming increasingly despondent about what sort of country this is becoming to be honest. I find it quite hard not to agree with Hillary Mantel. (Widely reported) From the attitude towards asylum seekers to the ignorance of the current slow demise of the farming and fishing industry, totally unethical foreign policy and general populist bullshit, I am really sad that anyone has any enthusiasm for this government, which is certainly not Conservative and has become a vehicle for Boris Johnson's fabricated personality.
Phew, I needed to get that off my chest.
Don’t get me wrong, I pretty much agree with most of that, except I don’t think it’s a matter of what have become/are becoming. We’ve always been like this and none of the things you mentioned are new, if anything we’re slightly better these days than we were a couple of decades ago. Possibly things felt better ten years ago and have regressed somewhat since, but still better than it used to be.
Other than that ten years ago I could travel and work freely in Europe, we weren't signing trade deals with countries with awful environmental standards (Australia)... I won't go on.
But on the tax increase; its rubbish, here is what it doesn't cover: BBC News - Will the cap really fix the social care system?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-58442991
But the real kicker is that vast amounts of the money will disappear into the NHS, and then Johnson will just raise taxes again in 2023, you wait.
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Oldmanmatt, that's a bit of an epic reply and since I'm now away with just my phone difficult to give you a full response :)
But quickly. NHS care was only available at the point he was in 'end of life' and needed appropriate medication to keep him comfortable (ish) in the last few weeks.
Landlords? Never mentioned landlords , the vast majority of property wealth is held by owner occupiers, the growth of property value has produced a big growth in that wealth and since we have no captital gains and very little inheritance tax for most this growth is basically untaxed.
On NI, average pensioner incomes after house costs are now similar to those in work, my argument is just that we should use income tax rather than NI , paid by all who have income rather than just by those who are working. Why is NI a better choice than Income Tax to raise this money?
Yes, my bad on the Landlords bit, it was meant as a general thread reply rather than all aimed at you. Shoddy phrasing and lack of proof reading on my part.
On the NI point, the short term NI increase is most likely a simple hook around legal instruments, that likely protect those in employment above SRA from becoming liable to NI and the impossibility of instituting the new levy in sufficiently timely fashion. NI, is hypothetically ring fenced for such uses, whereas general taxation is not, so probably better, in practical terms. If the levy was a simple addition, the NI route would not have been used.
Toby’s points about much of it all going to waste anyway, not withstanding.
A massive overhaul of NHS systems and spending, would probably generate far more cash for “Care”, but probably fills the average minister with sickening dread at the scale of the task.
Incidentally, the levy will be harder to avoid than tax, and simply not worth the effort to avoid. It seems like a very good way to raise money without it being lost into the Byzantine tax labyrinth.
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Toby’s points about much of it all going to waste anyway, not withstanding.
Here you go, see the front page of the Times and the Telegraph this morning
BBC News - Newspaper headlines: New tax sparks spending concern and migrant-row anger
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-the-papers-58495934
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Leaving aside arguments around reform of care system and more complex solutions to funding I still haven't seen anyone even attempt to justify raising funds by NI rather than income tax.
I believe it is at least partly because income tax is devolved to Scotland. So raising income tax would only impact the other nations but a portion of the funds raised would be allocated to Scotland to do with as they want. Cue headlines in the Daily Mail...
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Interstingly, a graduate earning over £27,295 will have an effective marginal tax rate of 42.25% taking into account student loan payments according to a few twitter economists*. This is about the same marginal tax rate as someone earning £90k......
*Not done the calc myself!
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I find it interesting that whenever the discussion is "when are the govt actually going to tackle the climate crisis" somebody always points out that you couldn't win an election on that platform as it wouldn't be popular.
Well I suspect that you couldn't win an election on raising taxes either & yet the party that's been in power for almost my entire life always does exactly that (rightly so IMO BTW , setting aside the debate about "how", as it's necessary).
I
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A back of the envelope calculation from an economist/climber friend on Twitter:
Brexit makes us all on average 4% poorer per year. Average tax share is 35%. The Brexit hit to taxes is therefore roughly the 1.5% extra NI contribution.
As ever, Brexit is just about making us poorer.
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A back of the envelope calculation from an economist/climber friend on Twitter:
Brexit makes us all on average 4% poorer per year. Average tax share is 35%. The Brexit hit to taxes is therefore roughly the 1.5% extra NI contribution.
As ever, Brexit is just about making us poorer.
Just watched Sky news. First time I’ve watched tv new in years (an accident this time), interesting assessment on the causes and knock ons of the driver shortage. Both haulier’s reps and Supermarket reps interviewed blaming Brexit, squarely and the Morrison Warehouse fella, stating prices would be rising from next week, as their “old price” stock will be gone by Saturday. One wholesale rep, talking about 50% increases in cardboard packaging costs and 70% on plastic, on top of some eye watering cost increases on produce this month. Then he chimed in with “of course, we’ve had to significantly increase our drivers rates, just to retain the few staff we have left” or words to that effect.
Then they switched straight into the story about Priti Nasty’s, sorry, Patel’s “Turn back the boats” policy, then a long stream of people (experts) laughing at her and explaining why it won’t work, is illegal and will just end up killing people.
I got a bit depressed, really, so I opened FB, with the intention of finding something funny, only the first post was my Aunt, essentially giving Priti Nasty both barrels (Aunt is a retired social worker) and the first comment underneath, in appalling spelling/grammar was the “this country can’t even look after it’s own elderly/homeless/pink fluffy kittens with three legs and CoPleteLy diFEffeEnt Coultuors” etc etc.
I had to comment. Will probably be in trouble later.
Anyway, you all know I’m fairly pro military, not exactly lefty hippy of the month, but fucks sake, how the fuck does anyone not realise the money spent on Trident, or (not “and”) Afghan, or Iraq, or Syria, or whatever, would fund free care homes for all for decades.
(It’s never “can’t”, it’s “won’t”).
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I believe it is at least partly because income tax is devolved to Scotland. So raising income tax would only impact the other nations but a portion of the funds raised would be allocated to Scotland to do with as they want. Cue headlines in the Daily Mail...
only partly devolved
"The Scotland Act 2016 provides the Scottish Parliament with the power to set the Income Tax rates and bands that will apply to Scottish taxpayers' non-savings, non-dividend income for the tax year 2021 to 2022. Responsibility for setting the tax-free Personal Allowance, and reliefs and exemptions, remains reserved to the UK Parliament. Income Tax on savings and dividend income is also reserved and continues to be paid to the UK Government. Therefore, Scottish Income Tax remains part of the UK Income Tax system and is not a fully devolved tax."
https://www.gov.scot/publications/scottish-income-tax-2021-2022/
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A back of the envelope calculation from an economist/climber friend on Twitter:
Brexit makes us all on average 4% poorer per year. Average tax share is 35%. The Brexit hit to taxes is therefore roughly the 1.5% extra NI contribution.
As ever, Brexit is just about making us poorer.
Yes, it'll probably get worse as well. But I think that it's not just made us poorer, it's also made, on average and in general discourse, a more divided small minded place, more inward looking, paranoid and miserable. It's also made the breakup of the union probably inevitable. The only tangible thing that the UK has gained is that we can now use Magnitsky sanctions I believe, I am given to understand that we couldn't do this in the EU.
Unfortunately this government is so devoid of morality there's little chance of them employing them against some of the unpleasant people who deserve them.
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I’m struggling to find it all as offensive as I’m being told I should.
I'm struggling with not becoming increasingly despondent about what sort of country this is becoming to be honest. I find it quite hard not to agree with Hillary Mantel. (Widely reported) From the attitude towards asylum seekers to the ignorance of the current slow demise of the farming and fishing industry, totally unethical foreign policy and general populist bullshit, I am really sad that anyone has any enthusiasm for this government, which is certainly not Conservative and has become a vehicle for Boris Johnson's fabricated personality.
Phew, I needed to get that off my chest.
Don’t get me wrong, I pretty much agree with most of that, except I don’t think it’s a matter of what have become/are becoming. We’ve always been like this and none of the things you mentioned are new, if anything we’re slightly better these days than we were a couple of decades ago. Possibly things felt better ten years ago and have regressed somewhat since, but still better than it used to be.
Ahhh, but direction of travel is kind of important! As an example, I was having dinner with friends just before the pandemic hit, six of us of which I was the only white person, the general consensus around the table was that in respect of racism things were definitely getting worse in a way none of my companions had seen before. We're talking about professionals in their early-mid 40s here, so nothing as bad as the 1970s but that strikes me as a fairly low bar. The mood took a sombre turn for sure. Who wants to live in a time of declining tolerance?
Away from the purely anecdotal, I was struck by this (https://annehelen.substack.com/p/meet-generation-disaster) description of American youth as "Generation Disaster". Now there are a lot of things in the post that don't affect young people in the UK, eg the opioid crisis, the huge reach of the US military, and there are some things that are much worse in the US than here, like massive inequality (don't believe for a minute that UK inequality is anything like that occuring in the US). But it's an interesting paradigm through which to think of young adults' experience in growing up in the post 9/11 world.
The main thing of course is the great recession of 2008. Real wages tanked for over a decade (https://fullfact.org/economy/how-have-wages-changed/). Stagnation has led to a rise in intolerance and poor governance. The cost of housing and education has increased. Then there is the rising threat of climate change where action is not commensurate with risk. And smartphones might have changed the way we relate to one another in ways that we don't fully comprehend.
These things are new.
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Nick Robinson (@bbcnickrobinson) Tweeted:
Vaccine passports were on. Then off. Now they maybe on again. One day. Delaying their introduction - if that’s what is happening - does have one interesting consequence. Large events in October with 1000s attending won’t need them. Events like, say, the Tory Party Conference. https://twitter.com/bbcnickrobinson/status/1437528972603047939?s=20 :chair:
It really seems that this government makes decisions based entirely on the few members of it who appear to have any actual power, and exactly what they want to do themselves, completely ignoring the fact that they're supposed to be running a country.
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Re the reshuffle, this simple graphic on the BBC gives an overview of Boris Johnson's decision tool:
BBC News - Cabinet reshuffle 2021: Who is in Boris Johnson's new cabinet?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-58574180
It seems that he's pretty much looked at the approval ratings of party members and sacked everyone at the lower end, other than the glaring omissions of Priti Patel, and himself.
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Gavin Williamson referred to him as the "Prime Minster" in a recent tweet. Probably good he's not in education anymore.
https://twitter.com/gavinwilliamson/status/1438120945013645316
(The "end of an error" comment is genius).
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Liz Truss is the Foreign Secretary. I cannot even......
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Liz Truss is the Foreign Secretary. I cannot even......
Not surprised, surely.
It’s an entire cabinet of unpopular reality TV stars and sycophants of dubious claims of actually being Homo Sapiens.
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Liz Truss is the Foreign Secretary. I cannot even......
O, don't be so harsh. Her popularity with the conservative party members will be invaluable in dealing with the inevitable consequences of the Afghan withdrawal, the Taliban, ISIS not to mention Iran, Russia, China...
After all she made that amazing speech about cheese a few years ago, she'll walk it. (Google this if you're not familiar with it, I'm sure its around somewhere)
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Not to mention Dorries, eating cockroaches probably means she's overqualified.
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This Aukus thing seems to be a bit Aukward too!
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Wonder if in history they will look back and pinpoint this as the pivotal event that kicked off WW3 / Cold War 2.
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Liz Truss is the Foreign Secretary. I cannot even......
she made that amazing speech about cheese a few years ago
This one you mean? Worth watching to the end to see the bonus acting skills…or maybe she really does get that angry about cheese?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_wkO4hk07o&
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Dorries is another Uber-Christian Wingnut:
"I am not an MP for any reason other than because God wants me to be. There is nothing I did that got me here; it is what God did. There is nothing amazing or special about me, I am just a conduit for God to use."
Many of the new cabinet have close connections with Corner Stone and “Lawyer’s Christian Fellowship”, which all sounds quite cuddly, but are really extremely Fundamentalist, Protestant cabals, with very, very, dark aims and desires. There are several other, similar, extreme Christian groups now represented in Johnson’s conclave.
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Marina Hyde is fucking genius.
I had to balk at the Spectator’s suggestion that Nadine “will oversee a more punchy attitude to the culture war aspect of her brief”. Sorry, but what culture war aspect of her brief?! Psychologists say that if you give a child a present and they end up playing with the box, then the toy you gave them was too complicated for them. If you give a minister a brief that encompasses the entire media, the UK’s data strategy, regulating big tech, 5G rollout, cyber-security, the charity sector, the whole of sport and the £100bn-plus creative industries, and they spend so much as ONE NANOSECOND fanning up some culture war nonsense about panto, that isn’t so much playing with the box as taking a shit in it. And nobody, other than fellow infants, wants to see that.
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Wonder if in history they will look back and pinpoint this as the pivotal event that kicked off WW3 / Cold War 2.
Aukus, or the cabinet reshuffle?
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Marina Hyde is fucking genius.
I had to balk at the Spectator’s suggestion that Nadine “will oversee a more punchy attitude to the culture war aspect of her brief”. Sorry, but what culture war aspect of her brief?! Psychologists say that if you give a child a present and they end up playing with the box, then the toy you gave them was too complicated for them. If you give a minister a brief that encompasses the entire media, the UK’s data strategy, regulating big tech, 5G rollout, cyber-security, the charity sector, the whole of sport and the £100bn-plus creative industries, and they spend so much as ONE NANOSECOND fanning up some culture war nonsense about panto, that isn’t so much playing with the box as taking a shit in it. And nobody, other than fellow infants, wants to see that.
She certainly does righteous fury very well. The appointment of Dorries is obviously entirely meant to irritate anyone with an actual interest in culture, sport or the arts. She's nowhere near as dangerous as Priti Patel or Truss, both of whom are considerably more ideological and ambitious
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This seems as though it's a decent overview of the Aukus submarine deal:
https://www.politico.eu/article/why-australia-wanted-out-of-its-french-sub-deal/
It doesn't seem as though the Australians have behaved as foolishly as I'd judgementally first assumed, as the circumstances of the deal have changed significantly and the French have had a lot of problems with it. It still seems pretty diplomatically inept on the part of the UK in particular though. Pissing off our nearest trading partner, who we are trying to sweet talk into dealing with the migrant 'crisis' in the channel and on border controls, as well as China on the eve of the COP 26 talks is surely idiotic? I can't imagine Liz Truss managing to impress either of those parties into any cooperation to be honest.
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Wonder if in history they will look back and pinpoint this as the pivotal event that kicked off WW3 / Cold War 2.
Aukus, or the cabinet reshuffle?
Aukus, not that shuffling of a handful of joker cards!
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[quote author=TobyD
She certainly does righteous fury very well. The appointment of Dorries is obviously entirely meant to irritate anyone with an actual interest in culture, sport or the arts. She's nowhere near as dangerous as Priti Patel or Truss, both of whom are considerably more ideological and ambitious
[/quote]
You say that but to those of us that work in this sector it is potentially devastating. I don't know a huge amount about her and I hope to be proven wrong but I've seen the 'she knows what people like' argument used about her several times. Unfortunately people are at best naïve (we don't know what we don't know) and at worst just plain daft. I hope we don't end up in a world of vacuous reality TV and no challenge or excitement within the cultural world. I worry that arts as a tool for social justice or rehabilitation or health and wellbeing will be done for.
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You say that but to those of us that work in this sector it is potentially devastating. I don't know a huge amount about her and I hope to be proven wrong but I've seen the 'she knows what people like' argument used about her several times. Unfortunately people are at best naïve (we don't know what we don't know) and at worst just plain daft. I hope we don't end up in a world of vacuous reality TV and no challenge or excitement within the cultural world. I worry that arts as a tool for social justice or rehabilitation or health and wellbeing will be done for.
I really agree with you, the UK has a world class film and theatre industry, incredibly good museums, galleries etc, brilliant writers and a recently very successful sporting scene. It needs defending, nurturing and promoting.
However I'd still maintain that pissing off China, France and anyone else they feel like is probably a bit more dangerous, if equally irritating.
This is not going well, is it? The fruits of the UK's new sovereignty and diplomatic freedoms: https://www.politico.eu/article/us-china-and-india-snub-boris-johnsons-climate-meeting/
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Could anyone explain to me why the unions sunk the PR got at the Labour Conference? The CLPs were 80% in favour but the Unions/Affiliates 95% against so it lost.
I don’t get it? I realise Labour have to plan to win the current FPTP system but long term electoral reform would benefit them surely?
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Could anyone explain to me why the unions sunk the PR got at the Labour Conference? The CLPs were 80% in favour but the Unions/Affiliates 95% against so it lost.
I don’t get it? I realise Labour have to plan to win the current FPTP system but long term electoral reform would benefit them surely?
I've read analysis that says that PR would be a disaster for Labour, since the rise in voting Green. I don't know if this was definitive, but I don't know if a change would be a good thing for them. The LDs on the other hand would be better off, but so would the likes of Britain First.
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Could anyone explain to me why the unions sunk the PR got at the Labour Conference? The CLPs were 80% in favour but the Unions/Affiliates 95% against so it lost.
I don’t get it? I realise Labour have to plan to win the current FPTP system but long term electoral reform would benefit them surely?
I've read analysis that says that PR would be a disaster for Labour, since the rise in voting Green. I don't know if this was definitive, but I don't know if a change would be a good thing for them. The LDs on the other hand would be better off, but so would the likes of Britain First.
PR would lead to a reasonably accurate reflection of the true British psychology, in Westminster. It would mean the largest two political parties having to come to terms with how unpopular they actually are.
So “vote for us, or you’ll get them” suits them just fine.
Oh, yeah. PR means you have to accept that some people have ideas and ambitions that you might find extremely offensive (or plain stupid) zand that those ideas might suddenly gain official voice in parliament. Good. Nothing shows up the stains on a worn out old t-shirt like full daylight and close scrutiny.
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Could anyone explain to me why the unions sunk the PR got at the Labour Conference? The CLPs were 80% in favour but the Unions/Affiliates 95% against so it lost.
I don’t get it? I realise Labour have to plan to win the current FPTP system but long term electoral reform would benefit them surely?
I've read analysis that says that PR would be a disaster for Labour, since the rise in voting Green. I don't know if this was definitive, but I don't know if a change would be a good thing for them. The LDs on the other hand would be better off, but so would the likes of Britain First.
Surely Britain First etc (fringe parties) doing better would be better for the nation overall? The loons who wnat to vote for them can, and the bigger parties can spend less time pandering to them?
I know I'm a perpetual optimist but I can only see a parliament that actually reflected what the nation thinks/wants as a good thing? Would that many people vote green? Maybe if Labour looked at the reason the Greens were getting popular and embraced some of those policies?
Re the Green Party, they are so all over the place does anyone think they would be a strong challenge to Labour. There anti HS2 stance seems to epitomise them. Their policy is for new high speed rail linking the north of the country to the south, just not HS2. Madness.
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I don't see how PR could be a net loss to Labour.
Labour governments are, and always have been, a rare thing. Conservative governments are our default under FPTP despite progressive parties usually winning over half the vote.
Far better for Labour to be the major party in a coalition than to be in a state of almost perpetual opposition with an occasional foray into a position of power followed by another decade or more on the sidelines.
Keeping FPTP only helps the Conservatives.
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I don't see how PR could be a net loss to Labour.
Labour governments are, and always have been, a rare thing. Conservative governments are our default under FPTP despite progressive parties usually winning over half the vote.
Far better for Labour to be the major party in a coalition than to be in a state of almost perpetual opposition with an occasional foray into a position of power followed by another decade or more on the sidelines.
Keeping FPTP only helps the Conservatives.
Progressive parties, yes. Labour, no.
Labour will never win/very very rarely win, until they learn to include the progressives that don’t hold extreme socialist ideologies (yes, yes, I know. Cue the Labour stalwarts claiming most of their party are closet conservatives and a greater enemy than the right etc etc).
Latest Labour party conference, to anyone outside the party, looks to be just another exercise in “true socialist” gatekeeping, again. Honestly, given the open goal presented by the current clowns driving the bus, you have to wonder how Labour do manage to still score in their own goal so often.
Labour, all defenders fighting with each other to get ball time, no strikers.
Tories, do what the fuck they want, anyone complains or call them out, they trot out “we’ll bring back the good old days” and enough of the population go back to their pint or Bacardi and lemonade, discussing “Love Island” that the crisis is averted.
PR would be better for everyone, but it really might clip Labour’s wings. Being the “only credible alternative to the Tories” is not as strong a manifesto as thy seem to think.
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I don't see how PR could be a net loss to Labour.
Labour governments are, and always have been, a rare thing. Conservative governments are our default under FPTP despite progressive parties usually winning over half the vote.
Far better for Labour to be the major party in a coalition than to be in a state of almost perpetual opposition with an occasional foray into a position of power followed by another decade or more on the sidelines.
Keeping FPTP only helps the Conservatives.
Progressive parties, yes. Labour, no.
Labour will never win/very very rarely win, until they learn to include the progressives that don’t hold extreme socialist ideologies (yes, yes, I know. Cue the Labour stalwarts claiming most of their party are closet conservatives and a greater enemy than the right etc etc).
Latest Labour party conference, to anyone outside the party, looks to be just another exercise in “true socialist” gatekeeping, again. Honestly, given the open goal presented by the current clowns driving the bus, you have to wonder how Labour do manage to still score in their own goal so often.
Labour, all defenders fighting with each other to get ball time, no strikers.
Tories, do what the fuck they want, anyone complains or call them out, they trot out “we’ll bring back the good old days” and enough of the population go back to their pint or Bacardi and lemonade, discussing “Love Island” that the crisis is averted.
PR would be better for everyone, but it really might clip Labour’s wings. Being the “only credible alternative to the Tories” is not as strong a manifesto as thy seem to think.
I think that I generally agree Matt, although simple PR might not be the best solution, our voting system entrenches a confrontational two party system, which leads to a see-saw between administrations (although a see-saw weighted heavily on one side) and a politics which, looking at most of the rest of Europe right now, looks rather shabby.
I don't think that Labour needs to point out that there are fuel shortages, people can see that pretty easily for themselves. I thought that Rachel Reeves' quiet comment yesterday that Brexit was 'definitely a factor' was probably about right. I do think that they ought to point out what they would do / would have done to govern a country that might encourage a situation which isn't quite as bad as we're currently in.
The business news has been full of industry figures saying every day for the last 6 months that there were going to be huge issues with lorry drivers over the winter, and now...
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Re the 'own goal' for Labour, I don't know about that; I was barely aware of who Andy McDonald is / was anyway, and the average person with no interest in politics definitely won't. If much of the country just hears that someone on the far left of the party has left the front bench, that might actually benefit them, rather than harming them. A £15 minimum wage is a pretty foolish proposal and would only out off voters who value fiscal responsibility; it'd only devalue entry level professional jobs, lead to an acceleration of inflation and ultimately not really help anyone.
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The business news has been full of industry figures saying every day for the last 6 months that there were going to be huge issues with lorry drivers over the winter, and now...
Even the Transport Select Committee report published post-referendum in 2016 warned of exactly these shortages “if the UK becomes relatively less attractive as a place for foreign drivers to work, as it may do as the consequences of Brexit play out”.
No govt minister can ever say they weren’t warned.
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Labour governments are, and always have been, a rare thing
Rare is nonsense. LibDems in power, this century, is rare. Admittedly for anyone born post-1977 you've had 13 years of Labour and 31 of Tory, but 30% is still not rare. From 1945-2010 it is somewhat more balanced at 28:33 (years, approx, couldn't be arsed digging up and adding months) . Pretty successful for a party formed in 1900 to have been constantly in power or opposition (as in second biggest) since 1922. That's not to offer any approval or support for either.
What Labour seem completely blind to the fact is that they've lost Scotland with next to no chance to get it back. Without that they will never win on FPTP and will be at best in coalition with the SNP, briefly, as a condition of that will be a referendum on independence and following that Labour will lose power forever without PR.
The wider argument is that now surely a central tenet of being progressive is electoral reform. Without it Labour have little to offer the wider electorate they need to even be the biggest loser.
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The business news has been full of industry figures saying every day for the last 6 months that there were going to be huge issues with lorry drivers over the winter, and now...
Even the Transport Select Committee report published post-referendum in 2016 warned of exactly these shortages “if the UK becomes relatively less attractive as a place for foreign drivers to work, as it may do as the consequences of Brexit play out”.
No govt minister can ever say they weren’t warned.
Yup. Although they probably just weren't listening. Also, although there may be shortages across Europe, they don't have food and fuel shortages (or a CO2 shortage) across Europe. As pretty much every other European country has been eager to point out: https://www.politico.eu/newsletter/london-playbook/you-got-to-pump-it-up-mac-the-knife-heir-to-blair/ this is a consequence of Brexit, although there are clearly other factors, we're in the shit, and the EU aren't.
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"The slow-motion contest is well under way. Any Labour figure with a high profile, or even a low one, is presumed to be a candidate: Angela Rayner, Rachel Reeves, David Lammy, Wes Streeting, Andy Burnham (always), Yvette Cooper (again). The roster changes. Names rise and fall in the speculative race – painted wooden horses on a rumour carousel spinning jauntily on the Brighton beachfront, with a queasy-looking Starmer carried along for the ride. And all that the public hears is the repetitive strains of the hurdy-gurdy, reminding them of a faded attraction, somewhere off in the distance, going round in circles."
Rafael Behr (Guardian) sees Labour as treading water whilst searching for Starmer's replacement. I think he's right.
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Wes Streeting is gathering lots of ££££s from financial backers for some reason?
Apparently the right of the party hate Starmer as much as the left do. He's (Starmer's) a puppet on a string, merrily breaking the 10 pledges he made when standing in the leadership election before he clears the path for a 'coronation' of a new leader.
Despite a motion on the Green New Deal (that includes a commitment to public ownership one of Starmer's pledges) being overwhelmingly voted through, Rachel Reeves was soon wheeled out to say 'They'll take a pragmatic approach' and essentially ignore motions they don't agree with.
The new rules, regarding the election of a leader, that were shoved through as a motion at conference will ensure that the process excludes the diversity of views and communities the party alludes to represent. They restrict the choices of the membership by raising the nomination threshold 10% to 20% of MPs. James McCash a primary school teacher and member made an excellent speech highlighting what this would have meant over the last 40 years of LP election contests.
In 1994 neither John Prescott nor Margaret Beckett would've made the ballot. In 2010 no Ed Balls, no Diane Abbott, no Andy Burnham. In 2020 the choice would've been Keir Starmer or Keir Starmer. In the last 40 years it would mean that just 1 woman would've been on the ballot and zero black candidates. To use James' words, 'making debate, our debate within the party PALER, MALER and STALER'.
The membership has quickly been made an irrelevance by this leadership team and their democratic participation in decision making has been swiftly removed. Apparently MPs 'have a better feeling for things on the ground' and therefore should have more power in choosing a leader.
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Matt lets hear these 'extreme socialist ideologies' that you speak of which ones are you frightened of?
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Matt lets hear these 'extreme socialist ideologies' that you speak of which ones are you frightened of?
That requires more time than I have right now.
I’ll be back…
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What Labour seem completely blind to the fact is that they've lost Scotland with next to no chance to get it back. Without that they will never win on FPTP and will be at best in coalition with the SNP, briefly, as a condition of that will be a referendum on independence and following that Labour will lose power forever without PR.
Absolutely right JB. Its extremely strange that this rarely if ever gets mentioned despite being the most stark staringly obvious hindrance to Labour's electoral chances. Basically Labour already lost their most reliable red wall of 40-50 seats, seemingly for good (so far), in 2015, to the SNP. Somehow this has been memory-holed??? Maybe because 2015 is again pre-the usual "culprits" of B****t and C****n.
Without any strategy to regain these previously inbuilt circa 40-50 Scottish seats; either by winning them directly, or some kind of deal with the SNP, then Labour's only option to win an absolute majority i.e. more than 50% of all Westminster seats is to absolutely annihilate the Tories in England (Wales is too few seats to affect things either way under this scenario). This has only happened in 1945, 1997, 2001, and 2005. There were other years where Labour beat the Tories in England, but in those particular years they smashed it. Obviously they went on to win the UK election overall by a landslide in those years. The latter 3 were the Blair years.
Given the persistent radio silence on Scotland from Labour, plus other indicators e.g. rightwards drift, then for me the likeliest interpretation is that taking England by a landslide appears to be the current strategy. Personally I fundamentally disagree with it for a whole load of reasons, but we will see if it works - I don't think it will (which is my main objection!).
If the strategy is simply to win in England, rather than smashing it, then, depending on the margin of victory plus outcomes in Wales / Scotland, that most likely still needs an arrangement with the SNP to have a simple majority in Westminster. Back to square one i.e. conversations about referendums and PR. Its strange that these conversations are not ongoing at the conference, because for all the focus on winning, without grasping the nettle on this issue they will definitely lose both short and long term.
If in fact the strategy is to win the Scottish seats back, that is going to need an awful lot of explaining on how it will be done too...
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In reply to Nigel; it's not just Labour, all the Westminster parties have basically ignored Scotland. The SNP are so dominant I can't see any of them making any significant headway there.
In terms of election prospects obviously Labour would struggle to get a majority without Scotland, but then if a post election alliance or agreement is their plan, its probably best not to mention it until the time as it'd only be weaponised by the conservatives and harm their prospects.
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In reply to Nigel; it's not just Labour, all the Westminster parties have basically ignored Scotland. The SNP are so dominant I can't see any of them making any significant headway there.
In terms of election prospects obviously Labour would struggle to get a majority without Scotland, but then if a post election alliance or agreement is their plan, its probably best not to mention it until the time as it'd only be weaponised by the conservatives and harm their prospects.
Don't panic, Kier has appointed Gordon Brown to sort it out.
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In reply to Nigel; it's not just Labour, all the Westminster parties have basically ignored Scotland. The SNP are so dominant I can't see any of them making any significant headway there.
In terms of election prospects obviously Labour would struggle to get a majority without Scotland, but then if a post election alliance or agreement is their plan, its probably best not to mention it until the time as it'd only be weaponized by the conservatives and harm their prospects.
Don't panic, Kier has appointed Gordon Brown to sort it out.
Frankly, this might not pull up any trees but at least he actually has a sensible plan; unlike the Conservative party, who I think have just as much of a problem with Scotland, although it is a different problem to Labour's. They've appointed Gove, and their strategy (really) is not to talk about it as much as possible, and to try just repeating how well the UK is doing all the time.
Instead of debating Labour party internal matters, I think what matters more is that the government appears to be in total chaos; it's failing to do anything effectively and I see in the news today that Raab's latest plan is to get asylum seekers to do the jobs that were done by EU migrants in agriculture etc.
So not content with interring them in camps, and trying to turn migration into France's problem, the Conservatives are going to bring back slave labour?
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In terms of election prospects obviously Labour would struggle to get a majority without Scotland, but then if a post election alliance or agreement is their plan, its probably best not to mention it until the time as it'd only be weaponised by the conservatives and harm their prospects.
My crystal ball says that the conservatives will weaponise it regardless of whether it is mentioned in advance or not. And unless Labour are 20 points ahead in the polls then they will have a point.
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In terms of election prospects obviously Labour would struggle to get a majority without Scotland, but then if a post election alliance or agreement is their plan, its probably best not to mention it until the time as it'd only be weaponised by the conservatives and harm their prospects.
My crystal ball says that the conservatives will weaponise it regardless of whether it is mentioned in advance or not. And unless Labour are 20 points ahead in the polls then they will have a point.
You might be right, although on reflection by the time of the next election the Conservatives might be very keen to avoid any mention of Scotland whatsoever; Boris Johnson is clearly very bothered about his legacy as PM, and desperate not to be the PM who split up the UK, even though he's pretty much done that already, it just hasn't really come to fruition yet.
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It would be very nice to think that voters might equate this: https://www.politico.eu/article/brexit-is-going-badly-say-brits-in-new-poll/
with how completely incompetent the government is, bug I'm not holding my breath.
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Cressida Dick; the Teflon commisioner. How she's still in a job is anyones guess.
A serving Met police officer convicted of murder, a whatsapp group with racist and sexist language between met police officers, and Dick just says they they will learn 'any lessons' that need to be learned.
If anyone was in any doubt of the size of the problem, the North Yorks commissioner has said Everard 'should never have submitted to the arrest." Also: "women, first of all, need to be streetwise...perhaps women just need to consider, to learn a little bit about the legal process.'
Unbelievable. Tear it all down and start again, its beyond help.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-york-north-yorkshire-58762029
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How he could expect Everard to understand that she was being arrested unlawfully is anyone's guess when even his own officers didn't understand the rules (see Almscliff policing earlier in the year). Idiot.
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The fucking desperation to avoid criticising the police is disgusting, tying himself in knots to find some way that it was Everard's fault, that its women's fault. These people need to be fucked off out of public life. The fact he's still in a job this evening is unbelievable, he should have been gone within the hour!
Also, like its a reasonable line of advice to say that lone women should refuse arrest. Police are so famously open to having their authority questioned after all.
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Another Yorkshire political appointment to be proud of 🙄🙄🙄
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The fucking desperation to avoid criticising the police is disgusting, tying himself in knots to find some way that it was Everard's fault, that its women's fault. These people need to be fucked off out of public life. The fact he's still in a job this evening is unbelievable, he should have been gone within the hour!
Also, like its a reasonable line of advice to say that lone women should refuse arrest. Police are so famously open to having their authority questioned after all.
As a matter of interest, do you have a working proposal for replacement of the police service/system?
My cabin mate and fellow SNCO, Allan (“Frank” to us) Grimson, used his rank and seniority to bully young sailors into going with him, so that he could rape and murder them. There were four of us that shared that cabin on HMS Westminster from 1993-1995. Four POMEAs who lived and worked together. Frank had the bunk below me. He had terrible nightmares, crying out in his sleep etc. He always blamed his sister’s drowning when he was a kid for the nightmares, said he watched it happen, but was too little to help.
Of course, turned out he’d been hunting and killing for over a decade, by then. He was eventually convicted for a few murders carried out after that time, but he is center frame for several earlier disappearances.
Pretty sure the boss gave him some good write ups at the time, possibly even described him as an asset. Definitely recommended him for promotion etc.
He was a department head, in charge of sailors as young as 16!
Should I inform the First Sea Lord that he should be resigning? Or just the various MEO’s who were his direct boss’s over the several decades of his service?
I mean, I’m pretty sure I and many others said some damn stupid things, expressions of disbelief for example, even outright denial; when it came to light. Perhaps we should all commit Hari Kari with ceremonial Wheel Spanners?
Fucking glad I never had to answer questions from a reporter, I can tell you. I mean, how would I justify not knowing that someone I was that close to, had a secret life, abusing his authority and murdering young lads?
Can you feel the eye roll through the screen?
You usually make a lot of sense, when you post, I’m usually too flippant. This is a bit much though. Should we have a law that requires a CEO to resign every time an employee commits a crime?
And…
Wasn’t it the police that caught him? Pretty quickly, compared to our Frank, incidentally.
Also…
A “Police and Crime Commissioner” is not a Policeman or a Chief Constable; they’re about as relevant as a Speed Climber at a Lead comp.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allan_Grimson (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allan_Grimson)
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The fucking desperation to avoid criticising the police is disgusting, tying himself in knots to find some way that it was Everard's fault, that its women's fault. These people need to be fucked off out of public life. The fact he's still in a job this evening is unbelievable, he should have been gone within the hour!
Also, like its a reasonable line of advice to say that lone women should refuse arrest. Police are so famously open to having their authority questioned after all.
As a matter of interest, do you have a working proposal for replacement of the police service/system?
My cabin mate and fellow SNCO, Allan (“Frank” to us) Grimson, used his rank and seniority to bully young sailors into going with him, so that he could rape and murder them. There were four of us that shared that cabin on HMS Westminster from 1993-1995. Four POMEAs who lived and worked together. Frank had the bunk below me. He had terrible nightmares, crying out in his sleep etc. He always blamed his sister’s drowning when he was a kid for the nightmares, said he watched it happen, but was too little to help.
Of course, turned out he’d been hunting and killing for over a decade, by then. He was eventually convicted for a few murders carried out after that time, but he is center frame for several earlier disappearances.
Pretty sure the boss gave him some good write ups at the time, possibly even described him as an asset. Definitely recommended him for promotion etc.
He was a department head, in charge of sailors as young as 16!
Should I inform the First Sea Lord that he should be resigning? Or just the various MEO’s who were his direct boss’s over the several decades of his service?
I mean, I’m pretty sure I and many others said some damn stupid things, expressions of disbelief for example, even outright denial; when it came to light. Perhaps we should all commit Hari Kari with ceremonial Wheel Spanners?
Fucking glad I never had to answer questions from a reporter, I can tell you. I mean, how would I justify not knowing that someone I was that close to, had a secret life, abusing his authority and murdering young lads?
Can you feel the eye roll through the screen?
You usually make a lot of sense, when you post, I’m usually too flippant. This is a bit much though. Should we have a law that requires a CEO to resign every time an employee commits a crime?
And…
Wasn’t it the police that caught him? Pretty quickly, compared to our Frank, incidentally.
Also…
A “Police and Crime Commissioner” is not a Policeman or a Chief Constable; they’re about as relevant as a Speed Climber at a Lead comp.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allan_Grimson (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allan_Grimson)
The fucking desperation to avoid criticising the police is disgusting, tying himself in knots to find some way that it was Everard's fault, that its women's fault. These people need to be fucked off out of public life. The fact he's still in a job this evening is unbelievable, he should have been gone within the hour!
Also, like its a reasonable line of advice to say that lone women should refuse arrest. Police are so famously open to having their authority questioned after all.
As a matter of interest, do you have a working proposal for replacement of the police service/system?
My cabin mate and fellow SNCO, Allan (“Frank” to us) Grimson, used his rank and seniority to bully young sailors into going with him, so that he could rape and murder them. There were four of us that shared that cabin on HMS Westminster from 1993-1995. Four POMEAs who lived and worked together. Frank had the bunk below me. He had terrible nightmares, crying out in his sleep etc. He always blamed his sister’s drowning when he was a kid for the nightmares, said he watched it happen, but was too little to help.
Of course, turned out he’d been hunting and killing for over a decade, by then. He was eventually convicted for a few murders carried out after that time, but he is center frame for several earlier disappearances.
Pretty sure the boss gave him some good write ups at the time, possibly even described him as an asset. Definitely recommended him for promotion etc.
He was a department head, in charge of sailors as young as 16!
Should I inform the First Sea Lord that he should be resigning? Or just the various MEO’s who were his direct boss’s over the several decades of his service?
I mean, I’m pretty sure I and many others said some damn stupid things, expressions of disbelief for example, even outright denial; when it came to light. Perhaps we should all commit Hari Kari with ceremonial Wheel Spanners?
Fucking glad I never had to answer questions from a reporter, I can tell you. I mean, how would I justify not knowing that someone I was that close to, had a secret life, abusing his authority and murdering young lads?
Can you feel the eye roll through the screen?
You usually make a lot of sense, when you post, I’m usually too flippant. This is a bit much though. Should we have a law that requires a CEO to resign every time an employee commits a crime?
And…
Wasn’t it the police that caught him? Pretty quickly, compared to our Frank, incidentally.
Also…
A “Police and Crime Commissioner” is not a Policeman or a Chief Constable; they’re about as relevant as a Speed Climber at a Lead comp.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allan_Grimson (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allan_Grimson)
The police were aware of at least 2 incidents that are known for being 'starting points' for people who commit sexual offences. They did nothing. He was a member of a WhatsApp group that was sharing inappropriate content and the culture within the organisation meant that no one shut that down or reprimanded anyone for it. People commit on average 7 crimes in the run up to murder. He should never have still had his warrant card.
And rather than accepting that there were failings, that the police have systematic and deep rooted problems, police forces up and down the country (including my own local force) are issuing advice to women on how to check that the arrest is legitimate. With no recognition of the power imbalance at play, nor the threat of adding resisting arrest to the charge sheet.
And if Sarah had asked questions of the officer, do you think the outcome would have been any different? Or might it have just got violent sooner?
I'm with Spider Monkey on this one, I'm fucking livid.
The police have a serious equality, diversity and inclusion problem and there are too many people too invested and protective of it for that to change. I was hopeful when Cressida Dick was appointed but nothing has changed. Scrap the lot and start again with a fresh, independent thinking batch of people.
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I understand your frustrations, but it’s simply wrong.
I’m afraid “Minority Report” was a work of fiction, you can’t arrest someone for or prevent them from carrying out a crime they have yet to commit.
There was a flaw, probably an individual or small group of individuals, who didn’t see the potential seriousness of his actions. That doesn’t seem so hard to believe.
I would posit he would likely have carried out a similar act, sooner or later, regardless of his being dismissed from the force or not. Likely to even use similar tactics, since he’d probably been imagining do it from the first day he held a warrant card.
You (collectively) are angry and understandably so. It’s still not the “fault” of the police service. Pretty sure, had the CC been aware of the WhatsApp group, or his prior behaviour, she would have acted. How many Coppers in the Met? More than any other force, I’m sure. I’ll google it in a moment.
Do you think there aren’t a whole raft of mid-rank Officers looking closely at their officers now? In every force? I mean, there are already a few who are looking at early retirement or stagnated careers (because none of them broke any laws). I know one particular wanker and erstwhile friend who was kicked out of the Met 2-3 years back for being involved in a similar messaging group and other things. Still friendly with his now ex-wife. He was a 12 year veteran, AR with DPG experience. They canned him in a heartbeat. He can’t even find security work now.
Systems screw up, the bigger the system, the bigger the screw up. I don’t believe for one moment people within are not currently paying for their mistakes. I don’t understand why you (collective “you”) expect all the big wigs to fall on their swords? Because they were unaware of what their subordinates were doing in private and the (slightly) more senior subordinates who found out, didn’t push it up the system? You know, the overworked, under staffed, department head, trying to cover their patch? Some of their staff are arseholes, with shit attitudes? Or is it just dark humour? Hard to tell sometimes.
20/20 hindsight. I’m pretty good at that myself.
Edit.
Sarah, unfortunately, never stood a chance. I probably would have cooperated too, unless I had very good grounds to suspect the “Officer” was “fake”. I think questioning single officers, without proper support, will be de facto advice from now on and forces, generally, will be looking at non-uniform deployment around that advice. I would look at it differently too, unmarked car, plain clothes, alone. Ultimately, the warrant card could have been fake, stolen etc. As could a uniform, come to that.
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That’s all well and good Matt, however I read on another forum ( yes it’s only hearsay) that female met officers are reluctant to report any dodgy behaviour in male colleagues because the next time they up against it . They will be left to get a kicking.
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That’s all well and good Matt, however I read on another forum ( yes it’s only hearsay) that female met officers are reluctant to report any dodgy behaviour in male colleagues because the next time they up against it . They will be left to get a kicking.
That is hearsay, though, isn’t it. This is a situation (in varying degrees) that crops up in almost every organisation that humans dream up, from businesses, through armed forces, to churches and humanitarian charities.
If you imagine it is only females that find themselves in such situations, I have a bridge to sell you.
The weak are often the targets of bullies and “weak” is a relative term (see examples such as the US Army Ranger murdered by “colleagues” in a “Hazing” (yeah, right!) incident. Or Irish Nuns in Single Mother homes, Canadian Indigenous residential schools? The BBC?).
Humans suck.
Workplace bullying is a nightmare.
Society has a problem and there’s precious little that can be done, because it’s fundamentally part of human nature. As in, it will find a way.
Difficult to answer properly because I can’t give my full attention to this right now. Men are bastards, and they are not held accountable for their attitudes to women and weaker men. Absolutely. It’s a society wide failing. However, I can give you many examples of similar behaviour (or, equivalently bad/toxic if of a different nature) by female protagonists.
I’ve really got to pay attention to the family right now, so I can’t fill that out enough.
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Lots of excuses, lots of mitigation, no actual action. Yep, that sounds exactly like what will happen. I'm perfectly willing to accept my view is prejudiced against the police in this moment. Yours is prejudiced to always give them the benefit of the doubt. If we're going to discuss this, lets start with accepting that otherwise we are talking at crossed purposes.
Also, I can't be alone in finding the whataboutery of "women do bad shit too" profoundly offensive. Talk about missing the point!
Appreciate you saying I usually talk sense but I think we might be poles apart on this one! It is not hindsight. Black people and women have been saying this about the police for many years. It can be simultaneously true that most police are decent people And that policing as an institution is not fit for purpose.
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Lots of excuses, lots of mitigation, no actual action. Yep, that sounds exactly like what will happen. I'm perfectly willing to accept my view is prejudiced against the police in this moment. Yours is prejudiced to always give them the benefit of the doubt. If we're going to discuss this, lets start with accepting that otherwise we are talking at crossed purposes.
Jesus, I think I strained something with that eye roll.
(That’s a joke, not a dig. I understand your point of view. Now really got to put my pad down).
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No Sean, it’s hearsay, even the person reported as such said so. I won’t tit for tat you. Fuck sake, I even agreed that it was a realistic scenario. It’s still hearsay whether you like the fact or not. So, that was simply twatish of you, because I’m not condoning it.
If you can’t riposte probably or read what I wrote properly, go do one. Because if you think I was condoning such actions or situations you are very, very mistaken. The fact of the status of such reporting is unchanged by my feelings regarding the situation. I did not say that it was not happening.
Fuck, you can’t talk to people about these things without being bullied by pitchfork waving, torch carriers, waiting for the slightest grammatical slip or opening for wilful misunderstanding.
Sooo glad I dipped back in before going to bed.
Yes, Sean, I mean you.
Lovely.
Punter people for stating a fact because it doesn’t match your opinion? Single out a small part, a sentence and ignore the rest. Wow.
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You are of course entirely correct, so I’ve puntered you properly. Be careful what you wish for etc, etc.
I’ll reply fully when I have the time.
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You are of course entirely correct, so I’ve puntered you properly. Be careful what you wish for etc, etc.
I’ll reply fully when I have the time.
Entirely wrong and you are free to do as you please. I apologise for not being sufficiently in line with your reasoning.
However, I really don’t care that the truth offends you. It remains the truth.
If you persist in bullying for difference of view point, without being able to point to a factually incorrect statement, then you are really rather weak and simply hiding behind your keyboard.
I also did not say “Frightened women = Hearsay” or anything like it.
That is an outright lie and deliberately disingenuous of you.
You have certainly lost any respect I had for you.
Incidentally, this is exactly why the forum struggles with retaining participants who are not politically “woke” enough.
I have not denigrated women or their difficulties in anyway, I have specifically acknowledged it.
No, Sean you are a bully, simply trying to silence anybody not exactly in tune with your personal views.
This, is the Labour party in microcosm.
Brutus, the above exchange will suffice to answer your question from a few days ago:
The Labour party:
As a member, you must enjoy your bubble, fruitlessly wave your arms in the air in protest at every slight and achieve nothing by simply failing to acknowledge the difficult realities of the world. Don’t forget to chase off anybody who doesn’t fully subscribe to your bubble and brand them heretics.
A bit like some people on this forum.
Oh, I’ll fight off conspiracy dealing, individual attacking and generally unpleasant trolls. But this? Shameful.
Anyway, no more to be said, so I cede the bubble to you.
Tom was right. A very toxic place of late.
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OMM - I think this is a pretty emotive subject however you feel about it so please don’t lose sight of how that can run away on an Internet forum. FWIW I’m somewhere between yours and Sean/SM’s positions on this so valued all inputs.
I support Labour despite all its faults but I don’t agree with Brutus, and the Guardian pisses me off something rotten a lot of days. I don’t think it’s quite as much of a “woke” bubble as it might feel sometimes. Hope we don’t lose your contributions.
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I think Matt has a good point about heads of organisations being held to account; sure, accountability is extremely important but sacking people repeatedly every time theres a failure surely just discards valuable experience and expertise, and discounts the idea of being able to learn?
If Cressida Dick had known about the specific incidents and not acted, that would be different, but as far as I know that wasn't the case. Its natural to want to apportion blame after a tragedy but not always a good way to stop it happening again.
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Incidentally, this is exactly why the forum struggles with retaining participants who are not politically “woke” enough.
I have not denigrated women or their difficulties in anyway, I have specifically acknowledged it.
...
Tom was right. A very toxic place of late.
That would be a sad state of affairs, here or anywhere in wider culture. The whole concept of woke as its understood by the small c conservative part of the UK is primarily dreamed up by right wing commentators and political policy makers who are trying to find a way to prolong and expand the division that Brexit highlighted and which has proved so advantageous to the Conservative party.
I'm aware of its original meaning and importance in the campaign for racial equality, but its almost entirely changed in this country and been devalued as its been weaponised into a petty derogatory term.
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Incidentally, this is exactly why the forum struggles with retaining participants who are not politically “woke” enough.
I have not denigrated women or their difficulties in anyway, I have specifically acknowledged it.
...
Tom was right. A very toxic place of late.
That would be a sad state of affairs, here or anywhere in wider culture. The whole concept of woke as its understood by the small c conservative part of the UK is primarily dreamed up by right wing commentators and political policy makers who are trying to find a way to prolong and expand the division that Brexit highlighted and which has proved so advantageous to the Conservative party.
I'm aware of its original meaning and importance in the campaign for racial equality, but its almost entirely changed in this country and been devalued as its been weaponised into a petty derogatory term.
Agreed, but I recognise the syndrome “woke” has come to describe to many people; even as I recognise it’s misuses and weaponisation by others. That would be why I put it in inverted commas.
I have only tried to counter that which appeared to be an overly emotional reaction, that seemed illogically extreme. Akin to lynch mob mentality, if you will.
Societal change is not accomplished overnight (frankly the existence of Cressida, in that role, would have been unthinkable thirty years ago. Hoped for, but not really expected that soon). Seems a bit of an unreasonable burden to place on an individual, undoing centuries of ingrained behaviour, in the middle of deep, angry, backlash from a vocal and reactionary section of the population. Hardly a small portion, either.
PCC’s, by the way, are not much more than political sinécure, a useful place to put people owed favours (or their relatives) and more than a few will be bumbling idiots, palmed off to be seen and not heard. MP’s in safe seats, aren’t much better. Certainly something that should be protested and changed. All things that will not change without PR.
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Hang on. Passing over the back and forth about a few punter points ( ::)) ...
There is a lot to discuss here but a few major points. Firstly, accountability vis a vis Cressida Dick. Context is everything; if she had been a recent appointment, then calling for her resignation would clearly be premature. As it is, she's been in post for 4 years, and her period in charge has been marked by accusations of institutional racism, institutional corruption and non-cooperation with an independent report (Daniel Morgan) institutional misogyny and now a serving Met officer found guilty of murder. I'm interested in anyone who thinks she is doing a good job (please show working!) and why they think she is the person to oversee change. To my mind its abundantly clear she isn't the right person.
OMM's posts seem to suggest that the problem is one of humankind/society, that nothing can be done and so its fruitless to try; essentially throwing ones hands up in the air and saying the problem is insurmountable. I basically don't think this is the place to start so perhaps ne'er the twain shall meet. The problem (in this case sexism and misogyny) is obviously societal; but by definition that means the problem is part of our societal structures, such as the police, government and legal systems. In saying this I am *not* saying that all police officers are murderers; this should go without saying. However, all police are operating within a system which minimises crimes against women, that places the onus on women to protect themselves rather than men to stop attacking them. I personally also think that too many police officers are drawn from a section of society that likes having authority over people and reacts poorly to having that authority questioned. I also think that the police consistently lie to cover their backs and close ranks to prevent their actions being open to scrutiny. Stories from women and the black community have testified to this for so long frankly I don't think its up for debate. OMM may disagree, from memory I think he does from previous discussions on this topic. If so I'd be interested in what the alternative explanation is.
I say again, it is not hindsight to point this out. People have been saying it for a very long time.
Re the 'woke' reference, I just think thats rubbish. As Toby points out, the use of the word as a pejorative is straight out of the Mail/GB News playbook. Don't fall into that trap. Me criticising the police is not a personal slight on anyone or their worldview and I'm not waving a pitchfork and seeking to 'cancel' you. I'm perfectly aware of the difficult realities of the world; I just think that these realities are not responsible for the failings of the police.
Battery's response below was far more considered than mine and I'm yet to read anything that contradicts her conclusions (edited below for clarity). If policing as an institution *is* fit for purpose then it needs to prove it by doing a whole lot better than the examples below. It shows a profound lack of engagement with the problem and betrays a defensive attitude.
Rather than accepting that there were failings, that the police have systematic and deep rooted problems, police forces up and down the country (including my own local force) are issuing advice to women on how to check that the arrest is legitimate. With no recognition of the power imbalance at play, nor the threat of adding resisting arrest to the charge sheet.
The police have a serious equality, diversity and inclusion problem and there are too many people too invested and protective of it for that to change.
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Lots of excuses, lots of mitigation, no actual action. Yep, that sounds exactly like what will happen. I'm perfectly willing to accept my view is prejudiced against the police in this moment. Yours is prejudiced to always give them the benefit of the doubt. If we're going to discuss this, lets start with accepting that otherwise we are talking at crossed purposes.
Also, I can't be alone in finding the whataboutery of "women do bad shit too" profoundly offensive. Talk about missing the point!
Appreciate you saying I usually talk sense but I think we might be poles apart on this one! It is not hindsight. Black people and women have been saying this about the police for many years. It can be simultaneously true that most police are decent people And that policing as an institution is not fit for purpose.
Look, to be more specific.
The “what aboutery” part of this statement. No, I entire disagree, for good, experience based reasons.
Becoming overly specific in the treatment of what is (to me, at least) clearly a much broader issue, simply increases the marginalisation of every other group encountering similar issues.
The heart of the issue, is that some humans can, will, do and will continue to, abuse any little authority (or great) to bully those that they can. Bullying covers a pretty broad spectrum of unpleasantness from snide looks to murder, in that sentence. Dismissing the greater part of the problem doesn’t do anything to resolve the issue. The opposite. All you are achieving is shutting down an important conversation.
All that this ever achieves is to entrench division and force whole sections of society into ridiculous goody/baddie roles. How, exactly, does that help?
It plays back into that “You’reeither with us or against us” attitude the the Labour Party seems to exude, to many outside of it.
For reference, despite being a former Conservative party member and a “centrist” for the last 2 decades, I have been a Trades Union member for over thirty years. I have been listening to, and paying attention to, such arguments; for my entire working life. A working life that has already seen the transition from women and homosexuals being both legally and physically prevented from sea service, to preparing to join a ship under a female captain, apparently married to her wife for several years now (I haven’t met her yet, so that’s hearsay, I apologise for the double standard).
On the hearsay aspect. Would any of you accept a “I read that somebody posted on another forum, that they grew purple antlers on their testicles after receiving the Pfizer vaccine” without so much as a link to the forum in question?
Too complex to cover properly in this format, all of it.
Ultimately, I strongly suspect the current MET is better than it would have been without Cressida’s leadership and if it had continued with “more of the same” that proceeded her. This does not preclude acceptance that thing could and should be better, merely a belief that the expectations for pace of change are unrealistic and that the source of change is misrepresented by the arguments. Have you spoken to a group of teenage boys recently, school age I mean, because I had the “pleasure” recently and it was anything but. I think things are going backwards. I even suspect the approach to the situation I tried to identify here, might be why that is occurring.
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The fucking desperation to avoid criticising the police is disgusting, tying himself in knots to find some way that it was Everard's fault, that its women's fault. These people need to be fucked off out of public life.
As a matter of interest, do you have a working proposal for replacement of the police service/system?
As you probably know, I live in London. My third floor flat overlooks our carpark, where every so often men will come and inject heroin into their groin in full view of my home. Not surprisingly, I know some of my local police officers! I have a vested interest in the Met working effectively for all the citizens of my city. I fully support the police when they call for increasing staffing numbers and say they are under-resourced, something that has clearly happened as a result of the econoically illiterate and socially destructive policies of the various Conservative governments we've had since 2010. These governments have, generally speaking, been voted in thanks to the support of small town and rural residents, who it seems are happy to see the police and the courts defunded whilst those of us in big cities - who in general did not vote for these policies - suffer the lion's share of the consequences. One might go so far to say this many of the UK's citizens "simply failing to acknowledge the difficult realities of the world".
I get that policing London is difficult, it is a huge and complex place facing issues no other city in the UK does. I know that the Met do some really good work on murder and organised crime. I am also fully aware that the day to day work of all police officers is very tough, and that a lot of the social "clean up" work they do, such as dealing with the drug users in my neighbourhood (quite a nice neighbourhood, actually!) is both grim and the result of failures elsewhere in our society.
And yet, yet, yet... I totally agree with spidermonkey and battery here. This is an institution that in many respects is not fit for purpose. Let me tell you about my mate, who is a mild-mannered civil servant, teetotal, kinda churchy, yet gets pulled over more times in a year than I have in a decade. The fact that you read to the end of the previous sentence and you know exactly why this happens tells you all you need to know. This is not just an anecote: the latest police inspectorate report says (on page 50) that black people are 4.3 times more likely to be pulled over than whites. Yes, direction of travel, institutional change is hard, etc etc, but... it is 22 fucking years since the fucking Macpherson report!
So, moving on from the old news that the Met may struggle to serve the 40% of Londoners who aren't white, let's consider the new news that the Met may also struggle to deal with the 51% of Londoners who aren't male. Well, not new to women, obviously, given rape reporting rates, but you get my drift. In particular, let's look at this "hearsay" business. The story comes from an interview World at One did on Thursday with Parm Sandhu, who spent 30 years in the Met and rose to Chief Superintendent. Here's a transcript of that interview.
PS: "The police service is very sexist and misogynistic... it's put down to banter and "you can't take a joke". A lot of women will not report their colleagues because, if it was me..."
Interviewer: "Was it you, did you experience something that should have been reported?"
PS: "Yes, I did, but I dealt with it myself. And on one occaision I did report it and then I was vilified. Because what happens is, the male police officers will then close ranks and the fear that most women police officers have got is that when you're calling for help, you've pressed that emergency button on your radio, they're not going to turn up and you're going to get kicked in in the street. So you've got to be very careful and weigh which battles you can fight and which ones you can actually win."
Int: "So you don't report something serious that happens from a colleague because you fear that people will leave you to have your head kicked in?"
PS: "Yes. Absolutely. And women officers who are married to police officers won't report domestic violence either because of the same sort of issues. The woman becomes the perpetrator."
Here we have a former senior police officer telling us that she did not report a serious issue that should have been reported, and we have an explanation from her as to why she didn't, ie she felt the penalty of speaking out, as a woman, was the threat of violence - almost certainly male violence. She is clearly a tough cookie but she uses the word fear.
"I didn't report something because I was afraid of a beating. A woman complaining about male violence becomes the perpetrator."
That's where we're at. I'm livid about this. And you know what? This is never, ever fucking on us, is it? Us straight, white, reasonably middle class men, this is never really our shit to deal with. It's for black people, Asian people, gays, lesbians, women. Never fucking us that have this steaming pile of shite landing in the middle of our lives, is it? We can rationalise it away with banter or human nature or women bully too you know or the woke mob or whatever the shitty excuse du jour is, right?
What's that quote from Andrea Dworkin... "Many women, I think, resist feminism because it is an agony to be fully conscious of the brutal misogyny which permeates culture, society, and all personal relationships.”
So yes, your response - a quibble over the legal status followed by another statement that a fellow poster calls "profoundly offensive" - made me fucking angry. I don't punter people often and don't do it lightly, and to be honest I should have used my second choice and would delete my first if I could. But that is not bullying nor am I trying to silence you. I just think that you've confused freedom of speech from freedom from consequences. Please, post on.
As for the more interesting and substantive issue of Cressida Dick, of course she cannot know what is going on in every corner of a huge sprawling organisation. But what leaders are responsible for is creating the structures in which their subordinates work, and clearly something is going wrong here. Not just the Everard case. What about the disgusting case of police officers taking selfies next to murdered women Bibaa Henry and Nicole Smallman? Or the way women refuse to report sexual offences to the police? The undercover officers spying on protestors? The Daniel Morgan case?
Speaking as someone who's worked in communications, the way they've handled this is can only be an example of the Met's broader institutional failings. They've had months knowing this evidence was going to come out and to prepare for it. To say "yeah, just try to resist arrest or ask a bus driver"... well either they came up with this shit on the fly, in which case the leadership who have approved it really are incompetent, or they put it in their plans weeks or months ago and signed off on it, in which case the leadership are tone deaf idiots who cannot comprehend the impact of the words they use because they can't see outside their bunker.
Sure, this is communications rather than operations, but it's my experience that failures to communicate properly are often indicative of deeper organisational problems. Not to mention the minor point that public perception of the police is vital in them being able to operate properly. If a police chief's message is "consider trying to avoid arrest" rather than "here's what we've done, here's our strategy for the future" and they don't resign, then we are clearly in a world where the buck doesn't stop with anyone remotely senior.
I saw a fascinating post on Twitter from a professor of government who said one of his masters student was a police officer who wrote a dissertation highlighting some weaknesses in the Met HQ where he worked. He was promptly sent to work out in Peckham for a few years for his sins. This is not an organisational culture that can cope with being challenged and for the sake of all of us this needs to change. Some ideas how are here from Nick Timothy:
https://twitter.com/NJ_Timothy/status/1443879501545590785
One of them is: "Appoint not just a new Commissioner but an entirely new leadership team with a clean culture and a mission to reform the Met from top to bottom. If that means hiring from overseas, do it."
The fact he writes this after he was May's special advisor at the Home Office could be taken as a piece of cynical posturing, but I'll ignore that and take seriously the idea that police reform is really fucking hard. Partly because I believe it is, as every country has these problems, but also because we left-wingers, far from all being the naive fools you seem to take us for, Matt, are often very aware of how difficult improving society really is.
That's because we don't comfort ourselves with things like "Better than 30 years ago," which just doesn't cut it. I feel - I may be wrong - that those who are natural, small-c conservatives often love change and improvements in retrospect but struggle with the present day iteration of it, because change is chaotic and often involves a direct challenge to the people in charge. Conservatives are people who love the St James Bible and parliamentary democracy and so on, but forget that their antecedents killed those who translated the Bible into English, fought the 19th century reform movements, fought vigorously against people who don't have power clamouring for anything other than what they're given. Do excuse the diversion into my views on the conservative mindset, but it seemed relevant, hopefully more so than complaining about "scum Tories" or "woke mobs".
A bit of an essay that, but aside from finding this stuff important, I think that sometimes it's worth explaining to people why you've criticised them.
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Will respond more fully at some point, but just as yet more evidence this problem is not confined to the Met. Abuse of power, reacting poorly when his authority questioned. No consequences, just a written warning. :shrug:
https://twitter.com/davidallengreen/status/1443944947346984960?s=19
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You may feel it “ doesn’t cut it”, but that doesn’t change it. I certainly don’t think it’s somebody else’s problem either, nor have I implied such.
Merely that the focus is on the wrong target. You’re talking about metaphorical “little Dutch boys” sticking fingers in Dykes and pretending the ocean isn’t lapping on the other side and already seeping through a thousand other small breaches.
“Better than thirty years ago” is a considerable achievement. More progress has been achieved in that period, than was won in the years between granting of sufferage, to the point chosen.
Again. This does not preclude accepting that a great deal more change is needed. I maintain, the MET is symptom, a metaphor for, society at large.
Not sure demonising rural populations helps much, either.
People vote in what they believe to be their own best interests, for one thing and secondly, FPTP silences and disenfranchises as much of the rural population as any other.
As to Cressida’s tenure, or Tory bias etc, Labour were in power from 1997-2010, with power to completely overhaul the police service nationwide. They didn’t.
Righteous anger, is, often, actually pretty righteous and justified; it is also frequently both impotent and counterproductive.
I understand the reference to “ white middle classe men” etc, but I wonder if you’ve noticed the rapid increase in “recruiting” of young white men and children, by right wing organisations? It’s been mentioned a few times in various media outlets (I’m manning the desk at the bunker and snatching a moment here and there to type, frequently losing track of what I’ve written, or not quite writing what I intended. So not able to cite examples) and I’m certain I’ve seen it happen amongst my 14 year old son’s peer group. Alarmingly so.
You might look to the exclusionary rhetoric for a partial explanation of that, complex though it maybe in totality.
Banging the same old drum, once more. The “ Left” are adept at excluding whole swathes based on nuanced disagreements; the “ Right” embrace anybody who might further their own goals (they often put them up against a wall, once victory has been achieved (Metaphorically or literally, depending on scale of victory).
Right = Selfish, ends justify means etc etc.
Left= Empathy, belief in collective good etc etc.
The former seems to win out, repeatedly, despite generally commanding similar levels of support. Probably because of that ability to compromise moral stance, in favour of achieving goals.
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Re the Met and Cressida Dick, it's interesting that we're discussing this in a political thread incidentally. SM and Sean, I accept that the Met Police have significant failings, but at one time, not that long ago, the person who is ultimately responsible is surely the Home Secretary. I feel that she is just as culpable to be honest, concentrating on culture war bullshit and trying to victimise migrants and ignoring the fact that many of the difficulties the police have are surely due to the cuts made by her party and on her watch. There's no excuse for racism but it must be very hard to do that job with fewer and fewer resources and less funding, putting officers under pressure and leading to mistakes.
Cressida Dick shouldn't just be a punchbag for an incompetent government.
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Governments…
As pointed out above it’s been 22 years since the Macpherson report, which splits rather evenly between Labour and Tory governments…
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Will respond more fully at some point, but just as yet more evidence this problem is not confined to the Met. Abuse of power, reacting poorly when his authority questioned. No consequences, just a written warning. :shrug:
https://twitter.com/davidallengreen/status/1443944947346984960?s=19
Really?
Without knowing anything else at all about it, I'd say that example can probably be pigeon-holed into the 'you reap what you sow / get the police treatment you deserve by your behaviour' category. Of course m'lord/lady I'm sure the man was an entirely upstanding bastion of his community and did a lot of good work for charity etc. And no that doesn't justify making up an offence to arrest someone, but it does just look like a duck twat being treated like a twat.
My thoughts are as OMM said it: some men (and women) are utter bastards. The police have to deal with these utter bastards daily because it's utter bastards who generally commit most crime. And some of the more undercover utter bastards even make it into the police force, just as they make it into politics, broadcasting, teaching, sports-coaching, business and finance, and dare I say it your chosen activity/sport. We're lucky to have the police force we do and by the proportion of utter bastards in society we probably deserve something more like the US police horror of horrors. Small mercies etc.
None of which means 'can't do better', especially around misogyny which is seemingly embedded in our collective psyches.
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There's lots of really good points being made here and good discussion that has moved on a huge amount since my last post so I just have a couple of points:
- it's not the 'minority report' to suggest that someone who has 3 accusations of indecent exposure and has the nickname 'the rapist' should be put on desk duties / suspended. Many many employers would take action on misconduct without a criminal act having been committed never mind a conviction secured.
- Cressida Dick is not to blame for the culture of the police. To seek to apportion blame seeks to scapegoat, and placate the masses into thinking that something has been done, that justice has been served and we can all get on with our lives. What I am so disappointed by is her response to the whole Sarah Everard case, my hope was that having a female at the top might change some of the communication strategies and victim blaming messaging that has come out of the police to be acceptance of failings and commitment to change.
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Will respond more fully at some point, but just as yet more evidence this problem is not confined to the Met. Abuse of power, reacting poorly when his authority questioned. No consequences, just a written warning. :shrug:
https://twitter.com/davidallengreen/status/1443944947346984960?s=19
Really?
Without knowing anything else at all about it, I'd say that example can probably be pigeon-holed into the 'you reap what you sow / get the police treatment you deserve by your behaviour' category. Of course m'lord/lady I'm sure the man was an entirely upstanding bastion of his community and did a lot of good work for charity etc.
My thoughts are as OMM said it: some men (and women) are utter bastards. The police have to deal with these utter bastards daily because it's utter bastards who generally commit most crime. And some of the more undercover utter bastards even make it into the police force, just as they make it into politics, broadcasting, teaching, sports-coaching, business and finance, and dare I say it your chosen activity/sport. We're lucky to have the police force we do and by the proportion of utter bastards in society we probably deserve something more like the US police horror of horrors. Small mercies etc.
None of which means 'can't do better', especially around misogyny which is seemingly embedded in our collective psyches.
I have huge huge issue with your categorisation of people who commit crime as utter bastards and therefore deserving of crap treatment. Treating someone with dignity and respect demonstrates to them how to behave. The police are supposed to be a professional service, there to uphold the law and keep people safe, not take it personally and treat people like crap, in my experience you treat people with a bit of humanity and that's what you get back. I accept that there will always be exceptions to this but they are the exception, not the rule.
And what about the woman who is stealing or sex working in order to pay for food for her two kids? Or the middle class well educated man who committed fraud? Or the guy who punched someone in defence of his little brother? Or the 17 year old who has been groomed into drug running? It's easy to other people who commit crimes and write them all off as deserving of everything they get but once you start putting human details in and seeing them as people that becomes harder.
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I'm sure it is (possible to write them off etc. etc.). Except I wasn't. I was commenting on the specific that Spider posted and not, by extension ad absurdum, some unfortunate case that you came up with. Lets also just say that perhaps I don't require a lecture on rehabilitation and a fair crack of life's whip, as no doubt some others here won't either. But yes you're right, in general all people should be treated with respect and dignity.
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I'm sure it is (possible to write them off etc. etc.). Except I wasn't. I was commenting on the specific that Spider posted and not, by extension ad absurdum, some unfortunate case that you came up with. Lets also just say that perhaps I don't require a lecture on rehabilitation and a fair crack of life's whip, as no doubt some others here won't either. But yes you're right, in general all people should be treated with respect and dignity.
Apologies of my response was a bit rash. Not meaning to preach or have a dig. I understand your point but am an idealist, and think that we should be aiming for ideals when it comes to people who hold such power in our society.
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Will respond more fully at some point, but just as yet more evidence this problem is not confined to the Met. Abuse of power, reacting poorly when his authority questioned. No consequences, just a written warning. :shrug:
https://twitter.com/davidallengreen/status/1443944947346984960?s=19
Really?
Without knowing anything else at all about it, I'd say that example can probably be pigeon-holed into the 'you reap what you sow / get the police treatment you deserve by your behaviour' category. Of course m'lord/lady I'm sure the man was an entirely upstanding bastion of his community and did a lot of good work for charity etc.
My thoughts are as OMM said it: some men (and women) are utter bastards. The police have to deal with these utter bastards daily because it's utter bastards who generally commit most crime. And some of the more undercover utter bastards even make it into the police force, just as they make it into politics, broadcasting, teaching, sports-coaching, business and finance, and dare I say it your chosen activity/sport. We're lucky to have the police force we do and by the proportion of utter bastards in society we probably deserve something more like the US police horror of horrors. Small mercies etc.
None of which means 'can't do better', especially around misogyny which is seemingly embedded in our collective psyches.
I have huge huge issue with your categorisation of people who commit crime as utter bastards and therefore deserving of crap treatment. Treating someone with dignity and respect demonstrates to them how to behave. The police are supposed to be a professional service, there to uphold the law and keep people safe, not take it personally and treat people like crap, in my experience you treat people with a bit of humanity and that's what you get back. I accept that there will always be exceptions to this but they are the exception, not the rule.
And what about the woman who is stealing or sex working in order to pay for food for her two kids? Or the middle class well educated man who committed fraud? Or the guy who punched someone in defence of his little brother? Or the 17 year old who has been groomed into drug running? It's easy to other people who commit crimes and write them all off as deserving of everything they get but once you start putting human details in and seeing them as people that becomes harder.
However 30 plus years working in mental health services tells me treating some people with respect and dignity and they will spit in your face and kick you in the balls. Then claim it’s because they are “ill”.
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Will respond more fully at some point, but just as yet more evidence this problem is not confined to the Met. Abuse of power, reacting poorly when his authority questioned. No consequences, just a written warning. :shrug:
https://twitter.com/davidallengreen/status/1443944947346984960?s=19
Really?
Without knowing anything else at all about it, I'd say that example can probably be pigeon-holed into the 'you reap what you sow / get the police treatment you deserve by your behaviour' category. Of course m'lord/lady I'm sure the man was an entirely upstanding bastion of his community and did a lot of good work for charity etc.
My thoughts are as OMM said it: some men (and women) are utter bastards. The police have to deal with these utter bastards daily because it's utter bastards who generally commit most crime. And some of the more undercover utter bastards even make it into the police force, just as they make it into politics, broadcasting, teaching, sports-coaching, business and finance, and dare I say it your chosen activity/sport. We're lucky to have the police force we do and by the proportion of utter bastards in society we probably deserve something more like the US police horror of horrors. Small mercies etc.
None of which means 'can't do better', especially around misogyny which is seemingly embedded in our collective psyches.
I have huge huge issue with your categorisation of people who commit crime as utter bastards and therefore deserving of crap treatment. Treating someone with dignity and respect demonstrates to them how to behave. The police are supposed to be a professional service, there to uphold the law and keep people safe, not take it personally and treat people like crap, in my experience you treat people with a bit of humanity and that's what you get back. I accept that there will always be exceptions to this but they are the exception, not the rule.
And what about the woman who is stealing or sex working in order to pay for food for her two kids? Or the middle class well educated man who committed fraud? Or the guy who punched someone in defence of his little brother? Or the 17 year old who has been groomed into drug running? It's easy to other people who commit crimes and write them all off as deserving of everything they get but once you start putting human details in and seeing them as people that becomes harder.
However 30 plus years working in mental health services tells me treating some people with respect and dignity and they will spit in your face and kick you in the balls. Then claim it’s because they are “ill”.
Yes, I’m more of an idealist than this dialogue portrays. Quite gentle and accommodating, until I’m not.
It is the number of occasions where I have found it absolutely necessary to be other than gentle and distressingly often, considerably so; that colour my view on the matter.
Some people are utter bastards.
It is one of the biggest reservations I have with the “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity” type rhetoric from certain corners of the Left.
If you offered the hand of friendship to some people, you would get it back minus any rings, watches etc that went out with it, other people would simply remove the whole thing at the wrist and not feel a hint of remorse and still others would grasp it hard, draw the rest of your arm in and smile at you as they skinned it with a blunt butter knife.
They still won’t be the worst you might come across.
I think a lot of “utopian” idealism, rather relies on a good number of people simply ceasing to exist…
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This, is the Labour party in microcosm.
Brutus, the above exchange will suffice to answer your question from a few days ago:
The Labour party:
As a member, you must enjoy your bubble, fruitlessly wave your arms in the air in protest at every slight and achieve nothing by simply failing to acknowledge the difficult realities of the world. Don’t forget to chase off anybody who doesn’t fully subscribe to your bubble and brand them heretics.
Not sure what has caused the lack of humility in your words towards me. A little pissed that you have characterised me as above. It's clear I view the world and other humans in a very different way to yourself. It's clear we're both passionate about our beliefs but please don't assign words and actions to me based on your own prejudices.
Anyhow...
In case you weren't paying attention, I left the Labour Party as soon as Sir Keir was elected. I voted Green last time out. My former membership fee goes monthly to the local food bank and what little time I do have for campaigning etc.. Now goes into environmental causes. Not 'fruitlessly waving' ones arms.
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This, is the Labour party in microcosm.
Brutus, the above exchange will suffice to answer your question from a few days ago:
The Labour party:
As a member, you must enjoy your bubble, fruitlessly wave your arms in the air in protest at every slight and achieve nothing by simply failing to acknowledge the difficult realities of the world. Don’t forget to chase off anybody who doesn’t fully subscribe to your bubble and brand them heretics.
Not sure what has caused the lack of humility in your words towards me. A little pissed that you have characterised me as above. It's clear I view the world and other humans in a very different way to yourself. It's clear we're both passionate about our beliefs but please don't assign words and actions to me based on your own prejudices.
Anyhow...
In case you weren't paying attention, I left the Labour Party as soon as Sir Keir was elected. I voted Green last time out. My former membership fee goes monthly to the local food bank and what little time I do have for campaigning etc.. Now goes into environmental causes. Not 'fruitlessly waving' ones arms.
No no no, it was in answer to your question about the Labour party, in general, not you. Not a description of you. Further, I referenced the earlier discussion as that answer; then went on to make a mocking, hyperbolic “joining instruction” for a new Labour party member (that I’d actually meant to title “Welcome to the Labour party” but somehow (probably because I snatching moments between doing other things and feeling miffed with Seans vindictiveness) missed “Welcome to”.
Anyway, absolutely not written to be a condemnation of you. I knew I’d fucked the tone when I read it back this morning, but didn’t imagine you would read it as you did, even then.
No, my gripe is with the Labour party, as a movement and the “progressive” population as a whole (something that extends quite a way down the blue slope of the bell curve).
To reiterate: the “Left” is riven by division, for rather petty and silly differences and pursuit of purity. The “Right” bears no such handicap, since they will accept any compromise as long as benefit can be had from such.
This is a frustrating state of affairs, since the world would be immeasurably improved and the “Right” permanently relegated to second fiddle, if “Leftists” would accept “moderates” as progressive equals, rather than viewing them as part of the right.
The blame lies firmly in the darker red end of the left, there.
At risk of appearing overly critical, whilst I get your chagrin with your previous party affiliation and your desire to move on from it; it really only deepens the problem.
Recognition of the common ground, between all peoples not in the “Swivel Eyed Loon” camp, is the only way out of this mess.
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Quite. Have we had this yet?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WboggjN_G-4
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To reiterate: the “Left” is riven by division, for rather petty and silly differences and pursuit of purity. The “Right” bears no such handicap, since they will accept any compromise as long as benefit can be had from such.
This is a frustrating state of affairs, since the world would be immeasurably improved and the “Right” permanently relegated to second fiddle, if “Leftists” would accept “moderates” as progressive equals, rather than viewing them as part of the right.
Indeed. It's a sad state of affairs when there are many people who apparently want to spend their time threatening Rosie Duffield for being a feminist, rather than opposing a government that wants to make protest an imprisonable offence.
Keir Starmer had a difficult job to do in addressing the Corbyn legacy of antisemitism and he's been pretty successful. He is a bit uncharismatic and a relatively inexperienced politician but I think he needs to be given a chance for a few years.
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Brutus.
That was still not correct, very difficult without the nuances of body language and inflexion etc. I was going to PM, but that wouldn’t cut it.
I am incredibly sorry that my Labour party rant came across as an attack on you.
It absolutely wasn’t meant to be, I only mentioned you at all because you’d queried something I’d said earlier about extreme socialists gatekeeping “pure” ideology in the party.
I had intended to imply that Sean was practicing the same tactics.
I really, really shouldn’t have mentioned you at all. I have incredible respect for you and what you do and I don’t recall you ever gatekeeping; passionately defending your ideals, yes, attacking people for not being “pure” enough? Not that I can recall.
My irritation with others lead me to speak carelessly.
The Labour party will be the worse for driving people like you out and the “ Left” is diminished by it’s divisions.
It is a shame, because we can all agree on what, broadly, is best for the country. Nothing will change until cooperation between those left of the Swivel Eyes and the Fascists is achieved. They have no “ morals” that might contain their actions.
I think it’s likely that the right will continue to rise, sucking in the middle ground, simply by play acting unity and stability whilst the left self destruct over how much milk you can put in your coffee before it becomes a racist gesture…
Many on the left behave in a manner that has lead to accusations of being the “thought police” or similar. It’s hardly a surprising accusation. I’ve been watching with frustration for decades, whilst otherwise good people, happily set up, metaphorical, factories making ammunition for the right.
Of course, it doesn’t help that all the PR and Advertising Execs are over there…
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Keep an eye on the votes on the floor at the Tory conference, and no doubt we'll see another party divided....
Oh hang on they don't have any.
In terms of substance, apparently we're transitioning to a high wage economy, hence why we can't buy fuel. Hopefully someone will remind the government that they pay the wages of nearly 6 million people directly, so they can remember to give them all a pay rise...
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Keep an eye on the votes on the floor at the Tory conference, and no doubt we'll see another party divided....
Oh hang on they don't have any.
In terms of substance, apparently we're transitioning to a high wage economy, hence why we can't buy fuel. Hopefully someone will remind the government that they pay the wages of nearly 6 million people directly, so they can remember to give them all a pay rise...
The problem with smoke and mirrors, is that eventually the smoke coats the mirror and it stops reflecting and somebody unexpectedly opens a window and the smoke clears.
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Keep an eye on the votes on the floor at the Tory conference, and no doubt we'll see another party divided....
Oh hang on they don't have any.
In terms of substance, apparently we're transitioning to a high wage economy, hence why we can't buy fuel. Hopefully someone will remind the government that they pay the wages of nearly 6 million people directly, so they can remember to give them all a pay rise...
Although it's surprising and disappointing that the government isn't losing popularity over the fuel, food and energy crisis, I'll be interested to see if that changes when furlough ends, the UC uplift removal takes effect and noone can buy a turkey.
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Keep an eye on the votes on the floor at the Tory conference, and no doubt we'll see another party divided....
Oh hang on they don't have any.
In terms of substance, apparently we're transitioning to a high wage economy, hence why we can't buy fuel. Hopefully someone will remind the government that they pay the wages of nearly 6 million people directly, so they can remember to give them all a pay rise...
Although it's surprising and disappointing that the government isn't losing popularity over the fuel, food and energy crisis, I'll be interested to see if that changes when furlough ends, the UC uplift removal takes effect and noone can buy a turkey.
Honestly, I’ve expected them to “lose popularity” so many times already, so many unmitigated, well reported, major fuck ups; causing everything from economic hardship to thousands of excess deaths, but the fat scarecrow keeps on blustering through, loved by pompous middle aged wankers countrywide.
I was recently told that this was “still better ‘van wot Corbyn wud ‘a dun” by a man who had lost his job during lockdown.
It’s nuts.
Too many people would have to admit they were wrong, so they’ll sit quietly on the train as it charges over the precipice.
Probably muttering something about “well, it couldn’t be helped. Bloody Brussels had it in for us, din’t they…”
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Boiling a frog.
Wonder how hot (shit) it needs to get before turkeys stop voting for Christmas?
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In terms of substance, apparently we're transitioning to a high wage economy, hence why we can't buy fuel.
I've applied for dozens of jobs recently, and in many areas minimum wage is the norm. Given the margins in the hospitality industry, I really can't see them being able to increase them further.
So the government's chosen strategy of claiming it isn't responsible and businesses should pay more seems likely to result in the demise of an awful lot of smaller businesses, and perhaps (in hospitality for example)
a return of the 1970s era of a few poor quality identical pub chains kicking out crappy microwave meals?
Not to mention the current likely scenario of a mass pig cull and an endless stream of tedious shortages for months on end. At least we can all stay warm in the glow of our glorious f*****g sovereignty eh.
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Not to mention the current likely scenario of a mass pig cull and an endless stream of tedious shortages for months on end.
I read this as '..a mass pig cull and an endless stream of tedious sausages'.
Cheer up Toby.
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So the government's chosen strategy of claiming it isn't responsible and businesses should pay more seems likely to result in the demise of an awful lot of smaller businesses, and perhaps (in hospitality for example)
a return of the 1970s era of a few poor quality identical pub chains kicking out crappy microwave meals?
Can’t comment on the rest but decent pubs with decent food around here seem to be doing very well post lockdown, so hopefully we are safe on that front. I assume that pay in indy pubs is better than a chain one but don’t know.
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Funny listening to UK ministers while in Europe... Yes, the global supply chain has all sorts of issues at the moment, but Germany, Italy and France seem to have plenty of petrol and no shortages in the shops...
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I think people would have a lot more time for the Police if they felt like the Police actually enforced the law effectively.
Whereas I think a lot of people's perception in this country is that if your car is nicked, or you're sexually assaulted, or some corrupt bastard steals millions from a pension pot, then the police don't really do anything. There are myriad reasons for that but I think by and large the British Police are considered to be a bit useless when it comes to whatever you need them for, or whatever you see in the news.
Disclaimer: I personally think there's a lot of issues with the British Police but that they certainly aren't the US Police and people who suggest they are are being irresponsible. My brother is also a copper, I think there are good Police Officers, I think the services have been hugely underfunded and overstretched. But I also think the leadership is really good at saying sorry and then doing fuck all when it turns out coppers are abusing their power and position etc again.
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Funny listening to UK ministers while in Europe... Yes, the global supply chain has all sorts of issues at the moment, but Germany, Italy and France seem to have plenty of petrol and no shortages in the shops...
No shortages in the shops, eh? Bet you can’t find a Yorkshire pudding in the Nice carrefour
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Yeh Toby cheer the fuck up mate. It’s not as bad as Project Fear predicted.
And what with the supine media, weakened powers of the courts for judicial review, and reduced freedoms for citizens to protest its looking pretty good for all that post-Brexit political accountability.
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Yeh Toby cheer the fuck up mate. It’s not as bad as Project Fear predicted.
And what with the supine media, weakened powers of the courts for judicial review, and reduced freedoms for citizens to protest its looking pretty good for all that post-Brexit political accountability.
Sunny uplands here we come!
No shortages in the shops, eh? Bet you can’t find a Yorkshire pudding in the Nice carrefour
Touche
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No shortages in the shops, eh? Bet you can’t find a Yorkshire pudding in the Nice carrefour
There probably is some in a warehouse, but they have no idea what shelf it should go on. Pudding c'est un dessert oui? Non. C'est un patissierie? Non. You eat it with rosbif???
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Yeh Toby cheer the fuck up mate. It’s not as bad as Project Fear predicted.
And what with the supine media, weakened powers of the courts for judicial review, and reduced freedoms for citizens to protest its looking pretty good for all that post-Brexit political accountability.
Yeah, feeling pretty bloody cheerful now; the UK's amazing. Businesses raising wages is bollocks, they'll just wait until enough people are desperate enough for any job that they'll happily work for £8.91 an hour.
In reply to teestub, I very much doubt it, minimum wage is pretty much the standard in hospitality as far as I've seen unless you're at a more senior level.
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Yeah, feeling pretty bloody cheerful now; the UK's amazing. Businesses raising wages is bollocks, they'll just wait until enough people are desperate enough for any job that they'll happily work for £8.91 an hour.
No doubt government will simply bring these recalcitrant businesses into line by raising the minimum wage then! Job done, easy.
In all seriousness though, of course most hospitality jobs are still paying minimum wage. Wages haven't actually gone up, just because the government say they have. Would it shock anyone that perhaps they might be twisting things a little (I'm being generous)?
The *average* salary + bonus growth in Q2 2021 has increased, by 6.6% year on year. Sounds a lot, but it is a statisical outlier due to the pandemic. What was happening a year ago? Essentially almost all hospitality jobs were either paid at 80% (furlough), or lost completely. Now they are all back then even paying min wage it looks like wages have skyrocketed, even though they have stayed the same. The ONS have had a stab at estimating these effects and reckon that wages overall have actually increased by about 3.2% - 4.4% in reality. Given Q2 covers the yearly inflation adjustment then we're looking at wage growth of basically sweet FA.
These effects are already known as they are exactly why the government are not honouring the pension triple lock i.e. they have already argued that wage increases are a statistical hiccup!!! Unbelievably, now they are arguing the opposite!!! Of course, its bollocks. But its hard to keep track of the lies to be fair.
PS All stats from ONS https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/employmentandemployeetypes/bulletins/averageweeklyearningsingreatbritain/august2021
https://blog.ons.gov.uk/2021/07/15/far-from-average-how-covid-19-has-impacted-the-average-weekly-earnings-data/
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Hospitality - Even the pretty highbrow places round here are struggling for staff (poncy south Manchester)
Wages - The problem with the current Tory rhetoric, that the scarcity of candidates will drive up wages, is that those costs will be passed on. In the case of lorry drivers, if the costs of transporting goods go up, the cost of those goods go up so the poor nurse trying to buy those goods has an effective wage decrease as cost of living has increased more than the oh so generous pay rise from the Government. (emotive job picked for full effect)
I'm not saying wages going up in some sectors is a bad thing, but the fact these are always talked of in simple isolated examples instead of acknowledging the interconnectedness of everything really gets my goat, especially in the current Tory u-turn spin of "we always knew Brexit would cause our supply chains/farming/fishing to collapse, if fact we wanted it to, so we can build a high wage industry out of the ashes" bollocks.
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For sure the risk at the moment is stagflation (wage and price inflation spiral with low/no growth in GDP). The reward of stagflation, if there is one, is that government debt becomes massively lower just though the value of the pound/dollar/yen/groat debt being worth far less than before, even without any large scale pay-back of the debt. Convenient for central banks and governments worldwide in the long term... if damaging to the average person in the street in the short term.
What we're seeing is a global phenomenon and no-one's sure what's going to happen next. People gnashing their teeth may as well gnash their teeth at the weather.
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emotive job picked for full effect
Only a little bit emotive! But probably more rhetorically effective than pointing out the hit to aggregate demand given that one in six workers are in the public sector. Given the post-pandemic chaos in loads of markets around the world, my guess is that firms that don't face labour shortages are going to keep wages down in the short term, so I suspect plenty of private sector workers are going to lose out too.
I'm not saying wages going up in some sectors is a bad thing, but the fact these are always talked of in simple isolated examples instead of acknowledging the interconnectedness of everything really gets my goat, especially in the current Tory u-turn spin of "we always knew Brexit would cause our supply chains/farming/fishing to collapse, if fact we wanted it to, so we can build a high wage industry out of the ashes" bollocks.
It's pure fucking bollocks. Increasing wages is great, but surely the best way to do it is to increase demand for goods and services rather than restrict labour supply. We're already seeing farms with wasted produce who are going to cut their production next year - so instead of increasing wages we're just seeing lower output.
The other issue with HGV drivers is that I can't see how much of their work can be automated, so instead of getting real productivity rises which lead to increased wages, instead we're just going to get the same work done at a higher cost (to everyone else). I'd actually be fine with seeing driver wages increase but through improvements in the minimum wage (maybe even a sectoral minimum wage), stronger labour laws with better implementation, and stronger rules to protect supermarket suppliers and prevent a race to the bottom. These could have been done at literally any time in the last decade and introduced gradually to prevent crazy wage spikes. But that would have required careful governance.
For a long time I've been convinced that the short run forecasts of Brexit chaos were perhaps a bit unlikely but the real risk was a long run hit to the UK economy, putting it on a low wage, low productivity, low growth track. I was entirely wrong in expecting that transition not to be very bumpy.
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The other issue with HGV drivers is that I can't see how much of their work can be automated...
I won't be surprised if this comment doesn't age well beyond 2030 - I'd not be at all surprised to see development of some kind of dedicated driverless lane on motorways for the purpose of 24hr driverless HGVs transporting goods between warehouses and onward travel hubs.
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We’ve all been waiting very patiently for our jetpacks Pete.
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For sure the risk at the moment is stagflation (wage and price inflation spiral with low/no growth in GDP). The reward of stagflation, if there is one, is that government debt becomes massively lower just though the value of the pound/dollar/yen/groat debt being worth far less than before, even without any large scale pay-back of the debt. Convenient for central banks and governments worldwide in the long term... if damaging to the average person in the street in the short term.
Worth reading Nouriel Roubini on this:
https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/stagflation-debt-crisis-2020s-by-nouriel-roubini-2021-06
tl;dr - We could have 70s style stagflation with 2010s level of debt, not a problem for goverments (as Pete says here), but definitely a problem for indebted firms, households and eventually banks. (And also emerging markets whose debt is in dollars, euros or pounds.) Eventually you get high inflation which forces higher interest rates, so everyone with a lot of debt is fucked.
What we're seeing is a global phenomenon and no-one's sure what's going to happen next. People gnashing their teeth may as well gnash their teeth at the weather.
Well, everyone's suffering a massive pandemic-related shock. But in addition the UK has subjected itself to another supply shock (remember we could have extended the Brexit transition period due to the pandemic but chose not too) which is clearly exacerbating the problem. Poor governance has further worsened our position, for example haulage industry groups have been telling the government this would happen for a long time, and it's clear they could have taken steps to deal with the problem, such as changing visa rules or subsidising entry into driving jobs. Thirdly, our competitors in the EU, US and China can call upon continent-wide supplies of labour* and expertise, putting us at a permanent disadvantage.
*Yes, I know there are shortages of truck drivers across the EU, but it's clearly a smaller problem for them than for us.
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The other issue with HGV drivers is that I can't see how much of their work can be automated...
I won't be surprised if this comment doesn't age well beyond 2030 - I'd not be at all surprised to see development of some kind of dedicated driverless lane on motorways for the purpose of 24hr driverless HGVs transporting goods between warehouses and onward travel hubs.
Indeed... already heading that way in the US.
https://spectrum.ieee.org/this-year-autonomous-trucks-will-take-to-the-road-with-no-one-on-board
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I won't be surprised if this comment doesn't age well beyond 2030 - I'd not be at all surprised to see development of some kind of dedicated driverless lane on motorways for the purpose of 24hr driverless HGVs transporting goods between warehouses and onward travel hubs.
Researchers at US Bureau of Labour Statistics are less convinced:
https://hbr.org/2019/09/automation-isnt-about-to-make-truckers-obsolete
Even assuming you're right, I'm not sure that self driving trucks eight years in the future are going to calm inflation worries today.
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For sure the risk at the moment is stagflation (wage and price inflation spiral with low/no growth in GDP). ...
What we're seeing is a global phenomenon and no-one's sure what's going to happen next. People gnashing their teeth may as well gnash their teeth at the weather.
In terms of broader economics yes. However the shortages in fuel, food and workers in many sectors is mostly though not entirely a result of leaving the single market.
There are a number of these things which are at least in part the result of political decisions, not the global economic situation.
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Even assuming you're right, I'm not sure that self driving trucks eight years in the future are going to calm inflation worries today.
Something that nobody suggested. But well done for heading them off in advance.
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I love how in a few short weeks we've gone from these issues with the supply chain and labour shortages being a worldwide problem and nothing to do with Brexit, to now being an integral part of the govt's planned shift to a 'post-Brexit high-wage economy'.
And how the 'old model' of free-market capitalism was the fault of business alone, so now this transition is something for business to sort out alone.
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I love how in a few short weeks we've gone from these issues with the supply chain and labour shortages being a worldwide problem and nothing to do with Brexit, to now being an integral part of the govt's planned shift to a 'post-Brexit high-wage economy'.
And how the 'old model' of free-market capitalism was the fault of business alone, so now this transition is something for business to sort out alone.
It's this aspiring autocratic government's cunning plan of getting into the shit, and then trying to make it all someone else's problem. See also immigration policy, N Ireland etc. It's now routine for Boris Johnson to tell everyone how terrible the N Ireland protocol is, whilst trying to blithely ignore the fact that he negotiated it.
Jonathan Freedland wrote a really good article about the gradual erosion of democracy under this government last week.
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BBC News - Conservative conference: Dominic Raab criticised for misogyny comments
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-58814271
This man is apparently a qualified legal professional.
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Good summary of where I am with all this:
https://mobile.twitter.com/lbc/status/1445378612585185282
The mind boggles how some people can still have faith in this govt.
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It's not even gaslighting, it's too bloody obvious to even be that.
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Good summary of where I am with all this:
https://mobile.twitter.com/lbc/status/1445378612585185282
The mind boggles how some people can still have faith in this govt.
It's not even gaslighting, it's too bloody obvious to even be that.
It's not just Brexit, although that's one of the main problems. Raab interviewed by the today program tired to say that the problem with pigs was trading with China; it took me about 2 minutes to confirm that he was lying with a look at industry figures.
The government just lies and obfuscates about everything. Boris Johnson was wittering about our glorious vaccine rollout in his speech yesterday, ignoring the fact that Spain, Portugal and many other countries have now vaccinated more of their population. We're on about the same as France which has a notorious problem with vaccine refusal. It's not awful but we're hardly world beating.
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This tweet and the accompanying rants are quite entertaining, in a somewhat grim way.
https://twitter.com/Dominic2306/status/1448059195807440902?s=20
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This really isn’t the best time to be caught in the Brexit turmoil, be it short term or not. The scuttlebut in the shipping world is of impending recession, brought about (ironically) by the final resolution of the supply chain crisis, sparked by Covid, compounded by Suez blockages etc etc. It’s due to finally clear in February 2022. It’s notable that the shipping companies are expecting a massive drop in orders (are already experiencing such) due to a building inventory glut as 2020 orders finally arrive. Almost no new vessels have been commissioned and most currently operating were scheduled for scrapping before the crisis, patched up and thrown back out for a short term fix.
It is not a coincidence that the RN has begun hosting Merchant Navy cadets aboard their warships for sea training, nor that the MCA has finally recognised such service as equivalent to service on a merchant ship, over the summer. The RN is fully expecting to end it’s manpower shortage during 2022/23, despite the current glut of job vacancies ashore. They think those vacancies will evaporate as the harsh impact of recent events catch up with us.
https://www.ft.com/content/6478625f-1d62-4bd0-8a27-5ee3de6f36bc?segmentID=ba5c37f3-1ef2-1603-ca72-c26f292ab7db&fbclid=IwAR0d6SYJHmXcPTCwKYLGKG2l7iI3_Y8QpQurH1xrmjUUVasOe45H_lbKNlo_aem_AYWIczglXKS4IcYJxZlQs-hRMLMK-ISN0Ckflyg1XAKzSBJP8kZHdJmYgnNkaxNh2oUIRx87OsGuJXIFVRv6Dgnb21x57G78vZRBqywRJagLIOvWgrVg85BPWsWi43ZRmXA (https://www.ft.com/content/6478625f-1d62-4bd0-8a27-5ee3de6f36bc?segmentID=ba5c37f3-1ef2-1603-ca72-c26f292ab7db&fbclid=IwAR0d6SYJHmXcPTCwKYLGKG2l7iI3_Y8QpQurH1xrmjUUVasOe45H_lbKNlo_aem_AYWIczglXKS4IcYJxZlQs-hRMLMK-ISN0Ckflyg1XAKzSBJP8kZHdJmYgnNkaxNh2oUIRx87OsGuJXIFVRv6Dgnb21x57G78vZRBqywRJagLIOvWgrVg85BPWsWi43ZRmXA)
Edit:
Why?
Squid Games:
A preposterous story line, involving people gambling their very lives, in a series of ridiculous, childish, games, in order to obtain currency to pay off their debts and support their families etc etc.
Squid Games = Military Service.
(Me. I’m back in the games, at least on the side lines).
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Somewhat embarrassing for the government just before COP:
https://news.sky.com/story/uk-trade-deals-should-prioritise-economic-growth-over-environmental-protections-leaked-govt-document-12433808
Not a great surprise, except that its actually written down so blatantly.
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OMM - not everyone shares your view on shipping as far as I can tell, e.g. https://www.freightwaves.com/news/how-supply-chain-chaos-and-sky-high-costs-could-last-until-2023
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OMM - not everyone shares your view on shipping as far as I can tell, e.g. https://www.freightwaves.com/news/how-supply-chain-chaos-and-sky-high-costs-could-last-until-2023
To be fair, it’s not my opinion, it’s that of (for instance) the FT and others. Both articles rely on an assumption around the period beginning February 2022. The FT is, apparently, feeling generally negative to cautious about demand, whereas the AS article banks heavily on increasing demand after current/looming inventory gluts crash. I would note, though, the AS mention the increased lead times and the likely difficulty of actually replenishing inventory within reasonable timescales, without acknowledging one of the possible effects of that being shutdown/collapse of particular a manufacturing sector in a particular region. Also, there’s mention of inflationary pressure, without much speculation on how that might dampen demand etc.
It’s all predicated on differing predictions of what post pandemic demand will actually look like and how different sectors choose to, well, gamble, on that.
I glossed over the ship building aspect in my paragraph above, with a “nothing on order”, where “nothing on order for short term delivery” would have been more appropriate (and “nothing” taken as hyperbole, too). I know of a few constructions that are both delayed (due to supply and manpower issues)and also being delayed by the ordering party trying to renegotiate contracts and delivery dates, such as to defer delivery.
My opinion? Honestly, it’s “fuck knows”.
Pete is probably our resident expert in hedging, I guess. I want (wish) to try and be ready for what is to come. The only thing I can be sure of, after fifty years, is that what actually happens, will still surprise me and somehow manage to incorporate all opposing predictions, good, bad, indifferent and improbable, into one big brown, sticky mess.
Some will “win”, some will “lose” and I reckon blind luck will have as much to do with which side anybody ends up on, as it will any “savvy” claimed by the winners.
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current/looming inventory gluts
I don't think there is any looming inventory glut unless demand drops off a cliff though? US inventories are incredibly low from what I've seen (not got links to hand).
Agree with "who knows"! Especially with wildcard of electricity rationing in China and how that plays out...
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current/looming inventory gluts
I don't think there is any looming inventory glut unless demand drops off a cliff though? US inventories are incredibly low from what I've seen (not got links to hand).
Agree with "who knows"! Especially with wildcard of electricity rationing in China and how that plays out...
Yeah, but I *think* Dizard isn’t talking about now, but a point in early 2022, when the backlog is mostly caught up. As in, most of the orders in transit now, were made in 2020/ early 2021 and that, currently, new orders are lacking. He’s predicting a short term glut (or, at least, complacency on warehouse levels over the next 5 months in anticipation of delayed orders) followed by a surge in demand (because the future orders should have been placed already) with a transport sector unprepared/unable to cope. I would point to the port infrastructure issues mentioned in the AS article, which I don’t think Dizard had adequately covered in his article; as further indication of problems ahead.
A minefield.
Possibly the world will wander through it, humming a silly little ditty, unharmed.
Or not.
🤷♂️
Oh, yeah. The bit in the AS about Xmas stripping out warehouses etc. Surely that’s mainly in the retail sector and light goods assembly etc, rather than heavy industry (which I take to include Car manufacturing and upwards in scale. Do car sales leap up over Xmas? Dunno).
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Pete is probably our resident expert in hedging, I guess. I want (wish) to try and be ready for what is to come. The only thing I can be sure of, after fifty years, is that what actually happens, will still surprise me and somehow manage to incorporate all opposing predictions, good, bad, indifferent and improbable, into one big brown, sticky mess.
Some will “win”, some will “lose” and I reckon blind luck will have as much to do with which side anybody ends up on, as it will any “savvy” claimed by the winners.
I have a mid to long-term view on certain parts of industrial development on a global scale. Not really interested, from an investment pov, in short-term (< 1 year) events unless they have long-term consequences (which covid obvs does).
What I think is beyond doubt - versus what is just speculators' claims (e.g. uranium supply in the short term) and speculators profiteering on short-term squeezes (cobalt in 2018/9, supply of natural gas) - is there is a fundamental issue around long term demand for certain commodities needed in 1. chip-making (namely the tiny amounts of tin used for solder) 2. EV batteries (namely nickel sulfate, as well as tin) and 3. electrification (copper).
These relate to the 3 long-term wider themes below, which rely on the supply issues being solved.
1. build out the energy transition from oil/gas/coal to renewables.
2. introduce mass-scale EV transport.
3. build out the 'internet of things' by mass-scale adoption of industrial automation and consumer goods all connected to internet via 5g.
Toys for xmas, food in the aisles etc., I'm the wrong person to ask and don't really have an opinion. As long as I can get a pizza and a bottle of cider on a Friday pm I'm happy. What's that about ham you say...!
I assume all are aware of the MP murdered today. Fucking grim.
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Yeah.
Definitely grim and dampens the enthusiasm to discuss politics.
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He was my local MP. It's a pretty nice area, I'm totally stunned.
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It's a real problem that elected representatives seem to be increasingly targeted like this, and the death is David Ames is a senseless tragedy. It seems strange that it's being taken by the likes of Priti Patel as being indicative of a problem with social media. I'm not aware that it really has anything to do with it...
People being vile on Twitter is no doubt an issue, but not one which has any direct connection with MPs being murdered, surely?
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Generally coarsening debate referring to public servants with terms like ‘enemies of the people’ might though.
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Generally coarsening debate referring to public servants with terms like ‘enemies of the people’ might though.
I'd agree that. That phrase was specifically mentioned when this was discussed on the BBC. I believe that was the Daily Mail that used it, no?
However, I rather doubt that the perpetrator of the recent killing was a Daily Mail reader. The online abuse is clearly a poor reflection of society and the state of public discourse, but I still don't know if it's really pertinent to this case.
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It's a real problem that elected representatives seem to be increasingly targeted like this, and the death is David Ames is a senseless tragedy. It seems strange that it's being taken by the likes of Priti Patel as being indicative of a problem with social media. I'm not aware that it really has anything to do with it...
I was curious about this reference so tried to evidence it. Maybe Priti Patel did say it as well but the quote in this BBC article (https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/oct/15/commons-speaker-to-examine-mps-security-after-david-amesss-death) is from a labour MP, Anna Turley.
"The former Labour MP for Redcar Anna Turley, who lost her seat in 2019, said she had decided not to stand in future elections because of the constant threats – for which she blamed a culture of abuse on social media.
“It’s encouraging people to become more and more extreme in the things they say and the language they use,” she said.
“We have been fostering an environment where electoral representatives are dehumanised. It’s become completely toxic. You start off in politics with an open heart and an open hand and that is exactly how David was.”
After consistent abuse on social media, she said, she “ended up not advertising my surgeries, doing everything by invitation, having an intercom on the door”.
Coincidentally, I have just been reading Ayaan Hirsi Ali's two autobiographical books, "Infidel" and "Nomad", which focus substantially on the dysfunctional characteristics of some muslim immigrant communities in the west, and in particular the Somali diaspora to which she once belonged - as did David Ames' killer - as well as her long period in dutch police protection because of islamist death threats. A recommended read for open-minded folk, though of course Ayaan is these days an alt-right pariah to progressives for pointing out uncomfortable truths about hands-off multiculturalism and championing the western enlightenment tradition. Weird that woke types are effectively pro- female genetic mutilation, wife beating, family honour murders, etc but, hey, as long as not-white it is all good, right?
So in one fell swoop you're basically calling anyone progressive a narrow minded, FGM apologising, pro-islamic state "woke"? Aye, nice one. Definitely going to bother to read that book now... Nice of you to show your head around here again, it's been a while :wank:
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Pretty sure he's just applying that to a certain subset of the more evangelical of that persuasion.. who are, as with the more extreme/evangelical of most persuasions, pretty nuts and pretty dumb. Though I could be wrong in my assumption!
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It's a real problem that elected representatives seem to be increasingly targeted like this, and the death is David Ames is a senseless tragedy. It seems strange that it's being taken by the likes of Priti Patel as being indicative of a problem with social media. I'm not aware that it really has anything to do with it...
I was curious about this reference so tried to evidence it. Maybe Priti Patel did say it as well but the quote in this BBC article (https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/oct/15/commons-speaker-to-examine-mps-security-after-david-amesss-death) is from a labour MP, Anna Turley.
"The former Labour MP for Redcar Anna Turley, who lost her seat in 2019, said she had decided not to stand in future elections because of the constant threats – for which she blamed a culture of abuse on social media.
“It’s encouraging people to become more and more extreme in the things they say and the language they use,” she said.
“We have been fostering an environment where electoral representatives are dehumanised. It’s become completely toxic. You start off in politics with an open heart and an open hand and that is exactly how David was.”
After consistent abuse on social media, she said, she “ended up not advertising my surgeries, doing everything by invitation, having an intercom on the door”.
Coincidentally, I have just been reading Ayaan Hirsi Ali's two autobiographical books, "Infidel" and "Nomad", which focus substantially on the dysfunctional characteristics of some muslim immigrant communities in the west, and in particular the Somali diaspora to which she once belonged - as did David Ames' killer - as well as her long period in dutch police protection because of islamist death threats. A recommended read for open-minded folk, though of course Ayaan is these days an alt-right pariah to progressives for pointing out uncomfortable truths about hands-off multiculturalism and championing the western enlightenment tradition. Weird that woke types are effectively pro- female genetic mutilation, wife beating, family honour murders, etc but, hey, as long as not-white it is all good, right?
So in one fell swoop you're basically calling anyone progressive a narrow minded, FGM apologising, pro-islamic state "woke"? Aye, nice one. Definitely going to bother to read that book now... Nice of you to show your head around here again, it's been a while :wank:
Well, yes, he did, but that’s just provocation for the sake of provocation.
The book is probably worth reading (caveat: I know little about the author) and I’m sure you’ll find alternative view points, from within the same community/heritage. View points that veer from one extreme to the other and all points in between.
If we asked a big and varied enough cross section of the “English” population you’d throw up similar disparate views and opinions on “our” culture and if you broadened that to “British”; even more so. Some of our own “customs” are a bit, um, off and if you delve back a lifetime or so ago, frankly, bloody awful. I suppose you probably only need to go back to Great great Grandparents childhoods, for some posters here, and we’re into hanging people for stealing loaves of bread and other corporal punishments, not to mention women without much in the way of rights. Ffs, it was a criminal offence, punishable by jail time, to be a homosexual serving in HM Armed forces, less than thirty years ago.
Toby has spent a lot of time in the Middle East, at the same time I did, it is difficult to ignore some of the more offensive attitudes and customs, when exposed to them directly. I would point out, on the other hand, that some of our own are or have recently been, too (often those of “religious” origin. Where I grew up, the divide between “Church” and “Chapel” was deep, bitter and economically tough on the “Chapel” people. Not that there wasn’t a whole inverted snobbery and assumed “victim hood” within that community, too).
Living in Israel was a bit eye opening too, for me, as was spending so much time in West Africa. Basically, Toby’s point is not entirely without substance, once stripped of the confrontational tropes.
Humans are pretty awful, on the whole, and “Western society” hasn’t been all that good, all that long, still isn’t in so many ways, so it shouldn’t seem at all surprising that other cultures still perpetuate thing we (and a lot of them, themselves) find offensive etc.
Essentially, the most recent MP murder, bears striking similarities to the last, despite the very obvious differences in skin colour and religion of the perpetrators, ergo, any conclusions about the religion, the nature and heritage of the peoples from which they emerged, must apply equally.
Or perhaps, it’s not viable to deduce much about a particular culture, based on the extreme action of an individual?
Up to you I guess. I’ll pass.
Oh yeah. As a vaguely related aside:
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/09/13/can-progressives-be-convinced-that-genetics-matters?mbid=social_facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_social-type=owned&utm_source=facebook&utm_brand=tny&fbclid=IwAR23A_SmCFHarWTz1_9QFfLpZi2BkZr4C-Y3pj2W5Tqe9Q7ShK8o-hF0bhI (https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/09/13/can-progressives-be-convinced-that-genetics-matters?mbid=social_facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_social-type=owned&utm_source=facebook&utm_brand=tny&fbclid=IwAR23A_SmCFHarWTz1_9QFfLpZi2BkZr4C-Y3pj2W5Tqe9Q7ShK8o-hF0bhI)
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I'd agree that. That phrase was specifically mentioned when this was discussed on the BBC. I believe that was the Daily Mail that used it, no?
However, I rather doubt that the perpetrator of the recent killing was a Daily Mail reader. The online abuse is clearly a poor reflection of society and the state of public discourse, but I still don't know if it's really pertinent to this case.
Yes re the Mail, haven’t seen the BBC.
Daily Mail readership won’t be a decisive factor on an individual basis I agree.
The Mail and Patel wield enough influence to contribute to a decline in civic standards, the paper with its jingoistic and intolerant headlines, Patel with her unending attempts to appear ever tougher and more vicious on migrants, refugees and non uk citizens.
Culture s a composite thing; we all create it by our actions, but some actors wield more influence. And therefore have more responsibility. Obvs.
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Weird that woke types are effectively pro- female genetic mutilation, wife beating, family honour murders, etc but, hey, as long as not-white it is all good, right?
Mate, you do come up with some really unpleasant generalisations.
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I'd agree that. That phrase was specifically mentioned when this was discussed on the BBC. I believe that was the Daily Mail that used it, no?
However, I rather doubt that the perpetrator of the recent killing was a Daily Mail reader. The online abuse is clearly a poor reflection of society and the state of public discourse, but I still don't know if it's really pertinent to this case.
Yes re the Mail, haven’t seen the BBC.
Daily Mail readership won’t be a decisive factor on an individual basis I agree.
The Mail and Patel wield enough influence to contribute to a decline in civic standards, the paper with its jingoistic and intolerant headlines, Patel with her unending attempts to appear ever tougher and more vicious on migrants, refugees and non uk citizens.
Culture s a composite thing; we all create it by our actions, but some actors wield more influence. And therefore have more responsibility. Obvs.
Indeed, although the Daily Mail has changed quite a lot since Paul Dacre ceased to be the editor.
However I'm still unsure whether the coarsening of discourse has much to do with what seems likely to be a terrorist attack of some sort. I'm not saying that either issue is unimportant, they both are, just that they seem to be separate. I may be wrong, but I can't see the sort of person who spends time doleing out abuse on Twitter being the same person who picks up a weapon to maim and kill people in this way.
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No, we are in complete agreement on that.
My contention is that when public discourse and attitudes become increasingly hostile, violent behaviour is likely to become more frequent.
By public discourse I do not mean Twitter, or specific social media. They are a reflection of the state of the nation, they feed into and amplify it, but fundamentally it’s a red herring. Look to those who set the terms of the debate, the language, attitudes and dog whistles that are used. That is where the biggest problems - and solutions- lie IMO.
I am not against legislating social media, but it’s a lot easier for a politician to stand up and declare they have found the problem and are addressing it, than it is to put their own house in order. I think that’s a problem, if we want to get to a better place.
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No, we are in complete agreement on that.
My contention is that when public discourse and attitudes become increasingly hostile, violent behaviour is likely to become more frequent.
..
but it’s a lot easier for a politician to stand up and declare they have found the problem and are addressing it, than it is to put their own house in order. I think that’s a problem, if we want to get to a better place.
Many of the warm tributes to Ames came from MPs from whom I thought it was a bit rich, to be polite about it, given some of the things they'd said in the recent past.
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Had to look up Ayaan Hirsi Ali, this article where she says that Johnson should become the new leader of the world order seems a good summary of her ideas... https://www.telegraph.co.uk/columnists/2021/10/03/ayaan-hirsi-ali-britain-should-take-lead-english-speaking-world/
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Surely this...
Weird that woke types are effectively pro- female genetic mutilation, wife beating, family honour murders, etc but, hey, as long as not-white it is all good, right?
... is a fairly textbook (if low level) example of this...
“[social media] encouraging people to become more and more extreme in the things they say and the language they use,” she said.
Social media has had the effect of pushing people towards repugnant extreme positions. Part of this is by labelling any opinion that doesn't stick to the orthodoxy of one side or another as being evidence that the holder belongs to the 'other side'. Which in turn discourages discussion of any complex middle ground, as nobody want to risk looking like they belong to the wrong tribe. Very similar murders of MPs from opposite ends of the political spectrum is just an extreme manifestation of this.
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It's a real problem that elected representatives seem to be increasingly targeted like this, and the death is David Ames is a senseless tragedy. It seems strange that it's being taken by the likes of Priti Patel as being indicative of a problem with social media. I'm not aware that it really has anything to do with it...
I was curious about this reference so tried to evidence it. Maybe Priti Patel did say it as well but the quote in this BBC article (https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/oct/15/commons-speaker-to-examine-mps-security-after-david-amesss-death) is from a labour MP, Anna Turley.
"The former Labour MP for Redcar Anna Turley, who lost her seat in 2019, said she had decided not to stand in future elections because of the constant threats – for which she blamed a culture of abuse on social media.
“It’s encouraging people to become more and more extreme in the things they say and the language they use,” she said.
“We have been fostering an environment where electoral representatives are dehumanised. It’s become completely toxic. You start off in politics with an open heart and an open hand and that is exactly how David was.”
After consistent abuse on social media, she said, she “ended up not advertising my surgeries, doing everything by invitation, having an intercom on the door”.
Coincidentally, I have just been reading Ayaan Hirsi Ali's two autobiographical books, "Infidel" and "Nomad", which focus substantially on the dysfunctional characteristics of some muslim immigrant communities in the west, and in particular the Somali diaspora to which she once belonged - as did David Ames' killer - as well as her long period in dutch police protection because of islamist death threats. A recommended read for open-minded folk, though of course Ayaan is these days an alt-right pariah to progressives for pointing out uncomfortable truths about hands-off multiculturalism and championing the western enlightenment tradition. Weird that woke types are effectively pro- female genetic mutilation, wife beating, family honour murders, etc but, hey, as long as not-white it is all good, right?
I'm a "woke type" and I can assure you that I am against fgm, domestic violence and honour killings as well as Islamophobia, it's quite easy to do both at once. Seems like a needlessly divisive pot shot taken against people who have been largely conjured out of a Daily Express article, do they eat avocado on toast too, these woke types you're imagining?
A lot of the "problems" of multiculturalism are ones that exist in monocultured areas too. Yes we have trouble with homophobia in, say, the Anglo-Pakistani Community. But we have those outside of it too, you only need look at say the CofE who still allow churches to decide not to allow gay members of the parish and won't say it isn't sin, and that's the state bloody religion. We're living in and increasingly more interconnected world where communication is outstripping distance and community barriers, we can't just respond to these problems with anti-X, Y and Z community statements. We need to constructively challenge the entrenched views.
Part of the problem I think political discourse faces in this country is its a race to signal the hardest how cool and militant you are, either by trying to poke fun at the woke queer commie students, or talking about how poor white working class people are basically all backwards racists, or whatever. It needs to be less about point scoring and more about trying to engage constructively (sadly the Labour Party I proudly joined is increasingly dominated by people who would rather lose while making tweets that get a lot of likes than win while engaging with what people in this country want and need).
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A much better, clearer, way of saying it than I managed. Bravo.
^2
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Social media has had the effect of pushing people towards repugnant extreme positions. Part of this is by labelling any opinion that doesn't stick to the orthodoxy of one side or another as being evidence that the holder belongs to the 'other side'. Which in turn discourages discussion of any complex middle ground, as nobody want to risk looking like they belong to the wrong tribe. Very similar murders of MPs from opposite ends of the political spectrum is just an extreme manifestation of this.
Good point. But it’s not just politicians in the firing line. Chris Packham’s home was attacked by arsonists recently. There’s a cultural shift that normalises abuse of people who hold diverging views. Social media plays a role but it’s deeper than that too.
Voltaire’s biographer Hall summed up the principle of respect for another’s position when she wrote: "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it’. It’s being eroded.
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Tbh one of the reasons it is being eroded is because (and this I do think is actually more on the far right than the left) it's being used as a defence for hate speech and violence.
But I also do think we should be careful re. American problems getting conflated with British problems. In the UK we have seen increasingly people talking online about the Police and so on in a manner influenced by the actions of American police. Similarly the US right are abjectly fascist theocrats and the Tories aren't. Voting for Trump means you voted for a textbook fascist, that's not true about Boris Johnson. And in the UK if you make violent speech there are consequences. You can be arrested for sending racial abuse to Marcus Rashford.
We do have problems in that arena mind you. Priti Patel and the Tory press use in my mind truly abhorrent words about asylum seekers. And I think we have a big problem with transphobia. But in general I think UK politics rejects extremism much more than the US does, and even places like France.
So generally I'd say in the UK freedom of speech is largely used positively and largely we have robust anti-hate speech sentiment. Antisemitism in the Labour Party (which absolutely exists) has been muscularly challenged, although I don't think racism in the Tory Party grassroots has been so much. But the Tories can point to multiple minority MPs and Cabinet Ministers, I don't really believe that they're a party of racists for racists, which is what a lot of people on the left say.
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So generally I'd say in the UK freedom of speech is largely used positively and largely we have robust anti-hate speech sentiment. Antisemitism in the Labour Party (which absolutely exists) has been muscularly challenged, although I don't think racism in the Tory Party grassroots has been so much. But the Tories can point to multiple minority MPs and Cabinet Ministers, I don't really believe that they're a party of racists for racists, which is what a lot of people on the left say.
You don't have to be stood at Tommy Robinson's side in the street chanting racist slogans to be racist. It also comes in the systematic, every day, unconscious biases that the government should be actively seeking out and eradicating but unfortunately seem happy in their ignorance of in much the same way as they are treating misogynism. They are unaware and/or unwilling to do anything about.
I think this is why the phrase 'anti-racism' has been adopted, to tackle some of the passive 'well it's not me I didn't do it' attitudes and stimulate people into being proactive.
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I would agree that this government essentially reinforces the inequalities of society across the board, yes. I generally consider it to be an absolute disaster of a government in every way.
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In regard to racism I had an incident last week where a delivery driver on my driveway said to me, "You know who the difficult customers are, the ones with a different skin colour to you and me. And the worst are the Asians". I told him to go away but afterwards wish I'd said more and called him out on it more explicitly. I was naturally appalled by what the guy had said and I feel it says something about the current state of things that he felt comfortable clearly expressing his racism to me (a customer) in public and in the context of doing his job. I contacted the company who I'd ordered the goods from and explained what had happened. They basically weren't interested and refused to even register my complaint. Their comment was that "it's not our responsibility if a postman's racist". For the record the driver wasn't exactly comparable to a postman. He was delivering a multigym and an airbike specifically contracted as a specialist courier for the firm who sell the multigyms - Fitness Superstore.
I'd like to follow the incident up with some form of action but other than splashing it on social media I'm not sure what to do. It's not a hate crime as far as I can see. Any ideas for a further course of action I could take? I'm not happy with just letting it ride.
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Review the product with an outline of the exchange and why you feel the company is happy to tolerate it? They might respond to you. As it isn’t a crime to express unsavoury views, not sure there is much else you can do.
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That kind of shit is totally unacceptable, any company should throw a wobbler because who knows these days when that's going to end up on social media. I'd go higher up the food chain.
Their MD is Paul Walker, email is apparently: paul.walker@fitness-superstore.co.uk
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I guess most people have seen this cartoon?
(https://i.ibb.co/BVwCLrP/306-A8-F71-DE75-45-D3-B4-CD-B8-EA8-A69-C83-E.jpg)
Nice, sums up a lot of the UK today.
Probably a bit more than is obvious though, because I think (metaphorically) the fellow on the right (very subtle of the artist) is seeing the Labour party specifically and the left in general, standing square behind the fellow on the left (it’s awfully clever, isn’t it?), just out of frame, supporting his minority position. This is, of course, a good thing. The correct and humane thing.
It’s just that yon fella on the right, is absolutely certain that everyone on the left, is sitting in opposition to him, doesn’t care about him. The only person who isn’t, apparently, berating him for simply existing is that prick Murdoch.
There are a lot of people in this country, represented by Mr Hi Vis. They have deserted the Labour Party in droves, because they feel excluded by that party and the left in general. As long as the left continues to indulge in self righteous name calling and belittling of Mr Hi Vis (the very tactics they are (rightly) so fond of decrying when employed by the Right), then they will never see power in the UK.
Labour, in particular, has a massive image problem; because very few working or middle class people in the UK, feel represented by them. They appear to represent most minority groups (Good, brilliant, right) exclusively (not good, divisive, exclusionary).
Perhaps it’s just a media issue, possibly the entirety of the media is biased against the left in general? Or, maybe, they could, perhaps, at least try, to be a little less judgmental?
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I would agree that this government essentially reinforces the inequalities of society across the board, yes. I generally consider it to be an absolute disaster of a government in every way.
I'd probably agree with all of that. I have significant sympathy with some of the traditional Conservative ideals, but this government represents none of them. It's a spendthrift, short term government lead by a strong motivation for Boris Johnson's own personal advancement and entertainment.
It staggers me that focus groups still show that most people still like him and think the government is doing ok.
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Labour, in particular, has a massive image problem; because very few working or middle class people in the UK, feel represented by them. They appear to represent most minority groups (Good, brilliant, right) exclusively (not good, divisive, exclusionary).
Perhaps it’s just a media issue, possibly the entirety of the media is biased against the left in general? Or, maybe, they could, perhaps, at least try, to be a little less judgmental?
Labour does indeed have a massive image problem, but it's not quite this simple.
Here's the YouGov post-2019 election analysis: https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2019/12/17/how-britain-voted-2019-general-election
If you look at the differences by social class, there isn't a huge difference in Labour support between Mr Hi Vis and Mr Suit. A third of the population supporting you isn't good and it certainly isn't good enough, but neither is is "very few". The big dividing lines are still age and education - and I'm certain there is some research that teases these effects out to show which is slightly more important, but I can't for the life of me remember which way around it is. And I think it's quite clear that the preferences of the elderly - for continuing high house prices and low levels of house building, for continuing high spending on elderly benefits, for low levels of spending on climate change which they won't benefit from - are in direct opposition to the preferences of the young.
One of the huge issues for Labour is I think the confusion between left wing activists and the Party itself. I have little time for many of the former and think they over-represent what the "electoral left" is interested in, or wants to do. For me another, and interlinked, issue is that on many issues - such as minority rights and representation - big city and small town dwellers are simply living in very different realities.
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Have I just misunderstood (apologies if this is in the wrong thread) but has Javid just held a press conference to communicate the message that the gov intends to sit on its hands and if there are 100k infections /day it will be because of public failure to get vaccines and follow other, no longer compulsory, behaviours??
Words. Fail. Me.
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Have I just misunderstood (apologies if this is in the wrong thread) but has Javid just held a press conference to communicate the message that the gov intends to sit on its hands and if there are 100k infections /day it will be because of public failure to get vaccines and follow other, no longer compulsory, behaviours??
Words. Fail. Me.
No, that's exactly what he said. The junior minister interviewed on the today programme this morning also implied that any failure of the booster programme was the fault of people not coming forward, or the NHS, who are apparently responsible for anything going wrong (however if it seems to be working well, that's all the government).
Just like last time they were advised to act early, they won't, and it'll ultimately be more economic harm, restrictions and deaths than if they did. All because the PM likes to hand in his homework late and do things at the last minute.
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I suspect the Saj has a hand in this too. It was clear as soon as he became health secretary that he was more strongly opposed to restrictions than Hancock.
They’ve been doing their best to signal that it’s all back to normal by not wearing masks in the commons and at cabinet meetings for months, and now all of a sudden it’s on the public to have known better.
Never their fault is it. What a vile bunch of cowards.
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... now all of a sudden it’s on the public to have known better.
Never their fault is it. What a vile bunch of cowards.
Vile but popular. In a strongly individualistic culture this approach is proving to be reasonably popular. Plus a graph, some stats about infection rates, etc etc just isn't as persausive to many voters as a reasonable-sounding story, especially if it's a story that involves blaming others.
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If you look at the differences by social class, there isn't a huge difference in Labour support between Mr Hi Vis and Mr Suit. A third of the population supporting you isn't good and it certainly isn't good enough, but neither is is "very few". The big dividing lines are still age and education - and I'm certain there is some research that teases these effects out to show which is slightly more important, but I can't for the life of me remember which way around it is.
I don't have the info to hand, but from memory age is *the* dividing line, education level being a proxy for age - essentially Labour wins on uni educated folk because of the huge rise in graduates since the millennium i.e. graduates are not evenly spread throughout all age groups, there are more younger ones than older ones. And the young swing to Labour.
The conservatives rely hugely on the retired vote. What the chart in your link demonstrates appears to be a fairly linear shift from labour voting when young to con voting as age increases, which is true. In case anyone is not sure of "how true" the maps in the following article make it abundantly clear. The disparity is massive: https://www.standard.co.uk/news/politics/general-election-map-uk-young-old-voters-a4323171.html
What is not made obvious by Yougov in the link is that the turnout follows a similar trend - turnout of the older demographic is much higher than in younger demographics. Also very important is that the ages are not evenly spread geographically. Put simply the cities are young, everywhere else is older. The "everywhere else" accounts for more seats. FPTP then has an effect in that Labour piles on a lot of wasted votes in the cities, whereas the conservative vote is more effectively distributed. The net result of this combination is that Labour can win handily across the demographic of working age people, and yet still lose the election to the votes solely of the over 65's. Again from memory so apologies if wrong, but I believe this happened in 2017, and also 2019 (though the effect was much less pronounced). So yeah age is important, which is why like you I find Tory notions of solving the housing crisis, climate change, and "levelling up" a little hard to believe.
Regarding social class, this used to be a major predictor of voting intention. This relationship broke down during the Blair era (see graphic on page 55 of https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/CBP-8749/CBP-8749.pdf ). So in that sense OMM is correct in that they have an image problem which they haven't resolved (except briefly in 2017).
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Looks like the slide towards increased restrictions is on its way...
BBC News - Covid: UK cases top 50,000 for first time in three months
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-58999796
...and the PM is still just trying to tell people to get vaccinated. We have a chocolate f*****g teapot for a leader.
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I'd say there is slim to zero chance of increased restrictions even approaching previous lockdowns. I suspect masks might make a return but social distancing won't, and frankly I think thats a good thing. Serious restrictions like the last 18 months should be reserved for once in a generation threats, not just 'pressure on the NHS because winter is coming.' Seems pretty clear everyone will be exposed to covid multiple times throughout their life, not sure it helps to suggest that we can realistically avoid that.
Other than keep encouraging vaccination and masks (unlikely to make a significant difference but can't harm, so would be a good idea) there is little else to be done in terms of covid policy other than make it compulsory. Some days I think this would be good, others I don't; I don't think its straightforward. There is a hard core minority of people who have decided not to get jabbed for whatever reason and you shouldn't institute society wide restrictions to protect that cohort i don't think.
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Obvs the vaccines greatly reduce the impact on health once you’ve caught covid.
But I still feel like I’m in the dark about what impact vaccinations have on transmission of Covid. Is it just me? Can anyone link to a simple explainer showing the stats?
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Other than keep encouraging vaccination and masks (unlikely to make a significant difference but can't harm, so would be a good idea) there is little else to be done in terms of covid policy other than make it compulsory. Some days I think this would be good, others I don't; I don't think its straightforward. There is a hard core minority of people who have decided not to get jabbed for whatever reason and you shouldn't institute society wide restrictions to protect that cohort i don't think.
It's a tricky conundrum. In terms of people actually falling ill and dying it does mainly seem to be amongst the unvaccinated. If you then accept that the Government's primary responsibility is the protection of the nation's citizens, and yet you are also in favour of individual autonomy on healthcare, how can the Government protect those people who choose not to get the vaccine?
Seems to me that simply encouraging vaccine uptake would be an inadequate way of going about it. Especially if the pandemic of the unvaccinated then means non-covid healthcare services are impacted for everyone. No one could say that the Government has adequately protected a triple vaxxed cancer patient if they can't get care because an unvaccinated person is taking up time, space and resources, when there were other ways of effectively protecting the unvaccinated person.
Personally I think this leads unavoidably to some sort of further restrictions. Unless you decide to accept a certain level of fatalities as a cost of doing business...which it so far seems is the chosen approach.
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I guess the question is the extent to which covid hospitalisations are impacting on non-covid care. I think it is far more likely that the knock on effects of the past few years (when covid hospitalisations were really fucking bad!) and years of underfunding/simply not enough staff will be causing this rather than the covid hospitalisations right here, right now. Whether this makes a difference in practice is up for debate, but for me NHS chiefs are fighting the wrong battle calling for a covid plan B, instead they should be calling for more funding and training more staff, starting now. The NHS couldn't clear the backlog before covid, it stands no chance of clearing it after covid!
Personally I think this leads unavoidably to some sort of further restrictions. Unless you decide to accept a certain level of fatalities as a cost of doing business...which it so far seems is the chosen approach.
I think this is absolutely the chosen approach and has been for many years. My partner and I were discussing it the other day and have concluded that the UK has basically chosen to accept a 4/10 healthcare system when compared to the rest of Europe because that is the level of healthcare we can get with our current taxation model. I don't necessarily agree with it but that is unavoidably the direction of travel. We won't magic up better health outcomes without more staff and funding, and we shouldn't give cover to that political choice by acceding to annual restrictions on lives because the system can't cope. Its the system that needs changing, not peoples behaviour for me.
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I guess the question is the extent to which covid hospitalisations are impacting on non-covid care. I think it is far more likely that the knock on effects of the past few years (when covid hospitalisations were really fucking bad!) and years of underfunding/simply not enough staff will be causing this rather than the covid hospitalisations right here, right now. Whether this makes a difference in practice is up for debate, but for me NHS chiefs are fighting the wrong battle calling for a covid plan B, instead they should be calling for more funding and training more staff, starting now. The NHS couldn't clear the backlog before covid, it stands no chance of clearing it after covid!
Personally I think this leads unavoidably to some sort of further restrictions. Unless you decide to accept a certain level of fatalities as a cost of doing business...which it so far seems is the chosen approach.
I think this is absolutely the chosen approach and has been for many years. My partner and I were discussing it the other day and have concluded that the UK has basically chosen to accept a 4/10 healthcare system when compared to the rest of Europe because that is the level of healthcare we can get with our current taxation model. I don't necessarily agree with it but that is unavoidably the direction of travel. We won't magic up better health outcomes without more staff and funding, and we shouldn't give cover to that political choice by acceding to annual restrictions on lives because the system can't cope. Its the system that needs changing, not peoples behaviour for me.
I certainly don't think that another full lockdown is remotely likely, or perhaps necessary; not least because the government is so deeply invested in this course of action. Even another mask mandate will lead to considerable tantrums among the usual set of backbenchers.
However, I do think that they should be more honest in having a conversation about, to be brutal about it, how much death we're prepared to put up with. However, being largely a set of juvenile populists, they won't do this, preferring (if Boris has his way) to abandon any fiscal responsibility to throw money at the NHS, and try to distract the voting public with meaningless culture war BS.
What they need to do is actually engage in how the NHS needs to change in order to stop just being a bottomless moneypit, which no amount of billions will solve. Not a penny of the NI increase will end up with social care, it will all be swallowed by the NHS, much in inefficiencies and its failure to grasp concepts like trying to resource effectively. Until a few years ago, the NHS was still the world's biggest user of fax machines; I think that tells you a lot about how good they'd then be about buying say, radiology equipment or computer systems.
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Is there something about wanting to stretch out the peak in Covid cases by getting some of them "out of the way" now, rather than have a choice between stringent lockdowns/bigger hospitalisation peak in the winter?
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When I type 'UK deaths coronavirus' into google, the resulting chart shows that daily deaths have been about the same since the middle of August. Are hospitalisations any different?
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When I type 'UK deaths coronavirus' into google, the resulting chart shows that daily deaths have been about the same since the middle of August. Are hospitalisations any different?
It is remarkably different from previous waves. In both cases about 1/6th ish, or so, about; what they were for similar daily infection point in previous waves.
The numbers have been largely flat for months. The death figures from the headlines (date reported) are incredibly misleading; the figures for death (date of event) remains very flat. I would assume that there will be a rise, to match the rise in cases, over the next couple of weeks.
I don’t believe the slopes or peaks of either hospitalisations or deaths, will reflect the increase in cases in the way they did in prior events. The infections still seem to be in less vulnerable populations, even as they seem to be moving back into adult populations from the juvenile that has been dominant over the early autumn.
Honestly, just look at the data on the Gov site. It seems pretty obvious.
https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/ (https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/)
Deaths, in particular, demonstrate the difference, clearly:
https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/deaths (https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/deaths)
It really pays to click on the “All “x” data” the graphs on the main page are, again, misleading.
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From the Grauniad:
Boris Johnson has said that the government sees “absolutely nothing to indicate that [a full lockdown] is on the cards at all” when asked to rule out a shutdown with ““stay at home” advice and shops closing this winter.
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So that’s it then. Another lockdown is definitely on its way.
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I guess the question is the extent to which covid hospitalisations are impacting on non-covid care. I think it is far more likely that the knock on effects of the past few years (when covid hospitalisations were really fucking bad!) and years of underfunding/simply not enough staff will be causing this rather than the covid hospitalisations right here, right now. Whether this makes a difference in practice is up for debate, but for me NHS chiefs are fighting the wrong battle calling for a covid plan B, instead they should be calling for more funding and training more staff, starting now. The NHS couldn't clear the backlog before covid, it stands no chance of clearing it after covid!
Having just been in for a hospital appointment today here's some anecdotal stuff - the consultant, and everyone else, were "very concerned" about covid. He's working flat out doing ops but they are working with various covid related headwinds. There is the obvious of covid patients taking icu beds. Then the loss of spaces due to rejigged wards. Then there's staff being absent due to isolating / dependents isolating / being ill short term / being off long term / having left altogether. Then there's the fact that any potential efficiencies i.e. "squeezing someone in" last minute after a cancellation say, can't happen because of patients having to pass a covid test 3 days prior to op and then isolate. And then of course you have the issue of there being a backlog i.e. more patients than normal, in the situation where all the above extra restraints are in place. Now it seemed to me they are getting it done, but it also seemed fair to say they were pushed.
So it seems covid is impacting non-covid care quite a lot already. I actually totally agree with what you say, a lot of this is undoubtably systemic and long term and needs more funding and staff, but we are where we are. Starting training nurses today definitely needs to happen but it won't solve the current problems, so I can see why the NHS would ask for more restrictions. I wouldn't expect anything else from them as they are trying to look after their patch, and rightly so.
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I think thats all very fair Nigel; my partner is a doctor so if anything I'm too aware of the pressure the NHS is under! :lol:
The views I've typed out above have been thrashed out through discussions with her. To offer some more anecdata, in her hospital there seems little impact from covid thus far. The problem I have with asking for more restrictions is it reinforces the idea that the public needs to be constantly looking after the health service, whereas in reality its the health service that should be looking after the public. That isn't meant to sound callous, i think the NHS is great and its staff are brilliant, but I'm not into restrictions every time the hospitals are under pressure; that should be reserved for once in a generation stuff.
Its all academic really as for multiple reasons the government are unlikely to introduce strict measures again. I share the wish for an honest conversation about the trade offs of that though, including the deaths that will result.
Edit: also, on a strategic level, I think its profoundly self defeating for the NHS to call for more restrictions. An awful lot of people will hear that and think 'they say they're busy every year, sod em', which isn't the whole truth but has a grain of truth to it; there are warnings of the NHS being under pressure every year. I worry about what such calls will do to public trust in the institution.
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I worry about what such calls will do to public trust in the institution.
Undermine it to the point the public realises that "Our NHS" is actually a fairly second rate healthcare service in dire need of reform?
I agree with a lot of your points SM, but a desire and legitimate need for systemic change doesn't solve an acute and time sensitive issue.
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I worry about what such calls will do to public trust in the institution.
Undermine it to the point the public realises that "Our NHS" is actually a fairly second rate healthcare service in dire need of reform?
I agree with a lot of your points SM, but a desire and legitimate need for systemic change doesn't solve an acute and time sensitive issue.
In terms of the likelihood of anything being done/changed in time and in terms of further restrictions, it’s very unlikely; simply because current policy is broadly popular. We have reached the point of “meh” as a nation, or at least, enough people have and the government is free to proceed as it is/has, without losing much of it’s current support.
There is a possibility of that changing, as things will likely get worse; however that didn’t happen the last couple of times the stable door was slowly inched shut a few weeks after the horse bolted.
Frankly, though, I think our nation is around half full of people who really don’t care much about anybody outside their immediate social circle (and probably smile at the misfortune of many within that circle), so I’m not expecting much.
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I worry about what such calls will do to public trust in the institution.
Undermine it to the point the public realises that "Our NHS" is actually a fairly second rate healthcare service in dire need of reform?
I agree with a lot of your points SM, but a desire and legitimate need for systemic change doesn't solve an acute and time sensitive issue.
It might be second rate to some of the European health care systems but get ill physically or mentally in the US without adequate insurance and it will seem like a premium service.
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I worry about what such calls will do to public trust in the institution.
I agree with a lot of your points SM, but a desire and legitimate need for systemic change doesn't solve an acute and time sensitive issue.
Fair point! I guess I still think there is a difference between "acute as medical professionals see it" and "acute as the government and probably most of the public see it" and I think the latter will probably win out as things stand.
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I worry about what such calls will do to public trust in the institution.
Undermine it to the point the public realises that "Our NHS" is actually a fairly second rate healthcare service in dire need of reform?
Isn’t the long term strategy to undermine it to the point that more private sector involvement is the “only” way to fix it?
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Of course. Defund the public service then fix with private capital once the public are fed up enough to accept it.
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It might be second rate to some of the European health care systems but get ill physically or mentally in the US without adequate insurance and it will seem like a premium service.
Well that's a common mistake; we compare against the US and say "oh well, could be worse" when really we should be asking why it's not as good as the best!
Isn’t the long term strategy to undermine it to the point that more private sector involvement is the “only” way to fix it?
Just like, say, many of the European healthcare systems that are better than the UK's?
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Isn’t the long term strategy to undermine it to the point that more private sector involvement is the “only” way to fix it?
Just like, say, many of the European healthcare systems that are better than the UK's?
Quite. The problem is that significant NHS reforms won't be popular despite the fact that it is an outdated model which just doesn't work with such a high proportion of elderly people in the population. Notch it up with other things that are obvious areas for reform, but political hot potatoes such as drug policy, the prison system... etc.
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WFH seems like a reasonable measure: https://inews.co.uk/news/politics/covid-plan-b-working-from-home-is-the-best-way-to-curb-spread-of-virus-sage-scientists-warn-government-1264550
Unfortunately the head of Pret a Manger donates a lot of money to the Conservative party, so there's bugger all chance it'll happen unless it gets really bad.
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Isn’t the long term strategy to undermine it to the point that more private sector involvement is the “only” way to fix it?
Just like, say, many of the European healthcare systems that are better than the UK's?
Yes a lot of European systems have some private involvement, but that is not necessarily the reason they are better. I can't comment on whether the NHS needs reform etc, but to go back to the "throwing money at it" angle, to have parity of service with Europe I would expect to have parity of funding. We don't: https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/healthcaresystem/articles/howdoesukhealthcarespendingcomparewithothercountries/2019-08-29
Can't link to charts directly but they're easily scrolled down to.
- UK spends much less per person than the EU median, particularly the countries I suspect you are thinking of (Swiss, Norway, Germany).
- UK pays less as a proportion of GDP, and this fell between 2013-2017 whereas it rose in other European countries.
- Proportion of healthcare from public funds actually fairly similar across nations (though UK is high), with differences in how this is collected e.g. differing levels of mandatory state health insurance vs taxation. I think sometimes this insurance based contribution gets mixed up with being "private".
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Totally agree with all those points. Mine was simply that people in the UK are bizarrely dedicated to the NHS, and hold it in an esteem it doesn't really deserve. This, combined with the constant comparisons with the US system and how terrible that is, prevents the change that's so clearly needed. Whenever any sort of private funding is mentioned people automatically assume it'll mean going with the US system, and it just doesn't.
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This, combined with the constant comparisons with the US system and how terrible that is, prevents the change that's so clearly needed.
The US actually has pretty much the most advanced health care in the world, but only if you're relatively wealthy or have a job with healthcare insurance as part of the renumeration. Yes, if you don't have any insurance you get virtually nothing, but if you can afford it it's fantastic.
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Toby, I am not so sure about that as rich people in the US have lower life expectancy than poor french people e.g.
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Yes, if you don't have any insurance you get virtually nothing, but if you can afford it it's fantastic.
This is like pointing out that some people have nice mansions during a discussion about lack of affordable housing!
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This is like pointing out that some people have nice mansions during a discussion about lack of affordable housing!
"The UK housing system is actually one of the best in the world, but only if you're relatively wealthy or have financial assistance from family. Yes, if you don't have these you can't afford to buy and are condemned to inflated rental prices forever, but if you can afford it the system is brilliant.'
:chair:
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Toby, I am not so sure about that as rich people in the US have lower life expectancy than poor french people e.g.
Would that have more to do with obesity by any chance?
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This is like pointing out that some people have nice mansions during a discussion about lack of affordable housing!
"The UK housing system is actually one of the best in the world, but only if you're relatively wealthy or have financial assistance from family. Yes, if you don't have these you can't afford to buy and are condemned to inflated rental prices forever, but if you can afford it the system is brilliant.'
:chair:
You might think that sounds ridiculous but it's perfectly true. The US has amazing healthcare that a lot of the population can't afford. The UK has plenty of houses, but noone under 50 can afford them either. I'm not saying both things aren't massively problematic, but it doesn't stop them being correct!
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"the test of a civilization is the way that it cares for its helpless members"; Pearl Buck
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Totally agree with all those points. Mine was simply that people in the UK are bizarrely dedicated to the NHS, and hold it in an esteem it doesn't really deserve. This, combined with the constant comparisons with the US system and how terrible that is, prevents the change that's so clearly needed. Whenever any sort of private funding is mentioned people automatically assume it'll mean going with the US system, and it just doesn't.
What sort of private funding would be an improvement then, if not the US model?
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The Dutch system seems to keep costs low, but provision and quality high than the UK.
It's not *that* different from the UK system. In fact, I'm going to do a bit of reading about the differences. Basically you have to pay a basic charge, and you pick a "package" which give you some added cover, either physio, eye care etc.
Its still free at the point of use, and seems (but this is where I need to do some reading, never loved there so this is all second hand from my partner...) better care than here.
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The Dutch system seems to keep costs low, but provision and quality high than the UK.
It's not *that* different from the UK system. In fact, I'm going to do a bit of reading about the differences. Basically you have to pay a basic charge, and you pick a "package" which give you some added cover, either physio, eye care etc.
Its still free at the point of use, and seems (but this is where I need to do some reading, never loved there so this is all second hand from my partner...) better care than here.
Ditto with my experience of French healthcare, at least in a rural setting (Ardeche) and twenty years ago…
Although I do recall paying my GP and claiming it back, but not that that was onerous and I think there was a way around that when I was on unemployment benefit for a short period.
Things change, I know, but I recall it being much faster and better than the NHS of the day.
Not convinced the NHS is without scope for reform.
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The Dutch system seems to keep costs low, but provision and quality high than the UK.
It's not *that* different from the UK system. In fact, I'm going to do a bit of reading about the differences. Basically you have to pay a basic charge, and you pick a "package" which give you some added cover, either physio, eye care etc.
Its still free at the point of use, and seems (but this is where I need to do some reading, never loved there so this is all second hand from my partner...) better care than here.
I'm totally ready to accept that Dutch health system is better overall than UK but we should take into account that the Netherlands is significantly richer country than UK (> 25% higher GDP per head) and according to report above spends approx 33% per head more on health - given this you would hope that health system was better (though obvs thats not a given).
Not that this doesn't mean that there isn't space to reform and improve the NHS.
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I think its worth remembering that the quality of NHS services is variable depending on where you are. If you live in Sheffield you get access to some pretty fantastic acute hospital care and some okay health and social care. If you live in Grimsby the care is pretty bad and the services are in a much worse condition.
Basically the NHS is much better in all the places you'd expect it to be (big cities, south-east, south-west) and much worse where you'd expect it to be (northwest, northeast, coastal areas, rural North and Midlands, North Wales etc).
Like you might say A&E wait times are bad. And they are. They're way worse right now in NI compared to say Nottingham though. NI is looking at 40 hours in A&E if you are not in mortal danger (just a little mention, so if you fall off a boulder problem in NI right now, don't bother going to A&E unless your ankle is in agony etc).
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Not that this doesn't mean that there isn't space to reform and improve the NHS.
By dismantling the internal market and reversing the encroachment of private healthcare on publicly funded care maybe?
Efficiencies might start here, for example: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/oct/07/private-hospitals-treated-eight-covid-patients-a-day-during-pandemic-says-report
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The Dutch system seems to keep costs low, but provision and quality high than the UK.
It's not *that* different from the UK system. In fact, I'm going to do a bit of reading about the differences. Basically you have to pay a basic charge, and you pick a "package" which give you some added cover, either physio, eye care etc.
Its still free at the point of use, and seems (but this is where I need to do some reading, never loved there so this is all second hand from my partner...) better care than here.
I'm totally ready to accept that Dutch health system is better overall than UK but we should take into account that the Netherlands is significantly richer country than UK (> 25% higher GDP per head) and according to report above spends approx 33% per head more on health - given this you would hope that health system was better (though obvs thats not a given).
Not that this doesn't mean that there isn't space to reform and improve the NHS.
The GDP disparity is only a relatively recent, I'd love to nail it to brexshit, but it started a bit before then, but not long - so I don't think it's a valid reason for the disparity. The 33% higher funding probably is...
https://countryeconomy.com/countries/compare/netherlands/uk?sc=XE34
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The GDP disparity is only a relatively recent, I'd love to nail it to brexshit, but it started a bit before then, but not long - so I don't think it's a valid reason for the disparity. The 33% higher funding probably is...
https://countryeconomy.com/countries/compare/netherlands/uk?sc=XE34
I was more suggesting (possibly incorrectly) that the higher GDP was the reason for the higher spending on health and hence better service. Interesting that the significant disparity in GDP developed over such relatively short period.
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I think its worth remembering that the quality of NHS services is variable depending on where you are. If you live in Sheffield you get access to some pretty fantastic acute hospital care and some okay health and social care. If you live in Grimsby the care is pretty bad and the services are in a much worse condition.
Generally my experience is that the NHS tends to be excellent at emergencies, and bloody awful at a lot of chronic conditions, especially mental health.
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Really good back and forth over the NHS. I think a lot of it come down to:
Mine was simply that people in the UK are bizarrely dedicated to the NHS, and hold it in an esteem it doesn't really deserve.
I think it did deserve it and we have been repeatedly told it is better than everyone else's so we believe that. Ignoring mental health, chronic issues/quality of life procedures, it IS the best in the world...... for outcomes per £/$/€ spent. The sad fact is we want a better health system, we need to spend money on it and we are a nation adverse to both tax rises AND health insurance.
Whenever any sort of private funding is mentioned people automatically assume it'll mean going with the US system, and it just doesn't
That's a factor of our government. If you look at the current cabinet, would you expect a them to implemetn a Euro style system, on enact a fire sale of the NHS to their mates that'd make the PPE contracts look like value for money?
The US actually has pretty much the most advanced health care in the world
But quite different in approach. They have a very interventionist approach (makes more money) than the UK.
Generally my experience is that the NHS tends to be excellent at emergencies, and bloody awful at a lot of chronic conditions, especially mental health.
I think this is spot on. I'm not sure this would be changed by privatisation though?
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I don't think proportion of GDP spent on healthcare is especially meaningful. The US spends close to twice as much as many European countries with some form of national healthcare, but typically with worse outcomes (e.g. life expectancy, admittedly a crude measure). Having tried to deal with the labyrinthine bureaucracy involved in US health insurance I suspect much of that extra spend has nothing to do with patient care and a lot to do with profit.
And yes, when it is good, US healthcare probably is the best the world, but what does that mean when you can't access it? I have friends with "excellent" insurance through their employer who are still thousands of dollars out of pocket for non-elective surgery.
Edit: on per capita GDP, I was generally shocked to see it's a third higher in Denmark compared to the UK. I thought there'd be a gap but I would not have guessed it would be so big.
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Edit: on per capita GDP, I was generally shocked to see it's a third higher in Denmark compared to the UK. I thought there'd be a gap but I would not have guessed it would be so big.
The U.K. is basically the Netherlands and Puglia glued together. Nine out of ten of NW Europe’s poorest regions are here, and the richest.
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All this debate about health was originally due to covid restrictions being brought in to save the NHS. At the end of the day, the craven self interest of this government is such that its probably not going to happen before the COP, as that might be a bit embarrassing for Boris, and spoil all the big corporate events hes looking forward to.
Just wait until after its over in a fortnight.
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Galpinos has said most of what I would have done so I won't rehash it.
If you google any healthcare system ranking, the UK is always up in the top few. I've no idea how these rankings are worked out, and different ones give slightly different answers. But in all of them, any system that comes above the NHS spends significantly more. That appears to be the difference. As has been remarked, you would expect the Netherlands to have better outcomes if it spends 33% more per head of population! Anyway I managed to find a link to the relevant chart from the earlier link which shows these disparities (apologies for size).
It appears to me that actually the NHS does amazingly well considering that by any comparative measure it is being run on the cheap.
The other thing I takeaway is that something has gone very, very wrong in the US. They spend twice as much as every other developed nation, and they don't even have universal healthcare, never mind universal free healthcare like we do. Which is why we would be well advised to jump onto any creeping talk of privatisation to solve NHS "issues" from this government or their outriders in the Telegraph / Times / Mail, as like Galpinos I wouldn't trust them not to go down the US route. The solution is to spend more on what we already have.
(https://www.ons.gov.uk/chartimage?uri=/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/healthcaresystem/articles/howdoesukhealthcarespendingcomparewithothercountries/2019-08-29/ae93ec43)
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All this debate about health was originally due to covid restrictions being brought in to save the NHS. At the end of the day, the craven self interest of this government is such that its probably not going to happen before the COP, as that might be a bit embarrassing for Boris, and spoil all the big corporate events hes looking forward to.
Just wait until after its over in a fortnight.
I've already heard they're expecting Glasgow to have some increase post-COP restrictions to deal with the inevitable surge in cases... Great!
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I don't think proportion of GDP spent on healthcare is especially meaningful. The US spends close to twice as much as many European countries with some form of national healthcare, but typically with worse outcomes (e.g. life expectancy, admittedly a crude measure). Having tried to deal with the labyrinthine bureaucracy involved in US health insurance I suspect much of that extra spend has nothing to do with patient care and a lot to do with profit.
Its a bit of a tangent I know, so last mention of this, but I am still shocked at quite how much the Americans spend on healthcare! Andy, the ONS report I linked partially confirms your suspicion, in section 7 "How much is spent on healthcare governance and financing". The answer is in this chart:
(https://www.ons.gov.uk/chartimage?uri=/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/healthcaresystem/articles/howdoesukhealthcarespendingcomparewithothercountries/2019-08-29/bb9df8a9)
The US spends £639 per capita simply adminstering their system i.e. processing insurance claims, before even doing any healthcare That is way more than any other country - 3x more than 2nd highest spender on this. The UK spends £53, 12x less than the US. Also the other countries that spend big on this all have varying degrees of private insurance systems. Worth remembering if anyone claims that private involvement is more efficient / cheaper. Whatever its merits, its not that!
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Thanks Nigel. My suspicions were really much more than that, but its interesting to see the actual data. The complexity and waste is truly mind-boggling. When it comes to healthcare, the market is neither more efficient nor better at serving people.
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Unless they are shareholders.
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Thanks Nigel. My suspicions were really much more than that, but its interesting to see the actual data. The complexity and waste is truly mind-boggling. When it comes to healthcare, the market is neither more efficient nor better at serving people.
Out of interest Andy, in the US itself, when discussing domestic healthcare and its various tweaks, is there a widespread recognition by everyone (politicians / media / man in the street) that they spend twice as much as all other countries, for a worse service? Or is this somehow "hidden" / not widely known?
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Which is why we would be well advised to jump onto any creeping talk of privatisation to solve NHS "issues" from this government or their outriders in the Telegraph / Times / Mail, as like Galpinos I wouldn't trust them not to go down the US route. The solution is to spend more on what we already have.
Although I am not a fan of private healthcare having worked in a private hospital in Malaysia, the NHS needs some sort of reform.
Spending more money on what we have will be a huge waste. There is a lot of wastage in the NHS in some places and it's hugely inefficient in many ways, although in others it does remarkably well. I think that private involvement in some places might be a benefit especially the things that it does badly, such as resourcing.
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Edit: on per capita GDP, I was generally shocked to see it's a third higher in Denmark compared to the UK. I thought there'd be a gap but I would not have guessed it would be so big.
The U.K. is basically the Netherlands and Puglia glued together. Nine out of ten of NW Europe’s poorest regions are here, and the richest.
This stats seems to come up pretty often but I'm not sure it really indicates what people seem to think and tends to lead to somewhat simplistic and exaggerated conclusions.
Appears in this sort of article though the link to the original data doesn't seem to work: https://inequalitybriefing.org/graphics/briefing_43_UK_regions_poorest_North_Europe.pdf
It does appear that some of the starkest results may be related to the difference in region sizes selected, full fact looks at this in some detail, https://fullfact.org/economy/does-uk-have-poorest-regions-northern-europe/
If you look at larger regions then it would appear that the UK looks pretty similar to France, poorer and more economically divided than Germany or smaller, richer Northern European countries such as Denmark, Belgium, Austria etc but significantly less divided than e.g. Italy or Spain.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_OECD_regions_by_GDP_(PPP)_per_capita, splits UK into 12 regions and France into 13 (excluding overseas territories).
UK has 1 very rich region (London), another over 45k (South East) then 5 between 35k to 50k, and other 5 between 30k and 35k.
France has 1 very rich region (Ille-de-France), then 5 between 35k and 40k and 8 between 30k and 35k. Interestingly Scotland, East, North West and South West are richer than all but 3 French territories.
The figures for Italy are quite different and show why the Netherland / Puglia comparison doesn't really work for the UK while it does have a strong element of truth for Italy. Italy is split into 21 regions (so somewhat smaller region size), 2 regions have GDP over 50k, another 9 over 40k, only 3 regions between 30k and 40k and 7 regions (basically the whole of Southern Italy plus Sardinia) between 20k and 30k (3 of which are below 25k)
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Although I am not a fan of private healthcare having worked in a private hospital in Malaysia, the NHS needs some sort of reform.
Spending more money on what we have will be a huge waste. There is a lot of wastage in the NHS in some places and it's hugely inefficient in many ways, although in others it does remarkably well. I think that private involvement in some places might be a benefit especially the things that it does badly, such as resourcing.
Maybe so, not having worked in healthcare I really couldn't comment on the details of procurement.
However, looking briefly at more country-by-country data it looks like we could employ a load more doctors and nurses, on the assumption that the NHS is competent at hiring staff?! And increase numbers of beds, imaging machines. Relative to other OECD countries we are quite a way down the pecking order on everything e.g. fewer MRI machines per head than Turkey, less than half as many nurses per head than Norway, 3x fewer beds per head than Germany.
It would cost money but none of these things should waste anything as I understand we are known to be short of them all anyway? Links below if anyone's interested, quite illuminating:
https://data.oecd.org/healthres/doctors.htm#indicator-chart
https://data.oecd.org/healthres/nurses.htm#indicator-chart
https://data.oecd.org/healtheqt/hospital-beds.htm
https://data.oecd.org/healtheqt/magnetic-resonance-imaging-mri-units.htm#indicator-chart
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Although I am not a fan of private healthcare having worked in a private hospital in Malaysia, the NHS needs some sort of reform.
Spending more money on what we have will be a huge waste. There is a lot of wastage in the NHS in some places and it's hugely inefficient in many ways, although in others it does remarkably well. I think that private involvement in some places might be a benefit especially the things that it does badly, such as resourcing.
Maybe so, not having worked in healthcare I really couldn't comment on the details of procurement.
However, looking briefly at more country-by-country data it looks like we could employ a load more doctors and nurses, on the assumption that the NHS is competent at hiring staff?! And increase numbers of beds, imaging machines. Relative to other OECD countries we are quite a way down the pecking order on everything e.g. fewer MRI machines per head than Turkey, less than half as many nurses per head than Norway, 3x fewer beds per head than Germany.
It would cost money but none of these things should waste anything as I understand we are known to be short of them all anyway? Links below if anyone's interested, quite illuminating:
https://data.oecd.org/healthres/doctors.htm#indicator-chart
https://data.oecd.org/healthres/nurses.htm#indicator-chart
https://data.oecd.org/healtheqt/hospital-beds.htm
https://data.oecd.org/healtheqt/magnetic-resonance-imaging-mri-units.htm#indicator-chart
On many of the things, its not just how many you have, it's that ours are old and years behind what some other countries have.
On beds its not really beds at all, you can have them anywhere, (like the vast nightingale hospitals) this word always really refers to the staff to look after them.
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Although I am not a fan of private healthcare having worked in a private hospital in Malaysia, the NHS needs some sort of reform.
Spending more money on what we have will be a huge waste. There is a lot of wastage in the NHS in some places and it's hugely inefficient in many ways, although in others it does remarkably well. I think that private involvement in some places might be a benefit especially the things that it does badly, such as resourcing.
Maybe so, not having worked in healthcare I really couldn't comment on the details of procurement.
However, looking briefly at more country-by-country data it looks like we could employ a load more doctors and nurses, on the assumption that the NHS is competent at hiring staff?! And increase numbers of beds, imaging machines. Relative to other OECD countries we are quite a way down the pecking order on everything e.g. fewer MRI machines per head than Turkey, less than half as many nurses per head than Norway, 3x fewer beds per head than Germany.
It would cost money but none of these things should waste anything as I understand we are known to be short of them all anyway? Links below if anyone's interested, quite illuminating:
https://data.oecd.org/healthres/doctors.htm#indicator-chart
https://data.oecd.org/healthres/nurses.htm#indicator-chart
https://data.oecd.org/healtheqt/hospital-beds.htm
https://data.oecd.org/healtheqt/magnetic-resonance-imaging-mri-units.htm#indicator-chart
I can’t imagine encouraging my children to seek careers in medicine.
From my peripheral knowledge of the culture and compared to my military background, I have the impression that the life of a junior doctor (in particular) is one of relentless misery and bullying (victim of), whilst experiencing stupid and harmful working hours and conditions, with ever declining respect and opportunity at the end of a very very long training tunnel.
Listening to tales from relatives that have been or are going through that mill, it generally sounds like a self flagellating exercise, and that’s speaking as someone who likes to live in a hole in the ground for days on end and works four month stretches at sea, with no rest days and rather high levels of responsibility.
I can’t imagine recruiting or retention being that great.
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Am I wrong to think the biggest difficulty the UK healthcare system faces is that it has to treat the average UK person? In that the average UK person is really fucking unhealthy. And requires more healthcare compared to the average European.
Or is that an inaccurate assumption on my part fuelled by anecdote and bemusement at how we've seemingly become a nation of fat useless bastards, and not backed up by stats?
Using Matt's naval narrative, paying for more buckets to bail out leaky ships is perhaps not as wise a long-term approach as investing in ships that leak less (good health).
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Am I wrong to think the biggest difficulty the UK healthcare system faces is that it has to treat the average UK person? In that the average UK person is really fucking unhealthy. ?
In my experience that's pretty accurate. But not the only problem. I'm extremely dubious that trying to Google comparative statistics would help either. Overall though, if people looked after themselves slightly better there would be fewer problems. Unfortunately, the PM is dead set against sugar taxes, and campaigned against Jamie Oliver when he tried to make school meals healthier.
O, and I wonder if the cost of health services compared above includes the 37bn that our government wasted on test and trace
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...
I can’t imagine recruiting or retention being that great.
Speaking as someone who has quit a job as allied health professional neither can I.
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Am I wrong to think the biggest difficulty the UK healthcare system faces is that it has to treat the average UK person? In that the average UK person is really fucking unhealthy.
I’d imagine it’s a factor. But doesn’t get away from the chronic underinvestment compared to other countries that Nigel has linked to upthread.
Using Matt's naval narrative, paying for more buckets to bail out leaky ships is perhaps not as wise a long-term approach as investing in ships that leak less (good health).
But what’s contributing to poor health in the UK? What would you invest in? That is such a massive topic, but you’d have to look at reducing levels of poverty to begin with, as that is intrinsically linked with poor health.
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Am I wrong to think the biggest difficulty the UK healthcare system faces is that it has to treat the average UK person? In that the average UK person is really fucking unhealthy.
I’d imagine it’s a factor. But doesn’t get away from the chronic underinvestment compared to other countries that Nigel has linked to upthread.
Using Matt's naval narrative, paying for more buckets to bail out leaky ships is perhaps not as wise a long-term approach as investing in ships that leak less (good health).
But what’s contributing to poor health in the UK? What would you invest in? That is such a massive topic, but you’d have to look at reducing levels of poverty to begin with, as that is intrinsically linked with poor health.
Don't want to be that guy again but how much evidence is there that UK is significantly unhealthy compared to other European countries? Life expectancy figures for Western Europe are remarkably similar really, between 80.6 (Germany) and 83 (Switzerland) with UK at the lower end (81) but ahead of, among others, Germany, Denmark and Belgium. Figures on healthy life expectancy are a bit more difficult to find and it's not clear how accurate they are but a quick look again shows UK in the bottom half but not any way a significant outlier.
Yes we are amoung the worst for being overweight/obese but it does feel like there is a bit of trope on here to blame a lot problems on fat people not looking after themselves. I'm sure we do have issues with health inequalities in the UK , a lot of those linked to financial inequality and division but it has to be overly simplistic to blame all the problems of the NHS on that.
It could be argued that the NHS provides good value service given the lower level of UK spending on health compared to lots of similar countries and I think it is often pretty effective particularly for acute and emergency care. But the payback for that low spending/investment (and arguably other issues around organisation etc) includes often slow and frustrating service, big gaps in areas like chronic conditions, mental health etc and some pretty difficult working conditions for a lot of the staff.
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I don't know what the stats are for the UK, but I was listening to something last night that said that in the US in the 70s there were 8 administrators for every healthcare provider on average. Now there are 1800 and that healthcare should be renamed sick care.
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Re population health.
I don't think that looking at a UK life expectancy figure will tell you a lot.
It's about quality of life, and both are extremely unequal around the UK.
People who live to 80, but with COPD for the last 20 years of that, are a) putting a huge burden on the health service b) not having a good time with COPD. It's one of the most underestimated conditions, sufferers are frequently too breathless to eat properly, wash properly etc let alone do any exercise.
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Re population health.
I don't think that looking at a UK life expectancy figure will tell you a lot.
It's about quality of life, and both are extremely unequal around the UK.
People who live to 80, but with COPD for the last 20 years of that, are a) putting a huge burden on the health service b) not having a good time with COPD. It's one of the most underestimated conditions, sufferers are frequently too breathless to eat properly, wash properly etc let alone do any exercise.
Possibly, but it doesn't tell you that we're significantly worse than other similar countries.
Healthy life expectancy:
https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=File:Life_expectancy_and_healthy_life_years_of_people_aged_65_years,_by_sex,_2018_(years)_AE2020.png
Given the variations in the data I'm not sure how consistent/accurate this is, but in the end it's not clear to me that UK is massively different to other European countries. The developed world has made big strides in keeping people alive longer, maybe not so much in keeping people healthy longer?
UK may be slightly different to other European countries but do we really believe that we're exceptionally bad in this way? If we're not careful don't we just end up as the opposite side of the coin to classic rightwing GB (English?) exceptionalism.
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Re population health.
I don't think that looking at a UK life expectancy figure will tell you a lot.
It's about quality of life, and both are extremely unequal around the UK.
People who live to 80, but with COPD for the last 20 years of that, are a) putting a huge burden on the health service b) not having a good time with COPD. It's one of the most underestimated conditions, sufferers are frequently too breathless to eat properly, wash properly etc let alone do any exercise.
Possibly, but it doesn't tell you that we're significantly worse than other similar countries.
Healthy life expectancy:
https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=File:Life_expectancy_and_healthy_life_years_of_people_aged_65_years,_by_sex,_2018_(years)_AE2020.png
Given the variations in the data I'm not sure how consistent/accurate this is, but in the end it's not clear to me that UK is massively different to other European countries. The developed world has made big strides in keeping people alive longer, maybe not so much in keeping people healthy longer?
UK may be slightly different to other European countries but do we really believe that we're exceptionally bad in this way? If we're not careful don't we just end up as the opposite side of the coin to classic rightwing GB (English?) exceptionalism.
Theres absolutely no way I'm looking for statistics on this, but something like a comparison of annual hospital admissions due to an acute exacerbation of copd would be a measure of some sort.
For a lot of people, the advances in longevity, as you suggest have not been matched by an advance in quality of life. Modern medicine, in many cases, seems to have achieved maintaining suffering for longer more than anything else. Having said that though, if you work in healthcare, you don't tend to see the people who are enjoying their lives in later lives, and I've certainly met many people in their 90s who are having a great time.
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Yes we are amoung the worst for being overweight/obese but it does feel like there is a bit of trope on here to blame a lot problems on fat people not looking after themselves.
I was going to suggest late onset diabetes as a measure of people sitting on the couch eating ready meals but was very surprised to find out we seem to be among the lower end for this in Europe...
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I realise it's very lazy to post this idle thought without a link, but here goes.
I don't deny that there's been chronic underinvestment in the NHS for years, and that it is fraught with problems.
But, my experiences with it have all been very positive - from routine GP stuff to trauma care (that was admittedly less positive but, ultimately, I dropped in on Sheffield Northern with very little warning and the titanium they gave me still seems to be doing the job 10+ years later) to childbirth stuff. I also remember that there was a report that came out a few years ago describing the NHS as one of the best healthcare in Europe and the world. Can anyone remember which report this was and why it is no longer relevant?
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What IanP said. UK COPD rates are on the high side compared with EU countries but this is just one condition. Overall, UK longterm disability rates are in the middle of the range amongst European countries.
(https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/documents/4187653/9347723/Disabilities+2017)
It is a similar story for longevity, health-related quality of life, perceived quality of life and so on. The UK is usually somewhere in the middle compared with other European countries for societal health measures (obviously these data conceal huge variations between Kensington and Merthyr).
Back to the US healthcare system. I don't even think its that good even if you have infinite money. The legal, financial and cultural background mean that unnecessary highly invasive procedures are rife. Very frequently, the best medical option is to do nothing, and that often includes investigations. That's hard when you've got $millions of scanners and surgical teams at the ready.
An anecdote: In around 2007 I took a lad to the Hi-Desert Medical Centre (Joshua Tree) with a suspected broken hip after he'd fallen soloing. We had to wait an agonising 6 hours in casualty before he was seen by a doctor and got proper pain control. Far worse than any of numerous UK experiences.
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I also remember that there was a report that came out a few years ago describing the NHS as one of the best healthcare in Europe and the world.
I read some commentary earlier in the year that suggested in these types of reports the NHS was often rated very highly for equality of access to care and that sort of thing but a bit rubbish in the keeping people alive stakes. I will have to see if i can find it and what the source was.
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https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-nhs-has-never-been-the-envy-of-the-world-
Hopefully the link works and it's not completely blocked by the paywall. No doubt many will dismiss the source, it seemed a reasonable piece for me. I was amused by this reference to a quote from the Guardian discussing the study i think Will referred to.
"When the NHS was ranked as the best healthcare system by the Commonwealth Fund in 2014, the Guardian wrote up a glowing review of the study, noting unironically that, ‘the only serious black mark against the NHS was its poor record on keeping people alive.’"
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Thanks. I don’t find that especially contentious, though dislike occasional value judgment instead of real argument eg ‘sweet spot of of private .. ‘.
The suggestion that the NHS is increasingly struggling is fairly self evident I should think. The real questions are why, and what solutions should be sought. ‘Publicly funded system faces adversity therefore its model is unsound’ is not proven. You could argue the adversity is related to the watering down of its public model with private elements undermining rather than shoring up the whole.
It’s a tricky issue. Simply pointing to different system with different elements as evidence of what this system needs to do is a syllogism. Most people will fall back on their innate biases as a clear picture is hard to see in a diverse and fragmented system. Maybe that is the answer; right there.
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I found this article as well: https://inews.co.uk/opinion/rishi-sunaks-budget-nhs-backlog-doctors-and-nurses-cant-solve-1270608
I know she's a journalist at the spectator as well, however anyone who doesn't read it ever might be surprised that it's often pretty critical of the government, more so than some of the left wing papers.
Shame that the spectator also publishes some proper crap like Ross Clark
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“At least the bankers on short-haul flights sipping champagne will be cheering this budget today.”
A pithy summary of the spending review from Rachel Reeves.
Write up here: https://www.politico.eu/article/rishi-sunak-boris-johnson-uk-budget-wages-spending-revenue/
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It’s looking like the amendment to allow Owen Patterson to receive no suspension for undeclared paid lobbying is going to pass with a three-line whip from the Conservatives.
The reasons being the element of personal tragedy and a question of whether the review was fair.
Now, I’m probably biased but the decision was made by a cross-party group of MPs and Chris Bryant seems to have quite clearly offered explanation for the main challenges by Owen Patterson. It’s a tragedy that his wife took her own life but it doesn’t change the fact that these rule breaches were committed before then, and it was the pressure and likely result of the inquiry which drove her to do it (from what I have read in terms of quotes from her in the weeks before her death - I can’t say this with certainty).
To me, this highlights the complete lack of integrity of the Conservative party.
Recently it was voting to protect Rob Roberts from a recall petition for Sexual Assault as it wasn’t right to change the rules retrospectively. And then allowing him back into the party.
Now, it’s voting to change the rules retrospectively when a recall petition was likely which might lose them an MP. With such a big majority you’d think that they would let this lie…
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Au contraire...with a majority this big they can make the rules whatever they want them to be.
I guess in a way we should be glad all they are abusing their power for us covering up their own sleaze. For now.
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This is a fucking disgrace. Hope Labour boycott the new committee to highlight that it’s just going to be a kangaroo court now
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Patel breaks the ministerial code and keeps her job after the investigation found her guilty of bullying across different departmental positions.
Dacre didn’t get appointed, but since they retuned the ‘wrong answer’ his application will be resubmitted. Successfully, I expect.
Rob Roberts gets back onto the gov benches after sexually harassing staffers.
It’s hardly a surprise if Paterson gets to avoid sanctions too, this administration has no shame.
That’s the key word really: past MPs would be held back from misdeeds or at least removed if found out where current ones don’t. A lot of our checks and balances are really only voluntary. If you don’t care and can brazen it out, there is little sanction with bite if the behaviour isn’t clearly prosecutable.
We also saw some similar values at work in Labour when clearly anti Semitic speech met nothing more than a bit of tutting from the leadership and precious little else.
My takeaway is that character really matters, rules not so much now.
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Reading that Paterson even voted for his reprieve rather than abstaining. Classy.
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It’s looking like the amendment to allow Owen Patterson to receive no suspension for undeclared paid lobbying is going to pass with a three-line whip from the Conservatives.
...
To me, this highlights the complete lack of integrity of the Conservative party.
Its truly despicable the way they've played the card of his wife's suicide to justify the rejection of the rules. Several political reporters said that a lot of the backbenchers were actually really pissed off by being whipped to vote on this and felt that the suspension should have gone ahead. I think that the avoiding of any responsibility for anything is really a Johnson trademark. Some of the party have more integrity. Rebellion against a three line whip is risky and not something many would risk.
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Chris Bryant interviewed this morning on Today compared the rule change to politics in Russia. It's so corrupt; but why didn't 33 Labour MPs vote on it?
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why didn't 33 Labour MPs vote on it?
Isn’t that some pairing procedure due to absentees?
The papers really are a joke in this country. The usual suspects have either gone with a different headline, backed Paterson, or in the case of the Mail tried to tar all MPs with the same brush.
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why didn't 33 Labour MPs vote on it?
Isn’t that some pairing procedure due to absentees?
The papers really are a joke in this country. The usual suspects have either gone with a different headline, backed Paterson, or in the case of the Mail tried to tar all MPs with the same brush.
A “Gentleman’s agreement”, or, given the simplicity of allowing remote attendance and voting on debates, an inexcusable policy to allow MPs to not show up for work, but still get paid.
Should the opposition decide to end this agreement, I would expect to see parliament run in a less half hearted manner, proper debate and quite a few MPs seeking careers outside public office, that don’t prevent them popping off for a bit of Grouse shooting on a whim or holding down a few score of NEDs on the side…
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The papers really are a joke in this country. The usual suspects have either gone with a different headline, backed Paterson, or in the case of the Mail tried to tar all MPs with the same brush.
In defence of the Times, it's often annoyingly loyal to Johnson, but is pretty critical in today's edition. Also features an op ed by the editor of Conservative Home, which warns that this vote could significantly affect voters opinions of the Conservative party, and does say explicitly that Patterson broke the rules by lobbying for Randox etc. FFS, he's paid 100,000 by Randox as a part time sideline to his MP role, it's just naked greed.
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why didn't 33 Labour MPs vote on it?
Isn’t that some pairing procedure due to absentees?
A “Gentleman’s agreement”, or, given the simplicity of allowing remote attendance and voting on debates, an inexcusable policy to allow MPs to not show up for work, but still get paid.
There is a pandemic on and many, including Starmer I believe, could not attend without breaking quarantine. MPs also sometimes have more pressing concerns in their constituency. And the whole point is they pair with someone voting the opposite - so whether the pair attend or not, or vote remotely, is irrelevant to the outcome. Much as our parliament needs reform, pairing is surely well down the list of concerns.
It does amaze me when otherwise engaged folk are ignorant of basic functional procedures like this. Perhaps it is to the media's credit that they never mention it because of its irrelevance.
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I've just seen a tweet from Laura Kuenssberg that reversal of yesterday's decisions is expected imminently. If so, they don't even have the courage of their "convictions."
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I hadn’t realised until I watched the debate yesterday, that Owen Patterson will go through this new process rather than being let-off straight away. During the debate, it was quite clear that there was little to no merit to make these changes in the way.
Some conservative MPs were highly critical of doing it this was and the number of votes against the amendment and abstains highlights this. JRM repeatably said that this case went on for far too long, there were personal tragedies involved and that witnesses weren’t able to speak orally.
Chris Bryant (Chair of the committee which reached the verdict) gave a very strong rebuttal at the end highlighting that the duration was due to allowing every request of a delay by Owen Patterson to be granted, only starting back after the death of his wife when his lawyers said they were ready to begin again, and that given many of the rule breaches were via email and therefore no witness’ evidence would make a slight bit of difference - they were purely initiated by OP with no observers.
I quickly realised that there seems to be no way that Owen Patterson could be perceived to be not Guilty and I’d be amazed if the new committee decided to let him off the hook. It makes you think what else might be coming down the line.
Ministers are out today criticising Kathryn Stone and suggesting she should step down. She also happens to be the person deciding whether to start the investigation into Johnson’s flat refurbishment which was an undeclared gift which quickly became a loan when made public. There must be plenty of things which might come out where it would be very handy to remove the independence of the decision from Government…
Does anyone know what happens if Labour/SNP decide to boycott the new committee as they are suggesting? I understand that the amendment was to put in a committee which had to be cross party.
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Does anyone know what happens if Labour/SNP decide to boycott the new committee as they are suggesting? I understand that the amendment was to put in a committee which had to be cross party.
Turns out that it means a u-turn… s if it only became clear today that there wasn’t cross-party support for this…
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/nov/04/boris-johnson-makes-u-turn-over-anti-sleaze-regime-for-mps-owen-paterson
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Anyone got any good ideas for a pithy but polite reply to my Tory MP who was defending the vote in email exchanges right up until this morning? In light of the u-turn.
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why didn't 33 Labour MPs vote on it?
Isn’t that some pairing procedure due to absentees?
A “Gentleman’s agreement”, or, given the simplicity of allowing remote attendance and voting on debates, an inexcusable policy to allow MPs to not show up for work, but still get paid.
There is a pandemic on and many, including Starmer I believe, could not attend without breaking quarantine. MPs also sometimes have more pressing concerns in their constituency. And the whole point is they pair with someone voting the opposite - so whether the pair attend or not, or vote remotely, is irrelevant to the outcome. Much as our parliament needs reform, pairing is surely well down the list of concerns.
It does amaze me when otherwise engaged folk are ignorant of basic functional procedures like this. Perhaps it is to the media's credit that they never mention it because of its irrelevance.
Not ignorant. Re-read.
Remote attendance.
Ffs. The debate being the more important aspect of this. The fact that the system functions on predetermined voting position and party whips, rather than individual conscience is an awful situation and absolutely ripe for reform.
MPs of both parties are, currently, simply drones, in most cases. Such agreements, should not be possible, if Parliament functioned as something better than a Labour versus Tory pissing contest and part time debating society.
I do think it’s cute that you believe all those absent MPs are engaged in vital constituency work (as surely, some are) or otherwise essential activities. I very much doubt that all of them are.
Isolation due to the pandemic, is something most of us have a fair amount of experience in mitigating, now.
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Anyone got any good ideas for a pithy but polite reply to my Tory MP who was defending the vote in email exchanges right up until this morning? In light of the u-turn.
Aren’t you Shipley and thus represented by the delightful Philip Davies? I can’t imagine any form of words having any effect on him!
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Aren’t you Shipley and thus represented by the delightful Philip Davies? I can’t imagine any form of words having any effect on him!
Yep! Absolutely no prospect of him becoming a decent human being but I do enjoy pointing out his hypocrisy and contradictions and generally wasting his time.
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Is there a way to see if your local MP abstained in protest, or wasn’t in parliament/was paired with someone and therefore couldn’t vote?
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Considering Julian Smith was in for the later divisions of the day and those of the day previously, I would assume he abstained
https://members.parliament.uk/member/4118/voting
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Considering Julian Smith was in for the later divisions of the day and those of the day previously, I would assume he abstained
https://members.parliament.uk/member/4118/voting
Good to know, thanks. Glad that he chose to abstain in that case. He’s given some god-awful responses to past questions from me, but glad he had the backbone to defy the whip in this case.
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Looks like Owen Patterson has resigned. Reports were that he wasn’t told about the U-turn and found out from a journalist whilst shopping. Must have known No.10 wasn’t looking out for him and decided he was better off away from the government rather than taking the heat for everything that went on…
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At least he can focus on his day job now.
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The penny probably dropped that he’d just been used as collateral in another clumsy Johnson power play to preemptively attack the standards committee ahead of what’s to come for the PM.
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It's one of the most self serving resignation statements I have ever seen. Apparently some MPs have been mocking his wife's suicide and/or belittling his family's pain. I have been pretty much glued to the news cycle on this and have not seen any such thing. The tone has been completely respectful other than when Boris shamelessly alluded to it in the commons yesterday.
He is resigning before he is subject to a vote which Boris would not be able to whip.
I was trying to explain the whole debacle to my 16 year old yesterday just after she told me that Boris took a private jet back from Scotland to attend a dinner of Telegraph journalists . . . it is hard not to despair.
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Yes. If he wanted to respect the “memory and reputation” of his late wife the best thing he and the PM could have done was not to use it to garner sympathy and cover for his previous misdemeanours and bring it up at every opportunity.
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Some more Machiavellian level plotting at the top of UK politics there, bet Patterson just wishes he’d taken the 30 days unpaid or whatever it was.
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Ffs. The debate being the more important aspect of this. The fact that the system functions on predetermined voting position and party whips, rather than individual conscience is an awful situation and absolutely ripe for reform.
MPs of both parties are, currently, simply drones, in most cases. Such agreements, should not be possible, if Parliament functioned as something better than a Labour versus Tory pissing contest and part time debating society.
Yeah and either everyone would vote with their party for entirely sensible reasons (they want to get ahead) or no government could be sure of getting a vote through and making laws would be even more chaotic and long-winded. Parliament can and does exert pressure over the executive, that the current lot seem to want to reduce this is a massive problem against which complaining about pairing (an entirely sensible way of accounting for absences) is small beer.
More general question: MPs pay - increase it but ban second and third jobs?
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Ffs. The debate being the more important aspect of this. The fact that the system functions on predetermined voting position and party whips, rather than individual conscience is an awful situation and absolutely ripe for reform.
MPs of both parties are, currently, simply drones, in most cases. Such agreements, should not be possible, if Parliament functioned as something better than a Labour versus Tory pissing contest and part time debating society.
Yeah and either everyone would vote with their party for entirely sensible reasons (they want to get ahead) or no government could be sure of getting a vote through and making laws would be even more chaotic and long-winded. Parliament can and does exert pressure over the executive, that the current lot seem to want to reduce this is a massive problem against which complaining about pairing (an entirely sensible way of accounting for absences) is small beer.
More general question: MPs pay - increase it but ban second and third jobs?
No. It’s not. It’s merely symptomatic of the mess. You could, should you wish to take it too the extreme, simply send home one of each party until one party runs out of MPs and assume the vote falls with the party with the majority. Which is exactly what happens on most occasions, one vote cancelling another, making it a forgone conclusion. Very few MPs vote with conscience on either side.
To give them their due, far more Labour MPs than Tories fall into that bracket (that I would, loosely, term “good people”).
Parliament is all too convivial and our two party system renders it largely moot, with an overall Tory bias. Labour are as much to blame as the Tories and stand to lose as much from PR as the Tories do. What you seem to view as potential chaos, actually usually engenders compromise and negotiation. Our current situation, with only a little hyperbole, might as well be seen as a straight contest between the PM and Leader of the Opposition, with each wielding their seated votes as their personal power. Of course, given PR, the issue itself would be moot.
Imagine the house split along the lines of the voting percentages cast in 2019.
Do you imagine making laws would be that much harder? I tend to think it would be more equitable, by a country mile or six.
The composition of the house would be majority progressive, for sure and life would be much better for the majority, I feel certain.
Labour, would in fact, exert more influence over government, than they do today, I suspect.
As it stands, they may as well drop the “Labour” title and rebrand as “The Official and Permanent Party in Opposition”. I’ll take that back and buy you a beer, if Labour win the next election, though.
Edit:
Also, making laws should be long winded. Quick fixes leave holes that often hurt.
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More general question: MPs pay - increase it but ban second and third jobs?
Yes. Should have been done long ago. Obvious time was the expenses scandal in 2009.
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No. It’s not. It’s merely symptomatic of the mess. You could, should you wish to take it too the extreme, simply send home one of each party until one party runs out of MPs and assume the vote falls with the party with the majority. Which is exactly what happens on most occasions, one vote cancelling another, making it a forgone conclusion. Very few MPs vote with conscience on either side.
To give them their due, far more Labour MPs than Tories fall into that bracket (that I would, loosely, term “good people”).
Parliament is all too convivial and our two party system renders it largely moot, with an overall Tory bias. Labour are as much to blame as the Tories and stand to lose as much from PR as the Tories do. What you seem to view as potential chaos, actually usually engenders compromise and negotiation. Our current situation, with only a little hyperbole, might as well be seen as a straight contest between the PM and Leader of the Opposition, with each wielding their seated votes as their personal power. Of course, given PR, the issue itself would be moot.
Imagine the house split along the lines of the voting percentages cast in 2019.
Do you imagine making laws would be that much harder? I tend to think it would be more equitable, by a country mile or six.
The composition of the house would be majority progressive, for sure and life would be much better for the majority, I feel certain.
Labour, would in fact, exert more influence over government, than they do today, I suspect.
As it stands, they may as well drop the “Labour” title and rebrand as “The Official and Permanent Party in Opposition”. I’ll take that back and buy you a beer, if Labour win the next election, though.
Edit:
Also, making laws should be long winded. Quick fixes leave holes that often hurt.
I think your characterisation of the Parliamentary system misses out an awful lot of what actually goes on in getting bills through Parliament, and seems to ignore the oversight aspect of the institution altogether. Bills can and do get changed at second and third readings as a result of MPs' debate/pressure, and the work of Select Committees is important - after all it was the Committee on Standards that started this whole row... Leaders often don't have the full and complete control over their party, and MPs can and do use their power to achieve their goals - remember the ERG? They certainly "voted with their conscience" - or threatened to - plenty of times in the last few years.
If you want "compromise and negotiation" over a strong executive, how do you think that would have played out in the financial crisis when the executive needed to make very quick decisions? Or indeed the pandemic? Even in a PR system you're going to have whipping simply because if you can't regularly count on votes, you gum up the process of actually doing anything - the political scientists Francis Fukuyama calls the US a "vetocracy" and they really do struggle getting stuff done at the moment. I'm all for taking the time to pass laws but sometimes the executive needs to act quickly.
Whilst I'm sympathetic to a move to PR, you can't assume there'd be an automatic progressive majority. All UK parties are internal coalitions, even the Lib Dems, some of whom would probably rather be with a free market/liberal centre-right grouping that would attract a lot of current Tories. It's a mistake to think that under PR current voting patterns would map directly into seats/MPs as the current choices hide as much as they obscure. I strongly doubt we'd even have the same parties as we do now.
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Owen Patterson has left the building...
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No. It’s not. It’s merely symptomatic of the mess. You could, should you wish to take it too the extreme, simply send home one of each party until one party runs out of MPs and assume the vote falls with the party with the majority. Which is exactly what happens on most occasions, one vote cancelling another, making it a forgone conclusion. Very few MPs vote with conscience on either side.
To give them their due, far more Labour MPs than Tories fall into that bracket (that I would, loosely, term “good people”).
Parliament is all too convivial and our two party system renders it largely moot, with an overall Tory bias. Labour are as much to blame as the Tories and stand to lose as much from PR as the Tories do. What you seem to view as potential chaos, actually usually engenders compromise and negotiation. Our current situation, with only a little hyperbole, might as well be seen as a straight contest between the PM and Leader of the Opposition, with each wielding their seated votes as their personal power. Of course, given PR, the issue itself would be moot.
Imagine the house split along the lines of the voting percentages cast in 2019.
Do you imagine making laws would be that much harder? I tend to think it would be more equitable, by a country mile or six.
The composition of the house would be majority progressive, for sure and life would be much better for the majority, I feel certain.
Labour, would in fact, exert more influence over government, than they do today, I suspect.
As it stands, they may as well drop the “Labour” title and rebrand as “The Official and Permanent Party in Opposition”. I’ll take that back and buy you a beer, if Labour win the next election, though.
Edit:
Also, making laws should be long winded. Quick fixes leave holes that often hurt.
I think your characterisation of the Parliamentary system misses out an awful lot of what actually goes on in getting bills through Parliament, and seems to ignore the oversight aspect of the institution altogether. Bills can and do get changed at second and third readings as a result of MPs' debate/pressure, and the work of Select Committees is important - after all it was the Committee on Standards that started this whole row... Leaders often don't have the full and complete control over their party, and MPs can and do use their power to achieve their goals - remember the ERG? They certainly "voted with their conscience" - or threatened to - plenty of times in the last few years.
If you want "compromise and negotiation" over a strong executive, how do you think that would have played out in the financial crisis when the executive needed to make very quick decisions? Or indeed the pandemic? Even in a PR system you're going to have whipping simply because if you can't regularly count on votes, you gum up the process of actually doing anything - the political scientists Francis Fukuyama calls the US a "vetocracy" and they really do struggle getting stuff done at the moment. I'm all for taking the time to pass laws but sometimes the executive needs to act quickly.
Whilst I'm sympathetic to a move to PR, you can't assume there'd be an automatic progressive majority. All UK parties are internal coalitions, even the Lib Dems, some of whom would probably rather be with a free market/liberal centre-right grouping that would attract a lot of current Tories. It's a mistake to think that under PR current voting patterns would map directly into seats/MPs as the current choices hide as much as they obscure. I strongly doubt we'd even have the same parties as we do now.
Of course it’s an over simplification. I made no such assumption either, I merely pointed out that if the current parliament actually represented the voting split at the last election, it would favour progressives, quite markedly. I rather think that free market/liberal/ centre grouping you envisage there to be a: a good thing and b: allow a good many moderate Tories to get behind socially liberal policies they probably already favour. Currently they will be whipped to the right of their natural inclination.
I’ve said it before, the middle ground decide elections. They create the majority. When people “defect”, “cross the aisle” etc, they were never actually ardent supporters of their original party to begin with. However, when a two party system evolves as ours has (and to an even greater extent in the US), the parties must gravitate away from centre, forming their own little bell curves about the centre line. Reducing the opportunity for compromise.
“Rebel” groups of cross party alliances are almost impossible in this system, but much more likely within a PR parliament. This is the ground where new parties should be growing, drawing in the disenchanted from both sides, those cross party alliances sprouting legs. It happens elsewhere, not in the UK or the US. We have seen an almost total stagnation of our political system as the 21st century, a marked entrenchment of the right in power and the left in shattered disarray.
Labour is not doing well.
It is not polling well.
People are not even trickling into it’s ranks.
The latest “U” turn? Popular opinion induced, based on response to press coverage. The man on the street wouldn’t give a toss about Starmer or Labour at large “boycotting” the proposed new scrutiny regimen, but the blatant corruption of the Government’s move was obvious enough for even Joe Public to notice and they failed to line up a Paedo Prince, Royal wedding or Junior Royal flouncing out of the country, to cover their shit.
Of course this system is not entirely dysfunctional. Of course the “good” people inside are slapping bandaids on here there and everywhere and it still limps on. Some of those bandaids are trying to hold back arterial bleeds. Look at the Government we have. How do you think we got here? Does this look like a system that is working, or one that is really very close to drowning?
As an aside from the main point: Given everything that has happen, pretty much since 2016, all the proven lies, the failed initiatives, the obvious corruption, the staggering number of actual deaths; how do you explain the Tory’s enduring popularity and Labour’s continued decline?
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As an aside from the main point: Given everything that has happen, pretty much since 2016, all the proven lies, the failed initiatives, the obvious corruption, the staggering number of actual deaths; how do you explain the Tory’s enduring popularity and Labour’s continued decline?
Easy answer, most people aren't really paying attention. Its common in focus groups for several members to be barely aware that Corbyn is no longer leader of the labour party, and to think that Johnson is doing a marvellous job. People who are paying attention are generally not especially happy with the Johnson government, even the very Conservative leaning commentators who are worried about the financial situation, constant breaking manifesto promises, chaotic decision making and the increase in the size of the state.
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The papers really are a joke in this country.
Well the headlines are going to make for very uncomfortable reading in No10 this morning. Without exception they’re hammering Johnson over this.
Doubt it’ll change the polls but will wait and see.
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From the BBC report: Mr Paterson said he now wanted a life "outside the cruel world of politics".
Ah, diddums. The cruel world is a £20 cut to UC, not the one where people get annoyed about representatives being corrupt.
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I was trying to explain the whole debacle to my 16 year old yesterday just after she told me that Boris took a private jet back from Scotland to attend a dinner of Telegraph journalists . . . it is hard not to despair.
He flew back in a GB branded jet, funded by taxpayers, to have that dinner with Lord Moore of Etchingham at the Garrick club; on the menu was pheasant followed by Grand Marnier souffle.
That's dedication to your job.
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I was trying to explain the whole debacle to my 16 year old yesterday just after she told me that Boris took a private jet back from Scotland to attend a dinner of Telegraph journalists . . . it is hard not to despair.
He flew back in a GB branded jet, funded by taxpayers, to have that dinner with Lord Moore of Etchingham at the Garrick club; on the menu was pheasant followed by Grand Marnier souffle.
That's dedication to your job.
Yep, pheasant can often be dry!
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From the BBC report: Mr Paterson said he now wanted a life "outside the cruel world of politics".
Ah, diddums.
You don't think it was more likely a reference to his wife's suicide? As much as the guy's political career should have ended in 2014 let's not ignore the tragic human element.
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I was trying to explain the whole debacle to my 16 year old yesterday just after she told me that Boris took a private jet back from Scotland to attend a dinner of Telegraph journalists . . . it is hard not to despair.
He flew back in a GB branded jet, funded by taxpayers, to have that dinner with Lord Moore of Etchingham at the Garrick club; on the menu was pheasant followed by Grand Marnier souffle.
That's dedication to your job.
Yep, pheasant can often be dry!
The wine omelette sounds pretty hard work too :sick:
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Anyone got any good ideas for a pithy but polite reply to my Tory MP who was defending the vote in email exchanges right up until this morning? In light of the u-turn.
You could send him a pair of flip flops as per The Thick Of It.
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You don't think it was more likely a reference to his wife's suicide?
I took it as a reference to being hung out to dry by No10. After all, that’s what prompted him to resign.
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Agree. I think he felt he was not given the opportunity to defend his indefensible position.
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You don't think it was more likely a reference to his wife's suicide?
I took it as a reference to being hung out to dry by No10. After all, that’s what prompted him to resign.
Agree. I think it was a shameless attempt at emotional blackmail to cultivate some sympathy for him. He didn't say anything about the cruel world of politics when he thought he'd got away with it the day before, only saying he'd do the same thing again. There are many excellent Conservative MPs, who seem to be decent people, in my opinion, but Patterson wasn't one of them.
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John Major interviewed on the Today programme this morning has called the government politically corrupt and extremely stupid.
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Aren’t you Shipley and thus represented by the delightful Philip Davies? I can’t imagine any form of words having any effect on him!
From BBC News:
“The relationship between MPs and those at the top has been left bruised. This could bite the government when it needs those MPs on side again in future votes, particularly on controversial issues.
The Mail on Sunday quotes Shipley MP Philip Davies pleading, "Please don't ever ask me to vote for anything ever again," after claiming he received abuse from his constituents for it.”
No abuse from me, only (hopefully) reasoned arguments, but good to see he’s regretting slavish loyalty now.
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Aren’t you Shipley and thus represented by the delightful Philip Davies? I can’t imagine any form of words having any effect on him!
No abuse from me, only (hopefully) reasoned arguments, but good to see he’s regretting slavish loyalty now.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/nov/07/30-mps-who-could-be-affected-by-proposed-consultancy-ban?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other
I see that Philip Davies is a paid consultant for a pawnbrokers. I wonder if that's all above board?
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Some tasty rates in there. Wouldn't mind getting onto some of these gigs myself. Taking one random example:
Julian Smith, Skipton and Ripon (Conservative)
External adviser on business development for hydrogen distribution company, Ryse Hydrogen, earning £60,000pa for 20 hours
£3000 per hour. They must be getting some fantastic "advice" on hydrogen distribution!
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Being a paid consultant ought to be banned for MPs, although they should be allowed to work in fields that may inform their political work, such as law or the health service.
I'd probably bet money that Johnson won't turn up to the emergency debate this afternoon, and he will suddenly have something important to do like rushing back up to COP. He has form having gone to Afghanistan to avoid a vote.
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More general question: MPs pay - increase it but ban second and third jobs?
Yes. Should have been done long ago. Obvious time was the expenses scandal in 2009.
I don't think they should get a payrise. They get £81k a year vs average UK salary around £30k. This for the amount of actual hard work you see them doing seems a decent deal for them.
They shouldn't be allowed to consult. I think there should be a clause that prevents them consulting within 5 years of finishing the role too.
It should be seen as a passion career, not an opportunity to cash in or earn big bucks. Should be people who want to serve their country; now it's people who feels the country should be serving them.
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I don't think they should get a payrise. They get £81k a year vs average UK salary around £30k.
It should be seen as a passion career, not an opportunity to cash in or earn big bucks. Should be people who want to serve their country; now it's people who feels the country should be serving them.
I think the argument for increasing pay is to attract talent that is otherwise put off by the relatively low salary. Not saying it's a shit salary - far from it. But to attract experienced and talented people from across the spectrum then it has to be enough to be worthwhile giving up what they could demand elsewhere, which might be £100k+ (CEOs, senior managers, lawyers, accountants, consultants, IT bods...). If I was earning that sort of money there's no way I'd go into politics - especially if it meant a pay cut and living away from home Mon-Thurs.
They shouldn't be allowed to consult. I think there should be a clause that prevents them consulting within 5 years of finishing the role too.
I do agree with this, but then a higher salary would do away with any justification for having second jobs and rinsing expenses.
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I don't think they should get a payrise. They get £81k a year vs average UK salary around £30k. This for the amount of actual hard work you see them doing seems a decent deal for them.
It should be seen as a passion career, not an opportunity to cash in or earn big bucks. Should be people who want to serve their country; now it's people who feels the country should be serving them.
I am not sure a payrise is the answer either, but I do think that the vast majority of MPs actually work bloody hard and earn every penny of their salary. If you think about the amount of shit they have to put up with as well as the fact that there's a significant chance of losing the job entirely every few years, wierd working hours etc etc, it's not a job that you can describe as an easy living.
It's extremely unfortunate, however that I'd say one of the few MPs who has little interest in the job or any aspect of policy, and is mainly in it for the power trip happens to be prime minister.
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It should be seen as a passion career, not an opportunity to cash in or earn big bucks. Should be people who want to serve their country; now it's people who feels the country should be serving them.
Perhaps, like nurses and teachers, the joy of serving should compensate for pay because it’s a ‘vocation’. Or perhaps not, and recruitment of talent becomes fraught.
Pay people well and expect - and get- 100% commitment in return.
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Pay people well and expect - and get- 100% commitment in return.
This sort of commitment?
https://twitter.com/alexwickham/status/1457739590639439872?s=20
(Boris Johnson has apparently travelled over 26000 miles to avoid difficult situations in parliament)
Or this sort of commitment?
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10179601/Former-attorney-general-Geoffrey-Cox-second-job-saw-vote-remotely-Caribbean.html
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You are proving my point.
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You are proving my point.
I don’t think so.
For many MPs, that role is a second job and the remuneration almost irrelevant. The position is sought for influence and access to power. Paying more won’t change that, if anything it just makes it more attractive (because there are negatives to being in the public/media eye).
Strictly enforced and greatly strengthened regulation of working hours, attendance in the house, outside activities and financial dealings; would be the only way to change the current system.
It’s quite possible to achieve. As a Civil Servant with a security clearance, I lose huge swathes of what some would call “basic” privacy, so does everyone else in that category. You either accept it as part of your role or you “roll” off.
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You are proving my point.
I'm not sure about that; Geoffrey Cox earned over a million pounds last year for outside legal work. There is no way that any feasible pay increases will compete with that! Boris Johnson gets eye watering amounts of money for Telegraph articles (over 100000 a piece I think). I agree more with Matt that some sort of required attendance and appearance at votes might be a better way to go.
Some MPs- probably the vast majority- work hard for their constituents and are valuable public servants. I fail to see how Cox is, with 140 hours legal work a month, and half the time in the Caribbean. The MPs in very safe seats occasionally seem to sit back and milk it. The ones in marginal areas are no doubt rather more concerned with their job security, and want to keep their constituents happy.
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You are proving my point.
I'm not sure about that; Geoffrey Cox earned over a million pounds last year for outside legal work. There is no way that any feasible pay increases will compete with that! Boris Johnson gets eye watering amounts of money for Telegraph articles (over 100000 a piece I think). I agree more with Matt that some sort of required attendance and appearance at votes might be a better way to go.
Some MPs- probably the vast majority- work hard for their constituents and are valuable public servants. I fail to see how Cox is, with 140 hours legal work a month, and half the time in the Caribbean. The MPs in very safe seats occasionally seem to sit back and milk it. The ones in marginal areas are no doubt rather more concerned with their job security, and want to keep their constituents happy.
I think you’re right that making people use their time to be places (e.g. debates/votes) would be a great way to focus on their roles more.
A friend often says that, for example, parking fines and speed tickets should require you to go to a specific place in person to pay. For someone with a huge salary, just parking anywhere and dealing with a £30 fine is no deterrent for them. Making them take some time out of their day to pay, for example, at the local council office would quickly stop them offending/re-offending.
The same goes for attendance of votes etc. It will start to separate out those who want the role purely for influence that it brings.
On Boris Johnson’s Telegraph articles, I’m had a long-standing bug bare about this kind of thing. To be fair, I’ve not read many of them, but they are often political in nature about things which are aiming to appeal to voters.
I think that as a public figure, these kind of article should be available to the everyone (i.e. not paywalled) and I also fee uneasy about the high remuneration for them. I feel like the leader of a country should be getting their message out there because it is an important message, not because someone is bunging you £100k…
I’ve had this with local MP’s too. What’s the point in having an MP who writes articles that I’ve got to pay to read.
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I'm not sure about that; Geoffrey Cox earned over a million pounds last year for outside legal work. There is no way that any feasible pay increases will compete with that! Boris Johnson gets eye watering amounts of money for Telegraph articles (over 100000 a piece I think).
If I had my way the pay would rise and taking pay or money from any source other than parliament would be a criminal offence.
If characters like Cox et al became fewer on the ground in the Commons as a result, so be it. They should be motivated by a public - rather than self- serving ethic. Where I disagree with Rocksteady is the implication that at some level virtue should be its own reward. Those views tend never to be applied to the speaker themselves I find.
Conditions of presence for votes etc I quite agree with. Let's have some thoughtful regulation there. It does exist to some degree- some Lords are notorious for briefly turning up to meet the minimum attendance and take their pay. it is also true that Covid has driven a coach and horses through previous norms of physical attendance and now may be an excellent time to consider these issues.
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It should be seen as a passion career, not an opportunity to cash in or earn big bucks. Should be people who want to serve their country; now it's people who feels the country should be serving them.
My view on "passion careers" that don't pay well is that they tend to be full of rich people who can afford to be fulfilled on the cheap, because someone else bought a house for them. I've worked for aid agencies, the sector is full of such people, and I'm sure TV, journalism, the arts, etc are too. This strikes me as a mostly negative trend in British life.
What surpised me about the MPs' consultancy jobs was not so much the money but the amount of time they were spending on them. The odd few days in the recess I could just about get, but some of them are spending a month or more working on second jobs. That's indefensible, they should be using that time to either work on constituency issues or developing specific subject matter expertise that enhances their worth to Parliament more generally. A month a year of obligatory personal development such as taking an undergrad or grad level course on climate science, biotechnology, macroeconomics - or even basic bloody statistics! - probably wouldn't hurt.
I'd also like to see a serious attempt to close the revolving door. If you serve as a minister or on a select committee then no working in that sector for a couple of years afterwards (tho I am aware that ex-MPs need to earn a living somehow).
The suggestions about manditory attendance etc strike me as unneccessary micro-management.
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It should be seen as a passion career, not an opportunity to cash in or earn big bucks. Should be people who want to serve their country; now it's people who feels the country should be serving them.
My view on "passion careers" that don't pay well is that they tend to be full of rich people who can afford to be fulfilled on the cheap, because someone else bought a house for them. I've worked for aid agencies, the sector is full of such people, and I'm sure TV, journalism, the arts, etc are too. This strikes me as a mostly negative trend in British life.
Yeah on reflection I'm wrong about the passion career because I do agree with the above. The only people I've met who were artists or work in TV or were full time writers or entrepreneurs in their 20s had a financial safety net.
I guess with MPs I don't see why they should earn as much as a doctor or lawyer or other skilled and qualified professional because they don't have to go through that crucible of professional training. The qualification to become an MP is persuading people to vote for you.
Maybe there should be professional training to be an MP, which you could partly waive if you already have had a career? Then at least the high pay would have the justification of having specialist skills to bring to the table.
The outside consulting/revolving door creates obvious conflicts of interest that clearly shouldn't be allowed at all. I'd support the criminal penalties. I think even the lucrative speaking opportunities should be closed off. You shouldn't be able to do a bad job running the country, cause division and chaos then earn millions afterwards (like Dave Cameron and George Osborne for example).
Having said that I remember in the Big Short the guy who bought 9bn of sub-prime bonds was fired but kept his $24m bonus for the year's work...
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Agree with the above that the unintended consequence of restricting any outside work would be MPs who are exclusively independently wealthy.
I do think that in professional careers which need a certain number of hours a year to stay qualified it's not a problem, and many of these people are valuable MPs, Rosanna Allan Khan for example, and a high degree of legal expertise must be valuable if drafting legislation.
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Very disappointed the Guardian didn’t go with the title
It’s not an easy life any more, chum
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/nov/09/iain-duncan-smith-accused-of-brazen-conflict-of-interest-over-25000-job
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Very disappointed the Guardian didn’t go with the title
It’s not an easy life any more, chum
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/nov/09/iain-duncan-smith-accused-of-brazen-conflict-of-interest-over-25000-job
There is a great cartoon in The Times today, of Geoffrey Cox limbo dancing under a very low bar, while juggling bank notes, titled "how low can you go Sir Geoffrey?"
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Yeah on reflection I'm wrong about the passion career because I do agree with the above. The only people I've met who were artists or work in TV or were full time writers or entrepreneurs in their 20s had a financial safety net.
Oh yeah nobody who isn't wealthy takes jobs paying less than 80 grand- that's why nursing, scientific research, social work & ,teaching & hospitality are staffed entirely by the children of the rich.
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Yeah on reflection I'm wrong about the passion career because I do agree with the above. The only people I've met who were artists or work in TV or were full time writers or entrepreneurs in their 20s had a financial safety net.
Oh yeah nobody who isn't wealthy takes jobs paying less than 80 grand- that's why nursing, scientific research, social work & ,teaching & hospitality are staffed entirely by the children of the rich.
But being an MP is extremely insecure, you have to live in London a lot of the time, put up with a lot of abuse, work at very strange hours which aren't necessarily predictable and many other things. There are clearly some benefits but I really don't think it's the easy ride that it often seems to be portrayed as.
Saying that, its absolutely not an excuse for anyone to piss off to the Caribbean to earn a million pounds while the rest of the country isn't allowed to go on holiday, to a pub or a cinema.
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Yeah on reflection I'm wrong about the passion career because I do agree with the above. The only people I've met who were artists or work in TV or were full time writers or entrepreneurs in their 20s had a financial safety net.
Oh yeah nobody who isn't wealthy takes jobs paying less than 80 grand- that's why nursing, scientific research, social work & ,teaching & hospitality are staffed entirely by the children of the rich.
I can't win on this passion career thing because I was attacked for saying I thought that being an MP should be treated as a passion career and not as a high earning role and then for saying the above. I obviously haven't thought it out well enough.
I've had passion roles which paid very little and were fun and I've had boring soul destroying jobs which paid well. My wife works in a passion career and loves it but earns a lot less than an MP. I'm sure some roles in the sectors you've mentioned pay above £80k. It's nuanced isn't it.
Point I'm trying to make is that being an MP shouldn't be seen as a ticket to the gravy train. I don't think giving it a high salary will necessarily attract the right sort of people from the private sector. Edit: But yes there are obvious downsides that should be compensated for. Although I'd argue that £80k and the expenses that they can already legitimately claim back are some kind of compensation.
The idea of salary being proportionate to commitment I find odd - because eg. nursing etc.
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Am I missing something here or is this thread only frequented by people who earn in excess of £80k per year?
Average salary in the UK is 29k.
82k IS a high salary and the majority of people in the UK dream of earning that much. :shrug:
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Average wage reflects a lot of lower skilled jobs though. For me Brutus it is the difference between maybe what 'should' be the case and realistically what is sensible to achieve the outcome you are after. ie MPs who are able and committed.
If we want high calibre candidates to perform with professionalism, in London, then the salaries should at least reflect (not compete with) professional London salaries. With no realistic grounds for complaint. Receipt of outside pay should be considered a criminal matter.
If wages are too low for the role - and as Toby points out the wage needs to reflect the insecurity and unsocial hours - good candidates will either be rich dilettantes or shy away.
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I've never heard working in the arts described as a 'passion career'. However as someone who was/is an artist and worked in the South West I can say pretty confidently most artists are poor and don't even make an adequate wage. Unless you make highly commercial work, income will rely on grants and funding.
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If it helps I don't earn 82 k. The salaries in "the city" are I guess what are being used for comparison though. In the public ish sector profs get on average 82k. Hospital consultants start on about 85k. Should MPs get paid about that much?
I'd say it isn't unreasonable, but I haven't thought about it too much.
Numbers just from the Google.
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Am I missing something here or is this thread only frequented by people who earn in excess of £80k per year?
Average salary in the UK is 29k.
82k IS a high salary and the majority of people in the UK dream of earning that much. :shrug:
Caveat here that my way of thinking here may be a long way off the mark. I don’t agree that the low-paid jobs are just for people with wealthy parents, far from it, but I think that having a strong financial background (fall-net) would massively help becoming an MP.
My way of thinking about it, is that there is a lot of work that goes into becoming an MP.
Whilst not the rule, I imagine that prerequisites include a strong political knowledge, knowledge of past/current affairs, probably having worked for local government or been on advisory boards/school boards, time to campaign, time to raise funding for said campaign (if you don’t have the spare cash), lots of time to visit local businesses etc.
Then to stand as an MP you need 10 people to support you, and if you want to stand as a non-Independent you need the backing of a political party (which I imagine is incredibly hard to get for most of the larger parties due to going with who they know etc and the fact they only put one person forward per constituency, and that’s once every 4 years). Then to top it off you need to pay a £500 deposit to secure your place.
So, to me, this hugely limits the pool of people who would realistically consider it and kind of boils them down into a few groups.
1) Those who have a real desire to become MPs - working their way through local government etc with the aim of ultimately being elected. These may be more of the “passion” career type.
2) Those who have the time/resources to have a go at becoming an MP - and want to do it because either they think they will be able to make a difference, or because they think it will personally benefit them.
In this latter group I suspect that the average salary etc is far above the national average. In my line of work (Banking - boo, hiss) it’s far from uncommon to see people on £80k+, especially when you consider bonus’ etc. In fact once you become a manager/senior manager (depending on how specialised the department is) that kind of becomes an expectation before too long.
I’m not quite sure where I’m going with this now, but I think that the current system is really set up for well connected, wealthy people to become MPs. I do think this is changing more now, but that it’s more of an exception than the norm. You only need to see the make up of cabinet to see how un-represented the average person is.
I think that an MP is very well paid, but I also wouldn’t begrudge a big rise for them either - it’s certainly a way more demanding job, and one that hugely effects your personal life, than I would ever want to do. But I think that until things change to allow more of the “passion career” people to come through then changing the pay wouldn’t make much difference. If you put it up, those in group 2 above will just be doing even better. If you put pay down, the draw of power will be enough to keep group 2 coming.
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It's potentially a great service job, done really badly by some terrible people. As the saying kind of goes.. many of the people who have the desire to become an MP should be barred on the grounds of having the desire to become an MP.
It's a job that would be better foisted upon people who'd been identified by some all-knowing eye as skilled and public-minded enough to do the job well and fairly. Kind of pluck them out of society against their will and drag them screaming and kicking into the house of commons to serve their time. The really unfortunate ones become ministers.
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You’re thinking of the BMC, am I right?
Whilst not the rule, I imagine that prerequisites include a strong political knowledge, knowledge of past/current affairs, probably having worked for local government or been on advisory boards/school boards, time to campaign, time to raise funding for said campaign (if you don’t have the spare cash), lots of time to visit local businesses etc.
I wonder if you are confusing ‘desirable’ with ‘essential’?
MPs who don’t know that NI nationalists and unionists tend not to vote for each other? Karen Bradley, for example https://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/uk/ni-secretary-didn-t-realise-nationalists-don-t-vote-for-unionists-1.3621561
MPs who don’t know that Dover is a vital port, such as Dominic Raab? https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-46142188
Or even those unable to distinguish ports from pizza contracts? https://www.bebconsultancy.co.uk/why-you-should-never-copy-and-paste-your-tcs-like-seaborne-freight/
Truly, we are spoiled.
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As the saying kind of goes.. many of the people who have the desire to become an MP should be barred on the grounds of having the desire to become an MP.
I've got a lot of sympathy for that.
I look at our current MPs and I'm sure there are some good ones - and maybe even some who have the sort of qualities James describes. There's a lot of lobby fodder, who contribute fairly little and whose loyalty is to party first and foremost. There are a bunch who are self serving and power hungry. There are several who are just corrupt.
I tend to think that for a lot of MPs the salary isn't all they get from it: some are motivated by wanting to do good things, some are motivated by the opportunities for self enrichment either on the job or after, and some are motivated by a desire for power. There's probably plenty of easier ways to earn the money, if it's only about the money, or at least have a better work life balance whilst doing so.
I also tend to think that done properly it's a very important job and that probably the people we elect to do it ought to be in some nebulous way amongst the best of us, or at least the better of us. I'm far from convinced that's the case under the current system - if paying double or more got to a point where the MPs were all top calibre people (again, by some imprecise definition) motivated to do their best by people I'd support it in a heartbeat, but I don't really believe it because whilst those are good qualities in being an MP I'm not sure they're particularly essential in the current world for getting chosen as a candidate or elected as an MP.
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Interesting counter-argument in the New Statesman here:
https://www.newstatesman.com/comment/2021/11/banning-mps-second-jobs-would-weaken-parliament-not-strengthen-it
I don't agree with it, but it's worth a read. I'm not of the same political persausion of the author, but I don't think he's out to lunch.
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You’re thinking of the BMC, am I right?
Whilst not the rule, I imagine that prerequisites include a strong political knowledge, knowledge of past/current affairs, probably having worked for local government or been on advisory boards/school boards, time to campaign, time to raise funding for said campaign (if you don’t have the spare cash), lots of time to visit local businesses etc.
I wonder if you are confusing ‘desirable’ with ‘essential’?
MPs who don’t know that NI nationalists and unionists tend not to vote for each other? Karen Bradley, for example https://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/uk/ni-secretary-didn-t-realise-nationalists-don-t-vote-for-unionists-1.3621561
MPs who don’t know that Dover is a vital port, such as Dominic Raab? https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-46142188
Or even those unable to distinguish ports from pizza contracts? https://www.bebconsultancy.co.uk/why-you-should-never-copy-and-paste-your-tcs-like-seaborne-freight/
Truly, we are spoiled.
Of course, they are desirable traits.
But I imagine that most MP’s will have (what most would consider) a decent understanding of how parliament works, a reasonable understanding of some political history, and have the will/clout to put in the time to becoming known/up for selection.
Doesn’t mean there aren’t also some fools in there :lol:
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Interesting counter-argument in the New Statesman here:
https://www.newstatesman.com/comment/2021/11/banning-mps-second-jobs-would-weaken-parliament-not-strengthen-it
I don't agree with it, but it's worth a read. I'm not of the same political persausion of the author, but I don't think he's out to lunch.
Unless someone else is paying.
Gauke has more integrity than some MPs in his party, certainly. (Odd for a solicitor to misuse ‘dependant’ ). It’s all a very one sided argument though.
It is theoretically possible for parliament to be enriched by ministers with active outside interests. There may be other ways to gain that knowledge of the wider world. It is also possible that candidates who would enrich parliamentary life will not do so, feeling restricted if second jobs are not permitted.
The elephant in the room is the pernicious effect of greed and divided loyalties. He summarily dismisses these points. I don’t think that is correct either in view of the danger that parliament, lacking robust safeguards, might become increasingly corrupt and unable to fairly represent the interests of constituents, nor that MPs of poor character are occupying seats that would be better served by people with a modicum of integrity.
When the risk is that many parliamentarians as a cohort may be, or are perceived to be, lacking the integrity to fairly fulfill their roles….. saying ‘I doubt it’ just doesn’t hack it.
What is needed now is to protect the system. It is currently too weak to prevent abuse and risks further decline. Balancing that against the possibility that a few good folk might not contribute where so many rogues currently prosper, I think we should take the hit.
Edit- conclusion
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There seems to be an understandable cynicism in how most people view MPs. While there are a few who seem to be milking it for personal advancement or gain, I strongly believe that most of them are basically decent people even the ones I disagree with.
There is an argument that the people get the politicians they deserve, after all they do vote for them.
It's very unfortunate that our current PM is aspiring to be an autocrat and seems to have little or no interest in any aspect of policy only his own personal advancement.
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I do agree with you, but the problem is twofold. One, that the system is vulnerable to abuse which damages parliament’s ability to function. Two, that this tarnishes its reputation, leading to a loss of confidence and growing public cynicism. Which will damage democracy.
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Sounds like it’s time to bring out the ‘a bag of porridge only costs a pound’ types who were all over radio 4 the week they cut UC uplift.
With a bit of thriftiness they might still be able to afford their childcare* on £82k.
*Eton
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https://twitter.com/PrivateEyeNews/status/1458804387439128581
It is clearly lazy and wrong to tar all MPs with the same brush. The behaviour of high ranking Tories does cause alarm though.
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With a bit of thriftiness they might still be able to afford their childcare* on £82k.
Or their own wallpaper / holidays. On twice that amount.
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I do agree with you, but the problem is twofold. One, that the system is vulnerable to abuse which damages parliament’s ability to function. Two, that this tarnishes its reputation, leading to a loss of confidence and growing public cynicism. Which will damage democracy.
I totally agree that the system is vulnerable to abuse - it works fine if the pm is a person of any morals whatsoever. Ours isn't.
It's been said a lot but he just doesn't think that rules apply to him. John Major was quite right to say "there is a general whiff of we are the masters now".
Stories of our Times podcast worth a listen - excellent investigation into how the conservative party abuse the house of lords appointments.
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It's a sign of the times that Majors is looked back at as a level headed and sensible leader. At the time I thought he was a spineless wimp. I blame Spitting Image.
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Last night’s Question Time was one of the first times it felt like some of this Tory corruption was starting to break through to the electorate. Whatever you may have thought of Alastair Campbell when Labour was in power, he certainly seems to be a credible and effective communicator nowadays, and last night he was on fire - as was Lucy Powell.
Lee Rowley (Govt whip) was comprehensively outgunned and made little attempt to defend the indefensible.
Well worth a watch - it was the best QT I’ve seen in ages…
Neil
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... Whatever you may have thought of Alastair Campbell when Labour was in power, he certainly seems to be a credible and effective communicator nowadays, ...
His writing on depression is moving and insightful.
This is a link to the podcast I mentioned above https://open.spotify.com/episode/2TON2PVRCMcxQE2VADgFtj?si=-4SqLy5zQ4CICS_QW-Sv8w&utm_source=copy-link
It's a really good investigation, basically every one of the last 16 conservative party treasurers who has donated £3 million to the party gets a peerage, just after the threshold amount is reached, and then the donations stop, mysteriously.
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It's a sign of the times that Majors is looked back at as a level headed and sensible leader. At the time I thought he was a spineless wimp. I blame Spitting Image.
I think you are quite right.
Politically, he was one of those proverbial “little old men” of classic marshal art movie fame, though.
His demise marks the start of the Tory party decline (well, Thatcher set it off and the level heads managed to depose her, failed to maintain control (in the form of Major) and lost out to the “Puppet Masters” who managed to instal their first “useful idiot” at the head of the party (Hague)).
I think you can plot a couple of curves on the inversion of Tory party policy’s utility to the people of Britain and the rise/increase in wealth and power (and “non-dom” status) of the Grandees and achieve a greatly unpleasing symmetry…
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It's a sign of the times that Majors is looked back at as a level headed and sensible leader. At the time I thought he was a spineless wimp. I blame Spitting Image.
I think you can plot a couple of curves on the inversion of Tory party policy’s utility to the people of Britain and the rise/increase in wealth and power (and “non-dom” status) of the Grandees and achieve a greatly unpleasing symmetry…
At times, I wonder if the whole object behind Brexit was simply to make it much more difficult and expensive to travel abroad, so that wealthy old men could enjoy their mansions and villas around Europe free from any bother from the riff raff.
It doesn't have any other tangible benefit to anyone other than enabling Johnson to win an election. Everyone else got f****d.
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It doesn't have any other tangible benefit to anyone other than enabling Johnson to win an election. Everyone else got f****d.
Pete should be along any time now to explain why you’re wrong about that :jab:
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With a bit of thriftiness they might still be able to afford their childcare* on £82k.
Or their own wallpaper / holidays. On twice that amount.
Yep. They need to learn 'to manage their money and budget better', maybe 'drop the subscription to Sky, cut back on booze and fags'. Would love to see a journalist that has access to these people throw their rhetoric back at them.
Until second jobs, political donations and paid lobbying by/for corporate interests ends our democracy will remain undemocratic and corrupt.
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Until second jobs, political donations and paid lobbying by/for corporate interests ends our democracy will remain undemocratic and corrupt.
Aye to that Brutus, they are all just ways of buying influence, with the occasional honourable exception of registered professions.
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Until second jobs, political donations and paid lobbying by/for corporate interests ends our democracy will remain undemocratic and corrupt.
Aye to that Brutus, they are all just ways of buying influence, with the occasional honourable exception of registered professions.
Mostly, yes, although I don't have any problems with Ed Davey having outside employment as he's very transparent about what he does, and it all funds the 24/7 care that his disabled son needs.
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Underfunding of social care and support for the disabled as well a SEND in schools has been getting worse and worse since 2010, by design.
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Underfunding of social care and support for the disabled as well a SEND in schools has been getting worse and worse since 2010, by design.
Yes.
I find it hard to see it any other way. Strong whiff of “put the Plebs back in their box”, I fancy.
It’s something I’ve heard discussed, many years ago.
An argument to create an underclass, specifically for carrying out menial work etc. It was that aspect of the Tory party that pushed me away from it, however, I didn’t give it much credence. Not really a logical proposition, even setting aside the morality of it. The social unrest and agitation that brought about the changes of the late 19th and early 20th centuries being rather obvious indicators of the likely outcome of such a plan. The more so, that such examples of “people power” are so readily available and documented.
Not to mention, anyone with half a wit, would recoil at the crime/violence/murder rates of a 19th century British city, look at the vastly increased population and sophistication of a modern city and begin advocating a universal income, PDQ.
Possibly, though, the Tits that have bubbled to the top, of late, really believe they can get their servants back and jolly Jim Commoner doffing his cap and holding doors open for them in return for a sixpence and a condescending smile.
Perhaps, they think that keeping the plebs out of university, will reduce their own offspring’s risk of actually having to compete, on merit, for plum employment etc etc.
Maybe, keeping people sick and otherwise distracted, is supposed to keep them in check.
I expect that the reality is a lot more along the lines of incompetence and self interest driving unintended consequences, though I’m sure there are those that think as I’ve written above. I’ve met and spoken with them.
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I really do think it’s by design. The Osborne-Cameron state trimming policy specifically targeted local government, cutting funding and ensuring that care needs, removed from NHS and allocated to LG, could not be met. Every pound spent on social care by LG is a pound not spent elsewhere on the community. People blame left leaning LG that provides a poor service. And where then do they turn when it is time to vote?
There are also more votes gained in demonising the weak than supporting them properly. Throw in a free market ideology and people who were able to manage with dignity can no longer do so. The cavalier way Atos rejected disabled people via government ‘fit to work’ assessments is an abomination. That circa 2 thirds of appeals against its decisions were upheld (!) tell you all you need to know. And we aren’t talking people who are sitting comfortably in the meantime. These are dependent and often desperate people without options.
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MP's salaries, I am in the 95% of the population who earn a salary less (much less!) than £82K/year. From that skewed viewpoint I have to say it looks OK, given the subsidised house in London, food, travel, office costs etc. Their salary has also gone up by 24% since 2010. You won't find a similarly blessed frontline public sector worker. However it is obviously more debateable than I thought, given the comments on this thread! We must have a lot of London professionals on here!
In general I think any so-called politician who argues for more salary so they aren't tempted to earn some dodgy money on the side hasn't quite grasped the "politics thing".
Two things grate on this. First is the obviousness of it. In the main these "second" jobs are declared on the register of interests and so, in the immortal words of press legalese that always preface these things - "there is no suggestion of any wrongdoing". Well my British common sense (TM) says that actually taking £3000 per hour for advising a firm on Hydrogen distribution when you have no known knowledge on the subject of the distribution of hydrogen looks fishy. Especially when the company is Northern Ireland based and you used to be NI secretary very shortly before the "consultancies" started. And funnily enough you also started advising other NI based firms around the same time, who somehow also found your expertise in the totally unrelated area of cruise ship renovation worthy of £2000/hr??
I would say it is genuinely rare to find someone who is such an invaluable expert in both hydrogen distribution, and the totally distinct subject of cruise ship renovation, that they can command a rate of thousands per hour (equivalent of over £5million / year) for consulting on both totally disparate things simultaneously. But somehow such a person exists, whilst also being an MP full time. Genuinely multi-talented. I note they didn't do these roles either before being an MP, or while being NI secretary (i.e. that would be too obvious).
I think it looks like totally in your face quid pro quo wrongdoing without a shadow of a doubt. There are numerous other similar examples to the above. The dogs in the street can see that the companies are paying "cash for access / questions / influence / insider info". But its declared so what can you do....? As usual our lawmakers have access to defences which the man in the street doesn't.
Keeping professional qualifications current in a job you held prior to politics e.g. medicine, accounting, law etc. is fine and not the same as the above "advising".
Second irritant is the "outrage" from Tory MPs who are furious that once the u-turn happened they were made to look fools because they'd already followed orders to vote to let Paterson off in the first place. Of course if they had simply done the right thing in the first place and voted against, they'd have nothing to be miffed about. As clear an admission of the pointlessness the lobby-fodder charade nature of our democracy you will struggle to find. Its this sort of rubbish that makes the £82K look very poor value. These people are not scrutinising legislation, they are nodding donkeys.
As mentioned Private Eye has been all over this (and ACOBA) in every issue for years, to the extent that it will actually seem old news to readers. Its weird that the papers have only just caught on....
Not sure where to start on the Geoffrey Cox thing as it such a parody of itself that I'm not yet convinced its not a spoof.
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It doesn't have any other tangible benefit to anyone other than enabling Johnson to win an election. Everyone else got f****d.
Pete should be along any time now to explain why you’re wrong about that :jab:
Tell that to a fisherman or a farmer right now:
https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/politics/brexit-turns-europes-biggest-fish-23346030?utm_source=twitter.com&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=sharebar
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Succinct overview of pros and cons of MPs having second/third/fourth.. jobs.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/nov/14/only-people-mps-should-be-hustling-for-are-their-constituents
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https://www.thelondoneconomic.com/news/sack-jacob-rees-mogg-scandal-301121/?utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook&utm_campaign=sfeu&fbclid=IwAR2CFDr7b4ZFOBKVqZAihSuy1hdYumjNqXR7yISQwVdHlkofB5XLdcJP1LU (https://www.thelondoneconomic.com/news/sack-jacob-rees-mogg-scandal-301121/?utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook&utm_campaign=sfeu&fbclid=IwAR2CFDr7b4ZFOBKVqZAihSuy1hdYumjNqXR7yISQwVdHlkofB5XLdcJP1LU)
:o
Even the Mail has turned on him.
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Regarding the fairness with disabled support payments.
12000 winning appeals against DWP per month can’t be right, can it?
https://mobile.twitter.com/sourchimp/status/1459878278844624899
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Succinct overview of pros and cons of MPs having second/third/fourth.. jobs.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/nov/14/only-people-mps-should-be-hustling-for-are-their-constituents
An interesting alternative solution mentioned that MPs should be allowed to take any second job they wish, but that it must be voted on by their constituents first. This would mean anything they can't justify to the electorate would be effectively eliminated.
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No it wouldn't. It would mean Tory MPs in safe seats could do anything they wanted.
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The best thing would be to just ban all consultancy / advisory type roles altogether (paid or otherwise).
Allow the type of jobs that need qualifications to be maintained (e.g. medical professionals) but limit the amount of time they can spend in that role to the minimum required, so they can concentrate on their constituents. And obviously allow stuff like volunteering (third sector) or reserve military.
But then as Alastair Campbell suggested in that QT have to pre-emptively seek approval for any of the above second jobs via an independent body so they can’t argue ignorance after the fact.
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No it wouldn't. It would mean Tory MPs in safe seats could do anything they wanted.
I'd thought of that but actually I disagree, the idea of even the safest MP of any party having to openly ask their constituents if it would be ok with them if they spent say 10 hours a week as a consultant for an oil company, and then campaigned against fuel tax in parliament, just isn't very likely. The entire press would have them for breakfast.
I'm not sure if it was an entirely serious suggestion but it would increase transparency; currently the main shield for the blatant lobbyists is the fact that most people don't read parliamentary registers of interest.
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I suspect you haven't lived in a safe tory seat.
as Alastair Campbell suggested in that QT have to pre-emptively seek approval for any of the above second jobs via an independent body so they can’t argue ignorance after the fact.
This seems far more sensible. Democracy has its limits, not least where expertise is helpful.
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Another option for those who assert that second jobs enrich the commons, is to make them compulsory. Those from gilded backgrounds would have to work with common people.
Jacob Rees-Mogg in a Salford chippy would be an excellent place to start.
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Another option for those who assert that second jobs enrich the commons, is to make them compulsory. Those from gilded backgrounds would have to work with common people.
Jacob Rees-Mogg in a Salford chippy would be an excellent place to start.
I’d rather see him delivering bed pans on a Covid ward.
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Priti Patel as an NHS chiropodist? The possibilities are endless.
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Priti Patel as an NHS chiropodist? The possibilities are endless.
Threading would be more Priti’s thing I think; by all accounts it’s quite painful.
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Priti Patel as an NHS chiropodist? The possibilities are endless.
Threading would be more Priti’s thing I think; by all accounts it’s quite painful.
I think she’d enjoy being a dentist.
But I think she’d be better suited to slopping out after the fish market.
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During the BSE debacle, a mate of mine got a job hosing down the incinerators after they'd burnt all the possibly infected animals. He managed one shift and left; perhaps George Eustice would appreciate doing that?
More usefully, perhaps Boris Johnson could take up a second job and have a go at being prime minister? I'm not exactly sure what the f*** hes doing most of the time, but it certainly doesn't seem to be that.
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If anyone wants to know what their MP does outside constituency and parliament work, all available here: https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm/cmregmem/contents2122.htm
This is a good summary of the government proposals from Politico:
The next key question … is the one on the lips of several dozen double-jobbing MPs: which second jobs will actually be banned? The 2018 committee on standards in public life report referred to by Johnson talked of “any paid work to provide services as a parliamentary strategist, adviser or consultant.” The key word here is “parliamentary.” As the Telegraph’s Ben Riley-Smith notes, the language appears to suggest banning consultancy or advisory roles that specifically relate to parliament, for example “advising on parliamentary affairs.” This would actually be a very weak reform and not include the vast majority of the consultancy work that has hit the headlines in recent weeks, which are ostensibly jobs on non-parliamentary matters even though many do create conflicts of interest. The committee on standards in public life report admits this reform would only impact “a handful” of MPs.
How many? If *all* outside consultancy work was banned, then around 30 MPs would have to give up outside jobs. The Guardian had a useful list the other day — the MPs working as consultants are: Andrew Mitchell … Julian Smith … Chris Grayling … Mark Garnier … Alun Cairns … Ruth Edwards … Stephen Hammond … Steve Brine … David Davis … John Hayes … Iain Duncan Smith … Damian Green … Tim Loughton … Daniel Kawczynski … Andrew Percy … Khalid Mahmood … Laurence Robertson … Richard Fuller … Bob Neill … Royston Smith … Greg Knight … Ben Everitt … Andrew Bridgen … Philip Davies … Graham Brady … Chris Skidmore … Paul Maynard … John Redwood … Andrew Lewer and Dean Russell. Lib Dem leader Ed Davey also worked as a consultant for two companies to benefit his disabled son, though he said yesterday he’d give up the jobs.
Yet if only explicitly ‘parliamentary’ consultancy was banned … many of these 30 may be able to keep their jobs. So it’s now over to the standards committee to come up with a much tighter definition of exactly which consultancy jobs won’t be allowed. Then it’s up to Downing Street whether they agree when it comes to a vote in parliament.
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Of course a loophole big enough to accommodate the 'needs' of those riding first class on the gravy train will be left wide open. Just call it something other than consultant or advisor and it becomes a harmless second job that doesn't contravene the rules.
Lib Dem leader Ed Davey also worked as a consultant for two companies to benefit his disabled son, though he said yesterday he’d give up the jobs.
Speaking as the husband of a disabled woman and father of 2 children, living on a single salary around half of that of an MP and on behalf of anyone caring for anyone with a disability.... I find Ed Davey's justification for his corporate sponsorship particularly offensive, self entitled and lacking awareness of the harsh reality that I'm sure many of his constituents feel. Imagine being unable to work because of caring responsibilities, living on the pittance that is given to people in these circumstances and then hearing this **** playing the 'disabled child card' to justify his greed.
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How many? If *all* outside consultancy work was banned, then around 30 MPs would have to give up outside jobs. The Guardian had a useful list the other day — the MPs working as consultants are: Andrew Mitchell … Julian Smith … Chris Grayling … Mark Garnier … Alun Cairns … Ruth Edwards … Stephen Hammond … Steve Brine … David Davis … John Hayes … Iain Duncan Smith … Damian Green … Tim Loughton … Daniel Kawczynski … Andrew Percy … Khalid Mahmood … Laurence Robertson … Richard Fuller … Bob Neill … Royston Smith … Greg Knight … Ben Everitt … Andrew Bridgen … Philip Davies … Graham Brady … Chris Skidmore … Paul Maynard … John Redwood … Andrew Lewer and Dean Russell. Lib Dem leader Ed Davey also worked as a consultant for two companies to benefit his disabled son, though he said yesterday he’d give up the jobs.
Very interesting that that lost is all male... Do the females have more scrupels? Are they not in demand? Or are they busy doing unpaid work in the home/care giving in line with stats around women taking on the majority of those responsibilities?
On the question of what is BoJo doing - it takes a lot of time to come up with four or five slightly incoherent round the houses sentences instead of simply saying 'i was wrong'.
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How many? If *all* outside consultancy work was banned, then around 30 MPs would have to give up outside jobs. The Guardian had a useful list the other day — the MPs working as consultants are: Andrew Mitchell … Julian Smith … Chris Grayling … Mark Garnier … Alun Cairns … Ruth Edwards … Stephen Hammond … Steve Brine … David Davis … John Hayes … Iain Duncan Smith … Damian Green … Tim Loughton … Daniel Kawczynski … Andrew Percy … Khalid Mahmood … Laurence Robertson … Richard Fuller … Bob Neill … Royston Smith … Greg Knight … Ben Everitt … Andrew Bridgen … Philip Davies … Graham Brady … Chris Skidmore … Paul Maynard … John Redwood … Andrew Lewer and Dean Russell. Lib Dem leader Ed Davey also worked as a consultant for two companies to benefit his disabled son, though he said yesterday he’d give up the jobs.
Very interesting that that lost is all male... Do the females have more scrupels? Are they not in demand? Or are they busy doing unpaid work in the home/care giving in line with stats around women taking on the majority of those responsibilities?
On the question of what is BoJo doing - it takes a lot of time to come up with four or five slightly incoherent round the houses sentences instead of simply saying 'i was wrong'.
Interesting question, although a quick look through the register of interests would tell you that some certainly have outside interests, just not consulting.
The issue that is most concerning about the current arguments isn't the actual jobs that MPs have, or indeed how long they spend on them. This is all easily accessible information to anyone who wants to know.
The worrying thing is that the government tried to change both the rules and their arbiters to save someone's political skin.
Its deeply wrong and slightly reminiscent of the sort of politics that now seems commonplace in the US, to deny reality when it's not convenient.
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[q
The issue that is most concerning about the current arguments isn't the actual jobs that MPs have, or indeed how long they spend on them. This is all easily accessible information to anyone who wants to know
Not sure about that. Firstly, the actual roles can be opaque. Secondly, MPs are supposed to be public servants. After all, what is Hansard online called?
https://www.theyworkforyou.com/
If they are taking money from external sources, you have to ask what’s in it for the employer?
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[q
The issue that is most concerning about the current arguments isn't the actual jobs that MPs have, or indeed how long they spend on them. This is all easily accessible information to anyone who wants to know
Not sure about that. Firstly, the actual roles can be opaque. Secondly, MPs are supposed to be public servants. After all, what is Hansard online called?
https://www.theyworkforyou.com/
If they are taking money from external sources, you have to ask what’s in it for the employer?
While MPs are definitely public servants, they should be primarily legislators, and scrutinising legislation and government decisions. While some of the jobs look pretty dubious, and ought to be regulated, I still think it's an awful lot more worrying that the government tries to change rules and laws just to suit any old whim. The first might be corrupt, the second is definitely corrupt and borderline autocratic.
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Legislators? Absolutely, that’s the heart of the matter. Private employers spend money on MPs precisely because they are legislators and whether it is to gain knowledge of legislation or to influence it, neither is healthy in a democracy.
MPs should not have two masters.
As to this administration’s desire to tear down any obstacles in its path, we agree on the danger there.
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https://www.theneweuropean.co.uk/james-ball-boris-johnson-tory-sleaze/
The scene could hardly have been less conducive to confidentiality; a dinner with the prime minister and a number of executives from a friendly national newspaper. At the dinner, hosted by Daily Telegraph columnist Charles Moore at the all-male Garrick Club, Johnson appears to have made the grave error of assuming all those gathered at the table were friends whose discretion could be depended on. For a journalist to make such a mistake demonstrates a worrying lack of judgment.
The New European has been told that the prime minister was asked how family life with his new wife and mother to his child Carrie Symonds was going. His reported answer, that he was experiencing “buyer’s remorse” over the union, astonished some of those present.
Around thirty current and former journalists from the Telegraph were present at the Garrick Club dinner. While many found the Prime Minister’s remark amusing, others were uncomfortable and astonished he should be so indiscreet in such broad company. One dinner guest told The New European: “Clearly he just assumed he was amongst friends, but it was a remarkable thing to say and there were a number of raised eyebrows around the table.”
It is, of course, possible that the remark was made in jest. But even if so, it is yet another display of callous disregard for common decency.
The sense of buyer’s remorse is something plenty of Tory voters and even some Tory MPs are having right now about Boris Johnson, as he fails to stem a tide of sleaze coming from deep inside his party.
I would have assumed that this is made up, except that number 10 told them not to publish, but then reneged on an initial threat to sue them for libel. Its tittle tattle really, but maybe it just goes to show how cruel and nasty he really is.
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Tomorrow it’s the North Yorkshire Police, Fire and Crime Commissioner election following the recent resignation of Phillip Allott.
Candidate summary is here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-york-north-yorkshire-59052185
Before I get lost in a rabbit hole trying to work out what the role really is, how much power they have to do what they say they are going to do (one want’s to eliminate county lines drug trafficking, for example, which seems bold but is it really possible?), who to vote for etc. Can anyone provide a bit of an overview?
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Tomorrow it’s the North Yorkshire Police, Fire and Crime Commissioner election following the recent resignation of Phillip Allott.
Candidate summary is here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-york-north-yorkshire-59052185
Before I get lost in a rabbit hole trying to work out what the role really is, how much power they have to do what they say they are going to do (one want’s to eliminate county lines drug trafficking, for example, which seems bold but is it really possible?), who to vote for etc. Can anyone provide a bit of an overview?
Would be interested to know the answer to this myself, out of interest.
Had a quick read of the summaries and they seem much of a muchness except the student paramedic who stood out for the wrong reasons for me - county lines is one very small part of a complex national picture of identification and grooming of children and young people for exploitation. If you want to eliminate county lines then you either go from the top which means eradicating the drugs trade or any illegal trade for that matter because let's face it, some people will always find something to sell! Or you work upwards from the bottom which is about ensuring that children are not living in poverty, they don't experience trauma and adverse childhood experiences, you completely overhall the care system and the education system and ensure that children are not vulnerable to exploitation (and entering the criminal justice system) in the first place.
That statement also states that they want to represent the views of the workforce but given the issues that are beginning to be uncovered within the workforce that ambition makes me uncomfortable.
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Tomorrow it’s the North Yorkshire Police, Fire and Crime Commissioner election following the recent resignation of Phillip Allott.
The role is described here:
https://www.apccs.police.uk/role-of-the-pcc/
Personally I'd be considering that the exiting PCC wasn't removed by his party.
I'm currently giving mine quite a hard time asking why the Lancs traffic police seemingly doesn't give a sh*t if you try to squish a cyclist after two very near misses (one involving a car ending up parked in a tree, the other where the driver parked up got out and came looking for a fight :chair:).
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Is this not just going to be a shoeing for the Tory candidate as it’s North Yorkshire.
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Don't usually do this stuff, but this is some bantz:
https://twitter.com/GarethWild/status/1463466071512526849?t=deZeQ4u8jU76_DIVpIPXlA&s=19
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Is this not just going to be a shoeing for the Tory candidate as it’s North Yorkshire.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Yorkshire_Police,_Fire_and_Crime_Commissioner
Decent majority last time looks like it’s usually a Con Lab race.
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Is this not just going to be a shoeing for the Tory candidate as it’s North Yorkshire.
Shoo-in or shoeing? Opposite meanings, I assume the former?
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It's been a long time since I've woken up and read the news and thought "oh shit, this might actually get him this time" - it's normally a case of "this is pretty fucked, but somehow everyone will have forgotten by tomorrow". A depressing optimism, I suppose. Really struggle to see where Boris's line of reasoning is coming from, with the only method shown so far (denial) being rapidly eliminated each day.
Expected outcomes of PMQs today? There appears to be lots of Tory backbenchers pretty pissed off with this, will be interesting to see how many are willing to voice that publicly with their name attached.
Also Rees Mogg is in a leaked video on twitter, at the party joking about how they're all "socially distanced", and how it won't come back to haunt them in a year's time :oops: hopefully be gets a few questions thrown his way in Parliament too.
All the while, PCSC bill continues to move through the houses. If this party stuff is a dead cat, then this bill must be fucking atrocious.
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Also Rees Mogg is in a leaked video on twitter, at the party joking about how they're all "socially distanced", and how it won't come back to haunt them in a year's time :oops: hopefully be gets a few questions thrown his way in Parliament too.
That's not quite right, it's a recent video, from this year, at a christmas party at a think tank, independant link (https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/rees-mogg-joke-christmas-party-iea-laughing-b1971833.html)
But still possibly not the greatest joke
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It's been a long time since I've woken up and read the news and thought "oh shit, this might actually get him this time" - it's normally a case of "this is pretty fucked, but somehow everyone will have forgotten by tomorrow". A depressing optimism, I suppose. Really struggle to see where Boris's line of reasoning is coming from, with the only method shown so far (denial) being rapidly eliminated each day.
Expected outcomes of PMQs today? There appears to be lots of Tory backbenchers pretty pissed off with this, will be interesting to see how many are willing to voice that publicly with their name attached.
Also Rees Mogg is in a leaked video on twitter, at the party joking about how they're all "socially distanced", and how it won't come back to haunt them in a year's time :oops: hopefully be gets a few questions thrown his way in Parliament too.
All the while, PCSC bill continues to move through the houses. If this party stuff is a dead cat, then this bill must be fucking atrocious.
Yep - it’s all fucking outrageous. I hadn’t seen the Rees-Mogg video until you mentioned but it’s awful as well. I don’t know the date of that event (it’s a separate one from the No.10 party) so unsure what the rules are at the time. But he’s happily joking that he things the distancing rules are 2 inches rather than meters whilst encouraging them all to shout and cheers. What a dick.
PMQ’s will make for good watching today. Surely they just need to come clean?
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PMQ’s will make for good watching today. Surely they just need to come clean?
See my twitter link further up, it's prescient!
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It's been a long time since I've woken up and read the news and thought "oh shit, this might actually get him this time".
Really struggle to see where Boris's line of reasoning is coming from, with the only method shown so far (denial) being rapidly eliminated each day.
Wish I shared your optimism but I think he’ll survive. Hope I’m proved wrong.
It’s been perfectly planned by whoever’s been sitting on the video though. Leak reports of the party so Johnson is forced to deny it happened. Then once he’s committed to denial and up to his neck in it drop the video.
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I’m sure PMQs will just involve the usual bluster, obfuscation, misdirection, waffle and obscure grammar, and there will be no change at all.
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I have a feeling we're going to be told (again) that the public aren't interested in hearing about these petty squabbles, they just want politicians to get on with the job.
And did you know the booster programme is going well?
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Also Rees Mogg is in a leaked video on twitter, at the party joking about how they're all "socially distanced", and how it won't come back to haunt them in a year's time :oops: hopefully be gets a few questions thrown his way in Parliament too.
That's not quite right, it's a recent video, from this year, at a christmas party at a think tank, independant link (https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/rees-mogg-joke-christmas-party-iea-laughing-b1971833.html)
But still possibly not the greatest joke
Yep sorry that's wrong. Can't edit any more unfortunately, hopefully everyone reads your reply.
I have a feeling we're going to be told (again) that the public aren't interested in hearing about these petty squabbles, they just want politicians to get on with the job.
And did you know the booster programme is going well?
:'(
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Not convinced by all the "well done whoever leaked it" chat about the video I've see elsewhere. They didn't have enough of a moral compass to leak it last winter when it actually happened.
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It looks like the government are upping their war on drugs, a tactic which has a 50 year track record of failing spectacularly:
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/dec/06/middle-class-drug-users-could-lose-uk-passports-under-boris-johnsons-plans
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To me this feels like a similar situation as to when Rudd lied to parliament i.e leak without evidence so that she could deny all knowledge, leak with evidence so that she was caught in the lie.
Mirror breaks story but without vid, gov denies. Video then released, gov caught in nasty nasty lie. Either the vid was known of by the press who decided to bait the government out, or the vid was deliberately kept back by the leaker who was almost certainly a senior gov figure (civil service or a senior politician) looking to do a hit.
Either way to me this feels very planned out. Just enough rope for them to try and hang themselves. Definitely looks poor. And they know it, hence every minister cancelling media appearances this morning
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To me this feels like a similar situation as to when Rudd lied to parliament i.e leak without evidence so that she could deny all knowledge, leak with evidence so that she was caught in the lie.
Mirror breaks story but without vid, gov denies. Video then released, gov caught in nasty nasty lie. Either the vid was known of by the press who decided to bait the government out, or the vid was deliberately kept back by the leaker who was almost certainly a senior gov figure (civil service or a senior politician) looking to do a hit.
Either way to me this feels very planned out. Just enough rope for them to try and hang themselves. Definitely looks poor. And they know it, hence every minister cancelling media appearances this morning
Third possibility: the original leaker and the video leaker are two different people, acting independently. There were "several dozen" people at the party, it's quite possible for them to have talked to the press seperately and of their own accord. The leaker of the video didn't even have to be at the party - could have been the camera operator who was disgusted, kept a copy but didn't think anyone was interested until now. Or he tried to give it to a reporter but the reporter didn't do anything with it as the existence of the party wasn't confirmed. When the story was confirmed, by another outlet, the reporter ran with the video.
We just don't know. But the world of politics is full of cock ups.
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Quite possibly yes. It just feels like the video release was perfectly timed. But yeah could be that.
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I’m sure PMQs will just involve the usual bluster, obfuscation, misdirection, waffle and obscure grammar, and there will be no change at all.
I think the word is obfuckstickation. Otherwise agree.
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Quite possibly yes. It just feels like the video release was perfectly timed. But yeah could be that.
We don't know how long ITN had the video for - could have been a while and they were trying to get the whole story to stand up. Bear in mind they have to be careful not to libel people, and that requires undertaking various checks on the story.
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Pffff. I think some of you need a copy of The Prince slipped into your Christmas stocking.
If you've got dirt you don't throw it out there when your opponent is on their uppers, and if your opponent is a serial fibber then it would be remiss not to expose them as such.
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I loved that they are only going to investigate the party (out of the three) which they will confirm the PM wasn’t in attendance at. And also that they won’t confirm whether the person investigating it, was in attendance himself.
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So Allegra Stratton goes... PM couldn't even take the chance to show some pretend leadership and dismiss her? Wasn't he 'sickened' by the video? Seems like a missed opportunity to me.
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Remember the episode of The Thick of It about who was going to resign? It's this.
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It all feels like an episode of the Thick of It nowadays
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Apparently the major difference between actual high-level political life and an episode of In the Thick of It is that in the later they don't go around saying "This is just like an episode of In the Thick of It".
:popcorn:
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Apologies if this is a complete punter question but between the regulatory deadlines at work, the into-the-early-hours proof reading sessions, and the school run I'm afraid my brain may have ceased functioning.
Remember that NHS data sharing thing we were getting so animated about on this thread in June? My NHS app has got a bit about my vaccination history which I can view, but to generate a vaccine passport QR code I need to agree to some sort of data sharing. Is this the thing we were worried about or are we good to go? Due to my addled state please have mercy and keep your answers to words of one syllable.
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Apologies if this is a complete punter question but between the regulatory deadlines at work, the into-the-early-hours proof reading sessions, and the school run I'm afraid my brain may have ceased functioning.
Remember that NHS data sharing thing we were getting so animated about on this thread in June? My NHS app has got a bit about my vaccination history which I can view, but to generate a vaccine passport QR code I need to agree to some sort of data sharing. Is this the thing we were worried about or are we good to go? Due to my addled state please have mercy and keep your answers to words of one syllable.
As far as I understand it, just agree to that, it's only sharing your vaccination status, which you're doing anyway by using the code.
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The front pages of the papers make a lot of the large Tory rebellion around COVID restrictions. I'm glad the PM brought in plan B (despite my concerns about how effective vaccine passports may be in curbing the spread), but I fear more restrictions will be needed in the coming days/weeks and the PM will bottle it for reasons of self interest.
The tail gets to wag the dog too often under this and recent Tory governments. That's what got us the Brexit vote, the slow previous lockdowns etc. How do people see this playing out? Can these wingnuts be contained? Any reasons to be cheerful?
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I see it playing out just as you've called it as that's what the Gov's past form suggests. Coupling that with the PM's self preservation interest and he won't do anything that will be viewed as unpopular either by the electorate or the ERG until he absolutely has no choice (which will mean it'll be too late, again).
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The silver lining is one way or another this wave will be over quickly with how transmissible it is. Suspect there will be big gaps in rotas, supply chains etc in January and February.
I remain unconvinced that there is a lot that can be done about this wave. Its so ridiculously transmissible that anything short of a full on authoritarian lockdown won't do the job, and I don't want that. Even people going about minimalist daily lives will keep the R above 1. Looking at it neutrally, taking my opinion about him out of it, the PM is totally fucked here, caught between a rock and a hard place. If he does nothing he risks Italy style NHS collapse in January, supply chains grinding to a halt, loads of deaths and the consequent loss of political capital from the public, maybe even forcing resignation. If he brings in a full lockdown it will be largely ignored over Xmas, won't work, all the above will happen anyway and he will lose political capital from both the public and his party. Its a proper devil's alternative.
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It's not binary though is it - even if hypothetically you can't get it below 1 a lower R means a wider and lower peak which means the degree of overload is less.
"we had a lockdown and it didn't even help" would be an easy argument because no-one will be able to prove to what degree the alternative would have been worse - there's no counterfactual so those with axes to grind (CRG, elements of the press and so on) will effectively say the lockdown did nothing, despite the maths obviously suggesting that it did.
But that's what leadership is supposed to be, right? Boris is great (relatively speaking!!!) for implementing something once there's a large enough herd already clamouring for it, but across the last two lockdowns there'd be a lot fewer people dead if he'd been pushing the argument not following it.
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Of course not, but if you commit to a lockdown you're probably commiting to it for about 4/5 months. That's a really long time. I do have some sympathy with those who question whether this will happen every year, every time there's a new variant. It's not a sustainable solution.
There's no counterfactual whatever they decide to do, that's the nature of it surely? We have no idea what would have happened over the summer if we hadn't relaxed restrictions, for example.
Johnson is a shit leader. But being a good leader doesn't magic away the problems of the situation either, there aren't any easy answers. I suspect quite a lot in government would prefer a quick flare of a wave over a long drawn out winter of discontent for reasons of both cultural and fiscal ideology.
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It all feels like an episode of the Thick of It nowadays
Proponents of "Simulation Theory" (Elon Musk etc.) think our life experiences are figments of simulations being run by hugely powerful AIs in the future.
I'd agree but only with the proviso that the present can only be explained if the sole learning inputs of future AIs are episodes of Brasseye, The Day Today, Thick of It, The New Statesman, Blackadder Goes Forth, and Yes (Prime)Minister.
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Sustainability is tricky. Sure, if a proper lockdown that long were needed every year (for a variety of reasons I don't think that's the most likely outcome, but for the point at hand it doesn't matter), that would feel unsustainable. But then so would crashing your healthcare system every year instead, as would refusing care to a lot of people every year in order to avoid that. If that's the place you end up there is no world where it's rosy if you just don't do anything - it's not a choice of a one off shitshow versus endless lockdowns, it's endless lockdowns versus endless shitshows. You don't have one big wave in which everyone who's going to die does and after that covid is done.
Some counterfactuals are easier than others. Personally I think we have some idea what would have happened if we had maintained restrictions over the summer. But either way, if you believe lockdowns reduce R to some degree (common sense?) and you think there's a limit in the short term to how many people you can care for at once (fairly uncontroversial?) before quality of care disintegrates to the point where the death rate starts to step up, then it's not exactly complex maths to suggest that a lockdown would lead to fewer deaths in the short term via a lower peak spike, assuming the spike breaches the capacity limit? The economy, the longer term picture of what it does for immunity and a route towards endemic state, how society reacts, all that - definitely difficult. But I'm not sure the broad shape of the picture on short term deaths is that hard is it? Particularly at the moment, where its blindingly obvious that theres a race between boosters and cases and that a delay to the rate at which cases rise means more of the future cases will hit fully boosted immune systems and do less damage.
I think you're probably right that some people would prefer to get it over with quickly, although I think they'll be sad to find out covid will still be there afterwards. The current conservative party view does puzzle me a bit. They obviously have this really strong streak of libertarianism and low restrictions and low intervention going through them. But at the same time their voters tend to be older (doesn't tendency to vote Tory basically rise with age?), more importantly in terms of pressure points their party members tend to be older, so in some ways I'm surprised there's been less tension between that low restriction streak and the fact that their core clientele tend to be more vulnerable.
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I don't think I'm suggesting it would be rosy. I think it is about choosing the least worst option, and I'm not convinced the lockdown option *is* the least worst option currently. We might just disagree on that maybe? I have definitely gone full circle on it from March 2019, that's for sure.
The point about maintaining restrictions over the summer, I think, I'd that it wouldn't have actually left us any better off for this wave in any meaningful way. It doesn't future proof the healthcsre system at all, based on the current rate of doubling a summer of restrictions would have bought us about a week of additional time, maximum. I am not denying your maths in the slightest ; but the reason this has become such an interesting and complicated question is that it isn't about maths anymore, it's a much broader picture that will require trade offs.
I think the apparent disconnect you identify between elderly tory voters and the libertarian streak of the MPs is partially explained by the middle class whiteness of the older tory voters in particular. They are 98% jabbed or something ridiculous so feel fairly safe. They also have delusions of grandeur/war baby/boomer attitudes towards risk. Interesting demographic.
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The current conservative party view does puzzle me a bit. They obviously have this really strong streak of libertarianism and low restrictions and low intervention going through them. But at the same time their voters tend to be older (doesn't tendency to vote Tory basically rise with age?), more importantly in terms of pressure points their party members tend to be older, so in some ways I'm surprised there's been less tension between that low restriction streak and the fact that their core clientele tend to be more vulnerable.
As well as the attitude spider points out, I think you're also discounting another view among many older people which can be summarised: 'I'm old, I'll die one day and that's OK, in the meantime I'm not going to live like a prisoner nor expect anyone else to'. Perhaps more elderly people with conservative views feel like this, I've no idea.
During a pandemic of respiratory virus that kills mostly the elderly, increased numbers of elderly people getting ill and dying should not be considered unusual or something that can be prevented at all costs - certainly not at the cost of crashing everybody else's lives and the economy. That wider question won't go away, each wave brings it into focus. Can't see any easy answer. Like others I felt the first lockdown was the right thing to try; the second lockdown was necessary but botched - partly because the trade-off was a bit harder to justify; another lockdown now feels to me like it would be deeply unpopular and unobserved by more than ever.
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If you're thinking I would have argued we would have been better off with restrictions over the summer, I wouldn't. Costs in the summer (more deaths) versus a mix of pluses and minuses pre Omicron (a health service run more ragged versus more population immunity such that cases were basically flat with few restrictions required).
But over the summer we weren't (with hindsight, obviously there was a range of views at the time - I'm acknowledging having the hindsight, not claiming foresight) letting cases run to the level where we fundamentally broke healthcare.
In terms of lockdowns - in general I tend to think the way out is a lot of population immunity - boosters for those for whom the risk to society of natural infection is too great, some kind of mix elsewhere. I think it's arguable that point was being approached with Delta. In an ideal world you wouldn't need restrictions if you could get enough immunity. Either way, in the current situation with the booster:cases race I do think some sort of stronger control measures than current feel a fairly logical sell because you have a booster timetable and you have a clear need.
But more widely I guess I don't think a no lockdown scenario is actually believable. If you really get a decent wodge of serious infections from a huge number of cases - if you were really busting through healthcare limits, ambulances weren't coming, A&E was unavailable, whatever... Lots of people would be genuinely sick. You'd have pingdemic and more levels of staff shortage but with no magic wand of "ah you don't have to isolate" to make it go away - we essentially had to start waiving the rules in some sectors, which you can't do if people are actually sick and unable to work rather than being prevented from doing so by an isolation order you can just magic away. People wouldn't be going out, hospitality gets screwed, schools would probably stop functioning (combination of staff absence and parents withdrawing kids), employers of parents get hit by the consequences - the economy gets fucked whichever way but if it's a proper lockdown at least there's some state support. Some of a lockdown is driven by the state but if things go south enough I suspect there's enough voluntary lockdown the public could enter into that you get all the deaths and the economy gets screwed as well. And that's without even allowing for the government caving in at a certain level of chaos and locking down just far too late. Essentially I think you can run hot up to a point but if it's serious enough then after that one way or another it's a lockdown early or a lockdown late, and early is probably more ordered, better supported and kills fewer people.
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The current conservative party view does puzzle me a bit. They obviously have this really strong streak of libertarianism and low restrictions and low intervention going through them.
Not low restriction/low intervention when it comes to restricting the right to protest, or disregarding legal judgment, or stripping UK citizens of their citizenship, or attacking the human rights act as Raab announced yesterday. Not freedom loving at all in fact.
Just hypocritical posturing and delusional babble such as showing evidence you don’t have Covid to protect others being tantamount to Nazi despotism.
Essentially I think you can run hot up to a point but if it's serious enough then after that one way or another it's a lockdown early or a lockdown late, and early is probably more ordered, better supported and kills fewer people.
Yes.
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The current conservative party view does puzzle me a bit. They obviously have this really strong streak of libertarianism and low restrictions and low intervention going through them.
Not low restriction/low intervention when it comes to restricting the right to protest, or disregarding legal judgment, or stripping UK citizens of their citizenship, or attacking the human rights act as Raab announced yesterday. Not freedom loving at all in fact.
Just hypocritical posturing and delusional babble such as showing evidence you don’t have Covid to protect others being tantamount to Nazi despotism.
Absolutely, and you can add voter id to that list as well.
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I am not denying your maths in the slightest ; but the reason this has become such an interesting and complicated question is that it isn't about maths anymore, it's a much broader picture that will require trade offs.
To be clear on the maths, the modelling which Gov is using from LSHTM is summarised here https://www.lshtm.ac.uk/newsevents/news/2021/modelling-potential-impact-omicron-england , full paper here: https://cmmid.github.io/topics/covid19/reports/omicron_england/report_11_dec_2021.pdf
I've snipped the relevant summary on hospitalisations from within the document:
"For our most optimistic scenario (low immune escape and highly effective booster vaccines), an
Omicron epidemic without the introduction of additional control measures may not exceed the
peak levels of hospitalisations recorded in January 2021. However, for our most pessimistic
scenario (high immune escape and less effective booster vaccines), we project that
hospitalisations and potentially deaths will exceed the peak levels recorded in January 2021."
My note - by "exceed" they mean roughly double the Jan 2021 peak, in terms of hospitalisations. By "additional control measures" they mean on top of recent announcements - the model already includes for masks in shops (30th Nov) and "Plan B" (12th Dec to 30th April).
If you want graphs then here they are:
(https://static.wixstatic.com/media/80447b_cf3f009cc76c4535804455a6f3af124c~mv2.jpg/v1/fill/w_913,h_657,al_c,q_90/80447b_cf3f009cc76c4535804455a6f3af124c~mv2.jpg)
Look at the red graphs. These are the ones Gov are worried about. They do not look good. *If* this model is correct then even a layman can see that more likely than not this wave will be worse than the one earlier this year in terms of hospitalisations. Deaths will be similar or less.
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Clicked post too soon!
What the above means is that arguably it is still a question of maths I'm afraid. The million dollar question which I don't know the answer to is actually "how many admissions is too many"? Basically when does the health sytem become overwhelmed?
Yes there will be "trade offs" while we adapt to living with the virus, but as things stand we might be trading a functioning healthcare system. That is a big risk. Too big for a sensible (!) government.
So in light of that will there be more restrictions? Well it hasn't been mentioned anywhere in the media AFAIK but the model goes on to look at the affect of the re-introduction of lockdown measures in 4 steps, which are reversals of the steps out of lockdown from this spring. So reversals of the following: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/apr/01/step-by-step-englands-roadmap-for-easing-covid-lockdown
All of these are based on extra controls coming in on 2nd Jan 2022. Add that to the fact that I picked up Grant Shapps on R4 yesterday quite specifically and precisely say that he "was confident no further measures (Plan C) will be required this year". "This year" is over in 2 weeks. Don't book anything for January....
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Whatever any further measures involve, they are likely to be pretty light touch and advisory rather than restrictions I reckon.
I don't think Johnson has the political authority to get another lockdown through unless we're actually knee deep in the s*** already.
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Don't book anything for January....
We're supposed to go away in early Feb but are already wondering whether Mar might be a better bet!
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Don't book anything for January....
We're supposed to go away in early Feb but are already wondering whether Mar might be a better bet!
And there's me wondering what sort of shape France will be in at Easter!
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Well April it is then... :lol: Why do covid waves have to coincide with periods where it's horrible to be in the UK! :wall:
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Well April it is then... :lol: Why do covid waves have to coincide with periods where it's horrible to be in the UK! :wall:
Hah! Don't hold me to it!
I suppose I was thinking that France, as much of western Europe, were struggling with Delta - as in despite having a stronger control environment than UK with a reasonably restrictive covid passport they had cases doubling about every ten days. I can't remember whether they strengthened their restrictions pre Omicron as Germany/Austria did, or whether it just looked like they were probably going to have to. And I can't remember how bad their actual deaths per case figures looked.
Either way, Omicron probably hits them less hard in the short term - we were more reliant on immunity to manage Delta, which Omicron partially sidesteps, whereas they were more reliant on controls which will hinder both D and O. But in the medium term, I think they had lower old age vaccine take-up, less natural immunity, and I think are still behind us on boosters (although their control measures maybe gives them space to catch up), so if they were struggling with D it feels likely that once O gets going - a bit later for them, but probably inevitable - they're going to struggle with that too without tougher control measures than just the ones they had in the autumn.
However, whether that's a big deal or not I don't know and I also suspect that your tolerance of faff on a longer trip without children would be higher than the level of inconvenience that would be worthwhile for a week's trip with young children in tow, which is what we had planned.
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Whatever any further measures involve, they are likely to be pretty light touch and advisory rather than restrictions I reckon.
I don't think Johnson has the political authority to get another lockdown through unless we're actually knee deep in the s*** already.
Agreed, for now.
The thing is that because of the newness of the situation and the uncertainty in the models we won't know if we're knee deep in the shit or not until it happens (around New Year). And whatever happens, it is already getting baked in and will happen incredibly quickly. So quickly that I don't think its wise to predict anything politically. For e.g. there is a scenario where the most pessimistic model is the reality, half the country has covid and is defacto locked down anyway, including most MPs so they can't even return to vote on anything! Or it might all be "fine" in the end, which still means similar-ish to last year i.e. hardly a popularity boost. Or anything in between. All we can say with certainty is that if further restrictions are needed then they will pass with Boris as the head of a Tory + Labour coalition (as per the votes this week) which will probably be the end of him. If he hasn't gone already after Shropshire today? Or more party photos? Anything can happen! Whatever it is I expect it won't be boring.
Nugget from Whitty in select committee earlier:
“The numbers in hospital over a short period could be very high indeed. This will be happening at a time when a very significant number of staff are going to be off ill, isolating or caring. So you’re going to have both a reduction in supply and an increase in demand in the health service over a very short time period, and that really is the reason why we’re all taking this extremely seriously,” Whitty said.
“One risk that is going to happen irrespective is, because of the steepness of this, even if this ended up in a situation where boosters do hold this to a large degree for a lots of people … a lot of people will simultaneously fall ill and be unwell, isolating or caring for others at the same time across the whole economy.”
From full article https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/dec/16/omicron-could-lead-to-record-daily-covid-hospitalisations-chris-whitty-mps-told
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Maybe I've missed something, maybe I'm being dense, maybe my rose tinted glasses are turned up too high or maybe I'm a friggin genius....
The main focus of the strategies to fight covid are to stop the healthcare system from collapsing (the health care system that was already creaking before the pandemic) so surely the way out of it in the long term is to properly support the NHS. Investment and resources to make staffing levels safe and sustainable and beds available.
??
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If the modelled outcomes for greatly increased hospitalisations over a short time period actually happen, then that would be the kind of situation for which opening Nightingale wards in high demand areas was designed for, no? Haven't heard much about them being opened for this wave, since they shut following seemingly not much usage during the first wave. Staffing issues?
Well April it is then... :lol: Why do covid waves have to coincide with periods where it's horrible to be in the UK! :wall:
Supposed to be heading to the Pyrenees on Dec 27th for some ski-touring.. Just waiting now for Spain to follow France's lead.
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Supposed to be heading to the Pyrenees on Dec 27th for some ski-touring.. Just waiting now for Spain to follow France's lead.
I'd get your money back; I've engineered a month off between jobs so it's clearly going to be DIY for me! #firstworldproblems
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If the modelled outcomes for greatly increased hospitalisations over a short time period actually happen, then that would be the kind of situation for which opening Nightingale wards in high demand areas was designed for, no? Haven't heard much about them being opened for this wave, since they shut following seemingly not much usage during the first wave. Staffing issues?
They were always going to be a bit pointless, physical space is rarely the real problem when the media says things about bed shortages, its always the number of staff to manage the patients that are the limiting factor. When there aren't enough staff in normal hospitals, nightingales are next to useless.
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My wife's hospital has cancelled leave for all staff over Christmas. Not sure who's going to be staffing these Nightingale facilities when there's fuck all people to run the normal hospitals.
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If the modelled outcomes for greatly increased hospitalisations over a short time period actually happen, then that would be the kind of situation for which opening Nightingale wards in high demand areas was designed for, no? Haven't heard much about them being opened for this wave, since they shut following seemingly not much usage during the first wave. Staffing issues?
Well April it is then... :lol: Why do covid waves have to coincide with periods where it's horrible to be in the UK! :wall:
Supposed to be heading to the Pyrenees on Dec 27th for some ski-touring.. Just waiting now for Spain to follow France's lead.
Do you think that will be the case or do you think its just France giving us the big f you over fishing rights and general brexit shit show/hating the uk on a whole?
Ive had to change a ferry on tuesday due to arrive in France, to a direct ferry to spain. At a much greater expense.
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Tories lose North Shropshire - one of the safest seats they had. There is some justice in the world.
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Tories lose North Shropshire - one of the safest seats they had. There is some justice in the world.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/uk-politics-59687316
The beginning of the end for Johnson? A Con MP just said that he's got to go now on R4.
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Supposed to be heading to the Pyrenees on Dec 27th for some ski-touring.. Just waiting now for Spain to follow France's lead.
Do you think that will be the case or do you think its just France giving us the big f you over fishing rights and general brexit shit show/hating the uk on a whole?
Ive had to change a ferry on tuesday due to arrive in France, to a direct ferry to spain. At a much greater expense.
In a similar boat here (haha). Was going to go rosslare-cherborg and drive down. Now looking at the much pricier Bilbao option but wondering if further travel restrictions in the short term are inevitable.
Dunno about France’s rationale but Macron has proven to be a chronic twat.
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Supposed to be heading to the Pyrenees on Dec 27th for some ski-touring.. Just waiting now for Spain to follow France's lead.
Do you think that will be the case or do you think its just France giving us the big f you over fishing rights and general brexit shit show/hating the uk on a whole?
Ive had to change a ferry on tuesday due to arrive in France, to a direct ferry to spain. At a much greater expense.
In a similar boat here (haha). Was going to go rosslare-cherborg and drive down. Now looking at the much pricier Bilbao option but wondering if further travel restrictions in the short term are inevitable.
Dunno about France’s rationale but Macron has proven to be a chronic twat.
Sounds like its all booked up now anyway. Though its Santander you need assuming you are going from Portsmouth. Unless you are still planning on going from Ireland. How much is it out of interest?
Every morning between now and 28th ill wake up and flick sky news on and just hope its not turned to rat shit with Spain too.
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Yeah hard to get bookings, I haven't managed to. Loads of people probably changing plans today from France to Spain. Might end up flying, or end up ski-touring in Scotland instead!
Macron's made no secret of his desire for policies that attempt to 'punish' the UK for brexit, and this is just another example. Banning UK travellers while keeping schengen area borders open seems to make little sense from a covid transmission pov.
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Macron's made no secret of his desire for policies that attempt to 'punish' the UK for brexit, and this is just another example. Banning UK travellers while keeping schengen area borders open seems to make little sense from a covid transmission pov.
The last one of these I saw had linguists up in arms saying the translation used by the British media was false?
EDIT: https://www.thearticle.com/lost-in-translation-the-castex-letter-fish-wars-and-brexit
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You say potato I say potato.
''Il paraît donc nécessaire que l’Union européenne montre sa totale détermination à obtenir le plein respect de l’accord par le Royaume-Uni et fasse valoir ses droits en utilisant les leviers à sa disposition de manière ferme, unie et proportionnée. Il est indispensable de montrer clairement aux opinions publiques européennes que le respect des engagements souscrits n’est pas négociable et qu’il y a davantage de dommages à quitter l’Union qu’à y demeurer.''
https://fullfact.org/europe/french-pm-eu-president-punishment-letter/
If it looks, walks and quacks like a duck - it's a duck. Unless it's in your interests for it to be a goose then, for you, it's a goose.
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Glad you're now on board with the fact that since Brexit looks, walks and quacks like a shit idea it was indeed a shit idea :jab:
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I see the potato showed up. :tease:
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(https://static.wixstatic.com/media/80447b_cf3f009cc76c4535804455a6f3af124c~mv2.jpg/v1/fill/w_913,h_657,al_c,q_90/80447b_cf3f009cc76c4535804455a6f3af124c~mv2.jpg)
Linked these graphs previously, from modelling Gov is using. UKHSA have just confirmed their assessment that Omicron's immune evasion ability (against 2 dose vaccine evasion and previous infection) is high, with high confidence.
So if UKHSA are right, and the model is OK - "High Immune Escape" - we're in the two red graphs on the right hand side. The dotted line is the peak level of hospitalisations from the last winter wave in January.
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You say potato I say potato.
''Il paraît donc nécessaire que l’Union européenne montre sa totale détermination à obtenir le plein respect de l’accord par le Royaume-Uni et fasse valoir ses droits en utilisant les leviers à sa disposition de manière ferme, unie et proportionnée. Il est indispensable de montrer clairement aux opinions publiques européennes que le respect des engagements souscrits n’est pas négociable et qu’il y a davantage de dommages à quitter l’Union qu’à y demeurer.''
This is what that text says:
“It seems necessary, therefore, for the EU to show its total determination to obtain the full respect of the UK for the agreement and assert its rights using the levers at its disposition in a firm, united and proportionate way. It is essential to show clearly to the European public that respect for written undertakings is non-negotiable and there are more downsides to leaving the EU than remaining in it.“
I’m a bit late to the party here and not minded to trawl through posts to understand more, but it’s an uncontentious statement of the bleeding obvious, non?
Edit. I have just clicked your full fact link Pete and I can see what the problem is. Specifically, it’s been poorly translated by people who clearly are either not that good at French, or wilfully transliterating ‘Dommages’ as ‘damages’. In some contexts that would be correct, here ‘downsides’ is a more appropriate translation.
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This is what the text says:
''It would thus appear necessary that the EU shows its absolute determination to obtain the UK’s full compliance with the agreement and also asserts its rights through recourse to all means at its disposal in a firm, unified and proportional manner. It is indispensable to show clearly to European public opinion that the respect of commitments entered into is not negotiable and it is as damaging to leave the Union as it is to stay in it.''
You say potato I say potato. People see what they want to see.
The letter does ask the EU to demonstrate Britain has been disadvantaged by leaving the EU.
The key line appears to be the final sentence of the paragraph shown above, in which the French PM says it is essential to show the European public that there are more “dommages” to leaving the Union than to remaining in it.
There’s some debate over how best to translate “dommages”. We spoke to three French speakers—a researcher, a journalist and an academic—who all said they believe “dommages” is most accurately translated as “drawbacks” or “disadvantages” rather than “damages”. However Dr Edward Arnold, Professor of French at Trinity College Dublin, did translate “dommages” as “damaging” in a translation produced for Irish fact checkers thejournal.ie.
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Posts crossed!
No, your translation ^^ isn’t that good.
Interesting that 3 fact checkers all agree with me.
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It’s this bit (the earlier section is a fair translation):
qu’il y a / davantage de / dommages / à quitter / l’Union / qu’à { y }demeurer.''
This translates, chunk for chunk, as:
‘that there are / more / ‘dommages’ / to leaving / the EU / than to remain / there.’
‘As damaging to leave as to remain ‘ - it’s just nonsense, the French text does not say that, as you can see. How to render ‘dommages’? Similar words do not have a perfectly overlapping range of meaning with their main equivalents in other languages, a baboon could mechanically translate Shakespeare into Spanish if they did. That is why translation requires some skill.
Here, the tone and context mean dommages should be expressed as ‘downsides’ or ‘disadvantages’.
Although bad translation annoys me, in respect of the uproar about the misconstruing this as some implied punishment- who cares :shrug:
The French think we should honour the legal contracts we sign and it’s politically important to them EU publics see leavers can’t just have their cake and eat it.
In other news, bears defecate in the woods.
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But one fact checker, equally qualified (professor of French at Trinity), doesn't agree with you. Is their view invalid then in your mind because your bias doesn't align?
Don't answer, it isn't important. You're correct and you're incorrect, depending who you ask.
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Pete, you don’t half talk some nonsense :lol:
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Err, really? You're claiming the translation I posted is wrong. I didn't make that translation, it was the translation made by a professor of French for an Irish fact-checking site. How is that nonsense?
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The continuing existence of the Le Touquet agreement is surely a mark against the revenge theory?
One doesn’t need to invoke a Brexity sense of victimisation to explain French behaviour: it is not surprising that a centrist politician in an election year, facing a challenge from the far right might, when a neighbouring country has high levels of a potentially dangerous disease, be keen on immediately shutting the borders.
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One doesn't need to have a sense of victimisation to correctly identify behaviour designed to 'punish'. One more straw man bayoneted, well done private Sean.
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My comment was - in my head at least - much more directed at Adam’s original post.
I should hasten you add, in case it wasn’t clear, that I think it’s a fairly stupid policy and I really feel for people who’ve had their trips ruined.
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Err, really? You're claiming the translation I posted is wrong. I didn't make that translation, it was the translation made by a professor of French for an Irish fact-checking site. How is that nonsense?
Because the translation is wrong.
Talk about something else, this is dull now.
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But the translation isn't wrong. There *is* no perfect translation - that's the point of the articles linked, about the different translations that have been offered up. You can think one translation is wrong and one correct, but that's just your opinion and your opinion carries no special weight as far as I'm aware.
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Translation isn’t consistently reducible to yes/no outcomes like arithmetic, but it’s not simply a matter of opinion either.
Honestly, I think it’s a non story. The French (amongst many at the heart of the EU) want to make the costs of Brexit crystal clear to their domestic audiences. What competent politician would do otherwise? This brouhaha is just a distraction tactic for the benefit of a UK audience, something trivial to stir the pot of public opinion. Another populist bauble to outrage the gullible. Maybe the famous adage should be be updated to ‘Bread, circuses and Brexit’.
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Again that's your opinion. But the topic reared its head on here when the subject of the French banning UK travellers was raised and Adam asked ''do you think its just France giving us the big f you over fishing rights and general brexit shit show/hating the uk on a whole?''
I think it is the French playing politics, because their sourness over brexit does colour their policy towards the UK. As you've said, it's hardly surprising. That's what politicians do. The topic of 'punishment' then came up and Paul questioned the use of the word 'punish'. It comes from the headlines of the time of the fishing rights row and various translations of the French document have been offered. None use the word 'punish' but they don't need to, the meaning put forward by the text is fairly clear as you point out.
It's unfair to label it a side show 'to distract the gullible'. The fact is 'the gullibles', as you label them, have had holidays prevented by a policy that anyone can see isn't based in any scientific evidence. It's just the French using some bullshitting about omicron to justify being cunts towards UK travellers because that's their policy - making life difficult for the UK where they see they justifiably can get away with it, because the UK left the EU and some French politicians believe they must show their public that life outside the EU must be made to appear more difficult.
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I have no idea about the translation of this text but I do find it amusing that people (both on and off UKB) are quibbling over the subtleties of an interpretation of a word here or a phrase there, and whether that makes Macron a bad man.
And at the same time we have the entire British Govt and huge sections of the British press gaslighting the public by explicitly proclaiming any slight change in policy, no matter how trivial or made up, as being down to some new-found Brexit freedom, while completely ignoring all of the blindingly obvious ‘dommages’ and brushing them off as just Covid related.
What’s worse? And is it any wonder the French or any other EU nation pushes back against that kind of overt state-led disinformation campaign?
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I have no idea about the translation of this text but I do find it amusing that people (both on and off UKB) are quibbling over the subtleties of an interpretation of a word here or a phrase there, and whether that makes Macron a bad man.
And at the same time we have the entire British Govt and huge sections of the British press gaslighting the public by explicitly proclaiming any slight change in policy, no matter how trivial or made up, as being down to some new-found Brexit freedom, while completely ignoring all of the blindingly obvious ‘dommages’ and brushing them off as just Covid related.
What’s worse? And is it any wonder the French or any other EU nation pushes back against that kind of overt state-led disinformation campaign?
Nothing at all to do with who is or isn't ''a bad man'', in my mind at least.
And your 'quibbling people' on UKB are those disputing the fishing row text contains any mention of 'punishing' the UK. I totally agree that it doesn't, while pointing out what everybody can see with their own eyes and brain that it's blatantly obvious the intent is to do whatever the French can to punish the UK.
Completely agree with you that there are loads of idiots who read the express, fail, telegraph etc. and who lap up any mention of new-found great british freedoms to, erm.., have curvy bananas or whatever now we're not at the mercy of EU banana-nazism. But I'm not one of them.
'Overt state-led disinformation campaign'. Ooh, sounds sinister. Hang on but that's just a scary name for every political movement in history ever, since the beginning of civilisation.
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I have no idea about the translation of this text but I do find it amusing that people (both on and off UKB) are quibbling over the subtleties of an interpretation of a word here or a phrase there, and whether that makes Macron a bad man.
And at the same time we have the entire British Govt and huge sections of the British press gaslighting the public by explicitly proclaiming any slight change in policy, no matter how trivial or made up, as being down to some new-found Brexit freedom, while completely ignoring all of the blindingly obvious ‘dommages’ and brushing them off as just Covid related.
What’s worse? And is it any wonder the French or any other EU nation pushes back against that kind of overt state-led disinformation campaign?
Yup. I've had to cancel my trip over the holidays - and I have to listen to people (brexit voting climbers) telling me it's because of covid when it's blatantly obvious it's because of Brexit.
Why's it obvious? My European mates are still pottering about the EU climbing where they want and I'm not because I no longer have the right passport.
But hey, yeah, let's blame the French or covid or Bill Gates. FML.
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To be more accurate it's about France's behaviour, in response to brexit. Not brexit per se - Spain and most other countries aren't behaving the way France is, indeed Spain is actively pursuing ways to get more British tourists to be able to stay for longer, which is against the grain of France's public stance. They probably see the obvious opportunity that France's loss can be Spain's gain (on the plain etc..).
It will play out in time and money as always will talk. I see France being isolated but they'll probably be fine with that. Meh..
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- and I have to listen to people (brexit voting climbers)
Wait there’s more than one? I thought Pete was the sum total 😂
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Hi Pete, a last word from me about that text. In referring to people being gullible, I was talking about the manufactured outrage centring on the word dommages. The correct translation of the very common phrase ‘quel dommage’ is ‘what a pity’ and you could as as easily come up with a spurious translation along the lines of ”it’s a pity”. But it would still be wrong.
Real world behaviour such as how people react to fishing and transport issues, that’s worth talking about for sure. As a teacher of French and Spanish I have a fair idea of what those cultures are like and French intransigence isn’t worth holding the front page for. However, I’m with Ali here in thinking the big underlying problem is the dishonesty of the uk administration. I think the government’s current woes show where bad faith as a modus operandi leads eventually, on all fronts.
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It will play out in time and money as always will talk. I see France being isolated but they'll probably be fine with that. Meh..
On the other hand Germany might class the UK as a "virus variant area of concern", closely followed by the rest of the EU / Schengen. At least for a short period until it doesn't make a difference anymore, as we have just done with several African countries. Or maybe not and you are right this is France out on their own. Omicron is going to make a lot of predictions age very badly quickly, one way or the other! Must be very annoying if holidays are booked as if anything happens it will be without any warning.
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To be more accurate it's about France's behaviour, in response to brexit. Not brexit per se - Spain and most other countries aren't behaving the way France is, indeed Spain is actively pursuing ways to get more British tourists to be able to stay for longer, which is against the grain of France's public stance. They probably see the obvious opportunity that France's loss can be Spain's gain (on the plain etc..).
It will play out in time and money as always will talk. I see France being isolated but they'll probably be fine with that. Meh..
The problem with travel I have currently, and yourself, is no longer having an EU passport and that's down to Brexit and the British. Not France or the EU.
Otherwise we'd both be happily pottering off to climb somewhere warmer this winter
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Current rumours / leaks about a circuit breaker lockdown sometime after Xmas. Return to step 2 restrictions. A reminder of what that involved RE international travel:
Overseas travel
You must not go on holiday abroad. You could be fined £5,000 for travelling abroad without a legally permitted reason.
Not saying this will happen at all, just emphasizing that all the brexit chat is tilting at windmills. Your holiday might be further scuppered for different reasons than French intransigence i.e. Spanish closures, UK restrictions. All you can do is wait and see.
Reminder of full step 2 restrictions https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/step-2-covid-19-restrictions-posters-12-april-2021
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I mean, enhanced restrictions coming after xmas shouldn't be surprising to anyone who can see more than a day ahead. The open question shouldn't be 'will there be more restrictions?' (obviously, almost certainly yes). It's 'how long for?'. My current belief is any post-xmas restrictions (possibly accelerated at short notice to pre-xmas amid howls of protest/despair/media fanfare) will be short-lived due to the seeming accelerated process of everything to do with omicron. Open minded however to us finding out that this variant turns people to dust at the week 4 stage of hospitalisation.
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"How long"? No idea. The LSHTM model, which I assume is done in liason with government, assumes additional measures coming in on either 26th Dec or 2nd Jan and running until 30th April! :blink: Set against that a lot of their other assumptions are becoming outdated e.g. R of 2.5, booster programme running at 200-500K/day, doesn't consider different controls from previous steps e.g. mass lateral flow testing. So that assumption may also be well off. Lets hope so!
The talk is of a circuit breaker which would certainly fit with your belief, but only if the current booster vaccination programme is maintained / cranked during that time until coverage is sufficient. Otherwise it just delays everything by two weeks. So "it depends" I suppose!
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re: translation. I do a lot of translations from French to English at work, and some the other way around as well, where speed and factual correctness is way more important than tone. There is every chance that I would translate "il y a davantage de dommages à quitter l’Union qu’à y demeurer" as "leaving the Union is more damaging than remaining in it". The tone is not really the same in French and in English but the content is the same, so I would be content with the translation.
The phrase "leaving the Union is more damaging than remaining in it" is also a fair representation what Macron holds to be self-evidently true regardless of how France acts.
People should not be offended with the "tone" of a message, rather than its content, unless they are absolutely sure that they understand most nuances of the language it was spoken in.
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The talk is of a circuit breaker which would certainly fit with your belief, but only if the current booster vaccination programme is maintained / cranked during that time until coverage is sufficient. Otherwise it just delays everything by two weeks. So "it depends" I suppose!
The definition of ''everything'', I'm expecting us to discover based on relative levels of overall population immunity (offset somewhat by relative age demographic), being:
1. vast majority of people catch covid and experience nothing much except tired and a headache,
2. our level of immunity preventing any especially large number of deaths or serious illness,
3. a short-lived peak of hospitalisations.
We'll see if that comment ages well or badly.
(https://i.imgur.com/2H9l5Yi.png)
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I cannot see any feasible way level 2 restrictions could remain in place until April. No way would the Tories vote for that, and Labour would stop voting for it pretty quickly lest they become seen as propping up the lockdown. Even a circuit breaker after Xmas strikes me as like bolting shut the proverbial empty stable!
I'm with Pete, that's how I think things will go down. I reckon hospitalisation will reach a peak higher than previous peaks, but will start to come down before any restrictions start to take effect. Fingers crossed anyway.
On another point, I thought this was an interesting point about how the way scientists speak is often incredibly confusing to the public. You could see something similar in the way the AZ jab issues were discussed last year. https://twitter.com/Samfr/status/1472145803766636545?t=yTVbE71dafiFt1zHNmS4PA&s=19
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That's a very good piece of writing.
It's not the same, but along similar 'playing it safe to protect professional reputation' lines is when economic or other professional forecasters, who are paid to make predictions, use a 40% or 45% likelihood of an event happening. It's a high enough number that if the event happens they look astute at forecasting something that was unlikely; while low enough that if the event doesn't happen (which it's unlikely to) they appear to have forecasted with confidence that it wouldn't.
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'Overt state-led disinformation campaign'. Ooh, sounds sinister. Hang on but that's just a scary name for every political movement in history ever, since the beginning of civilisation.
Glad we agree there’s a sufficient lack of Brexit benefits that the govt and all its fan boys have to resort to lies and propaganda to make it seem more palatable :thumbsup:
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A government? As in - a group of elected politicians? Resorting to lies and propaganda to make their chosen cause seem more palatable?
I've never heard anything so utterly preposterous in my life! :o
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Frost the brexit negotiator has resigned apparently.
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Travel restrictions to/from Germany, so perhaps it isn't just the French?
https://twitter.com/andrewiconnell/status/1472321896662323200?t=RLX78al2IJc-rK8RdN2Auw&s=19
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Frost the brexit negotiator has resigned apparently.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-59714241
Andrew Bridgen Con MP on the record to say that the PM is running out of time. He's in trouble if backbenchers are openly critical of him.
I'd impose travel restrictions on the UK if I was a European country, we have a chaotic useless administration who now won't have any authority to impose many more restrictions ourselves.
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Travel restrictions to/from Germany, so perhaps it isn't just the French?
https://twitter.com/andrewiconnell/status/1472321896662323200?t=RLX78al2IJc-rK8RdN2Auw&s=19
One rather suspects there's a correlation of some degree between strong "pro Brexit", "anti Covid controls" and "it's all about punishment" beliefs.
Question is how long before travel restrictions become widespread. Borders going up, restrictions coming in - feels more like the start of a trend than isolated incidents...
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Frost the brexit negotiator has resigned apparently.
What a fucking coward. He was brought into government for one job. So all this talk about him not agreeing with Covid restrictions or higher taxes is just nonsense. Anyone with more than 2 brain cells can see it’s because he’s failed to square the circle caused by his own shitty deal.
One by one the central protagonists will follow him off the ship and leave other people to try and pick up the pieces.
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Germans punishing us for Brexit now? Weird timing. Seems an unnecessary distraction from the Omicron stuff. Not wanting to be outdone by the French I suppose.
Netherlands now locked down. In their own government's words its to prevent their (very highly rated private insurance based) healthcare system from being overwhelmed. Obviously if we need to lock down for the same reason, according to some it will be caused by the NHS being a money pit in desperate need of reform - into something like the Dutch system.
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Frost the brexit negotiator has resigned apparently.
What a fucking coward. He was brought into government for one job. So all this talk about him not agreeing with Covid restrictions or higher taxes is just nonsense. Anyone with more than 2 brain cells can see it’s because he’s failed to square the circle caused by his own shitty deal.
One by one the central protagonists will follow him off the ship and leave other people to try and pick up the pieces.
Truss!
FFS.
.
.
.
Puts us in a bit of a bind…
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Frost the brexit negotiator has resigned apparently.
What a fucking coward. He was brought into government for one job. So all this talk about him not agreeing with Covid restrictions or higher taxes is just nonsense. Anyone with more than 2 brain cells can see it’s because he’s failed to square the circle caused by his own shitty deal.
One by one the central protagonists will follow him off the ship and leave other people to try and pick up the pieces.
Truss!
FFS.
.
.
.
Puts us in a bit of a bind…
She's got a ridiculously wide brief, Brexit, foreign office, equalities..... but is actually on full time angling for the PM's job.
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What do you think the excuse will be this time?
Oliver Dowden 55 minutes before Downing Street party:
Step 1 – as the PM announced this week:
- Those who cannot work from home should now speak to their employer about going back to work.
- You can now spend time outdoors and exercise as often as you like.
- You can meet one person outside of your household in an outdoor, public place provided that you stay 2 metres apart.
I think they will go for:
1) Guidance says public place, and Downing Street is not Public
2) Therefore no rules were officially broken. Also Johnson was just in his own garden which is allowed - if anything the others are to blame.
3) However we regret this happened and apologise for how this looks to members of the public
4) Some statement about vaccinations
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What do you think the excuse will be this time?
Oliver Dowden 55 minutes before Downing Street party:
Step 1 – as the PM announced this week:
- Those who cannot work from home should now speak to their employer about going back to work.
- You can now spend time outdoors and exercise as often as you like.
- You can meet one person outside of your household in an outdoor, public place provided that you stay 2 metres apart.
I think they will go for:
1) Guidance says public place, and Downing Street is not Public
2) Therefore no rules were officially broken. Also Johnson was just in his own garden which is allowed - if anything the others are to blame.
3) However we regret this happened and apologise for how this looks to members of the public
4) Some statement about vaccinations
5) We are waiting for the official report/inquiry by which time everyone will have forgotten about it and my reputation as the saviour of Britain from those evil foreigners and the plague will remain in tact.
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If Johnson is asked in PMQs tomorrow, he will of course not answer the question at all, because he never does.
There will be some bullshit about private locked premises and work colleagues I should think.
However, I was listening to a bit of 5 live and LBC this morning and a lot of people sounded pretty angry about it.
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From Marina Hyde in the Guardian, a predictable yet amusing response: I’m afraid the only sane response to this is: what?! What are you even talking about? Did you or didn’t you go to a big party in your garden, you smirking fibreglass toby jug? Or do you also have to wait for some veteran civil servant to tell you whether or not you put your pants on the right way round this morning? Honestly mate, just MAN UP. Johnson’s turn as “prime minister” seems to have moved past the sarcastic air quotes phase. This feels a lot like government by the crazy-face emoji, tongue lolling out and one eye boggling bigger than the other. Any Tory MP who voted for this galaxy-class liar to become leader should remember they were wrong on probably the biggest call of their career, and consider resigning before the next election to go and work for a charity/arms dealer.
Speaking of manning up, I wonder if the organisers managed to find any ladies to attend this 20 May party? I mean, I’m not saying that people who do well under Johnson are mainly guys who spent a significant part of the past decade masturbating to Game of Thrones. No wait – I am. But one of my favourite things about the one Downing Street cheese-and-wine “work meeting” that we have an actual photo of is that the only two women I can see in it are Carrie Johnson and Gina Coladangelo. Remember, girls: if you want to work at the heart of government, you need to be either a man, or in a relationship with a man who does. If you can dream it, you can do it!
Back to the BYOB party, though – sorry, I know you need flashcards to keep your rule-breaking Downing Street pandemic bashes in order – which was organised by Johnson’s principal private secretary, Martin Reynolds. Apparently Reynolds now wants to get back to the diplomatic service, and perhaps the Middle East, and there is some talk about him being made an ambassador. You know, like when you or I break the rules and mess up spectacularly at work, and they make us an ambassador.
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Oh look, the Metropolitan Police are being shifty again. Guess who its going to benefit :whistle:
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Oh look, the Metropolitan Police are being shifty again. Guess who its going to benefit :whistle:
I'm as frustrated as the next person, but isn't it standard procedure for information to be withheld while a police investigation is underway, so as not to prejudice the results of that investigation?
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Oh look, the Metropolitan Police are being shifty again. Guess who its going to benefit :whistle:
I'm as frustrated as the next person, but isn't it standard procedure for information to be withheld while a police investigation is underway, so as not to prejudice the results of that investigation?
Its just profoundly incompetent. Their position has changed like the wind. (below lifted from a journalists twitter).
The Met’s evolving position:
- we don’t investigate Covid crimes retrospectively
- there is insufficient evidence
- we’ll see what comes of Gray
- Gray found evidence so we’ll investigate
- we don’t want Gray to publish her evidence as it’ll prejudice our investigation.
more than a few legal eagles don't seem to see the issue of publishing the report. I'll try and track some down.
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Can a magistrates’ court case be prejudiced in the same way as a crown court case with a jury? If not, then prejudice ruling looks a little suspect.
Also say if some CCTV footage of a crime is released showing the criminal clearly committing the act but his identity is unknown to the police, but he is identifiable to those who know him. How is this different to releasing an image of Johnson at a party, except the circle of people who know him is somewhat wider? I mean, sometimes evidence is widespread in the public domain - the material only becomes prejudicial after an arrest is made, iirc.
Happy to be wrong on this because right now it looks awfully like the police working to political ends which really isn’t supposed to happen.
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more than a few legal eagles don't seem to see the issue of publishing the report. I'll try and track some down.
https://thesecretbarrister.com/2022/01/28/why-on-earth-would-the-metropolitan-police-ask-sue-gray-to-redact-key-parts-of-her-independent-report/
Or for the TL;DR:
Contrast to the position where the suspect knows in advance that X has potentially incriminating messages, and has the opportunity to either invent a pre-emptive lie (“I lent my phone to somebody else that day”) or to speak to X to ensure that those messages are accidentally irrecoverably deleted.
In other words, the absolute last thing you would want, as an investigator, is for a group of powerful, organised suspects to be presented with a summary of everything the police know, and to be afforded an opportunity, before being interviewed, to concoct a false exculpatory account, or to destroy evidence that they knew had not yet come to light, or to have a gentle word with witnesses who had not yet spoken to the investigators.
Sue Gray’s report, if it offers summaries of what witnesses or suspects have said about events currently being investigated by the Met, would potentially be precisely such a document. It would offer a cheat sheet for any guilty party (no pun intended) wanting to steal a march on the police investigation.
This may be why the Met are so anxious that the report omits details relating to the parties currently under investigation.
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I was just about to post that in the interest of balance! Still think the timing is distinctly dodgy and indicative of a force that is no longer fit for purpose, but then I've thought that for years, so plus ca change. As per the below, we'll have to wait and see what happens. My bet is their 'investigation' will find nothing beyond fixed penalty level and even that might not get pursued.
But a political ‘stitch-up’? It’s too early for such accusations to be sensibly levelled. As things stand, there are potentially valid reasons for the Met’s stance. The provable charge against the Met is unforgivable incompetence at the highest level. We’ll have to await the outcome of their investigation, details of precisely what Met officers knew at the time about the alleged offending, and the transparency of the Met’s ultimate decision-making, before deciding whether Hanlon’s Razor needs snapping in half.
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Its just profoundly incompetent. Their position has changed like the wind. (below lifted from a journalists twitter).
The Met’s evolving position:
- we don’t investigate Covid crimes retrospectively
It’s an odd word to use, ‘retrospectively’.
I have always believed the police investigate crimes which had already taken place. Does this mean they only investigate crimes under COVID legislation that haven’t happened yet?
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Its just profoundly incompetent. Their position has changed like the wind. (below lifted from a journalists twitter).
The Met’s evolving position:
- we don’t investigate Covid crimes retrospectively
It’s an odd word to use, ‘retrospectively’.
I have always believed the police investigate crimes which had already taken place. Does this mean they only investigate crimes under COVID legislation that haven’t happened yet?
A state investigating thought crimes? I'm sure I might have read that somewhere before...
Whatever any reports or investigation say they won't sack Johnson, the only people who will do that are Conservative MPs, or the electorate at the next election.
Unless there's actually a CCTV of Johnson snorting coke off a portrait of the Queen in number 10 he's clinging on as long as he can get away with it.
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It’s an odd word to use, ‘retrospectively’.
I have always believed the police investigate crimes which had already taken place. Does this mean they only investigate crimes under COVID legislation that haven’t happened yet?
The ‘policy’ they were working to (which seems to have only ever existed in the brain of Cressida Dick) was to act on Covid breaches which were in progress and where the police attended. Except the times when they acted retrospectively. But this only when there was evidence freely available. Except the time when evidence was freely available but they decided not to act anyway. Does that make more sense?
So with this new intervention to stop Gray publishing the bits they are investigating it seems either the Met are taking it very seriously and doing things by the book, or there’s a blatant cover up happening. You would hope given it’s the anti political corruption unit doing the investigation that it’s the former but it’s a sad indictment of both the Met and govt that the latter seems the most likely.
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That the question is seen as reasonable is a pretty sad indictment of their reputation, tbh.
Arise, Dame Dick!
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The position regarding not investigating "long after the event" is consistent with the policy of intervening when there are current breaches in Covid regs taking place - the regulations are there to assist in reducing the risk of transfer/infection.
However, it appears that according to the Met, three criteria for investigating the most serious and flagrant disregard for the Covid regulations have been met - referring to information forwarded from the Gray report.
From Sky.
"They are:
• evidence that those involved knew or ought to have known they were committing an offence
• that by not investigating it would significantly undermine the legitimacy of the law
• that there is little ambiguity over the absence of any reasonable defence"
This is what we all know already of course ;)
What saddens me more, is that so few people who do know, have been keeping quiet.
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Can a magistrates’ court case be prejudiced in the same way as a crown court case with a jury? If not, then prejudice ruling looks a little suspect.
I think the wording here is key:
"to avoid any prejudice to our investigation.”
It isn't about prejudice of a potential court case, it is prejudice of the investigation.
My understanding is that it is impossible to prejudice a court case at this early stage. Happy to be corrected by someone who knows what they're talking about though.
But the investigation could very much be prejudice by laying out all of the evidence for any potential suspects prior to them being interviewed. Allowing them to get their stories in order to defend against the evidence that has been uncovered rather than trying to guess which evidence may have been uncovered and therefore allowing them to avoid self-incrimination.
The word prejudice seems a very poor choice of words in this context. I'm not sure whether that is down to incompetence or deliberate deception. Which it is will become clear once the investigation is complete.
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Can a magistrates’ court case be prejudiced in the same way as a crown court case with a jury? If not, then prejudice ruling looks a little suspect.
I think the wording here is key:
"to avoid any prejudice to our investigation.”
It isn't about prejudice of a potential court case, it is prejudice of the investigation.
My understanding is that it is impossible to prejudice a court case at this early stage. Happy to be corrected by someone who knows what they're talking about though.
But the investigation could very much be prejudice by laying out all of the evidence for any potential suspects prior to them being interviewed. Allowing them to get their stories in order to defend against the evidence that has been uncovered rather than trying to guess which evidence may have been uncovered and therefore allowing them to avoid self-incrimination.
The word prejudice seems a very poor choice of words in this context. I'm not sure whether that is down to incompetence or deliberate deception. Which it is will become clear once the investigation is complete.
This is pretty much what a lawyer they just interviewed on the today programme said.
The really awful thing isn't intrinsically what was going on, it's that the government was (is) so chaotic and unprofessional that they have lost billions of pounds in covid loans, leading to the resignation of Lord Agnew this week.
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So with this new intervention to stop Gray publishing the bits they are investigating it seems either the Met are taking it very seriously and doing things by the book, or there’s a blatant cover up happening. You would hope given it’s the anti political corruption unit doing the investigation that it’s the former but it’s a sad indictment of both the Met and govt that the latter seems the most likely.
Don't want to link it but there's an article in the Daily Fail claims a tipsy no. 10 staffer boasted to their security team that "we're the only people in the country allowed to party" and this incendiary quote was passed to Sue Gray's enquiry, leaving me with little doubt that the met have been called in to provide cover, rather than for any genuine investigation.
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So with this new intervention to stop Gray publishing the bits they are investigating it seems either the Met are taking it very seriously and doing things by the book, or there’s a blatant cover up happening. You would hope given it’s the anti political corruption unit doing the investigation that it’s the former but it’s a sad indictment of both the Met and govt that the latter seems the most likely.
Don't want to link it but there's an article in the Daily Fail claims a tipsy no. 10 staffer boasted to their security team that "we're the only people in the country allowed to party" and this incendiary quote was passed to Sue Gray's enquiry, leaving me with little doubt that the met have been called in to provide cover, rather than for any genuine investigation.
There's also an article in the Sunday Times stating that number ten staff had to stop giving Johnson high security documents to 'work' on at home because he never looked at them, but left them lying around so that any friends of his or Carrie's who happened to drop in could see them.
You'd have thought that would be a serious disciplinary issue on itself, in any other job, it would be.
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Given the Met’s track record on this, an excess of zeal seems the least plausible explanation for their request:
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/cressida-dick-escapes-inquiry-after-25776230
Irrespective of the truth, the public perception of this will be terrible.
Edit - reply to dr_botnik
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:popcorn:
I couldn't find the guillotine emoji.
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You know how much May will have enjoyed this:
https://youtu.be/jjIkuomhrMw
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saw a tweet - "May enters, carrying a cold dish".
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The public declaration of 3 more Conservative MPs that they've lost confidence in the PM prompted: "a furious reaction from the culture secretary, Nadine Dorries, who called the rebels “a handful of egos” who were “selfish, doing Labour’s work and it’s really not helping their constituents”
From a lady who ate ostrich anus on reality television whilst purporting to represent a constituency isn't that slightly rich?
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https://twitter.com/PippaCrerar/status/1489262472762511365?t=pZgnmUGu_VyA_vnbRW2DLg&s=19
I'd recommend people read the letter in full.
:popcorn:
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https://web.archive.org/web/20220203162904/https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/exclusive-boris-s-policy-chief-quits-over-jimmy-savile-slur (https://web.archive.org/web/20220203162904/https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/exclusive-boris-s-policy-chief-quits-over-jimmy-savile-slur)
For anyone who wanted to read the letter in full without contributing to that bigoted propaganda machine.
Dear Prime Minister,
It is with great regret that I am writing to resign as your Head of Policy.
You are aware of the reason for my decision: I believe it was wrong for you to imply this week that Keir Starmer was personally responsible for allowing Jimmy Savile to escape justice. There was no fair or reasonable basis for that assertion. This was not the normal cut-and-thrust of politics; it was an inappropriate and partisan reference to a horrendous case of child sex abuse. You tried to clarify your position today but, despite my urging, you did not apologise for the misleading impression you gave.
I have served you for fourteen years and it has been a privilege to do so. You have achieved many important things both as Prime Minister and, before that, as Mayor of London. You are a man of extraordinary abilities with a unique talent for connecting with people.
You are a better man than many of your detractors will ever understand which is why it is desperately sad that you let yourself down by making a scurrilous accusation against the Leader of the Opposition.
Even now, I hope you find it in yourself to apologise for a grave error of judgement made under huge pressure. I appreciate that our political culture is not forgiving when people say sorry, but regardless, it is the right thing to do. It is not too late for you but, I’m sorry to say, it is too late for me.
Yours sincerely,
Munira
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Be nice to believe this was a principled resignation. But she’s stuck with him through far worse so it’s clearly a rat fleeing the sinking ship.
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Not sure Mirza and principled are words I would use together, unless the principle in question is to exploit every shabby prejudice to maximum advantage.
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Be nice to believe this was a principled resignation. But she’s stuck with him through far worse so it’s clearly a rat fleeing the sinking ship.
Rats surely? To lose one of your advisers is careless, but four?
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I did enjoy this.
https://youtu.be/FkdqR4WKvuU
They've edited out the phallus waving Redhead.
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Another government adviser quits:
https://twitter.com/PaulGoodmanCH/status/1489506331816042496?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1489506331816042496%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.bbc.co.uk%2Fnews%2Flive%2Fuk-politics-60256680
It's beginning to look like the Trump White House.
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In respect of "major lieutenants resigning around him", or "puppet head of state clinging on to office before he is finally removed against his will"?
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Imagine Tory supporters invading No 10 in support of their hero. Rushing there in their hybrid SUVs, trying to find parking, then queuing up at the door and knocking politely (yes I'm stereotyping).
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In respect of "major lieutenants resigning around him", or "puppet head of state clinging on to office before he is finally removed against his will"?
While the failing PM / president parrots far right internet conspiracy theories in desperation?
All 3 of those.
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Apparently aides quitting is proof of the PM "taking charge"
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/boris-johnson-news-sunak-savile-latest-b2007562.html
Yep, sure it is.
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Apparently aides quitting is proof of the PM "taking charge"
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/boris-johnson-news-sunak-savile-latest-b2007562.html
Yep, sure it is.
In the same way that passengers on the Titanic 'disembarked' perhaps?
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A fantastic quote from an old political opinion article from 2006 about prime minister Tony Blair:
“It is a wonderful and necessary fact of political biology that we never know when our time is up. Long after it is obvious to everyone that we are goners, we continue to believe in our ‘duty’ to hang on, with cuticle-wrenching tenacity, to the perks and privileges of our posts. We kid ourselves that we must stay because we would be ‘letting people down’ . . .” written by Boris Johnson.
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Jeez. That's a beaut.
"..the perks and privileges of our posts".
I read "cuticle-wrenching tenacity" and thought for a moment that this should be in the max hangs thread.
I know that I'm making the same mistake I made about Brexit, when the reality is probably a long way from what I imagine.
How much support does Johnson have within the party?
The media are also polarizing things. We all are, aren't we? I am, in use of the assumptive "We".
All my cognitive biases are at work when I sift through the news, looking for the latest scandal, the video of the resignation speech. Can't seem to find it.
Boris has aspirations of emulating Churchill, when the irony is that he's more likely to be found dead in his bunker.
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Jeez. That's a beaut.
"..the perks and privileges of our posts".
I read "cuticle-wrenching tenacity" and thought for a moment that this should be in the max hangs thread.
I know that I'm making the same mistake I made about Brexit, when the reality is probably a long way from what I imagine.
How much support does Johnson have within the party?
The media are also polarizing things. We all are, aren't we? I am, in use of the assumptive "We".
All my cognitive biases are at work when I sift through the news, looking for the latest scandal, the video of the resignation speech. Can't seem to find it.
Boris has aspirations of emulating Churchill, when the irony is that he's more likely to be found dead in his bunker.
I'd agree it's pretty easy to become blinkered and unaware of how general opinion is on any issue; I pretty regularly read some of the Times and Spectator as well as Guardian, I etc; although I'm sure I am looking at them in a partial way, there is a widespread derision for Johnson, his behaviour and policies, albeit for different reasons. My guess is that people in general are beginning to sour on him at the moment, which may reverse or continue depending on what he does now.
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Perhaps the worst public servant in history finally goes, albeit she had to be forced out. Good riddance.
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Perhaps the worst public servant in history finally goes, albeit she had to be forced out. Good riddance.
I will celebrate only if she is replaced with someone who has the backbone to admit there is an institutional problem and someone who is not a wannabe politician. We shall see....
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Bas Javid?
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Perhaps the worst public servant in history finally goes, albeit she had to be forced out. Good riddance.
devastating that i had no idea who you meant until i checked on the news who it was. could have been any of about half a dozen people. hope the rest of them are gone sooner rather than later, but i doubt it.
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Can someone put a name to this? My googling hasn't thrown anything up.
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Cressida Dick
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In politics, does acted unlawfully actually means anything?
Over the last few years the government have been found, by the courts, to have acted unlawfully on many occasions.
Does this actually mean anything other than maybe tarnish their image? Are there any consequences, fines, anything?
https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/law/2019/sep/24/boris-johnsons-suspension-of-parliament-unlawful-supreme-court-rules-prorogue
https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/uk-acted-unlawfully-with-vip-covid-contract-lane-court-rules-2022-01-12/
http://www.matthewgold.co.uk/high-court-rules-home-secretary-acted-unlawfully-in-accommodating-asylum-seekers-in-inadequate-napier-barracks/
https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.politico.eu/article/uk-government-acted-unlawfully-coronavirus-contract-firm-dominic-cummings/amp/
https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/society/2021/feb/19/matt-hancock-acted-unlawfully-failing-publish-covid-contracts-high-court
https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/baroness-dido-harding-covid-19-response-test-trace-high-court-b982606.html%3famp
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I think that this ruling applies to Matt Hancock, not the government as a whole, and that he broke equality law rather than any criminal law, although that's only gleaned from reports, rather than any legal knowledge.
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https://www.politico.eu/article/boris-johnson-partygate-lockdown-scandal-conservative-london-mayor/
Worth a read.
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Taking things aside from the detail and seriousness of the Ukraine crisis, I was referring to the balance of interests for Johnson and the Conservatives, which still can't be ignored against the measures that might be taken.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/world/2022/feb/26/partygate-putin-war-boris-johnson-ukraine-crisis-prime-minister
Of course Johnson is fully aware of the gravity of things, but hopefully we are also fully aware of the question, sadly, of "what's in it for him?".
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Don’t want to disrupt the Ukraine thread, but really needed to say fuck Boris Johnson and the pure shite that comes out of his mouth.
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Don’t want to disrupt the Ukraine thread, but really needed to say fuck Boris Johnson and the pure shite that comes out of his mouth.
Can we add Mogg?
The distain for the rest of us when he speaks is palpable. It's not political fluff that people who lost/sacrificed are furious that those making the rules were flaunting them.
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Don’t want to disrupt the Ukraine thread, but really needed to say fuck Boris Johnson and the pure shite that comes out of his mouth.
I'd usually naturally recoil from abusing politicians rather than strongly criticising them. However, in this case I'd totally agree with the above.
This was an unutterably stupid and crass thing to say, and less there be any doubt, Johnson's mind is never on Ukrainians, or even our national interest, it's operation save big dog all the way for him, he's an unpleasant person and totally unfit to be prime minister.
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Don’t want to disrupt the Ukraine thread, but really needed to say fuck Boris Johnson and the pure shite that comes out of his mouth.
Can we add Mogg?
The distain for the rest of us when he speaks is palpable. It's not political fluff that people who lost/sacrificed are furious that those making the rules were flaunting them.
Yes, he supports Johnson because he'd never be anywhere near the cabinet if anyone else was PM, because he's really not good at anything, and displays no sign of intelligence.
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The Brexit bit was obviously totally ridiculous, but I was almost as astounded by the bit where he tried to pretend he was making a stand against tyranny, when he was literally just back from Saudi Arabia begging for more oil!
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Talk of 'evil' dictatorships, oligarchs and such, got me thinking how we are so blindly led to believe that somehow we have moral superiority?
A country where it easy enough and more cost effective to illegally fire 800 workers to be replaced with heavily exploited agency staff, that has illegally gone to war (and killed large numbers of civilians), that will do business with human rights abusers and sell arms to the very worst of humanity, that systematically abuses it's disabled citizens, that strip searches under 12s on school premises, that harbours institutional racism, where wealth is systematically extracted through government to a wealthy elite that store their riches offshore (if their Russian their called oligarchs!), that presides over outrageous levels of child poverty whilst being one of the richest economies in the world.
The list goes on and on and on, you need some seriously heavy rose tinted spectacles to gloss over all this shite. It's easy to blame one man, Boris Johnson but he is surrounded by the same ilk and there is effectively blood on the hands of the majority of our 'political class' whom have allowed this neoliberal nightmare to evolve over the last 40+ years. Sure we can put the evil label on Putin but what does that make our leaders?
Solidarity with exploited workers globally and solidarity with the sons and daughters that are sent to kill each other. What a mess.
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Well, it’s tempting to look at things from a national perspective. However, in some respects, a supranational perspective is more coherent. The reason why kleptocratic Russians are welcomed at the highest levels of British society is that those who do welcome them (not all, obviously) are similarly motivated. They have similar values and views. In other words, they see them as peers, not foreigners. The social orders beneath them are the true foreigners in this picture.
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Couldn't agree more JR. I am sure 'they' will all do very well out of this situation too
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I doubt the top kleptocrats will, they can't hide. The minor oligarchs will be all right. The gov will do a few performative seizures of yachts and items of unexplained wealth. Really, it's the legislation around offshore wealth and shell companies which will determine everything. I don't anticipate much change there
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQ9RQrcv3T8
Assume you've seen this, it was certainly educational to me (assuming it's true). Enlightening, although I found the format of the presentation a bit irritating,
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I doubt the top kleptocrats will, they can't hide. The minor oligarchs will be all right. The gov will do a few performative seizures of yachts and items of unexplained wealth. Really, it's the legislation around offshore wealth and shell companies which will determine everything. I don't anticipate much change there
Actually, what has happened is already significant and unprecedented.
The Swiss and Monaco government’s responses are monumental as is the seizure of the yachts.
Those yachts were not “owned” by the Oligarchs we all know “own” them. They were listed as a company asset, of a limited company, formed in the Cayman Islands and registered as a Foreign Maritime Entity in Gibraltar. However, the Cayman company, would have been a wholly owned subsidiary of another ltd company formed in the BVI, which in turn is majority owned by a Bermuda ltd company, which is owned by… and so on.
Each juridiction has strict rules about Director and Shareholders confidentiality.
This makes proving beneficial ownership very, very, difficult.
Something that has a lot less to do with taxation, than it does with liability. Imagine the cost implications of sticking one of those Mega Yachts through the side of an Ultra Large Crude Carrier and destroying the environment for many thousands of KM² around.
Most high value assets, houses included, are held in this fashion. I mean, these things come into play for divorce settlements and a million other reasons. It’s significant that the EU has been working to remove those barriers and make the proving of “Beneficial Ownership” much simpler, for the last couple of decades; whilst the UK government resisted (personally, I’m certain it played into the Brexit campaign. Brits and Brit citizens, own a lot of assets in this fashion).
Edit: the countries and jurisdictions I used above, were picked at random and not meant to be specific for any one instance. There is a long list of such jurisdictions and the list can be recursive. Even individual US states can be involved (Delaware was a favorite I have used, personally, when an owner specifically wanted the Stars and Stripes on his vessel’s stern).
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If you think the UK is bad for dirty Russian money hidden behind shell companies, you'd baulk at the hidden wealth of the UK's army of self-employed rope access grit-blasters maintaining the paintwork of North Sea rigs. These guys make Abramovich look restrained. Replace megayacht and Belgravia apartment with BMW M3, a jet-ski and a portfolio of BTLs. I'm joking of course but the process is similar, perhaps without the BVI shell of a shell of a shell although I wouldn't be surprised with some of the characters I've met. Still waiting for the day Newacstle Utd is bought by a sole trader painter-blaster.
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Try a sat diving welder. License to print it.
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If you think the UK is bad for dirty Russian money hidden behind shell companies, you'd baulk at the hidden wealth of the UK's army of self-employed rope access grit-blasters maintaining the paintwork of North Sea rigs. These guys make Abramovich look restrained. Replace megayacht and Belgravia apartment with BMW M3, a jet-ski and a portfolio of BTLs. I'm joking of course but the process is similar, perhaps without the BVI shell of a shell of a shell although I wouldn't be surprised with some of the characters I've met. Still waiting for the day Newacstle Utd is bought by a sole trader painter-blaster.
It’s very easy to do and cheap. Problem then is spending it here, as sooner or later you have to prove where it came from. Being employed by an offshore company and then paying income tax in the home of that company, being the safest. It’s the greedy that try to skip all taxation that end up screwed. Luxembourg used to be a “2%” income tax haven. Haven’t looked at it for over a decade, so no idea. You used to have to rent a business address in Lux (basically a telephone answering gig) which used to cost a couple hundred a year. Less than €200 to register a company. Gibraltar used to have off the shelf “business partners”, so you could show an X% local shareholder etc. It’s definitely not just for the super rich.
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Major banks, big business, savvy individuals with the means, governments around the globe, a failure by the MSM to report and pursue... There are so many organisations and people complicit in this racquet but but Russia bad, us good. There's nothing we can do about it and if we change the law they'll find another loophole so why bother heh?
I would love to talk more about this but there is a war going on, I need to read up on the latest developments, be in touch with what the experts are saying might happen next so I can play armchair General for 6 months or so until the next thing comes along.
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… a failure by the MSM to report and pursue...
The coverage of the Pandora Papers was pretty widespread?
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… a failure by the MSM to report and pursue...
The coverage of the Pandora Papers was pretty widespread?
And the results of the 'widespread' coverage were? Failure to pursue!
It's very similar to 'partygate' if you can get it out of the news cycle people will forget about it soon enough, wasn't there going to be some prosecutions or something? Nevermind.. WAR!
Good investigative journalism is a dying profession within the MSM why is that?
Ignore me I'm a 'conspiracy theorist' the MSM is full bore behind investigative journalism that consistently reveals the global corruption going on. As you were.
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Major banks, big business, savvy individuals with the means, governments around the globe, a failure by the MSM to report and pursue... There are so many organisations and people complicit in this racquet but but Russia bad, us good. There's nothing we can do about it and if we change the law they'll find another loophole so why bother heh?
I would love to talk more about this but there is a war going on, I need to read up on the latest developments, be in touch with what the experts are saying might happen next so I can play armchair General for 6 months or so until the next thing comes along.
Oh, I don’t know, it’s probably not that bad. I mean, we have one forum “Armchair General” out on the boarder helping with the refugee effort and I’m sitting here waiting for marching orders to go dodge Russian Torpedoes on the Argus or a Bay class (casualty receiving ships, with full hospital facilities, without the protection of “Hospital ship” status (so that they can actually enter conflict zones, which hospital ships cannot. One of which is just back from six months supporting the Ebola crisis)) because non-combatant and refugee evacuation is one of their main roles and about 45% of our training time.
You can certainly argue that Britain could do more and I’m pretty sure the “Lads and Lasses” in green and blue, would be all over a role in “International Rescue”, with minimal bangs and booms. FAB Brains!
However, you would be hard put to find a nation that did more. The fact that we* retain a “Civvi until activated” status, specifically so we can more easily access disaster zones, despite the headaches that splitting the Naval service into three arms, entails, should indicate that the “Nation” (if not the Government de juré) takes it seriously.
Anyway, the EU were trying hard to iron out some of those “loopholes” and I’m pretty sure that’s the motivation behind the likes of Mogg and Johnson’s Brexit stance.
But, it’s not really representative of “Britain”. A place that has a lot of faults, but a lot of hopeful ideals too. For one, you can write your thoughts here and the worst consequence would be someone calling you names. No “standard issue” kicking in your door. In fact, you could run for PM, should your vision capture enough imaginations.
*The Royal Fleet Auxiliary, nobody seems to know we exist or, if they do, think we just drive tankers to fill up Warships.
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The strategy of the current government seems to be that if you constantly have a new scandal ready-baked for deployment, you can simply allow it to become public and wait for the previous scandal to become old news. This keeps their media sponsors happy as they have plenty of content, whilst the public become so desensitised to scandal and appalling standards of behaviour including bare faced lies that it soon become normalised.
By way of example, ask the average punter about the following and see if they even register: Windrush, illegal proroguing of Parliament, Priti Patel's illegal discussions with Israel..... I could go on but you get the gist. I've no doubt Johnson made his Ukraine=Brexit speech purely to distract from the questions around the attendees at his fundraising dinner held at the time the invasion was reported, and to reopen old wounds to ensure that if any awkward questions are raised about where the funding for the Leave campaign actually came from, they are dismissed as being sour grapes "you lost, deal with it snowflake" yada yada yada.
Let's be clear, Brexit is a done deal, but we should never again allow a hostile power to manipulate us in that way again. The problem for the Tories is that it is going to be hard for them to make these changes without admitting that they have profited from (not the same as being complicit in) something which could be argued was close to treason.
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'Armchair General' OMM not a slight at you or anyone else for that matter just an observation on how we can all become engaged and entwined in whatever narrative is going on at present. We were armchair virologists not so long ago. (Incidentally, I am currently not working at school due to having COVID myself, a large number of pupils and staff off, it's rife everywhere, not much been said about it though).
Yes, yes. We can say what we want without the savage repercussions of other countries. I can also freely tell you that the University of York conducted a study on austerity that found that the joint impact of cuts to healthcare, public health and social care since 2010 found that the cuts were linked to 57,550 more deaths than would have been expected between 2010 and 2014. The majority of these deaths being the vulnerable and disabled members of our society. Of course it's easy to pretend that this violence towards our own population doesn't exist because it's not as blatant as 'kicking in your door' and many of us don't directly experience it. My family has direct experience of this state funded, private profit driven, stealth violence and I can tell you that it is sadistically vicious. We didn't round these people up and bump them off but they're gone nonetheless. Hopeful ideals or not their voices won't be heard.
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I don't think you'll find many people disagreeing with you that our society has a huge number of flaws, and there's no shortage of people here who are deeply dissatisfied with the government. That's putting it very lightly.
To equate our failings with that of the Russian government is to lack any sense of proportion. We might be bad in many ways but we are orders of magnitude less bad than Putin's state.
By all means rail against all that our society has done which is bad, but if that's all you've got to say when the topic of conversation is a state so brazen and gratuitous in its evil then you're going to leave a lot of people cold.
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By all means rail against all that our society has done which is bad, but if that's all you've got to say when the topic of conversation is a state so brazen and gratuitous in its evil then you're going to leave a lot of people cold.
Killing 56k people over 4 years is evil would you not agree? Should be described as a bit more than a flaw in my view.
Many of the brazen things Russian government has done ours has also done. I mean we could do a bar chart or something to quantify and compare but I think you're missing the point. I'm not equating, I'm pointing out how shitty leadership and those with power across the majority of countries are. It's not a black and white thing.
Is this not a bit like saying well I may have done some bad things but then someone else has done way worse so please don't point them out to me because they're the topic of conversation not me? Is it not OK to discuss the wrong doings of the people we pay to govern us?
I must come across as right miserable cvnt on here :lol: I mean I do like a good rant and I don't really sit in the comfortable position of being able to agree with mainstream narratives so much which can be hard work/ frustrating at times. I know other people hold similar views but perhaps can't be arsed to air them because you just get shut down or feel like a lone voice. TBH I'm waiting for someone to tell me if I don't like it move somewhere else :lol: I love the country, I just wish we could do much much better for our own and for the rest of the world.
The Russian government led by Putin has conducted an illegal invasion of Ukraine a lot of people on both sides are going to die, that's really bad an act of evil in fact. ANY consequence of a government's actions that is resultant in people dying is really bad, an act of evil in fact. How's that for you?
I'm off to do a jigsaw puzzle for a bit.
(edited for grammar - probably not well enough!)
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By all means rail against all that our society has done which is bad, but if that's all you've got to say when the topic of conversation is a state so brazen and gratuitous in its evil then you're going to leave a lot of people cold.
Killing 56k people over 4 years is evil would you not agree? Should be described as a bit more than a flaw in my view.
Many of the brazen things Russian government has done ours has also done. I mean we could do a bar chart or something to quantify and compare but I think you're missing the point. I'm not equating, I'm pointing out how shitty leadership and those with power across the majority of countries are. It's not a black and white thing.
Is this not a bit like saying well I may have done some bad things but then someone else has done way worse so please don't point them out to me because they're the topic of conversation not me? Is it not OK to discuss the wrong doings of the people we pay to govern us?
I must come across as right miserable cvnt on here :lol: I mean I do like a good rant and I don't really sit in the comfortable position of being able to agree with mainstream narratives so much which can be hard work/ frustrating at times. I know other people hold similar views but perhaps can't be arsed to air them because you just get shut down or feel like a lone voice. TBH I'm waiting for someone to tell me if I don't like it move somewhere else :lol: I love the country, I just wish we could do much much better for our own and for the rest of the world.
The Russian government led by Putin has conducted an illegal invasion of Ukraine a lot of people on both sides are going to die, that's really bad an act of evil in fact. ANY consequence of a government's actions that is resultant in people dying is really bad, an act of evil in fact. How's that for you?
I'm off to do a jigsaw puzzle for a bit.
(edited for grammar - probably not well enough!)
I hadn’t thought of it as a slight, it was more a “try to look for the positives in the bleak” kinda thing.
People, have been fucking over other people, as long as there have been people. Mostly it’s “unintentional” or, at least, without direct malice. Ignorance, ideology and religion being the biggest evils in humanity.
For instance, thousands of people suffer and die, unnecessarily from cancers, because they believe Black Salve or beetroot shakes will cure them. Idiotically clinging to ideology, long after empirical evidence proves it false, has plagued our people, society, governments and political movements; forever.
Frankly, the number you quote is low in comparison to the excess Covid deaths from that type of thinking.
This isn’t to condone such things, merely an observation. However, actually facing the brutality of the most banal lack of insight, from the vast majority of humans, day in, day out; is somewhat overwhelming.
Find the good, move it forward as best you can, hope you’re not one of the bad guys (often hard to tell until the dust settles).
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I think that's a bit of a weak response tbh, no offence I can see what you mean, but still. Everyone does horrible stuff so it is what it is. Sure but also we have a moral responsibility to call that out and say its not okay, because it isn't. The current Tory government killed thousands of people through incompetence. The previous administration killed thousands through austerity. These things are wrong and mostly ignored because the people who died were the people expected to suffer and die, not upper middle class people with nice jobs.
I would absolutely back our gov over Putin but it's a crying shame that to get my support they need to be facing off against him. And even then Boris said Ukraine was like Brexit, the worthless feckless cunt.
Most of the time things like Ukraine right now highlight that actually it's not people dying that seems to garner support, its the wrong people in the wrong place dying. Yemen is okay and austerity was a necessary force, but Ukraine isn’t and the royals get national outpouring of grief when they pop it. I'm fine with that just not with how someone else's grandma in a care home can die due to Hancocks incompetence and he kept his job, or a bus full of kids in Sana'a get turned to ash and we'll support the gov who did it.
Hypocrisy. That's what these things always show.
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The tin solder that holds everything together in every electronic component you own, including the device on which you just typed the post on this thread, was probably sourced from a corrupt and possibly tyrannical state (Indonesia or Myamar), by possibly exploited youth labour, possibly working for a corrupt state-owned company (PT Timah), creating damage to the environment by dredging the tin-loaded sand from the shallow seabed and deltas, possibly processed in a coal-fired processing facility in an autocratic state that persecutes and murders its minorities and political enemies (China). Meanwhile we all depend for our standard of living on manufacturing powered by the oil and gas of Saudi, Russia, and likely this year also Venezuela and Iran.
When the world transitions away from hydrocarbons we'll all rely on metals that come or are processed in large part from Russia, China and various autocratic or plain old corrupt states. As Terresa might have said there's no magic metal tree.
If the barrier to acting in the world was people throwing around labels of 'hypocrisy' and 'other bad things going on' then you wouldn't be able to operate in the world. Everyone would stay curled up safely in bed where they couldn't do anything that hurt anyone else. I think there are varying degrees of malicious intent and also varying degrees of malicious negligence to be considered.
BTW Matt I've worked on various of the RFA ships - all the 'Forts', and three of the 'Tides'. You can thank Doylo and the other exploited chimney cleaners for the nice clean engine vents.
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Just access or did you ever embark, bitd?
Very good points, by the way.
Bit busy, being ill but not having Covid, but I also tend to think there has been a general ignoring of how far the world has improved. Long way to go, but the trend is promising. So, as I said, find the good, move it forward as much as you can.
Try to keep the “Old man shouting at the clouds” thing to a minimum, because that will kill you and actually doesn’t help. I do it too, but it really doesn’t achieve anything.
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Just access over the last ten or so years. Would have enjoyed a nice cruise bitd while the RFA did all the work! I enjoy visiting the ships it's always interesting.
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Just access or did you ever embark, bitd?
Very good points, by the way.
Bit busy, being ill but not having Covid, but I also tend to think there has been a general ignoring of how far the world has improved. Long way to go, but the trend is promising. So, as I said, find the good, move it forward as much as you can.
Try to keep the “Old man shouting at the clouds” thing to a minimum, because that will kill you and actually doesn’t help. I do it too, but it really doesn’t achieve anything.
IDK where to start with this. I'm sure fellow environmentalists that lurk hereabouts will be pleased to hear the world has improved and we've just been ignoring that fact. I'm also sure they know we have a long way to go and plenty of time to achieve it. The politics thread is dead, how can we be optimists when confronted with the truth? Maybe rename it 'Middle Age Ostriches Collectively Bury Their Heads in the Sand'. I hope you can sense that I am writing this in good humour and despite having a very despairing world view I am generally quite a happy human being. Probably the least happy period of my life involved a settling for/ a letting go of the values and the beliefs I hold. Stop shouting at the clouds is the worst thing I could personally do. I do what I can within my own life to support others, I seek to do work that does likewise, I don't accept things the way that they are, I seek change and I tell people what I think even it may be unpopular, that's what keeps me ticking OMM.
The government were told what the consequences of their austerity measures would be they carried on anyway, Ian Duncan Smith even used these words towards sick and disabled people 'work your way out of poverty'. The lack of outrage is unbelievable. I sometimes wonder whether people whom are 'comfortable' actually understand the everyday reality of life for those at the bottom in this country or whether it's just easier/less painful not to think about it.
Things are about to get a whole lot worse for a lot of people, once again they know what the outcomes will be but will they seek to protect citizens first or profits?
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It's important to take a global view not a local one. By almost any metric you choose, globally the lot of the average human has been improving steadily since WW2. Austerity and Brexit are both shit but relatively unimportant in the overall scheme of things (despite some of the personal impacts of either being terrible for some individuals). The looming impact of climate change will be a different ball game, I agree.
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It's important to take a global view not a local one. By almost any metric you choose, globally the lot of the average human has been improving steadily since WW2. Austerity and Brexit are both shit but relatively unimportant in the overall scheme of things (despite some of the personal impacts of either being terrible for some individuals). The looming impact of climate change will be a different ball game, I agree.
'Some of the personal impacts of either being terrible for some individuals.' :no: I don't buy the global trends/ averages argument at all, the amount of wealth in this country is obscene and the personal impacts of the decisions made by those with the most are far beyond 'terrible' for some individuals. These aren't necessary causalities of progress they're potentially our friends, family, members of our communities etc.. whom have died because of the callous removal of resources and our states victimization of those with little. It's criminal, murderous, a cull by stealth but heh living standards generally globally are improving so who gives a shit. I quoted a figure from a research study that lasted for 4 years this has been going on for much longer than those 4 years and we have had a pandemic that has disproportionately hit the poorest since. Once again the apathy, the ability to hide from the truth and lack of outrage astounds me.
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Re P&O,
The AVERAGE wage for the replacement staff is £5.50. How is this possible with a minimum wage of £6.56 (over 18)/£8.91 (over23)? Do they get round it via the apprentice wage route or is it some off-shore gubbins?
It also makes me think, if P&O can't make the business work and are doing this, what do all the other operators pay their employees? Is me boycotting P&O for the family Font trip just putting money in the hands of another awful company? Do I have to sell a kidney for the chunnel?
(in 1996, as a 16yo stacking shelves in Tesco I was on £4.50hr with double time on Sundays which adjusted for inflation would be £9hr/18hr today)
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It's offshore related business apparently
That they admitted they knowingly broke the law is disgraceful. People should be prosecuted for that.
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(in 1996, as a 16yo stacking shelves in Tesco I was on £4.50hr with double time on Sundays which adjusted for inflation would be £9hr/18hr today)
This got me thinking. In approx 2006 (13/14 years old) I was on 4 quid an hour working for the local greengrocers at the weekends. Can't remember what my friends were earning in comparable jobs, but looking back it feels like slave labour!
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Most of the times when I have traveled with P&O on the Hull Rotterdam route. Majority of the the staff working in the restaurants and cleaning the cabins are from the Philippines. This probably how they get round the shit pay.
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You will pick up more detail through here:
https://www.nautilusint.org/?_cldee=YnVsbGV0aW5kaXN0cmlidXRpb25saXN0QG5hdXRpbHVzaW50Lm9yZw%3d%3d&recipientid=contact-91ae962243a2e911a98d000d3ab9ad32-a9f42573117344bebba890c15dc78fc5&esid=4434b7ea-03aa-ec11-983f-0022489d0dfb&_cldee=YnVsbGV0aW5kaXN0cmlidXRpb25saXN0QG5hdXRpbHVzaW50Lm9yZw%3d%3d&recipientid=contact-91ae962243a2e911a98d000d3ab9ad32-a9f42573117344bebba890c15dc78fc5&esid=4434b7ea-03aa-ec11-983f-0022489d0dfb (https://www.nautilusint.org/?_cldee=YnVsbGV0aW5kaXN0cmlidXRpb25saXN0QG5hdXRpbHVzaW50Lm9yZw%3d%3d&recipientid=contact-91ae962243a2e911a98d000d3ab9ad32-a9f42573117344bebba890c15dc78fc5&esid=4434b7ea-03aa-ec11-983f-0022489d0dfb&_cldee=YnVsbGV0aW5kaXN0cmlidXRpb25saXN0QG5hdXRpbHVzaW50Lm9yZw%3d%3d&recipientid=contact-91ae962243a2e911a98d000d3ab9ad32-a9f42573117344bebba890c15dc78fc5&esid=4434b7ea-03aa-ec11-983f-0022489d0dfb)
(https://i.ibb.co/Nnk3d0H/531-CF71-F-AFC4-4222-97-C3-95-F684-BD0-E0-B.png)
Also, I used the Sky News calculator today to workout the Budget’s impact on our family.
We will pay £12 less per year.
There’s no way this will help anybody earning less than us.
If I added £10k to our supposed income, we saved closer to £300, so…
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https://www.nautilusint.org/ (https://www.nautilusint.org/)
Not sure what I did with that link above.
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You can watch the full 2 hours of Parliamentary committee including taking evidence from the CEO of P & O on pootube if you're so inclined. £300k a year plus incentives is the going rate for being a full scale **** apparently. More cost effective and less hassle to break the law and pay the dues.
Brought back memories of the sharp suited Rolex wearing HR consultant that was rolled out in front of us, by the County Council, when the Youth Service got smashed. Sharp suit but nothing but darkness behind the eyes!
Excellent stuff from Gary Stevenson on Times Radio explaining in very simple terms why we have high inflation, where all the COVID money ended up and why the government's response to 'the cost of living crisis' is a fucking joke. >
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQMYdnTCyZc
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I don't buy the global trends/ averages argument at all, the amount of wealth in this country is obscene and the personal impacts of the decisions made by those with the most are far beyond 'terrible' for some individuals.
Made me think of this:
Charlie Munger was born in 1924. The richest man in the world that year was John D. Rockefeller, whose net worth equaled about 3% of GDP, which would be something like $700 billion in today’s world.
Seven hundred billion dollars.
OK.
But make a short list of things that did not exist in Rockefeller’s day:
Sunscreen.
Advil.
Tylenol.
Antibiotics.
Chemotherapy.
Flu, tetanus, measles, smallpox, and countless other vaccines.
Insulin for diabetes.
Blood pressure medication.
Fresh produce in the winter.
TVs.
Microwaves.
Overseas phone calls.
Jets.
To say nothing of computers, iPhones, or Google Maps.
If you’re honest with yourself I don’t think you would trade Rockefeller’s $700 billion in the early 1900s for an average life in 2022.
But that’s hard to admit, because all the insane luxuries Rockefeller didn’t have are now considered basic necessities. Everything works like that. All luxuries become necessities in due time. It’s why “everything’s amazing and no one’s happy,” as Louis C.K. says.
https://www.collaborativefund.com/blog/low-expectations/
I don't think 'everything's amazing'. But I do think a huge number of people are unhappy and a lot of that unhappiness comes from unrealistically high expectations and peer comparison. Life isn't fair, essential for happiness to remember that.
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Gotta agree with Brutus on this one, it’s great that global average living standards are increasing obviously, but this shouldn’t be used as an excuse for the consistent failings of communities in our country, or the increasing inequality that feeds into this.
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Interesting thesis Pete. What you seem to be saying is we should compare ourselves with people who lived in 1924, even though this is quite hard, but we shouldn't compare ourselves with people who live in 2022, even though this is painfully easy.
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Gotta agree with Brutus on this one, it’s great that global average living standards are increasing obviously, but this shouldn’t be used as an excuse for the consistent failings of communities in our country, or the increasing inequality that feeds into this.
...and if the increases in standards do lead / contribute significantly to complete environmental meltdown, famine and death then they probably weren't worth it.
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I don't buy the global trends/ averages argument at all, the amount of wealth in this country is obscene and the personal impacts of the decisions made by those with the most are far beyond 'terrible' for some individuals.
Made me think of this:
Charlie Munger was born in 1924. The richest man in the world that year was John D. Rockefeller, whose net worth equaled about 3% of GDP, which would be something like $700 billion in today’s world.
Seven hundred billion dollars.
OK.
But make a short list of things that did not exist in Rockefeller’s day:
Sunscreen.
Advil.
Tylenol.
Antibiotics.
Chemotherapy.
Flu, tetanus, measles, smallpox, and countless other vaccines.
Insulin for diabetes.
Blood pressure medication.
Fresh produce in the winter.
TVs.
Microwaves.
Overseas phone calls.
Jets.
To say nothing of computers, iPhones, or Google Maps.
If you’re honest with yourself I don’t think you would trade Rockefeller’s $700 billion in the early 1900s for an average life in 2022.
But that’s hard to admit, because all the insane luxuries Rockefeller didn’t have are now considered basic necessities. Everything works like that. All luxuries become necessities in due time. It’s why “everything’s amazing and no one’s happy,” as Louis C.K. says.
https://www.collaborativefund.com/blog/low-expectations/
I don't think 'everything's amazing'. But I do think a huge number of people are unhappy and a lot of that unhappiness comes from unrealistically high expectations and peer comparison. Life isn't fair, essential for happiness to remember that.
My Grandfather was born between the wars in Coventry, about 100 years ago. His father had been gassed in the trenches and could only manage night watchman work at the factory. His mother took in laundry to make ends meet. They never did. They lived in one room, with one bed. My grandfather was one of 13 brothers and sisters. Two died of (now) preventable diseases, before the age of 5. He was the youngest and by the outbreak of WW2, the only one not in the Army, Married or “in service”. He was evacuated to Buckfastleigh. While there, his entire neighbourhood in Coventry, was utterly destroyed (parents survived). He never returned to Coventry. Lodged with his custodian family and laboured on the farm, until he was old enough to enlist in the Navy (ironically finishing training a few days before VE day).
He died, well medicated and cared for, surrounded by his children (and several of his many grandchildren and even a few of his great grandchildren) in clean, calm, NHS hospital.
It is an objective fact, that life has improved for almost everybody, dramatically, over the last 100 years. This is not the same as saying that either equity or equality have been achieved; or even that there is not a vast challenge ahead to improve things for a huge number of people. Both here and globally.
Personally, I’m incredibly aware of the issues (I have been both poor, homeless and utterly broke myself) and my partner works day in and day out with some of the most vulnerable/at risk kids, in the “worst” school, Torbay has to offer (and this place has some of the most deprived areas in the UK and ranks 4th for violent crime in the UK).
I agree with Brutus, that there is still massive injustice and a mountain of inequality, that still causes incredible suffering and that it is entirely unnecessary, largely the fault of ignorance, blind adherence to ideology and arrogance amongst the political classes and the wealthier population (principle difference being, I think both Left and Right are equally guilty of these things).
However, ignoring the manifest improvements, that have spread out from the “Western” world, globally; is daft.
It could certainly move faster. Different story.
Ask me about my Romanian family’s progression from subsistance farming, living in 19th century conditions, to (clearly) UK middle class standards now, over the last 20 years (shit, MIL hires a local kid to milk the cow these days. Pure posh that is, by Romanian standards).
There is much reason to be hopeful. As much because the “Government” have always been as they are now and yet “we” usually move in the right direction as a society (globally, some bits quicker than others).
Part of me thinks the Ukrainian situation will boost the movement away from Oil ans Gas dependence and (hopefully) push, a much more connected, world even further away from the lure of dictators and kings.
Ultimately, steering 6 Billion cantankerous individuals is a slow process. Even herding the 68 Million on this island, is a thankless task and these fuckers at least all speak the same language (sort of).
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To be clear, I wasn't making excuses, just pointing out the global perspective but the point seemed to be missed in all the outrage. Not that surprising really as at a local level, yes, it is fucking outrageous that we've allowed ourselves to be ruled by such a bunch of charlatans who will drive many into absolute poverty.
I know what absolute poverty is, my parents had to choose between feeding the family or putting the heating on. In winter I'd break the ice on my bedside glass of water in the morning before getting dressed for school. At school my nickname was "Wing Commander Middleton" because the fashion was for skinny ties and shirt collars but as my clothes all came for jumble sales or church charity boxes I looked like I was in the Bee Gees with huge flappy collars. One reason I've always secretly hated disco, sorry Grimer! So don't get me wrong, my version of hell has a special room set aside for Sunak and chums. Still, despite their endeavours, in general humanity is better off than in 1950, for now. I'm more angered by the lack of progress on reducing emissions than I am on reducing inequality because unfortunately the former will have way more global impact than the latter.
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It’s not just selective editing is it?
There are so many clips, at different points; seemingly every public moment of the NATO conference and Johnson is (seemingly) being, pointedly, ignored and shunned.
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I've been thinking about these questions of growth and inequality for a while. My post-graduate diploma thesis was on growth and development in South Asia and my masters dissertation looked at how changes in the labour market, taxes, benefits and pensions combined to affected inequality in the UK over what a more excitable leftist might call "the period of neoliberal hell", aka the 70s to the 2010s. The modelling for the later involved a fairly deep dive into the evolution of the UK's tax system and its wealth and income distribution. Before you come at me with your hot takes on how not being able to forecast depressions mean economic models aren't worth shit, let me point out that human societies are very complex and even working out the effects of things that have already happened is hard! Even when those things are events that have happened repeatedly, such as raising or lowering taxes, or changing interest rates.
It's one of those things where the more I learn, the less certain I am, but some things remain quite clear.
For sure, the world is much better off than it was, which is obvious to anyone like Matt or myself who has relatives living outside the rich world. There are ways you could "not buy it", such as suggesting that the majority of outstanding growth happened mainly in China, but heck, that's still a lot of human beings living a better life. But I don't think we can be complacent and console ourselves with "we usually move in the right direction as a society (globally, some bits quicker than others)" because this quite the full picture either. Lots of places just flatline, for years and years, or even go backwards.
Governments, or probably more likely elites in general, can fuck things up:
(https://i.imgur.com/AgngM8I.png)
This graph shows averages rather than distributional effects, so the picture for most Indians and Nigerians is worse than it appears. But look, Nigerians are now back where they were in around 2009, a decade on and they still aren't making economic progress. And before you say - but does GDP growth really make people happier? - yes, there is good evidence that it really does, even though GDP itself is a crude measure.
Or governments/elites can really fuck things up, in the case of Pakistan as compared to Bangladesh, whose success is under-rated:
(https://i.imgur.com/2dMRqZN.png)
Or huge, horrible political or financial events can really really really fuck things up too, in this case the fall of the Soviet Union and the Asian Financial Crisis:
(https://i.imgur.com/mr3rVef.png)
Apologies for those who are familiar with this stuff already.
The problem for many on the left is that these improvements occured within the "neoliberal era" from 1980 onwards. Sure, one could say "but it's people working in horrible sweatshops" and this is true. But... moving to a city and working in a factory is often much better than staying in a village. This kind of movement is a key part of societies getting richer, creating more inclusive and responsive political structures based around class interests rather than kinship or patronage, increasing rights for women etc. Compare the prospects of the great-grandchildren of Sicilians who moved to New York in 1910 as against those who stayed.
Even within the UK, there's a real problem with labelling the last 40 years as a write-off compared to the social democratic/welfare state heyday of 1950 - 1980. Those thirty years were just great if you were a white male worker, and yes, on average, there was a decline in income and wealth inequality:
(https://i.imgur.com/98Ah1kP.png)
(https://i.imgur.com/628faDf.png)
But can you really say those were great years if you were a woman, non-white, gay? I think there is a more difficult relationship between the socialist left and liberalism than left-wingers like to admit (the further left, the more difficult the relationship). It's no surprise that they key driver of liberal reforms on race, homosexuality, prisons, etc was Roy Jenkins, a politician despised by the left who went on to found the SDP. As a pure rhetorical point, how can left wing parties win elections when they describe as hellish an era in which many voters have seen their outlook vastly improve?
I think something else that is under-appreciated is that from the late 70s/early 80s onwards there were two mutually reinforcing trends occuring. On the one hand, lower taxes on the well off, which were a choice. But also, a divergence in the labour market that saw the wages of more educated, skilled workers growing more quickly. Sure, unionisation played a part in this, but studies attempting to estimate a counterfactual in which unionisation rates remain high suggest that the same basic trend would have occured. What if the terrible inequality we experience now was in part baked-in because it flowed from technological changes that were occuring and out of any individual's control? You could embrace those changes as the US, Europe and Japan did, and suffer rising inequality, or you could fail to embrace them, as the USSR did, and... suffer even worse inequality. Sure, there are some countries that escaped this dynamic like the Netherlands, but maybe whatever they did is simply harder to do in a larger, more diverse country.
Do I have to add the disclaimer that austerity was a disaster and that our current rulers are clueless? I suspect I probably do.
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I agree with Brutus, that there is still massive injustice and a mountain of inequality, that still causes incredible suffering and that it is entirely unnecessary, largely the fault of ignorance, blind adherence to ideology and arrogance amongst the political classes and the wealthier population (principle difference being, I think both Left and Right are equally guilty of these things).
The "plague on both your houses" approach doesn't square with reality. There are clear and measurable differences between our left and right parties when it comes to inequality, public services and the life chances of the less well-off.
(https://i.imgur.com/ruWbYgF.jpeg)
There is much reason to be hopeful. As much because the “Government” have always been as they are now
There's a strong argument that this government are much worse on both strategic vision and day-to-day implementation than nearly every other government I've seen in my lifetime. To say "they're all the same" is the kind of cynical nonsense that gives really poor politicians the green light to do stupid shit.
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I agree with Brutus, that there is still massive injustice and a mountain of inequality, that still causes incredible suffering and that it is entirely unnecessary, largely the fault of ignorance, blind adherence to ideology and arrogance amongst the political classes and the wealthier population (principle difference being, I think both Left and Right are equally guilty of these things).
The "plague on both your houses" approach doesn't square with reality. There are clear and measurable differences between our left and right parties when it comes to inequality, public services and the life chances of the less well-off.
(https://i.imgur.com/ruWbYgF.jpeg)
There is much reason to be hopeful. As much because the “Government” have always been as they are now
There's a strong argument that this government are much worse on both strategic vision and day-to-day implementation than nearly every other government I've seen in my lifetime. To say "they're all the same" is the kind of cynical nonsense that gives really poor politicians the green light to do stupid shit.
I dunno, this lot have been in power since 2010 (changing leaders doesn’t seem to have changed their underlying ideology) and allowing for the global collapse of ‘08 and the Pandemic (which probably gives similar figures for most Western nations over the last 2-3 years, even if ours are a degree worse than most); the current government appear to be on a par with Labour of the ‘70s. (Looking at the “clear patch” between global crap).
Thatcherism, meanwhile, appears to be vindicated…
Which pisses me right the fuck off.
Anyway, my gross oversimplifications aside; that was an excellent couple of posts, very much appreciated and informative. Cheers.
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I'd entirely agree Sean, there are many very good and conscientious, hardworking politicians, from all the main parties. The distinct issue with this government is that Boris Johnson has never been any of those things, has no interest in policy and can't even appear professional.
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Interesting thesis Pete. What you seem to be saying is we should compare ourselves with people who lived in 1924, even though this is quite hard, but we shouldn't compare ourselves with people who live in 2022, even though this is painfully easy.
I agree with this, of course it's a silly comparison purely made to justify ridiculous inequality.
But there's a serious philosophical point within Pete's post - it is actually quite hard to compare the differences in wealth over a long period. Obviously we are richer, in the simple sense that we can combine labour and capital to do more "stuff", whether that's build cars faster, create vaccines, whatever. But really poor people nowadays could have a mobile phone which no one had in 1975 or 1915, so isn't there some kind of logic in saying that even very poor person today is in some sense "richer" than a well off person from a century ago?
I don't really find this convincing, as on a personal level we can't go and live in 1920, but it's quite awkward to resolve. If we break things down into the service they provide, so "message services" go from runner/merchants > pony express > postal service with carriages > postal service with railways > telegraph > telephone > fax > mobile phone > smartphone then... maybe, but sometimes the quality is different.
Anyhow quite heroically someone tried to work out the change in the cost of light, which is essentially the same stuff throughout history (kinda): https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-38650976
Nordhaus' writes: "The bottom line is simple: traditional price indexes of lighting vastly overstate the increase in lighting prices over the last two centuries, and the true rise in living standards in this sector has consequently been vastly understated."
Obviously if we constructed a price index that took this into account then the vast fortunes of the Gilded Age would shrink in their present value. I honestly don't know how much the statistical agencies do this, clearly they will be very aware of this issue and try to correct for it, but has this been done for the whole of the twentieth century or further back? I have no idea.
But I suspect if we did then Rockerfeller would still look really fucking wealthy.
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Not had time to do more than skim, but this looks interesting:
https://www.resolutionfoundation.org/app/uploads/2020/07/living-standards-audit.pdf (https://www.resolutionfoundation.org/app/uploads/2020/07/living-standards-audit.pdf)
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This nugget stood out from an article in today’s Guardian (https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/mar/25/the-uks-poorest-people-have-been-utterly-abandoned-by-this-ideological-chancellor) by Paul Kissack, chief exec of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation
Rather than strengthen the support available, he {Sunak} chose to cut benefits in real terms, leaving households in poverty £445 out of pocket for the year ahead; 600,000 more people will be pulled into poverty by this decision. Around a quarter of them are children.
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Interesting thesis Pete. What you seem to be saying is we should compare ourselves with people who lived in 1924, even though this is quite hard, but we shouldn't compare ourselves with people who live in 2022, even though this is painfully easy.
Well done demolishing that little strawman you just built Duncan. No, hopefully that isn't what I appear to be saying. It's pretty clear the comparison is being made between someone in poverty today versus the richest man in the world in 1924. And the point raised is a philosophical one to do with 'enough', peer comparisons, and relative wealth. It's an easy topic to get outraged about and I wouldn't expect anything else here.
An interesting way to think about human inequality is to look at a human life as if it were a unit of wealth subject to the pressures of compounding growth. Then apply the maths of 'sequence of returns risk' to a human lifetime. Sequence of returns risk is the maths of how identical fixed withdrawals from two identical initial fixed pots of wealth, in a fluctuating price environment, will trace very different paths through time depending on the market price environment during the crucial early stages of withdrawal.
So 1 unit, at the same overall average growth per annum over, say 20 years, will finish at very different levels from 0 to + a lot, dependant on the unit price during early years of withdrawal.
It seems to me that it works the same for people, as can be seen in the way early life advantages or disadvantages compound over time. Lives that start off at a slight disadvantage compound into a much larger disadvantage, while lives that start with a small advantage compound into a much larger advantage. Same for pensions, athletic achievement, and no doubt lots of other environments where there's competitive pressures and where early small gains or losses have enough time to compound.
When people talk about equality I wonder to myself what they really mean. Equality of outcome? Zero chance of that, you may as well campaign for moons on sticks.
Equality of opportunity - I'm all in favour of that especially in three areas - education, housing and health. Not much else matters really. But health is tricky because it's hard to stop medical professionals having an incentive to provide a market to wealthy people. Housing is tricky but more solvable than health - in world king mode I'd immediately cap home ownership to two per person within the UK (to cries of outrage from poor villagers in Spain and France no doubt). All that student accom owned by the middle-class would be owned by either the state or the uni. Private investors (mostly ex-students funnily enough, easy to spot the opportunity when you've been the opportunity earlier in life) - if they really were as keen on making money from providing student accom as the last 30 years would suggest they are, could invest as private finance into the uni or government housing system for a fixed rate of annual return. Houses inherited from parents, if they took you over the two-house cap, would get sold at a much lower IHT rate than the current system. Education should be simple but isn't - ban paid-for schools tomorrow seems a simple policy that would level the field. Except the outcome would still be unequal because the market for paid-for tutors would explode.
Cost of housing seems the simplest to make more equal in the UK. Unfortunately a great many of the people who matter to politicians most - inc. many of the UKB readership - don't 'really' want it to be equal if housing being more equal means bringing the level of affordability of housing down a few notches, instead of bringing the poorest people up a few notches so that they're able to afford ultra expensive housing-to-income ratios. Because they have their wealth in it. A large proportion of people, as soon as they get a bit of wealth, do what unimaginative middle class people do which is buy more properties than they'll ever live in as investments providing yield and capital growth to see them through their retirement years. In that respect I agree with the Chinese communist party's *motto of 'houses are for living in not speculating'.
*Even if they don't actually mean it for all the elites, just the wrong sort of elites.
One illustration of sequence of return risk. Same start points - could think of 'start point' as inherent genetic ability, identical 'withdrawals' - could think of withdrawals as effort made in life, 3 different environmental pressures - market pricing in this case but could think of as 'competition from peers'. Very different end points largely influenced by conditions during the early years:
(https://monevator-monevator.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/sequence-of-returns-risk.jpg)
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For anyone who wants to get into the weeds of sequence risk.
https://earlyretirementnow.com/2017/05/24/the-ultimate-guide-to-safe-withdrawal-rates-part-15-sequence-of-return-risk-part2/
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If you’re honest with yourself I don’t think you would trade Rockefeller’s $700 billion in the early 1900s for an average life in 2022.
This is the bit I think I’m missing the point of, or disagree with: are we meant to choose not being mega rich personally, because we should be unselfish and think about how much better off the average person is today?
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Forget about whether it's selfish or not, once you have enough to be comfortable and secure anything more will be very unlikely to make you happier, whereas if you are in poverty, every little bit which moves you closer to the above has incredible value. Everyone (not just the poorest) would actually be better off with less inequality and a decent standard of living - just see which nations come in the top 5 for quality of life each year and then check their metrics.
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When people talk about equality I wonder to myself what they really mean. Equality of outcome? Zero chance of that, you may as well campaign for moons on sticks.
Equality of opportunity - I'm all in favour of that
So just because something is difficult and complicated we shouldn't even try??
I don't know how to insert a picture but this explains the issue with 'equality of opportunities' perfectly.
https://www.reddit.com/r/coolguides/comments/o3ivsg/equality_equity_and_justice_explained_better/
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Equality for all is a strawman on stilts. When people -sane people, at least- discuss inequality, as battery alludes, the issue is to remove systemic barriers by reasonable adjustments and to stop people thieving their way to extreme privilege. Free school meals would be an example of the former, getting your mates to award £76m profit contracts for unusable kit the latter.
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Equality for all is a strawman on stilts. When people -sane people, at least- discuss inequality, as battery alludes, the issue is to remove systemic barriers by reasonable adjustments and to stop people thieving their way to extreme privilege. Free school meals would be an example of the former, getting your mates to award £76m profit contracts for unusable kit the latter.
Actually that's what the link Battery posted *is* alluding to. :) Equality for all to be allowed to see the same game, currently blocked by the barrier. Which is what I said is unachievable and that you're saying is a strawman on stilts.
Much depends on your definition of what 'watching the game' represents in that simplistic picture I suppose - if you're talking about free school meals so that kids get to eat similar quantity and quality of calories growing up, then yes I fully agree this is both desirable and achievable. If you're talking about all kids getting access to all the same 'things' and experiences then this might be desirable but just obviously isn't achievable nor would it ever be in a capitalist, or any, economy unfortunately (literally..).
There's obviously a grey area that not everyone agrees on where necessary, desirable, essential, etc. are open to debate.
Putting up an appealing simple picture is a good way to give people a disabling belief that life could ever be truly fair and equitable for all. This hasn't ever been true, and the likelihood of it ever being true in the future seems so small as to be not worth considering imo.
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When people talk about equality I wonder to myself what they really mean. Equality of outcome? Zero chance of that, you may as well campaign for moons on sticks.
Equality of opportunity - I'm all in favour of that
Very few people who study this write about equality. Instead they research inequality, something which is present in all societies and at all times. It’s usually split into income inequality and wealth inequality, the later is very hard to measure and our data on wealth distributions doesn’t go that far back. But sometimes consumption gets used too.
Unlike the vagueness around equality, we have pretty good ways of quantifying inequality. Basically either a Gini coefficient (measures the distance from perfect equality, ie 1st decile has 10% of income, 2nd decile 10% etc), or a ratio of income by deciles, usually 90:10 or 50:10.
I doubt this answers the question you asked, but it’s the usual framework used for thinking about these questions! At least from a quantitative point of view, other approaches are available…
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Equality of outcome is not just impossible, it's undesirable. Hierarchies are inevitable, the best you can do is aim to make the hierarchy based on something that is beneficial to society. :lets_do_it_wild: :lets_do_it_wild:
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I wasn’t entirely sure what point Pete was making with this analogy… initial endowments matter? Skills compound over time but the return to skill changes? I mean, if so, then yes. I made the same point re returns to skill in one my posts above. That said, these things are all very reasonable in theory but examining them econometrically isn’t always easy.
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Ha! It occurred to me this morning. I've spent the last twelve months educating myself on sequence risk along with a load of other early retirement tools. Yeah probably wasted, but it seemed such a fitting model for thinking about the topic of lives which begin at a 'neutral' start point and which develop along diverging paths where each event has the ability to alter future success and it all compounds over time to wildly differing outcomes.
Sean - best I can suggest, if you want to understand sequence risk, is to take a read of ERN's site. Also Moneyvator. It's a seemingly simple concept, but fiendishly difficult to mitigate - aka 'the most difficult problem in finance'. I think you might find it an interesting way to think about inequality of outcome.
(Wondering now what withdrawal rate you've suggested for that settlement Habrich!)
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Thanks - I have already skim read the intro page to get an idea of how it worked, thought it was a neat idea, to the point of considering replicating their method even tho I am definitely not a finance guy.
Saying that skills etc compound is almost certainly true but how big a factor is it? The question of how education affects later income features in every econometrics text book because it is a simple and obvious question that turns out to be very hard to answer.
Inequality is also driven by more macro factors such as tax systems, social mobility, aggregate demand, etc. The drivers of in-country inequality are different to the drivers of between-country inequality, the later is even hard to quantify. “How much richer than Europe is America?” is also quite a hard question to answer, even tho it’s obvious that many Americans are richer than most Europeans, and the richest really are much richer. Some of that may even boil down to individual preferences and appetites for risk, in much the same way as there’s no one answer to the question of would you rather be ordinary early 21st century resident or Rockerfeller, or even Alexander the Great.
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Just spit balling now, but to use sequence of returns risk in relation to a person's life chances, I'd think of it in terms not of what positive skills/advantages compound over a lifetime. I'd think of it in terms of what setbacks/disadvantages occur early in a life. Because sequence risk is especially concerned with what impact setbacks have on long-term growth, and when/in what order along a timeline a disadvantage, setback or series of setbacks happen, more than the scale of the setback although scale isn't irrelevant. The earlier a setback the greater the compounding effect of those unrealised gains, versus an 'average'.
Just doing 'OK' compared to peers, with the occasional setback a bit later in life = you're probably going to do OK overall, i.e. not inequality.
But if a person is born (in other words begins the sequence) in some slightly disadvantaged circumstance compared to the average, and then in the early years experiences some setback, then using the sequence of returns model it would be difficult to ever fully recover from that compared to an average person, let alone someone fortunate.
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Was literally just reading ERN's page where he's modelling exactly what you're doing - modelling which variables have most predictive power in a high inflation environment for a CAPE-adjusted SWR 75/25 stocks/bonds. He's done a regression model on 8 variables and found that using the 10-year forward CPI gives the greatest predictive power (coming back again to sequence risk in the first 5-10 years!), versus using 1,5,30 forward CPI, 10-year bond, 2-year bond or short-term trailing inflation rate.
Interesting he found that direction of inflation is more predictive than actual level of inflation, up to a point around 8%.
Here: https://earlyretirementnow.com/2022/02/28/retirement-in-a-high-inflation-environment-swr-series-part-51/
Wish I had the stats knowledge to follow his calcs, but I understand the concept. I'm currently using CAPE-adjusted SWR for calculating my own withdrawal rate.
Apols off topic.
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Pete the regressions he’s doing here are fairly standard. Get yourself a copy of Stock and Watson’s Introduction to Econometrics and download R and you could teach yourself enough to understand what’s going on here quite quickly. It only used a very little calculus iirc and if you didn’t want to take those bits on trust, you could learn that easily too. I suspect you’d probably enjoy the whole process.
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I wonder if there's been a time when the UK had a worse government, or whether the proximity makes it seem so, and they'll look mediocre in retrospect?
Theres a serious war in Europe, an ongoing pandemic, a crisis in energy policy, inequality, not to mention climate change. The government has all but abandoned net zero (not mentioned at all in yesterday's energy policy paper) and the PM is occupied desperately trying to keep his job.
Ministers are pissing about trying to outsource refugees to Africa, and dismantling media organisations. The main hope is that they lack the competence to actually pass any of this bullshit into law.
Surely it hasn't always been this way?
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Don't panic though Toby as the Treasury is focusing on minting it's own NFTs......
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Nevermind at least the 'opposition' isn't driving itself towards bankruptcy. :whistle:
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Nevermind at least the 'opposition' isn't driving itself towards bankruptcy. :whistle:
In legal costs due to the widespread antisemitism of the Corbyn years. I think the opposition is doing as good a job as it can given the large Conservative majority and events of the past 2½ years. They've gone a long way towards making themselves a credible option as a government.
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Don't panic though Toby as the Treasury is focusing on minting it's own NFTs......
Incredibly high environmental costs incurred. Well done them.
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Don't panic though Toby as the Treasury is focusing on minting it's own NFTs......
Incredibly high environmental costs incurred. Well done them.
Well, they could go down the proof of stake approach (Ethereum 2.0 etc.) which will have a pretty minimal env. impact. But this is the tories, so it'll probably be powered by Russian gas or something...
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Don't panic though Toby as the Treasury is focusing on minting it's own NFTs......
Incredibly high environmental costs incurred. Well done them.
Well, they could go down the proof of stake approach (Ethereum 2.0 etc.) which will have a pretty minimal env. impact. But this is the tories, so it'll probably be powered by Russian gas or something...
Just like penalising restaurants with calorie labelling, when they could go after the sugar industry, only they won't, as Tate and Lyle are Conservative party donors.
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Nevermind at least the 'opposition' isn't driving itself towards bankruptcy. :whistle:
In legal costs due to the widespread antisemitism of the Corbyn years. I think the opposition is doing as good a job as it can given the large Conservative majority and events of the past 2½ years. They've gone a long way towards making themselves a credible option as a government.
Interesting take, however not factually correct, the increase in legal fees is circa £1.8million a year leaving around £18 million in losses unaccounted for by this explanation?!1 Income has gone right down, that's due to
a)unions reducing funding because of disagreements with the direction of leadership
b) a lack of and inability to attract large (£10k+) donors from the wealthy/ corporate.
c) circa 180k (could be more now) members leaving the Labour Party (taking with them their subscription fees and fundraising capabilities). (That's worth around £6million without taking into account the funds those individuals raised themselves, that's your legal fees covered)
d) prior to Starmer Labour was raising incredible amounts through campaigning and seeking small individual donations (these funding drives seem to have stopped/ possibly on the conceited assumption that big business would flock to fund the LP - well that's not happening).
I would suggest that harping on about Corbyn is getting as tired as the Conservative government going on about how Labour lost all that money 14 years ago. The focus of this leadership team and those around them should be on getting their shit together and hammering this government on behalf of working people. The CWU has withdrawn all funding stating that Starmer's leadership "is failing to connect with working class communities'. At present they are on course for Bankruptcy and unable to repay £millions in loans they have taken. The leadership were even briefing that bankruptcy could be a good thing, imagine how hammered they would get if this happens, can't even run their own finances let alone the whole countries FFS. Whilst publicly campaigning against fire & rehire and for pay increases to keep up with inflation the LP has made a 3rd of it's employees redundant and then recruited staff on insecure temporary contracts and on worse T&Cs. They have given their employees a 2% pay rise FFS! They have recently attempted to pay off employees that are alleged victims of sexual harassment and get them to sign Non Disclosure Agreements, it's insanity. These are supposed to be the 'forensic', 'professional', competent, 'grown ups' in charge.. Omnishambles. b b b b b b b but Corbyn, just excuses.
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I can't be assed to argue about this, but that really doesn't represent anything I've looked at. Frankly, he was an electoral disaster and I think his alarmingly laissez-faire attitude to Russia would not be popular at the moment, although I'm sure a tiny minority on Twitter would love it.
I'd far rather criticise the current government to be honest, as they could do something good for the country right now, but flap around the edges obsessed with pointless window dressing to try to distract people from party gate.
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Who do Labour represent, now, though Brutus?
And, genuine question, what does “working class” mean? I mean today, not historically.
Personally, I feel the political world would be better split along the Liberal/Progressive vs Conservative/reactionary axis.
The former tend to naturally represent/include in their thinking, the lower socioeconomic strata and diverse subcultures etc.
A huge number of people, who would benefit from Labour policies, shy away from being labelled “Working Class” etc. That label, in particular, carries some negative baggage for a lot of people.
Junior office workers, clerical staff, bank clerks etc etc, probably slot into the category you’re envisioning (economically) but would consider themselves “professional” in education or prospects. Whereas, plenty of “Woking men/women” in manual trades (plumbers, electricians, builders) are, economically, middle class, these days.
I think Labour has a “Patronising” issue and is in the midst of a terrible identity crisis. It will be interesting to see where this leads.
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I can't be assed to argue about this, but that really doesn't represent anything I've looked at. Frankly, he was an electoral disaster and I think his alarmingly laissez-faire attitude to Russia would not be popular at the moment, although I'm sure a tiny minority on Twitter would love it.
I'd far rather criticise the current government to be honest, as they could do something good for the country right now, but flap around the edges obsessed with pointless window dressing to try to distract people from party gate.
You made a statement about Corbyn causing the present financial woes of the Labour Party, I used information to demonstrate that what you said is not the truth of the matter.
Your response is to say 'that doesn't represent anything I've looked at', well maybe you should look further or at least be prepared to listen when someone presents you with information beyond what you have looked at?
Whilst you were at it you added in some more disgruntled rumblings about Jeremy; he's out of the PLP, hasn't been leader for a substantial amount of time, a lot of his supporters have left the party and he is effectively irrelevant to the current leadership. The general gist of my argument is that this obsession with Corbyn needs to stop. They need to move on, get their house in order or we will have an opposition Party that has bankrupted itself and that will be too weak to compete in the next GE.
You raised the legal costs as a point, my response gave more detailed factual information about how Labour is losing income and now you CBA to argue.
I'd be interested to hear your views on the LPs hypocrisy in it's treatment of it's own staff, the struggle to get big money backers, the legal costs of NDAs and the use of them against female staff? Not even a 'shit that's a bad look for them they handled that badly' or 'they definitely need to do something about income'? We're just going to ignore these things and not discuss them?
OMM agree that the LP is having an identity crisis, add that to financial crisis and a crisis in the way it treats/manages it's own staff.
I'm not sure who Labour represents now, I think they'd like to represent 'the red wall' voters whatever that means, I don't think they know what that means, whilst at the same time distancing themselves from Corbyn and anyone that would vote for him, only the more they go on about him the less distance there is. Just shut it down and stop talking about him for goodness sake it's toxic.
Agree 'Working class' is a clumsy term and patronising to some, I guess today it would encompass those on low incomes employed and unemployed but that's too simplistic. There is something the LP leadership could do here isn't there? Making it clear who they represent, redefining and using different language to do that. Identifying with those working men and women, working with their unions to secure better pay that keeps up with inflation etc.. It's like they're caught in the middle wanting to attract the big corporate/ wealthy backers but not succeeding and wanting to inspire those 'working people' to vote for them but not wanting to send out messages that would discourage the already discouraged wealthy donors.
The LP under Corbyn were good at raising funds through the memberships participation and were in a strong financial position without backing down on the values they were standing by, they also had more large £10k+ donors than Starmer does at present. Starmer and co. could learn from this model and use it but they won't because...
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Brutus, you could always “be the change you want to see in the world” and rejoin Labour and send them a tenner.
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Who do Labour represent, now, though Brutus?
And, genuine question, what does “working class” mean? I mean today, not historically.
I know I have mentioned this before but it bears repeating (I think!)...."working class", red wall, and everything else are all distractions.
Its AGE, nothing else.
In 2017, and more surprisingly given the received wisdom (myths!) in 2019, Labour actually received a bigger share of the vote then the Tories amongst those in every income decile <£100K (i.e. all but the very rich), of all ages, *once retirees are stripped out*.
To put that in plain language: in 2019 Labour beat the Tories across the board amongst people who work for a living. Then when the votes of the retired are added in, they lost across the board.
This link explains it succintly and has a drop down bar which toggles between "including retirees" and "excluding retirees" so you can see for yourself how pronounced this is - https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2021/06/labour-not-conservatives-was-largest-party-among-low-income-workers-2019
I have a vague memory of mentioning this on the thread last year and linking to some different colourful pics which demonstrated the age thing really well, will see if I can find it...
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Brutus, you could always “be the change you want to see in the world” and rejoin Labour and send them a tenner.
:lol: I'd be purged before I could take a breath besides membership is increasingly being made less involved in policy making, ideas that aren't popular with the leadership are sidelined, the young people of the party are being silenced/censored (particularly irksome for a former youth worker), some of the activities of the organisation are particularly ugly/abusive, it's not really looking close to being a path towards the change I want to see or likely to become that path for along time if ever. By other ways and means for sure but for me the LP is dead duck (that's decomposition is causing a wretched smell that turns my stomach).
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As a broadly left-wing but non-tribal voter, I find it funny how anyone associated with Labour always seems to want the rival factions to stop fighting/bashing each other... except the other faction is always the one that has to stop the fighting/bashing :lol:
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Think of them less as factions and more as 2 groups with incompatible views that have been forced together into a political party by the circumstance of a particularly shit democratic (if you can call it that) system.
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Brutus, you could always “be the change you want to see in the world” and rejoin Labour and send them a tenner.
:lol: I'd be purged before I could take a breath besides membership is increasingly being made less involved in policy making,
That’s because Labour members are comfortable and overly idealistic (I am a Labour Party member). Their idea of policy-making is a lot of nonsense that would make the party unelectable. Policy-making is hard, the idea that it is best done by some middle management teachers on a Thursday evening is insane.
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Think of them less as factions and more as 2 groups with incompatible views that have been forced together into a political party by the circumstance of a particularly shit democratic (if you can call it that) system.
I think this is sort of true but also avoids the fact the Conservative Party manages to be a pretty broad church and also not fall apart in factional squabbles all the time. Perhaps thats one of the reasons they are the most successful political party in the West, by quite a long way (defined in terms of winning elections). I am always struck by the sheer effectiveness of the Tory party machine at election time, as it shuts out all dissent and gets the job done. Is there something inherent to right wing ideology that explains this, at least in part? Perhaps a deep seated belief that Conservatism, in any of its forms, is preferable to a Labour government?
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That’s because Labour members are comfortable and overly idealistic (I am a Labour Party member). Their idea of policy-making is a lot of nonsense that would make the party unelectable. Policy-making is hard, the idea that it is best done by some middle management teachers on a Thursday evening is insane.
This is also sort of but not entirely true I think. Any party should listen to its members up to a point; the question is about where the line should be drawn. I am also a LP member and I want to be asked what my views are, but equally it would be mental for policy to be dictated solely by members, because they constitute such a tiny minority of the population.
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Think of them less as factions and more as 2 groups with incompatible views that have been forced together into a political party by the circumstance of a particularly shit democratic (if you can call it that) system.
I think this is sort of true but also avoids the fact the Conservative Party manages to be a pretty broad church and also not fall apart in factional squabbles all the time. Perhaps thats one of the reasons they are the most successful political party in the West, by quite a long way (defined in terms of winning elections). I am always struck by the sheer effectiveness of the Tory party machine at election time, as it shuts out all dissent and gets the job done. Is there something inherent to right wing ideology that explains this, at least in part? Perhaps a deep seated belief that Conservatism, in any of its forms, is preferable to a Labour government?
It's because Tory's want to win come what may and most of them will do whatever it takes. They know that there is compromise required in order to get into power and they are willing to make that compromise to give them access to power to shape policy in the direction they want.*
The "left" are less willing to make these compromises, they see themselves as more morally pure and righteous and as a result, are left by the wayside, scrabbling in the ditch with each other.
*This has been tested as the last few governments have had some very vocal factions pushing against them from their own back benches and gap between the direction of their varying viewpoints is stark, leading to no end of cretins getting far to much power and airtime!
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I am always struck by the sheer effectiveness of the Tory party machine at election time, as it shuts out all dissent and gets the job done. Is there something inherent to right wing ideology that explains this, at least in part? Perhaps a deep seated belief that Conservatism, in any of its forms, is preferable to a Labour government?
Well, yes. They're laser focused on winning and will stomach things they don't like to stay in power. This might seem immoral and annoying often, but in many ways it's the sensible approach to our electoral system. Many of the Conservative MPs hate Boris Johnson but voted for him as leader to be sure of winning the election. I can see the sense as you can't really do anything terribly effective in opposition, however right you think you are.
Personally I couldn't have ever voted for Johnson though, if I was in that position.
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Well, yes. They're laser focused on winning and will stomach things they don't like to stay in power. This might seem immoral and annoying often, but in many ways it's the sensible approach to our electoral system.
A less charitable - and simpler- interpretation might suggest that they like power a whole lot more than they do moral considerations.
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Well, yes. They're laser focused on winning and will stomach things they don't like to stay in power. This might seem immoral and annoying often, but in many ways it's the sensible approach to our electoral system.
A less charitable - and simpler- interpretation might suggest that they like power a whole lot more than they do moral considerations.
It’s just easier to coordinate selfish people (which is their common denominator), as long as you make sure there’s something in it for them. Morals are an abstract concept anyway, but the selfish simply substitute the “Just world” premise to alleviate any crisis of conscience. Bad things only happen to bad people.
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There was some research I saw reported I think last year that concluded that Tories were far more tolerant of friends opposing political view whereas something like 70% of Labour supporters polled would cancel a friend if they found out that person had right wing views. Cue Laura Pidcock's famous quote and of course Angela Rayner's comments at the party conference labeling Tories as scum. Given our electoral system you can't win by just speaking to your own side, and it hardly attracts wavering Tory voters to even consider voting Labour when the Labour Party isn't shy about saying what they think of you.
Never mind that with all the factional infighting the Labour Party doesn't seem interested in lifting its gaze from its own navel...
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However I think it is also the conservative party which has an identity crisis at the moment. They're very divided.
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There was some research I saw reported I think last year that concluded that Tories were far more tolerant of friends opposing political view whereas something like 70% of Labour supporters polled would cancel a friend if they found out that person had right wing views. Cue Laura Pidcock's famous quote and of course Angela Rayner's comments at the party conference labeling Tories as scum. Given our electoral system you can't win by just speaking to your own side, and it hardly attracts wavering Tory voters to even consider voting Labour when the Labour Party isn't shy about saying what they think of you.
Classic examples of this aplenty in this very thread....
It’s just easier to coordinate selfish people
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I have a vague memory of mentioning this on the thread last year and linking to some different colourful pics which demonstrated the age thing really well, will see if I can find it...
Replying to myself I know, here's a pic of the 65+ vote by constituency in GE2019:
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EMY6annWwAAhiXt?format=jpg&name=4096x4096)
Link here to an article with more pics - https://www.standard.co.uk/news/politics/general-election-map-uk-young-old-voters-a4323171.html
This demographic has a disproportionate effect on the result due to high turnout. Basically only the scousers and eastenders don't swing things for the Tories. Even Scottish pensioners are Tories!
The single best thing you can do to get a different result at the next election is to find a retired person you know and find out how they vote. Then talk to them about it. Or block their door on election day.
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The single best thing you can do to get a different result at the next election is to find a retired person you know and find out how they vote. Then talk to them about it. Or block their door on election day.
As well as convincing the under 50's to go out and vote.
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However I think it is also the conservative party which has an identity crisis at the moment. They're very divided.
Yes, so they'll probably (and deserve) to lose the next election, if Labour gets its act together. Labour last won with Tony Blair espousing the big tent actively appealing to other political faiths to join up while the Tories were massively divided on Europe. The last 10 years has had a consistent message from Labour MPs that they don't like anyone who isn't ideologically pure and won't work with them. It's not a way to win people over to your cause...
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However I think it is also the conservative party which has an identity crisis at the moment. They're very divided.
The last 30 years at least!
Its baffling why the narrative is always that Labour fight like rats in a sack whilst the Tories all swing in behind their team. Outside of the 6 weeks prior to an election they are at each other's throats non-stop. They are on about removing the current PM, they had a vote of confidence in the last one and eventually shuffled her off by not voting for her headline policy (EU deal), the one before had to resign because he lost a referendum precipitated by the festering huge split in the party, etc etc. I could go on.
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However I think it is also the conservative party which has an identity crisis at the moment. They're very divided.
Yes, so they'll probably (and deserve) to lose the next election, if Labour gets its act together. Labour last won with Tony Blair espousing the big tent actively appealing to other political faiths to join up while the Tories were massively divided on Europe. The last 10 years has had a consistent message from Labour MPs that they don't like anyone who isn't ideologically pure and won't work with them. It's not a way to win people over to your cause...
I entirely agree; there are some more moderate Labour voices, whom I could see appealing to an older more (small c) conservative demographic such as Rachel Reeves. Wes Streeting is also a good media performer and they both seem like competent politicians with a decent grasp of their brief. Unfortunately, they often seem to get drowned out by others in the media.
But crucially, I think the Conservative party has lost all direction. It's manifestly not Conservative at the moment; and doesn't seem to have a single idea about why it's in government, other than to try to stay there. They've got a pretty fat majority, and theoretically could be passing lots of actual policies, yet in over 2 years they've done very little. They keep saying they're getting on with the job; but don't seem to have an idea about what that actually is.
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The last 30 years at least!
Its baffling why the narrative is always that Labour fight like rats in a sack whilst the Tories all swing in behind their team. Outside of the 6 weeks prior to an election they are at each other's throats non-stop.
I agree; my point was more about the six weeks itself and how quickly all the infighting gets forgotten, whereas on the left it seems to remain, or be brought up more in the news.
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I have a vague memory of mentioning this on the thread last year and linking to some different colourful pics which demonstrated the age thing really well, will see if I can find it...
Replying to myself I know, here's a pic of the 65+ vote by constituency in GE2019:
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EMY6annWwAAhiXt?format=jpg&name=4096x4096)
Link here to an article with more pics - https://www.standard.co.uk/news/politics/general-election-map-uk-young-old-voters-a4323171.html
This demographic has a disproportionate effect on the result due to high turnout. Basically only the scousers and eastenders don't swing things for the Tories. Even Scottish pensioners are Tories!
The single best thing you can do to get a different result at the next election is to find a retired person you know and find out how they vote. Then talk to them about it. Or block their door on election day.
And the population is steadily ageing not getting younger. That's progress in living standards for you. The association between older age, and voting conservative, should worry other parties and incentivise them to try to appeal to older voters who may be more 'conservative' in outlook than the young. People are generally self-interested, and you should expect the UK population in another decade to have even more older age voters keen on hanging on to their accumulated wealth and not being hammered by tax (not that they are now! I think wealthy pensioners could contribute a little bit more than they do, especially if they're working still).
https://ageing-better.org.uk/ageing-population
Life expectancy has increased significantly in recent decades and the number of people in later life has grown rapidly. There are currently almost 12 million people aged 65 and over in the UK, with 3.2 million aged 80 and over. It’s estimated that by 2036, one in four of the population will be over 65.
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Exactly Pete, that is the challenge for the opposition parties. The question is how to solve it?
Anyway, more grist to the mill. Thought the below was interesting. Once you know that the conservatives can win a general election pretty much on the votes of the elderly, you can see why they don't care two hoots about rampant house price inflation, will happily give below inflation wage rises plus increase NI on working age people during a cost of living crisis, pay only token lip service to climate change, and yet continue to harp on about Brexit and immigration. But also still put on a bit of a facade of caring about the NHS. Because it all plays well with older voters. This from 2019:
(https://www.ntu.ac.uk/__data/assets/image/0039/955794/Table-2-Matt-Henn.jpg)
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This from 2019:
(https://www.ntu.ac.uk/__data/assets/image/0039/955794/Table-2-Matt-Henn.jpg)
Am I being dense; why does each horizontal line not add up to 100?
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However I think it is also the conservative party which has an identity crisis at the moment. They're very divided.
Yes, so they'll probably (and deserve) to lose the next election, if Labour gets its act together. Labour last won with Tony Blair espousing the big tent actively appealing to other political faiths to join up while the Tories were massively divided on Europe. The last 10 years has had a consistent message from Labour MPs that they don't like anyone who isn't ideologically pure and won't work with them. It's not a way to win people over to your cause...
I think what’s interesting about this is that it’s clearly a common perception based on the Corbyn years, but there’s a bit of a mismatch with reality. Most Labour MPs didn’t like Corbyn, didn’t like the far left’s purity obsession and definitely want non-Labour voters to vote for them. Damaged brand perceptions are definitely a thing!
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Good question Bradders! Basically the respondents were asked to pick from a list of 26 items the top 3 priorities which influenced their vote. The graphic above shows the results concerning a select 6 of these questions. I suppose the author could have done a graphic with all 26, but I can see why these 6 were chosen as it highlights differences between age groups. For instance there was no difference on "Planning / wind farms" (topical!) - as no-one from any age group put this in their top 3 voting priorities.
Put simply, if you asked someone 65+ their top 3 voting priorities in 2019 the most likely answer was "NHS, Get Brexit Done, Immigration". The same question to someone 18-24 or 25-34 was most likely to yield "NHS, Climate Change, Cost of Living / Prices / Inflation". I suspect little has changed.
Why the graphic has 0-100% along the bottom I have no idea as that is very misleading.
If you want the data then it is on this link https://lordashcroftpolls.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/Lord-Ashcroft-Polls-GE-2019-post-vote-poll-Full-tables.xlsx Cross ref columns BB-BG with rows 168-193.
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Are you supposed to have some sort of miraculous conversation at the age of 65 that turns you blue.
If so I must be a late developer :jab:
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https://news.sky.com/story/the-energy-security-strategy-has-something-in-it-to-disappoint-everyone-12584514
A pithy analysis of what a tossed off load of back of a fag packet drivel the government's energy strategy is.
Or from the BBC:
BBC News - Why many experts aren't impressed with the UK's energy plans
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-61022678
Or here:
https://www.theguardian.com/business/nils-pratley-on-finance/2022/apr/07/johnsons-political-cowardice-applies-the-brake-to-cheap-energy-as-he-bets-nuclear?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other
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This is a pretty good article, although I'm afraid it's paywalled: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/the-tory-party-used-to-be-led-by-people-who-made-real-sacrifices-pmdmtkq86
By Matthew Syed, detailing how he feels that the gradual erosion of public trust is the worst thing about this government. He opines that the sense of entitlement and privilege among the party's top tier has overtaken any adherence to fact or expertise, and that a monoculture of public school followed by Oxford education means that they can't see how their behaviour appears from the outside.
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Exactly the same points raised by Andrew Rawnsley in the Observer this morning, with a focus on Sunak.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/apr/10/stench-entitlement-now-oozing-from-rishi-sunaks-home-as-well-as-boris-johnsons
I won’t quote his punchline, but it sums up the obvious very neatly.
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This is a pretty good article, although I'm afraid it's paywalled: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/the-tory-party-used-to-be-led-by-people-who-made-real-sacrifices-pmdmtkq86
By Matthew Syed, detailing how he feels that the gradual erosion of public trust is the worst thing about this government. He opines that the sense of entitlement and privilege among the party's top tier has overtaken any adherence to fact or expertise, and that a monoculture of public school followed by Oxford education means that they can't see how their behaviour appears from the outside.
https://archive.ph/P1yw8 ;)
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Hard to argue with any of that.
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Hard to argue with any of that.
Particularly when George Eustice was interviewed yesterday about trying to expedite food in the Dover chaos to stop British food business from total collapse if they can't export. The minister's reply was that it was too difficult and they wouldn't be doing anything about it.
Charming.
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Well now, this is an interesting development:
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/apr/12/boris-johnson-and-rishi-sunak-fined-for-breaking-covid-lockdown-laws
:popcorn:
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I'd say surely they have to go now, but nothing is beyond this gang of crooks and charlatans. It was also begs the question - which horrorshow would replace them? The modest Truss, the warm and human Patel, Gove of the Ferengi or Raab with his outstanding grasp of geography.
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Maybe a Williamson-Grayling joint ticket?
with Karen Bradley in no 11 (https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/sep/07/karen-bradley-admits-not-understanding-northern-irish-politics)
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One of the Downing Street parties took place a week after we’d buried Dad. Who died alone in hospital and all we had was a face time call a few hours before he passed away.
As you can imagine, pretty sour mood in our house this afternoon.
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https://youtu.be/GkszkSuBnlQ
I can understand how infuriating it must be to think that the people who have been setting the rules have not been following the rules, Mr speaker, because I was also furious to see that clip. And I apologise unreservedly for the offence up and down the country and I apologise for the offence that it gives.
edit- quote added
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Sorry for your loss Sean.
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Roger Gale and Dominic Ross already saying now is not the time to remove him, with Ukraine crisis ongoing. Given their vocality on the issue when the news broke originally, I see this as a pretty clear indication that we will have to wait a while longer. If even those who have voiced their lack of confidence in the past think he should stay on, then those who were quiet before would see this as a perfect way to keep their heads down this time round.
Sorry to hear that Sean, can only imagine how angering this must be for you + family.
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Using Ukraine as an excuse is disgusting beyond words tbh
What callous, cynical scumbags they are
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Yeah, I bet Vlad is absolutely shitting it that Johnson will stay in No10. If it weren't for that meddling PM he would have steamed into Kyiv unopposed.
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Yeah, I bet Vlad is absolutely shitting it that Johnson will stay in No10. If it weren't for that meddling PM he would have steamed into Kyiv unopposed.
Quite. He's doing absolutely f*** all towards Ukraine that any other MP couldn't do. He's a lazy, ignorant liar and a cheat and he should have gone already. Obviously he'll never resign his treasured world king status, and he'll be going nowhere.
There a shred of hope in the 2 snap polls that show over 50% of the public think he should resign, probably not though.
https://news.sky.com/story/partygate-more-than-half-of-voters-think-that-boris-johnson-should-resign-after-fine-12589002
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Well he won't resign, and it looks like there's very little momentum from the Tories to get rid of him so we're stuck with him for a little longer at least.
I can see him being fined again for other parties, given they're going in chronological order and are only currently on June 2020. It is also distinctly possible the Tories will be absolutely hammered at the local elections in May; that might finally be enough to see his party get rid.
The biggest problem is the lack of an obvious alternative. Clearly Rishi is now screwed (and there may well be a reshuffle on the cards soon that sees him sidelined). Truss? Raab? Rees-Mogg? Hunt? Patel? Gove? :sick:
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The biggest problem is the lack of an obvious alternative. Clearly Rishi is now screwed (and there may well be a reshuffle on the cards soon that sees him sidelined). Truss? Raab? Rees-Mogg? Hunt? Patel? Gove? :sick:
Whether he stays or goes, I do not see another Tory leader who might be significantly better for the country. There are better men eg Tom Tugendhat or Robert Halfon and there must be women of the calibre of Justine Greening, but realistically they aren’t contenders and I doubt a new leadership would change the country’s fortunes much.
On the one hand a Johnson- Sunak leadership going into the next election might be better for Labour’s chances and the hope of some competent government.
However, for me the key issue is the damage to public trust in government. This is another nail in its coffin and the true winner wil be populism, wherever that leads.
Edit - quoting Bradders
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Grant Shapps' absolutely pathetic defence of the PM on the today programme this morning constituted any number of laughable statements. Perhaps the best was that we were the first country to roll out a covid vaccine, or that he didn't realise he was breaking the rules because he didn't understand them, so he hasn't knowingly misled parliament.
Sadly I think he'll probably stay, even if the local elections go badly.
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There are plenty of Tory MPs desperate enough for advancement they’ll debase themselves with any nonsensical defence of the indefensible. In fairness, they have had plenty of practice recently.
The standout quote for me was the MP shown in a news night montage yesterday:
There were no parties, but if there were, they definitely di not break the rules.
The depths of stupidity are bottomless.
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Obviously I agree. I don't particularly like the conservative party in terms of policy, but I can think of quite a few I'd far rather were PM than Johnson.
Sajid Javid is probably the most likely. Ben Wallace, Tom Tugenheart, Jeremy Hunt... all better than this embarrassing buffoon. Anyone but Raab or Truss really.
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The standout quote for me was the MP shown in a news night montage yesterday:
There were no parties, but if there were, they definitely di not break the rules.
The depths of stupidity are bottomless.
That could be straight out of a monty python sketch!
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I think there's a little Britain sketch about an MPs and his wife giving statement that more or less follows these lines.
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We are back to Major’s ‘Back to Basics’ levels of hypocrisy.
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We are back to Major’s ‘Back to Basics’ levels of hypocrisy.
Its way, way beyond that. John Major is an intelligent man who is basically honest. He did not break the law in office, preside over widespread law breaking and then repeatedly lie about it. Sure, the expenses scandal was appalling but MPs (not Major himself) were breaking employment rules and guidelines, not the law.
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The worst feeling I have about this is how depressingly predictable it all in
Of course he broke the law, of course he lied about it, of course he won't resign, of course his party will close ranks with some bulkshit excuse. They know and we know it. The look in their eyes says "come on... you know its rubbish but just accept it, don't make me say it again, just let it go" and wearily we go yeah, okay, sure, we can't do anything so whatever.
It's as obvious as the sun rising and setting. And then they do it all again and come a GE they say well okay Boris is all these awful things and he did break the law and shit all over the sacrifices of grieving families but he is really really sorry (honest) and besides are you going to vote for Labour? Who hate Britain? With their woke gay trans black lives matter lefty European ways? Levelling up! Getting Brexit done! And I'm not convinced it won't work tbh
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Indeed. If it were anybody else in any other top job they would have gone long ago.
If a CEO presided over, and actively partook in, a culture of rule breaking they would never be allowed to be the person to "fix" it. They'd be gone and someone new would be brought in.
Yet, somehow, we're all expected to believe that a lower set of standards should apply to the government, whose pathetic excuses are completely without credibility. Oh, he didn't know it was a party, he didn't know it wasn't allowed, he thought he was at work. They know it's bullshit, but they know that the public will just accept it if they can just shrug their shoulders for long enough.
The fact that the Tories have scraped the barrel and this is the best they can offer as leadership is a damning indictment on the whole party.
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It's worth listening to 'the rest is politics' to hear what Rory Stewart and Alistair Campbell have to say about the fines. It's not an exaggeration to say that Stewart hates Johnson more than Campbell, which is probably quite difficult.
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It feels like Trump; he can't survive this surely! And yet he does..
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It feels like the fact that trump did survive everything that he did has reset the bar in terms of what's acceptable for politicians. Would Johnson have got away with this pre trump? Or would Johnson have changed the mold himself?
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A sort of appalling behaviour version of the Overton window (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window#:~:text=The%20Overton%20window%20is%20the,as%20the%20window%20of%20discourse.)?
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It feels like the fact that trump did survive everything that he did has reset the bar in terms of what's acceptable for politicians. Would Johnson have got away with this pre trump? Or would Johnson have changed the mold himself?
Johnson was lying, cheating and breaking any rule he could see long before Trump was in politics. Although having said, so was Trump.
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Of course, predictably the Times is reporting the second FPN is already in the post and the Mirror is suggesting more are on the way.
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So Sunak wanted to resign, but was told not to as it would mean PM had to too.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/rishi-sunak-party-fine-resign-b2057014.html
I think this was covered in the 2nd or 3rd episode of The Thick Of It.
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Lord Wolfson has resigned, and he is a Minister
So we'll see if anyone else follows up. Bizarrely as much as I'm opposed to the Lords on principle in terms of standards and function they tend to be considerably less awful than the worst of the Commons
I mean there's only four Tory MPs who have faced criminal charges there of late, and one Labour. Barely any. Jesus.
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https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/apr/13/boris-johnson-could-get-three-more-fines-over-partygate-say-insiders
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Lord Wolfson has resigned, and he is a Minister
So we'll see if anyone else follows up. Bizarrely as much as I'm opposed to the Lords on principle in terms of standards and function they tend to be considerably less awful than the worst of the Commons
I mean there's only four Tory MPs who have faced criminal charges there of late, and one Labour. Barely any. Jesus.
I'm actually in favour of the Lords, when you look at how many of them there are, that's probably still a lower than average number of convictions than the general population! There are far too many of them, and some of the appointments are appalling but I think they are a valuable check on the Commons, especially in slowing or altering poor legislation.
If only they had some method of moderating the PM's behaviour...
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https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/apr/13/boris-johnson-could-get-three-more-fines-over-partygate-say-insiders
If he gets more, will he own up to it though? I seriously doubt it. My suspicion is that he'd judge it too risky to announce and cover it up. Hopefully someone somewhere would leak it to the media though.
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I think he will be advised that it’s too risky to cover up as it will inevitably
be leaked by No 11 come to light.
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I think he will be advised that it’s too risky to cover up as it will inevitably be leaked by No 11 come to light.
I believe many think the PM's office leaked the details about Rishi's wife. Although this information was mostly published in Private Eye about a year ago and no-one seemed terribly bothered at the time. Amazing what anyone will tolerate from a man who's paying half the country not to go to work.
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https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2022/04/12/lockdown-fine-public-think-johnson-sunak-resign
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They're clearly expecting more fines for Johnson, since they're already trying out the defence lines:
https://twitter.com/paulwaugh/status/1515248809542135812
(Many, many people are now pointing out that if you get caught speeding four times, you lose your license. And also that speeding in a 30mph zone is very much endangering life.)
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From whom is that quote meant to originate? It's such a mind-blowingly stupid argument to try to make I can't believe someone would actually try it!
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An un-named "one of Johnson's allies", according to the i news article.
I share your bogglement, but unfortunately I can believe that plenty of the current government are that fucking stupid. Also they're mostly very privileged people who sincerely believe it's unfair for rules to be applied too strictly to people like them.
If Johnson had been caught four separate times going 35mph in 30mph zones, some of them probably would be arguing that it's unfair for him to lose his license, because after all he was only speeding a little bit each time and he's very busy and important.
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An un-named "one of Johnson's allies", according to the i news article.
I share your bogglement, but unfortunately I can believe that plenty of the current government are that fucking stupid. Also they're mostly very privileged people who sincerely believe it's unfair for rules to be applied too strictly to people like them.
If Johnson had been caught four separate times going 35mph in 30mph zones, some of them probably would be arguing that it's unfair for him to lose his license, because after all he was only speeding a little bit each time and he's very busy and important.
I'd guess it's probably Guto Harri (No 10 communication chief). It sounds like him.
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https://twitter.com/RoryStewartUK/status/1515560300040400901?t=_V8Gx41U-gcAgL5DYAExug&s=19
"“75 per cent of the public believe that Johnson lied about breaking the law, a finding that future historians may regard as a landmark moment. Only 12 per cent think he is telling the truth, roughly the same number who think aliens walk among us.”
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They've not been deterred from trying the "it's just like a speeding ticket" line publicly. Doesn't seem to be going well:
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/live/2022/apr/19/boris-johnson-partygate-covid-lockdown-fine-uk-politics-live
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And:
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/boris-johnson-liar-poll-b2060046.html
'Liar' wouldn't be the word on the tip of my tongue but the word cloud can hardly be described as positive. I think today is going to be really risky for Parliament. If all of the honour based systems are shown to be entirely worthless (by all, not just the PM) then where does this leave us when we next come round to an election?
This will embolden him and the likes of JRM.
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Not surprising JRM never got invited to any of these parties. Must be Parliament's equivalent of Colin Robinson
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It's gruesomely entertaining, checking in with the news occasionally at the moment just to see what the government has fucked up today, although it would be more so if they weren't running the country most of us live in.
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Looks like Macron made it, despite alienating a large swathe of the population.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/apr/24/emmanuel-macron-wins-french-presidential-election-say-projected-results
If we think government by an incontinent like Johnson is bad, imagine what a proper a proto-fascist Mme la Présidente in a neighbour as powerful as France might be like. :sick:
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Looks like Macron made it, despite alienating a large swathe of the population.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/apr/24/emmanuel-macron-wins-french-presidential-election-say-projected-results
If we think government by an incontinent like Johnson is bad, imagine what a proper a proto-fascist Mme la Présidente in a neighbour as powerful as France might be like. :sick:
Did you mean incompetent, or do you have inside knowledge on Johnson's bowel problems?
Le Pen would have been awful for Europe, and geopolitical stability generally; unfortunately so would the reelection of Trump in 2024, which seems eminently possible.
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Lacking self-control.
Quite possibly Toby, one bullet dodged for now.
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Lacking self-control.
:lol:
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I noticed that "Rigged" was trending on Twitter last night, and made the mistake of clicking through. Some of the related posts were really quite alarming.
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With forty odd percent of even a low turnout, that's a depressing number of people happy with voting Le Pen.
It's a victory, but still a depressing one.
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If it had even vaguely looked a close election between Macron and Le Pen I think more people would have been arsed to vote in the second round. 58/42 is a blow-out,, despite Le Pen having spent 5 years moderating her politics (and consequently getting challenged from the right).
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For all the criticism Macron gets, he's done a lot better than our pitiful excuse for a government in the last 5 years. The French economy is stronger, France broadly did better in COVID (I think, I haven't looked at stats recently), and although it came to nothing, he did make an attempt to talk Putin down before the invasion, better than Johnson, who mostly ignored it until it was too late.
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No argument from me.
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This is an interesting analysis: https://news.sky.com/story/boris-johnsons-personal-appeal-was-less-important-in-2019-victory-than-many-thought-12598727
Perhaps there is a parallel between the 2019 UK general election and the recent French presidential election, purely in that both leaders were overall pretty unpopular, its just that one was significantly more unpopular than the other.
I'm obviously not making any direct comparison on their relative political positions.
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Come on Toby, get with the programme - haven't you heard that the 2019 GE was all just a media conspiracy to stop the Corbyn project?!
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Come on Toby, get with the programme - haven't you heard that the 2019 GE was all just a media conspiracy to stop the Corbyn project?!
https://www.lboro.ac.uk/news-events/news/2019/december/press-hostility-to-labour-reaches-new-levels/ (https://www.lboro.ac.uk/news-events/news/2019/december/press-hostility-to-labour-reaches-new-levels/)
:coffee: Your thoughts welcomed having read this and the linked research 3T??
IDK why on earth the Billionaire owned msm would want to dismantle the 'Corbyn Project' aka socialist agenda. Can't think of anything at all :-\ Nope. Must be a conspiracy as you say.
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In my opinion - 2019 was not a popularity contest but effectively a 2nd referendum on Brexit. Corbyn definitely f'd this up, was particularly weak in leadership in this area and not prepared to confront the realities in front of him. There's a good interview by Aaron Bastani with Len McClusky on this subject on the :shit: tube.
As I have said above in this thread, the continued obsession with Corbyn within the LP leadership and his ultimately toxified brand is futile/ self destructive (regardless of whether you think it was a self made toxicity or one generated by other forces).
If you are backing Starmer you must be aware that the msm are starting to raise the fact that Sir Keir was in the shadow cabinet supporting Jezza to become PM in 2019 and no amount of 'distancing' can change this.
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Obviously, yes, I'm aware that Johnson uses that as an attack, as well as some of the newspapers.
I appreciate your feelings about the election, but if you look at any of the polling, Corbyns astounding unpopularity was really the issue. It's remarkable that Boris Johnson is I believe, the first PM to be more unpopular than popular on the day of his election. I've listened to a podcast with (I think) James Johnston who works for one of the polling organisations talking about this, it's fascinating.
Given that, I can sort of see the sense in Starmer spending most of the time trying to move Labour away from Corbyn and being dull but competent. Perhaps that's all he needs to do?
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If you are backing Starmer you must be aware that the msm are starting to raise the fact that Sir Keir was in the shadow cabinet supporting Jezza to become PM in 2019 and no amount of 'distancing' can change this.
Starmer withdrew the whip from Corbyn. You can't get more distant than that. If Starmer isn't able to use that to draw a line between himself and Corbyn, there's no hope for him. It's bizarre that he consistently fails to make that point when it's brought up in PMQs.
It could also become a strong weapon for Labour at the next election if Johnson is removed: The Conservatives can't keep trying to use Starmer's past relationship with Corbyn against Labour if the next Conservative leader fails to withdraw the whip from Johnson and Sunak.
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To rehash the Corbyn issue briefly, there can be an appetite in the country for some of the egalitarian policies, but a difficulty with the man. Clearly, the Mail et al will always go for ad hominem attacks over a politics they dislike. Recognising there are/were issues with Corbyn's appeal to the electorate is not automatically a rejection of his policies and not all of the unease from voters was generated by journalists feeding dishonest messages.
The matter for me is done. He was a highly problematical leader and Labour needs to move beyond Corbyn, both in the party and in the minds of the electorate. That is not automatically a rejection of every policy position he espoused.
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It's bizarre that he consistently fails to make that point when it's brought up in PMQs.
Is this an example of Starmer's dull competence? Or is it the management of the LP's finances? Or the treatment of LP staff? What exactly is he supposed to be competent at? Breaking pledges?
Good to see that they are proposing to tax the profits of fossil fuel giants, perhaps more of these popular socialist policies that he pledged to keep would do more than being just enough to win? He slivered into the leadership by convincing the membership he would follow through with the socialist policies proposed by Jeremy with forensic competence. If he delivered on the pledges with the promised effectiveness than I think we would be talking more than just enough. Or would that piss the billionaires off too much? They've got to raise some funds somehow and it's hard to see which way they can turn.
Dull competence (unproven) vs. brazen incompetence what a wonderful choice.
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Dull competence (unproven) vs. brazen incompetence what a wonderful choice.
I'll go for the one who was a successful DPP and human rights lawyer, rather than second rate journalist repeatedly sacked for lying thanks.
Given their professional records, it doesn't really matter what I think about their ideology, I don't represent most of the UK population. You may think socialist policies are a good thing, I may be pathetically enthusiastic about the EU, most people in the UK are socially conservative (small c!), and want a broadly optimistic approach combined with fiscal reliability, not radicalism. Faced with something they see as radical, most people will go for almost anything else in preference. Most people will spend less than 5 minutes paying attention to the news in a week, and just want to get on with paying the mortgage and bills, and being able to buy food and an annual holiday if they're lucky.
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For people who normally don't really care about local elections, I'd just like to point out that on Thursday you have the chance to make Boris Johnson's life much worse. Do it for spite.
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Oh, the irony. Sarah Vine is unhappy about how the academies juggernaut is rolling over parental preferences:
https://twitter.com/WestminsterWAG/status/1503409446978048001?s=20&t=SuhZPQsSfnfBa0kP7n086A
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For people who normally don't really care about local elections, I'd just like to point out that on Thursday you have the chance to make Boris Johnson's life much worse. Do it for spite.
Unfortunately I don't think there's a chance that the local elections will spell the end of Johnson, as they're spinnable for all the parties whatever happens.
I'd certainly agree that the Conservative government has gutted local government budgets, and is directly responsible for poor public services and all associated ills; therefore don't vote for them.
Any amount of lying by Johnson also seems to be tolerated, depressingly. However if Conservative MPs think that hes likely to screw up again in a way that cuts through to the electorate, he'll be out pretty quickly. If it were me, I'd say that the risk of him doing something that stupid again before the next election was extremely high, given that the pattern of his life so far is for him to do something stupid, illegal or deeply offensive on a regular basis. Its a real shame for politics that the Conservative party has shed most of its more intelligent, capable MPs. Its lost Dominic Grieve, Rory Stewart etc and now has the likes of George Eustice and Priti Patel on the front bench.
Which was all a long winded way of agreeing, definitely don't vote Conservative.
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Just to remind you what a fucking moron he is.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/boris-johnson-bus-pass-pensioners-warm-b2070395.html
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Its a real shame for politics that the Conservative party has shed most of its more intelligent, capable MPs. Its lost Dominic Grieve, Rory Stewart etc and now has the likes of George Eustice and Priti Patel on the front bench.
Is there not a route back in for the likes of Stewart once Johnson finally gets the shove?
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For people who normally don't really care about local elections, I'd just like to point out that on Thursday you have the chance to make Boris Johnson's life much worse. Do it for spite.
Unfortunately I don't think there's a chance that the local elections will spell the end of Johnson, as they're spinnable for all the parties whatever happens.
I'd certainly agree that the Conservative government has gutted local government budgets, and is directly responsible for poor public services and all associated ills; therefore don't vote for them.
Any amount of lying by Johnson also seems to be tolerated, depressingly. However if Conservative MPs think that hes likely to screw up again in a way that cuts through to the electorate, he'll be out pretty quickly. If it were me, I'd say that the risk of him doing something that stupid again before the next election was extremely high, given that the pattern of his life so far is for him to do something stupid, illegal or deeply offensive on a regular basis. Its a real shame for politics that the Conservative party has shed most of its more intelligent, capable MPs. Its lost Dominic Grieve, Rory Stewart etc and now has the likes of George Eustice and Priti Patel on the front bench.
Which was all a long winded way of agreeing, definitely don't vote Conservative.
Oh, I don't think the local elections will be an insta-kill for him. But they're absolutely going to be used as a gauge of whether his misdeeds are cutting through to the electorate, and if so, I suspect the Tories will be trying to dispose of him a.s.a.p..
Unfortunately all the rivals for Tory leadership are equally terrible, so it's not like it'll be an improvement; I just really want to see Boris "let the bodies pile high in their thousands" Johnson suffer.
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Its a real shame for politics that the Conservative party has shed most of its more intelligent, capable MPs. Its lost Dominic Grieve, Rory Stewart etc and now has the likes of George Eustice and Priti Patel on the front bench.
Is there not a route back in for the likes of Stewart once Johnson finally gets the shove?
I don't think he's interested actually, on his podcast, he makes a very well argued point that being a constituency MP is actually pretty powerless as a political position. They don't have a budget, and can make very few independent decisions. Mayors and council leaders in many ways have more actual power, as they can spend money and make direct decisions. Most MPs only have one vote out of six hundred odd others on pieces of legislation. Of course, ministers and the PM have a lot more than that, but the majority, not so much.
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I just really want to see Boris "let the bodies pile high in their thousands" Johnson suffer.
Don't we all. Unfortunately, it seems that there is no justice in the world.
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Anyone who isn't really concerned about the online safety bill should be. In summary, it is likely to result in the potential for state censorship of online content by proxy, as the potential for online providers being ruled against will ensure that they're likely to use bots to remove anything which might cause them difficulty, where it isn't specifically illegal. It's an awful piece of legislation being championed by a DCMS minister who appears to have no understanding of her brief, or that such a law effectively allows a future government to restrict the publication of anything it chooses to.
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“All beliefs, habits, tastes, emotions, mental attitudes that characterize our time are really designed to sustain the mystique of the Party and prevent the true nature of present-day society from being perceived.”
"The man in this photograph is definitely not at a party, despite holding a glass of wine in a busy room, in front of a table covered in bottles."
"The government worked tirelessly to get refugees out of Afghanistan."
Spot the quote from the dystopian novel.
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I guess a)
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Forgot d) ‘I don’t really care’.
To offer a counter to the ‘dystopian misuse of language’… use of the word ‘party’ in this whole affair is also disingenuous and a misuse of language - it might fit a dictionary definition but it’s a pretty shit party that looks like a works leaving do.
But ‘works leaving do’ allows for nuance and more people may understand the context, despite it still being against the rules, while ‘party’ is a much more damaging weapon of strategic communications, designed to achieve an objective. A bit like ‘WMD’.
What was that about dystopian novels..
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Forgot d) ‘I don’t really care’.
To offer a counter to the ‘dystopian misuse of language’… use of the word ‘party’ in this whole affair is also disingenuous
It certainly is as party was never a feature of the legislation which, the defenders of Johnson have been good at dragging the discussion into a semantic argument about the meaning of party when it's utterly irrelevant. I too don't care whether this was a party or not, I care that Johnson lied, lied to parliament, broke the spirit of the rules, broke the law and that the the people who are meant to hold the govt to account have been asleep on the job.
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Pete, this isn’t some confected middle class liberal guardianista pseudo-outrage to satisfy the chattering classes.
It’s the PM and entourage self-evidently having zero regard for the laws which that administration passed and which the police enforced, sometimes very zealously. Most people know when they’ve been taken for fools and have little tolerance for it.
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Afraid you (or me) don't get to define what it does or doesn't mean for other people JR. I'd add as a general comment that there's a very big difference between knowing and caring.
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That’s all fine, but I am not doing that. The terminology isn’t important here. As Teaboy observed, terminology been a go-to semantic red herring for Johnson’s supporters when the legislation is pretty clear that it’s numbers, not beverages, which constitute an infraction.
As John Lyndon asks at the end of the Great Rock n Roll Swindle:
Ever feel like you’ve been had?
A lot of people do.
There really isn’t a sunny side to this.
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I'm not sure what 'there isn't a sunny side' means.
I broadly agree BoJo's a fool and a liar and the country is unfortunate to have him as apparently the most desirable option for tory PM. However I honestly cannot get interested or upset by a bunch of adults who spent lockdowns by working every day in each others' close company during working hours, spending time in each others' close company in the same rooms of the same building once the clock ticked past end of work hours. If that makes me a terrible person who's been taken for a fool, so be it.
I'm probably biased by knowing of various upstanding decidedly non-tory-voting academics and professionals who spent lockdown continuing to have dinner parties agasint the rules of the time. Really I couldn't care less, especially now the pandemic's over, despite thinking I wouldn't (and didn't) chose to act that way myself.
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I'm not sure what 'there isn't a sunny side' means.
No, me neither :)
Excuse the long post.
I am trying to express that there's nothing minor enough to dismiss about this.
The problem isn’t exactly what they did, but exactly who did it. It’s part of a serious slide in public standards (lawmakers freely disregarding rules they set for others to abide by) and that matters imo.
If you see this as discrete events it’s possible to feel contempt but just shrug your shoulders.
As.a process, it’s more worrying.
Increasingly people feel there’s one tule for them, another for us. That’s not me projecting,!it’s what we all see and what every survey reinforces. ‘They are all the same’ Except they aren’t and that undermines us all.
For democracy to flourish we need public buy in. Lacking that, the disaffection leaves room for populism and increasing authoritarianism. That quote of Hermingway’s about collapse happening “slowly, then suddenly” should be a sobering thought. You can see it over the Atlantic, increasing erosion of trust in institutions and increasing influence of loony authoritarianism. If we like the security our institutions bring, we need to look after them and that includes in little ways as well as big ones ie in the culture we create. To think political authoritarianism can’t happen here is naive in my view, another form of British exceptionalism.
If the PM can mislead parliament with impunity, where does that take us?
Another reason it matters is British soft power. The more we are seen abroad as tawdry, hypocritical and untrustworthy, the weaker British influence grows.
And because I give a stuff. These aren’t the values I want to see in public servants, the whole mind set is incompatible with the role. I fear these values (no seriousness or integrity) projected from government becoming more normalised in society. People, including young people, watch, listen and draw their own conclusions about what they think is permissible.
So to me it’s not just a few boozy laggards where people of integrity should be; it’s the seeping affect on society more broadly.
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And the next there’s a pandemic or some crisis where government asks the public for restraint, what adherence will there be after this lot?
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As others have said, its not exact details of parties that remotely matters, it's that Johnson is clearly capable of lying to parliament if he feels it's to his advantage. He is probably too incompetent and self interested to be a truly successful autocrat, but if Conservative MPs allow him to get away with it, the next PM could potentially be as dishonest, and more competent. It says something that Johnson's administration has passed almost no meaningful legislation in 2 and a half years, despite holding a large majority and without a powerful opposition.
Having said that, we had those rules to try to somewhat limit the number of people dying of a disease, and a small number of people clearly didn't give a shit. That matters to me, at least. Most people took lockdown seriously in 2020, it affected many children's education, people's mental health, employment, businesses etc, but the PM thought it was all a bit beneath him. That sickens me.
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Number ten has now been given the Sue Grey report, what is the chance they'll redact the bit where she says that the PM is fully culpable and should resign?
On a slightly different note, there seem to be rumours circulating extensively on Twitter that the PM's wife is enjoying carnal relations with a prominent conservative who is not her husband. This doesn't seem very credible, but it would be a degree of screwed up justice.
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You thought it couldn't get cringier than Gove's Scouse accent.
https://www.thepoke.co.uk/2022/05/27/nadine-dorries-raps-about-online-safety/
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Oh. Good. God.
Just when you thought Nadine Dorris couldn't discredit herself with the sector any more....
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Nadine Dorries? A rap? You had my hopes so high.
Quite apart from the bill being crap, that wasn't that bad, and it pains me to say that because Nadine Dorries can normally be relied upon to be horrendous at every turn.
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https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/may/27/boris-johnson-changes-ministerial-code-to-remove-need-to-resign-over-breaches
WTAF!
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Hard to believe it's not actually an onion article. Satire is truly dead!
This was the best bit.
"Johnson has also rewritten the foreword to the code, removing all references to honesty, integrity, transparency and accountability."
Tells you everything really.
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Hard to believe it's not actually an onion article. Satire is truly dead!
This was the best bit.
"Johnson has also rewritten the foreword to the code, removing all references to honesty, integrity, transparency and accountability."
Tells you everything really.
"Man caught obviously lying repeatedly changes rules to say lying is kind of more or less ok really ". Does that cover it?
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Pretty much.
Also, none if us are capable of working from home because when Boris does it he is distracted by cheese
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/may/14/boris-johnson-urges-more-people-to-return-to-office-working
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https://twitter.com/HarryYorke1/status/1530804558909390848
I am morbidly fascinated by what the "very specific term" is. People in replies are citing a Daily Mail column to suggest it's "The Gays", but that seems to be the term she uses to refer to aides, not personal friends.
These are such grim people.
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Nope, "The Gays" it is, according to the Torygraph:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2022/05/29/gays-new-revelations-carrie-johnson-gathering-boris-birthday/
I mean, call your friends whatever shit you're all okay with, but she also apparently kept calling the aides that even though some of them were very uncomfortable with it. Top tip: it's not cute and ironic when it's making people cringe. Especially not when they're your husband's staff and can't tell you to piss off.
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Nope, "The Gays" it is, according to the Torygraph:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2022/05/29/gays-new-revelations-carrie-johnson-gathering-boris-birthday/
I mean, call your friends whatever shit you're all okay with, but she also apparently kept calling the aides that even though some of them were very uncomfortable with it. Top tip: it's not cute and ironic when it's making people cringe. Especially not when they're your husband's staff and can't tell you to piss off.
Vindictive playing of ABBA songs in relation to the disposal of advisers, unreconstructed references to minorities... not really fitting with the badger hugging eco friendly image is it?
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Given all the rumours that she's the one who leaned on Johnson over the Nowzad evacuation (which are credble because I cannot imagine Johnson giving the slightest fuck about animals), I think she's exactly the kind of badger-hugging "conservationist" who thinks that cute animals are much more important than Afghan humans, and also thinks that she's terribly forward-thinking and modern because she has Token Gay Friends, whose defining trait in her head is that they are The Gays.
Every girl has to have a Sassy Gay Best Friend as an accessory, after all, this is what we've learned from TV.
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In case anyone else would enjoy watching Johnson getting boo-ed by the crowd at St Paul's:
https://twitter.com/vicderbyshire/status/1532660093489119233
And on the way out, too:
https://twitter.com/alexandrakuri/status/1532722094752030720
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In case anyone else would enjoy watching Johnson getting boo-ed by the crowd at St Paul's:
https://twitter.com/vicderbyshire/status/1532660093489119233
And on the way out, too:
https://twitter.com/alexandrakuri/status/1532722094752030720
Blimey, he seems to be as popular there as Prince Andrew would have been if he didn't have covid. However, unfortunately given that it's in London, that's probably what you'd expect, and there will still be many people elsewhere who think he's ok for reasons I cannot fathom. Hopefully the sentiment in Wakefield, and East Devon is not in his favour.
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The Economist pulling no punches on the outlook for the U.K. in today’s editorial:
“The idea that Britain has a growth problem is not new. But few realise how deep a hole it is in. Whereas average annual gdp growth over the decade preceding the global financial crisis of 2007-09 was 2.7%, the new normal is now closer to just 1.7%…
“The oecd predicts that next year gdp in Britain will be stagnant. Official forecasts show that real take-home pay will be lower in five years than it is today, eaten away by higher taxes and consumer-price inflation that, at 9%, is the highest among big rich economies.”
https://archive.ph/2022.06.09-133233/https://www.economist.com/leaders/2022/06/09/low-economic-growth-is-a-slow-burning-crisis-for-britain
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The Economist pulling no punches on the outlook for the U.K. in today’s editorial:
“The idea that Britain has a growth problem is not new. But few realise how deep a hole it is in. Whereas average annual gdp growth over the decade preceding the global financial crisis of 2007-09 was 2.7%, the new normal is now closer to just 1.7%…
“The oecd predicts that next year gdp in Britain will be stagnant. Official forecasts show that real take-home pay will be lower in five years than it is today, eaten away by higher taxes and consumer-price inflation that, at 9%, is the highest among big rich economies.”
https://archive.ph/2022.06.09-133233/https://www.economist.com/leaders/2022/06/09/low-economic-growth-is-a-slow-burning-crisis-for-britain
The New Statesman published a detailed article a few weeks ago, on the reasons why although inflation is a global issue, in the UK it is likely to be worse, and last longer. I don't have a link handy as I read the print copy, but I'm sure its easily searched for on their website.
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This wasn't the one I originally thought of, but is also worth reading if you're interested in economic and business policy
https://www.newstatesman.com/economy/2022/06/business-newsletter-ostrich-economy-headed-for-reckoning
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Inflation genuinely worries me, tbh.
I fear for the future of the country. While I'm a lefty and amongst my circle patriotism or whatever you want to call it is pretty uncool, on some level I do love my country and can't help but feel concerned for what's happening. It's going to be a hard winter for a lot of people
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I've been reading about this subject a few times per month every month since around 2019-20. A lot of commentators have been suggesting a stagflationary economy* in most of the west looks like the most likely outcome within the next 6-12 months and lasting for from 1 - 3 years. Most notably the US and European economies - Australia and Canada likely to be relatively the strongest due to their resource-heavy economies. But it's easy to call these things when some people have been calling 10 out of the last 2 downturns.
One of the issues this time around the block seems to be the lack of any headroom for central banks to fight inflation due to the unprecedented levels of government debt. Interest rates in the US can't increase beyond a maximum of approx. 3.5 - 4.5% without meaning debt repayments bankrupt the country. But interest rate rises are needed to fight inflation, and so central banks appear to be in an impossible dilemma. The cynical view suggests inflation is being 'allowed' to run higher for a period of time in order to devalue the west's gigantic debt, which in turn might allow for higher interest rates in future to fight longer-term inflation. The more conspiratorial views - ranging from plausible to bonkers - suggest some kind of global economic 'reset' is imminent which will write-off debts and transfer wealth from the public to the state. I've no opinion on this.
Bigger picture is the global transition to electrification and lower-carbon power-generation, requiring massive base metal resources and processing capacity, in a world of reduced global trade with Russia and China (which owns large parts of the means of producing a low-carbon electrified world), as China signals it will take back Taiwan and continues to supress dissent. Meaning the west pivots away from reliance on Chinese resources and processing as per Russian resources. Hard to see anything but economic turmoil and downturn for a period of time in that environment. Hopefully something better eventually emerges from the resource battles.
* Stagflation defined as subsequent quarters with: 1. rising unemployment, 2. weakening growth, 3. inflation higher than a 10-year average. Much of the west currently experiencing #2 and #3. Unemployment could begin rising later this year.
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Although we are clearly entering a period of low growth and higher than target inflation, I’m not convinced that stagflation is a likely outcome. Still could happen of course but doesn’t feel massively likely.
This Bloomberg article gives a good roundup of this:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-03-10/world-economy-can-avoid-1970s-rerun-but-not-without-some-hurt
Tl;dr better policy making, v different structural issues since the 70s, eg it’s hard to have a wage price spiral in a very un-unionised economy.
Clearly it’s going to be very hard for a lot of people for some time, but in the medium to long term I’m much more concerned about persistent low growth, as it’s much harder to do anything about. Engineering a small recession to get inflation back to its target strikes me as easier than building more houses or better infrastructure. If you’ve got kids, you should despair for them unless there is some change in this respect.
Pete - what’s your source for the suggested US interest rate upper bound?
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Pete - what’s your source for the suggested US interest rate upper bound?
Written in autumn 2011 as a commentary on the policies following the global financial crash and a warning of where they might take the economy. Republished spring of this year.
https://www.nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/inflation-and-debt
It doesn't go into details of the upper bound. I've read that elsewhere but struggling to find the source.
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Quote from: seankenny on Yesterday at 03:50:49 pm
Pete - what’s your source for the suggested US interest rate upper bound?
Written in autumn 2011 as a commentary on the policies following the global financial crash and a warning of where they might take the economy. Republished spring of this year.
https://www.nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/inflation-and-debt
It doesn't go into details of the upper bound. I've read that elsewhere but struggling to find the source.
This video is worth a watch as to why the FED are stuck with respect to rate hikes as a means to taming the current inflation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iu0XDn7J5Dc&t=761s
Basically servicing the debt would become impossible and the level of US govt debt, unfunded liabilities and consumer debt is multiples of GDP.
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Thanks… but I’m honestly not going to watch a video about this sort of thing, prefer to read it, it’s just too time consuming to wade through a video. Also my heckles are raised by a crypto dude who I invariably assume is shilling. Sorry!
Edit: realise that comes across a bit arsey, but I struggle with video as a medium for putting across information that would be better written.
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I share your distrust of anyone talking on youtube about crypto. But the guy in the vid is just saying the same thing in layman's terms, as the writer of the article I linked from 2011. It's a fairly basic concept - the west has issued too much government debt and there's also too much corporate and personal debt, to raise rates beyond a point around 3.5% - 5% (although the article doesn't mention that range, the bro in the vid does) due to the devastating consequences this would have on the economy. The 70s didn't have this environment of high national debt as a proportion of GDP.
The assumption is that central banks do know this, and are signalling the rises they're signalling this year in the hope that the signalling, along with the beginnings of rate rises, are enough to spook the economy into a slowdown which puts the brakes on inflation, without central banks *actually* having to go through with the full extent of the rises signalled (~3%+ by 2023). They know they have to stop short of rising beyond that point (which is what would be required to actually stop inflation, like Volker's rises to double digits in the 80s) because it would completely destroy the economy and put the west into a deep prolonged depression.
The assumption by many commentators also seems to be that central banks will pivot away from the current QT pathway, in response to market turmoil, to printing even yet more money and taking on even more debt because TINA. This ends, according to the popular theory that everyone and their dog now seems to be waiting for, in a complete meltdown of the dollar sometime in the 2020s. Probably associated with a China/US conflict, new variant wave, or some other black swan to blame it on. It's not even a remotely leftfield theory anymore, when idiots like me are spewing it on ukb(lack swans).
BTW the Bloomberg forecast you linked to got it spot on for their May US inflation forecast. Lets hope they're right going forwards.
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Thanks… but I’m honestly not going to watch a video about this sort of thing, prefer to read it, it’s just too time consuming to wade through a video. Also my heckles are raised by a crypto dude who I invariably assume is shilling. Sorry!
Edit: realise that comes across a bit arsey, but I struggle with video as a medium for putting across information that would be better written.
Sorry, I was going to put a caveat about this guy mainly being a crypto guy (bro) but actually this video doesn't really mention crypto and I thought it was a good summary in simple terms of the current debt burden but I understand if you prefer to read about it.
Traditionally there is meant to be a sweet spot for a country to only hold debts that are 70% of GDP so it is serviceable. The US government debt is currently 130% of GDP but the private debt is 370% of GDP! The current debt and unfunded liabilities are almost $1 million dollars per citizen, whereby each citizen would have to pay $30k extra in taxes just to service the interest for this year. In other words it is unsustainable and the US will never be able to grow it's way out of it. The same is true for other countries. Adding rate hikes into the mix and servicing maturing debts and new debt that roll over into new rates will be impossible. My guess it that the FED will have to pivot before the end of the year to stop a debt spiral as most of the collateral is also tanking in dollar terms in parallel.
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Just watched this from Bernie Sanders
Shortly after dipping in on this thread. It would be amazing to see some real change in the us. However, I think things will have to get a lot worse first..
https://www.instagram.com/tv/Cey4IVKjxqk/?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y= (https://www.instagram.com/tv/Cey4IVKjxqk/?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=)
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On our side of the ocean, re the Rwanda policy; the great thing about this government is that every time they announce a terrible policy that you disagree with if you're left wing or centrist, it fails to happen as they're too incompetent to actually enact it.
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Unfortunately, I suspect the outcome suits them just fine: now they can whip up fury at the "lefty lawyers" and the European convention on human rights for blocking their wonderful plan to forcibly ship torture survivors and refugee children halfway across the world.
Not that it wouldn't also suit them just fine if they'd succeeded and got some nice sadistic punishment of refugees to feed the Daily Mail.
It's all symbolic either way, "red meat" for the culture wars. The human beings who might get chewed up in the meat grinder are just props for them.
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Just so. :agree: Performative, divisive, distracting. A lot easier than governing, that’s for sure.
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Unfortunately, I suspect the outcome suits them just fine: now they can whip up fury at the "lefty lawyers" and the European convention on human rights for blocking their wonderful plan to forcibly ship torture survivors and refugee children halfway across the world.
Not that it wouldn't also suit them just fine if they'd succeeded and got some nice sadistic punishment of refugees to feed the Daily Mail.
It's all symbolic either way, "red meat" for the culture wars. The human beings who might get chewed up in the meat grinder are just props for them.
I also think you're right there. Most people seem to think that the ECHR is to do with the EU and don't like it, which is obviously the aim of this stupid policy which is a waste of time and money. There are several much cheaper alternatives available which havn't been tried.
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To borrow Adam Serwer's line about Trump's appeal to his followers: the cruelty is the point.
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Good interview with Nobel laureate Christopher Pissarides in the FT today. He highlights some of the issues we’ve mentioned on this thread about inflation and debt, but it much more interesting on the future of the labour market and how to make it work better in the future. (To be fair he won his Nobel for labour market theories.)
https://archive.ph/2022.06.14-041944/https://www.ft.com/content/86aba26c-f4ed-4e8b-90cc-8b6b9030955b
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In an unremarkable Guardian article about Johnson visiting Rwanda and refusing to consider the prospect that he might one day actually have to not be PM here https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/jun/23/boris-johnson-rules-out-crazy-idea-of-quitting-if-tories-lose-byelections?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other is hidden this gem:
During his visit, Johnson called in at the Groupe Scolaire Kacyiru II school, on the outskirts of Kigali, which receives funding from the British government. The children clapped as the prime minister entered the first classroom, and then read him a story about an unhealthy hen.
It began: “Hetty was an unhealthy hen. She never did exercise. She slept all day. She ate lots of unhealthy food. One day, Hetty saw a poster for a hen race.”
Johnson sat on a child’s chair looking bemused as the pupils read the story.
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Another classic from the BBC:
We've just heard from Conservative MP Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown MP who is treasurer of the party's influential 1922 Committee of backbench MPs.
On the precarious situation his party finds itself in, Clifton-Brown tells us: "If I were to run under a bus today it would be difficult to hold my seat, there’s no doubt about that.”
No doubt indeed
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Nice to see 2 Conservative seats gone. Apparently Helen Hurford 'soon to be MP' was hiding from the media/public in a dance studio at Tiverton leisure centre all evening and upon hearing the result did a runner refusing to speak to anyone.
As no-one has mentioned him on here massively impressed with the job Mick Lynch has been doing holding politicians/media/private profiteering to account in the last week. The desperation of some of the lines of questioning is laughable. There is an opportunity here for the shadow cabinet to seize upon public feeling, show their understanding/support for workers and make huge ground. Seems they are too scared or beholden by the media to do this. A spineless response from the leadership of the LABOUR Party. A party founded by what became the RMT Union to represent workers in parliament. :'(
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Nice to see 2 Conservative seats gone. Apparently Helen Hurford 'soon to be MP' was hiding from the media/public in a dance studio at Tiverton leisure centre all evening and upon hearing the result did a runner refusing to speak to anyone.
As no-one has mentioned him on here massively impressed with the job Mick Lynch has been doing holding politicians/media/private profiteering to account in the last week. The desperation of some of the lines of questioning is laughable. There is an opportunity here for the shadow cabinet to seize upon public feeling, show their understanding/support for workers and make huge ground. Seems they are too scared or beholden by the media to do this. A spineless response from the leadership of the LABOUR Party. A party founded by what became the RMT Union to represent workers in parliament. :'(
Completely agree on this one Brutus, and - as many have observed - this is what happens when you get someone straight-talking, not trying to give the "media trained" answer, not trying to appeal the outcomes of a focus-grouped mythical typical x target voter profile.
In many ways (and I'm doing Mick Lynch a terrible disservice here), a lot of the above could be said of what Boris' appeal is to the Tory right-of-centre caucus.
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As someone who has given media training to scores of people, I’d personally say Lynch does exactly what I urge interviewees to do. He puts forward a clear, straightforward and well-constructed argument for his organisation’s policy, textbook stuff. He actually has some good lines to deal with difficult questions. A lot of the time media or public communications is the moment at which genuine policy differences in an organisation get hammered out; in a recent podcast I heard Alastair Campbell is very clear that this is the role PMQs played for Blair and his team. So to some extent what you’re seeing is the result of the RMT having a clear and well-thought out case internally. I’m not downplaying Lynch, he’s clearly a very talented communicator, but I think the reasons for his success go a bit deeper than this.
He’s also a Lexiter… :worms:
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Absolutely Sean he's part of a well organised and competent union. He represents his members interests effectively.
Conversely..
The principle is just as true in politics. It’s why our party was created by the trade unions. It’s why the Labour Party will always stand with the trade unions. And why we will always need the trade unions to stand with us.
We have an obligation to unite and to work together. If we do, we can take on this right-wing government, win the next general election, and deliver the transformational change working people so desperately need.
Keir Starmer to the TUC last year. :chair:
Proving himself to lack any substance and a liar.
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The RMT isn’t affiliated to the Labour Party. Surely standing together goes both ways?
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On social media, according to many people from my hometown (Doncaster), Starmer is now a scab and can't be voted for. I imagine a lot of ex-mining towns will feel the same way.
Then again, there are parts of Donny that actually voted conservative last time, so who knows:
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Cw_yH6KWIAAV4TZ.jpg)
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That’s a funny picture but also not actually true. Lots of places in the Red Wall should have been Tory years ago, given their demographics. A residual attachment to the Labour Party may now have been broken but that’s understandable if a lot of Red Wall voters are socially conservative, home owning pensioners. The Conservative agenda of aggression to foreigners, no meaningful development and continuing high house prices does - to some extent - meet their needs.
As for the unions, many hardcore trade unionists have disliked the Labour Party for years. Every Labour government has pissed them off! Labour is a coalition of interests that is broader than they are.
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That’s a funny picture but also not actually true. Lots of places in the Red Wall should have been Tory years ago, given their demographics. A residual attachment to the Labour Party may now have been broken but that’s understandable if a lot of Red Wall voters are socially conservative, home owning pensioners. The Conservative agenda of aggression to foreigners, no meaningful development and continuing high house prices does - to some extent - meet their needs.
As for the unions, many hardcore trade unionists have disliked the Labour Party for years. Every Labour government has pissed them off! Labour is a coalition of interests that is broader than they are.
That does help explain things, but I'm not sure if it's a residual attachment to the Labour party that's fading, or more a residual hatred of the Conservatives? Although they're only one demographic, I don't think many of the ex-miners are changing their stance - my dad was a miner and he'd be hung drawn and quartered before he voted tory!
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The RMT isn’t affiliated to the Labour Party. Surely standing together goes both ways?
RMT aren't affiliated to Labour Party because it wasn't working both ways. :shrug:
Same reason others have reduced or withdrawn funding.
Going by your logic though we can expect to see Starmer and his front bench on the picket lines when inevitably one of the still affiliated unions goes on strike. I don't think so.
Labour Party was literally founded by a workers Union to ensure workers rights were represented in Parliament.
I am sure the public would love to hear someone from the Labour front bench or Keir himself standing strong for working people. It's open goal and a chance to stick the knife into the Conservative party further. 58% of people support the strike. The LP leadership are either too scared to take on the media (despite being shown how easy it is to make them look foolish) or their interest lie somewhere other than the very reason the party exists..
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The RMT isn’t affiliated to the Labour Party. Surely standing together goes both ways?
RMT aren't affiliated to Labour Party because it wasn't working both ways. :
The RMT are anti-European, the Labour Party is pro-European. It comes as a shock to ultra purist left wingers, but those of us that are left wing but not as left as you guys also have principles.
Labour Party was literally founded by a workers Union to ensure workers rights were represented in Parliament.
The far left love historical precedent, but only when it suits them. The Labour Party has a long tradition of being pro-NATO, for example, a tradition which the far left conveniently forget about. If you’re happy to let the contingencies of the 19th century be the guiding principle of a modern centre-left party then you’re probably saying that you personally are quite comfortable under a Conservative government and prefer the delicious feelings of outrage to the messy business of winning and wielding power.
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I hadn't seen any of the interviews with Mick Lynch until now, but a few of them are brilliant.. the Thunderbirds one at the bottom here is particularly good https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/rmt-mick-lynch-skewers-tory-backbencher-rail-strikes_uk_62b417bde4b06594c1dfa6ab
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He’s also a Lexiter… :worms:
I am aware of the existence / concept of "Lexit-ism" but never got to the bottom of why it was (I assume) "a thing" in the more leftier bits of the Labour movement.
Anyone care to educate me as to why?
I am assuming something about centrist technocrats.
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Not really my place to speak for those folks but the RMT said back in 2016 why their members should vote Leave:
https://www.rmt.org.uk/news/rmt-sets-out-six-key-reasons-for-leaving-the-eu/
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Haha, how's that lost working out for them :lol:
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He’s also a Lexiter… :worms:
I am aware of the existence / concept of "Lexit-ism" but never got to the bottom of why it was (I assume) "a thing" in the more leftier bits of the Labour movement.
Anyone care to educate me as to why?
I am assuming something about centrist technocrats.
Obviously a lot of different reasons for "Lexitism", but a significant one is that the EU places significant limits on state aid and subsidy which are incompatible with certain socialist/communist ideologies.
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There is another possible explanation. But I’m being polite, so I won’t say it.
My counter argument to that would be that given Brexit of nearly any form is going to make your poorer, it gives a strong incentive for government to try to claw back some of that loss of competitiveness by lowering standards and deregulation. It also puts plenty of downward pressure on wages. Given the almost inevitable nature of these changes, this makes Brexit a right wing project by definition.
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There is another possible explanation. But I’m being polite, so I won’t say it.
There are a few ways I've tried to read this and none of them make you look good tbh. I still think Brexit was stupid but this just strikes me as lazy classism.
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There are plenty of posh Lexit types too, perhaps you didn’t keep a close eye on exactly the sort of people who did well in the Corbyn Labour Party. I come from the social group least likely to get a degree - a white male eligible for free school meals - and I was brought up in a single parent household by my mum who was a dinner lady. Your accusations of classism are way off the fucking mark.
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OK.... So what did you mean then? That's how it came across to me, if that's not what you meant you could just explain what you did mean instead of taking it personally, it was meant as a discussion point rather than an accusation. I could have perhaps expanded on my post further to make that clearer.
I don't know that much about Lexit tbh, I was abroad at the time and missed a lot of the referendum buildup. It doesn't make any sense to me, hence why I'm interested in these posts...(much like TTT)
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OK.... So what did you mean then? That's how it came across to me, if that's not what you meant you could just explain what you did mean instead of taking it personally, it was meant as a discussion point rather than an accusation. I could have perhaps expanded on my post further to make that clearer.
I don't know that much about Lexit tbh, I was abroad at the time and missed a lot of the referendum buildup. It doesn't make any sense to me, hence why I'm interested in these posts...
Fair enough, but if you don’t want to make it personal, don’t throw around accusations like that! Aside from being a bit lazy, I can assure you that many of us from poor backgrounds grew up on household incomes way below those enjoyed by the unionised skilled and semi-skilled workers the RMT represents. (Note that I’m not angry that those workers are paid decently, rather that they are most definitely not at the bottom of the heap.)
My view of Lexit is that it was an epic misreading of what leaving the EU really meant. The state aid thing struck me as an overblown story when really we’re talking about people whose foreign policy ideas are crackpot - anti-EU and pro-Putin, this is Le Pen territory.
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Well, we might have to agree to disagree on whether that constituted an accusation, but fine. I didnt mean any offence, it just came across that way to me and I thought it merited comment.
I think you've identified a strand of Brexitism full stop, so probably part of Lexitism as well; overblown narratives around eg state aid or money for the NHS disguising more dangerous/grimmer ideas.
None of it strikes me as being outside the bounds of polite conversation, so I'm still a bit unclear what you were trying to be polite about by avoiding saying! Unless you just mean people were duped/taken in as a synonym for being a bit dim and not realising they were being taken for a ride? Cause if so, I think that's absolutely the case but not unique to Lexitism by any stretch ; people have been a bit dim and been taken from a ride from all sorts of political starting points.
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Okay understood.
As for Lexit, I think it comes from a slightly different place than the regular Brexit nonsense. I don’t particularly recognise the same strain of xenophobia in Lexiters, even if I think their view of the implications of the EU/integration with foreign states are wrong.
I’m always being rude to the far left on here and decided I was going to be slightly less forthright for a change… won’t make that mistake again!
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Perhaps I worded my question badly, what I meant more was "what specifically about Brexit (or not fighting for Remain) was so fundamentally important to the left(er) cause, that siding with the ERG etc wingnuts was a better idea than, say giving the EU "10 out of 10" on national TV?
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Perhaps I worded my question badly, what I meant more was "what specifically about Brexit (or not fighting for Remain) was so fundamentally important to the left(er) cause, that siding with the ERG etc wingnuts was a better idea than, say giving the EU "10 out of 10" on national TV?
Ideologically, I really think it was just the desire for greater governmental control - and distrust - of markets, specifically the labour market, and greater power to intervene in industry. Maybe some of it was a historical continuation of the far left’s dislike of the EU from back in the 70s and 80s?
Culturally you could perhaps make the argument that the Lexit types were often very similar to the ERG, a group of politically marginalised but posh English men allied to a more working class base. Cranks of a feather flock together? Or at least don’t repulse each other too much.
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The thing is that whatever your personal opinions are on RMT and the strike, it would be electoral suicide for Labour to get full bore behind the strikes. Labour's strongest voting base now is younger, metropolitan liberal minded professionals in the major cities, who are most affected by the trains not running. If they are serious about ever winning elections again, they need to be able to make difficult decisions which may conflict with what their ideal position would be personally, in order to appeal to enough voters across the country to win an election and actually be able to change anything.
Its all very well being a morally unimpeachable opposition, but a party in opposition can't legislate, can't usually block legislation they disagree with, and can't try to make the country a better place to live.
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The thing is that whatever your personal opinions are on RMT and the strike, it would be electoral suicide for Labour to get full bore behind the strikes. Labour's strongest voting base now is younger, metropolitan liberal minded professionals in the major cities, who are most affected by the trains not running.
Do you have evidence that this group is not majorly supportive of the strikes, despite being affected by them? This would seem counter to what I’ve read but have not seen any opinion polls etc.
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The thing is that whatever your personal opinions are on RMT and the strike, it would be electoral suicide for Labour to get full bore behind the strikes. Labour's strongest voting base now is younger, metropolitan liberal minded professionals in the major cities, who are most affected by the trains not running.
Do you have evidence that this group is not majorly supportive of the strikes, despite being affected by them? This would seem counter to what I’ve read but have not seen any opinion polls etc.
No I don't, but my point re their position stands, in order to win they are in a difficult place, but have probably done essentially the right thing, I'm not saying that I personally agree with it, but politically it's the right choice.
I'm more concerned with the fact that the Johnson government have done nothing in office, can't grip on any actual policy, and spend time on culture war bullshit. They're fundamentally bad for the country and another party needs to do whatever it can to get rid of them.
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The thing is that whatever your personal opinions are on RMT and the strike, it would be electoral suicide for Labour to get full bore behind the strikes. Labour's strongest voting base now is younger, metropolitan liberal minded professionals in the major cities, who are most affected by the trains not running.
Do you have evidence that this group is not majorly supportive of the strikes, despite being affected by them? This would seem counter to what I’ve read but have not seen any opinion polls etc.
I work with a lot of young liberal minded professionals and none of them batted an eyelid this week. They just fired up Teams/Zoom and worked from home. It’s the people who work in retail, hospitality and hands-on service jobs who were most inconvenienced.
On the Lexit thing, I thought what happened to Greece was a big factor in Left Wing opposition to the EU.
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The thing is that whatever your personal opinions are on RMT and the strike, it would be electoral suicide for Labour to get full bore behind the strikes. Labour's strongest voting base now is younger, metropolitan liberal minded professionals in the major cities, who are most affected by the trains not running.
Do you have evidence that this group is not majorly supportive of the strikes, despite being affected by them? This would seem counter to what I’ve read but have not seen any opinion polls etc.
I work with a lot of young liberal minded professionals and none of them batted an eyelid this week. They just fired up Teams/Zoom and worked from home. It’s the people who work in retail, hospitality and hands-on service jobs who were most inconvenienced.
On the Lexit thing, I thought what happened to Greece was a big factor in Left Wing opposition to the EU.
Maybe but look at an electoral map of the country, Labour in the cities mainly, and the Conservative in the more rural areas and most towns.
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I feel like a strong communicator could put together a pretty simple and comprehensive message about why the Labour Party supports worker's right to strike which would appeal to a broad range of people.
I appreciate why Starmer is hedging his bets but he's not exactly storming out with a powerful message about this strike being symptomatic of the deep failures in the country's governance and economy.
"We would nationalise the rail systems and therefore avoid any need for strikes, we'd improve services and cut costs by taking out the need to fill the pockets of shareholders" etc that would all sound pretty good. He doesn't need to come across as a firebrand just sensible.
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What you're saying wells sounds perfectly sensible to me, but I'm sure some people would stamp him as a firebrand for saying exactly such a thing. In the current climate he's got to walk an extremely tenuous tightrope to avoid pissing off a very broad range of people who could potentially vote his way.
Of course one of the risks he takes in treading such a line is that he ends up appealing to no one and the lib dems and greens win big time.
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The thing is that whatever your personal opinions are on RMT and the strike, it would be electoral suicide for Labour to get full bore behind the strikes. Labour's strongest voting base now is younger, metropolitan liberal minded professionals in the major cities, who are most affected by the trains not running.
Do you have evidence that this group is not majorly supportive of the strikes, despite being affected by them? This would seem counter to what I’ve read but have not seen any opinion polls etc.
It’s not the median Labour voter that’s the issue but the marginal Labour voter. They after all are the people Labour needs to get into power.
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Latest Opinium Poll today:-
70% support inflation level pay rise
62% think government should intervene
70% against cuts to rail staff
84% for investing rail profits in maintaining staff
59% workers right to strike if talks fail
There's not really a thin line to tread here get on board the people are pushing back. Read the room Keir and Co. The lack of support will and is already being seen as weakness.
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Last night I re-read this interesting interview with US pollster/election strategist David Shor:
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/07/david-shor-cancel-culture-2020-election-theory-polls.html
This could of course go in the US politics thread but I think some of the core ideas around issue salience are worth considering in the British context. It's probably easier just to read the article than me do a garbled re-hash, but Shor says this on attracting non-college-educated white voters:
"Democrats need to talk about the issues they are with us on, and try really hard not to talk about the issues where we disagree."
Amyhow, I figured it was worth a read.
As to Labour and the RMT strike, being too vocal in support offers the Conservatives a potential wedge issue with unionised vs non-unionised workers and the response to inflation which is potentially bad news for Labour, given that it probably wants to increase its vote share amongst non-unionised workers (who are also a much bigger proportion of the labour market). I support the strike action and don't think the claims are excessive, but I'm also aware that many of the voters Labour would like to win are older and are in the middle of a 70s rerun freak-out. I suspect the suggestion that Labour are stoking a wage price spiral would not go down well with those voters, added to the fact that a wage price spiral would be genuinely bad news. (I don't think the strike will cause this but so what, I'm a voter in a safe Labour seat and my trust in UK monetary policy is perhaps a bit higher than average.)
Maybe this is the elevation of tactics over strategy, I don't know. I just don't think it's as obvious a call as all that.
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The thing is that whatever your personal opinions are on RMT and the strike, it would be electoral suicide for Labour to get full bore behind the strikes. Labour's strongest voting base now is younger, metropolitan liberal minded professionals in the major cities, who are most affected by the trains not running.
Do you have evidence that this group is not majorly supportive of the strikes, despite being affected by them? This would seem counter to what I’ve read but have not seen any opinion polls etc.
It’s not the median Labour voter that’s the issue but the marginal Labour voter. They after all are the people Labour needs to get into power.
Exactly. Labour needs to be seen as financially responsible, strong on law and order, but fair on both. Keir Starmer doesn't have to be exciting, or wildly popular. Against Johnson, he just needs to be less unpopular than him. Only by appealing to a broad range of socially conservative voters can they win, and be able to actually do anything.
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"We would nationalise the rail systems and therefore avoid any need for strikes, we'd improve services and cut costs by taking out the need to fill the pockets of shareholders" etc that would all sound pretty good.
If only there was a north west European country with a left of centre government that had recently nationalised its rail service that could be used to test this argument...
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Keir Starmer doesn't have to be exciting, or wildly popular. Against Johnson, he just needs to be less unpopular than him.
Or less unpopular than Hunt, or whoever leads the Tories into the next election; it may not be Johnson.
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Is any one else finding a breathe of fresh air in Mick Lynch cutting through the media chaff. I'm impressed that he's been able to make arguments extending to broader issues than the current disputes at hand quite often in a way that politicians often seem to struggle with.
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Yes Moo. See previous page.
Also equally unimpressed with David Lammy's flagrant hypocrisy/lack of political conviction and subsequent half arsed roll back. LP in desperate need of a front bencher with a spine.
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I don't think you can compare a union leader and a politician as though they are equivalent and can say and do the same things, because they are completely different beasts. A unions job is to negotiate and if necessary strike in order to get what is fair for their members. A politicians job is to get into government and ideally manage well enough so that strikes etc are not necessary. At least, that's what a Labour gov should do, a Tory one will provoke strikes as part of their culture war agenda.
So yeah, I think Labour are doing the right thing by holding back their support to avoid playing into Tory hands and looking once again like a party of protest rather than of government. Instead of focusing on strikes, focusing on the economic clusterfuck caused by the Tories which is making them an issue. Lammy was pretty good I thought about apologising for getting his facts wrong and calling it half arsed missed the point - wake up and smell the coffee, we are sliding into fascism so stop wailing about Labour not being Left enough and focus on getting these Tories out by hook or by crook. At this stage I'd take May or Major so Lammy, Rayner and Starmer would be an upgrade on that.
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No I don't, but my point re their position stands, in order to win they are in a difficult place, but have probably done essentially the right thing, I'm not saying that I personally agree with it, but politically it's the right choice.
This, tho it demands tact in the way it’s put across and it didn’t read that way re Lammy’s Sunday interview. I didn’t see it, so who knows. The Tories will think do/dont support the strikers :devangel: is a wonderful trap. Labour need to be fleetfooted on that.
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I don't think you can compare a union leader and a politician as though they are equivalent and can say and do the same things, because they are completely different beasts. A unions job is to negotiate and if necessary strike in order to get what is fair for their members. A politicians job is to get into government and ideally manage well enough so that strikes etc are not necessary. At least, that's what a Labour gov should do, a Tory one will provoke strikes as part of their culture war agenda.
So yeah, I think Labour are doing the right thing by holding back their support to avoid playing into Tory hands and looking once again like a party of protest rather than of government. Instead of focusing on strikes, focusing on the economic clusterfuck caused by the Tories which is making them an issue. Lammy was pretty good I thought about apologising for getting his facts wrong and calling it half arsed missed the point - wake up and smell the coffee, we are sliding into fascism so stop wailing about Labour not being Left enough and focus on getting these Tories out by hook or by crook. At this stage I'd take May or Major so Lammy, Rayner and Starmer would be an upgrade on that.
Agree with most of that really. I'd rather Labour were stronger on the massive ongoing costs to the UK of leaving the EU and the single market, however I understand why they're keeping quiet and at this stage I'd rather have a stuffed donkey than Boris Johnson and his bunch of intellectually challenged halfwits in charge.
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"It's not your children, it's a treehouse":
https://twitter.com/Haggis_UK/status/1542783683492515840
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Every time you think there's no chance Johnson can survive this scandal, he manages it somewhere. Surely his time must be almost up? Seems almost inevitable that pincher will have to quit and cause a by-election now.
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I can't understand why No10 hasn't become better at managing stuff like this. You'd think that after all the previous times the PM has been caught lying they'd catch on that it's better to tell the truth straight up and put the right spin on it from the get go. But no, the PM lies again, gets caught lying again, and now the story is so much bigger than just Pincher again.
They could have chucked Pincher under the bus and escaped relatively unscathed. I'm amazed his aides let Johnson into the Commons chamber when they know he can't help buy Lie To Parliament when he's there (not that that offence has any penalty any more).
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I think it's intentional to let it become bigger and more drawn out than it needed it be.
It occupies the headlines for a news cycle and distracts people from the failings that are having a far greater impact on people's lives.
Johnson has admitted to using this tactic in interviews previously.
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Sunak and Javid resign; surely, surely this is it for Johnson now. Surely. Please!
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Of all the times he's seemed utterly screwed, this is definitely seems the most utterly screwed he's been.
Amazing the ministers still supporting him. It's the usual crackpot list but at some point, surely they try to save face. Raab getting regularly stitched up on TV? He must be fed up by now. They certainly will be doing damage to their careers given how inevitable Johnson's departure seems.
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Or: they only believe they have a career with Johnson’s patronage. Without him, they will be nowhere.
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Certainly people like Dorries, she's got no chance in another government. But others still could have hope, if they don't fully sink with this ship.
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They wouldn't have wanted to chuck Pincher under a bus because it'll likely lead to a byelection which they may well lose.
I struggle to see Johnson lasting much longer now, although I still don't think he'd actually resign.
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They wouldn't have wanted to chuck Pincher under a bus because it'll likely lead to a byelection which they may well lose.
I'd say losing a by-election is the lesser evil against losing your Chancellor and another front bench minister, but then they didn't know that Sunak and Javid would resign.
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Given how he shrugged off the other byelection results, I'd say he wouldn't care at all about losing that. Can use the same excuses again.
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Frankly I feel sorry for Cameron Norrie, wins a legendary match at Wimbledon to reach the semis and all the news is about politics.
I'm sure Johnson will limp on for a while and possibly call a snap election if he thinks the 1922 are about to kick him out
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Excruciating interview with Zahawi on PM this morning (around about 8:10 if you want to listen on Sounds).
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Excruciating interview with Zahawi on PM this morning (around about 8:10 if you want to listen on Sounds).
It was great wasn't it, Nick Robinson giving him the news of further resignations live on air. And yet he continued to defend the indefensible.
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Or: they only believe they have a career with Johnson’s patronage. Without him, they will be nowhere.
Definitely this, but also I think there's a strong element of "if not BoJo - then who"?
There's no strong contenders - and they're possibly stuck in "better the c*nt you know" situation.
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Excruciating interview with Zahawi on PM this morning (around about 8:10 if you want to listen on Sounds).
It was great wasn't it, Nick Robinson giving him the news of further resignations live on air. And yet he continued to defend the indefensible.
And the bit where he got him to talk about migrating to the UK after fleeing Saddam, getting him to say this is the best country in the world, making him well up with emotion, and then telling him they'd trashed the country's reputation. I screamed; it's not every day you hear someone get murdered on the radio.
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Jeez, BITD Spitting Image wouldn't be able to make fresh puppets fast enough.....
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Jeez, BITD Spitting Image wouldn't be able to make fresh puppets fast enough.....
Johnson as a limpet desperately clinging to the door of number ten while everyone else tries to prise him off?
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The Guardian liveblog has the header "Boris Johnson fighting for future as children’s minister Will Quince becomes latest senior Tory to resign – live"; in my bleary under-caffeinated morning state I initially misread it as saying that Boris Johnson's children had resigned, and for a micro-second that didn't seem implausible.
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Watch this resignation letters pile high Boris.
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Sajid Javid's speech in the commons today was pretty cutting.
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Clearly emotional, given the muddled words, but it's well worth a listen. I think he is spot on about the issue around the repeated lies from No 10 and the dangers to his party of doing nothing.
https://youtu.be/LzW-pfOiXz8
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I subscribe to some conservative substacks to get a sense of what is going on in Right Land.
Todays effort from the writer Ed West is a classic, jam-packed full of nonsense.
On Johnson’s “exotic” background: “It’s why the charges of racism never stuck; he has his faults, but racial prejudice isn’t one of them.” Okay, all those ethnic minority Brits complaining about his racism are just making it up.
“In fact he is almost more like an oriental potentate, a benevolent and cosmopolitan sultan, hampered by court intrigue and presiding over a crumbling empire.” Benevolent? What’s benevolent about psychopathic power seeking?
“A certain amount of sleaze and licence in a government is not a terrible thing; a bit of corruption can help get things done or built.” Try campaigning with “a bit corrupt” as a slogan next time…
“The only hint at who’s been in charge might be the visible increase in homelessness, the one tangible result of Tory rule.” And I guess if you are well off enough to avoid the NHS, never need to report a crime, live somewhere which manages a bit of litter picking after a decade of austerity, then it all looks pretty jolly.
“I’d like Britain to be more like Denmark in that respect, egalitarian, safe and demographically stable.” Is demographically stable the new euphemism for keeping out the foreigners, or perhaps the wrong type of foreigners?
At the same time he bemoans the UK’s economic stagnation, but what the hell did they expect when they want “demographic stability” and can’t see the result of their own casual slashing of government spending, which was backed up by the original lie of the post-2010 Conservatives, ie that it was public spending that caused the financial crisis?
There’s a whole new generation out there who hate progressivism, who don’t want social norms dictated by dysfunctional, miserable people
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Cognitive dissonance!? The idiot NI secretary was defending Boris after PMQs today, literally saying you must beware removing a PM who was elected by the people when Boris became PM after the party did just that.
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I reckon he's done. Either resigns today or a 1922 VONC chucks him. Either way yeah done.
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BBC News has just reported that the very same NI Secretary is about to tell Johnson to resign!
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And now more cabinet ministers following Gove's lead of denouncing from within. And the whips office briefing that they haven't got any MPs left to fill the vacancies.
He's fucked.
(Isn't it customary for the opposition to step in if you can't form a government? Someone wake up the Queen!)
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Not sure if this should be in the DIY thread but does anyone have advice on how to remove wallpaper without damaging it? It was awfully expensive.
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This is glorious:
https://twitter.com/Steven_Swinford/status/1544728307895341056
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Excruciating interview with Zahawi on PM this morning (around about 8:10 if you want to listen on Sounds).
I enjoyed (?) listening to this earlier, then seeing Zahawi calling for resignation not 12 hours later!
To all the cabinet c*nts resigning and citing their conscience - where has your conscience been the past couple of years?
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I particularly enjoy the ones pretending that they've suddenly had an attack of conscience over something else, and it's an amazing coincidence that they decided to give a shit exactly when it looked like Johnson's on the way out and no sooner.
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This is glorious:
https://twitter.com/Steven_Swinford/status/1544728307895341056
Kwasi Kwarteng suggested to be axed...
Surely Johnson isn't in a position to be getting rid of willing ministers!
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Patel apparently now in the "get out" group.
As a fun intellectual exercise, how could he actually get through this and remain PM? Anyone?
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Brandon Lewis has resigned in a limited and specific way.
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As much as I enjoy watching this all unfold, on a more serious note - what are the rules about "forming a government". Could a Lab/SNP coalition actually be formed and take over if no-one is left to fill the ministerial positions? Seems far fetched but I have seen it mooted. Will off and Google and report back if I find anything.
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I think the Cons would need to be given a chance under a new leader as a first step. Not sure what the timescale on them needing to sort this after a resignation would be, but a few of the more recent ones were quite drawn out from memory.
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Seems quite difficult to get any clarity on this. Good 'ol unwritten constitution of ours!
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I thought a government was basically fine until a vote of no confidence passed against it in the house. So effectively some Tory MPs have to decide they’re angry enough to bring down the entire government in order to dislodge him (which presumably triggers an early election, since any other party government would require permanent support from some conservatives to avoid the same fate, which isn’t going to happen). That feels unlikely given the number of them scared of losing their seats. If he goes, he probably goes via another Tory leadership contest.
I don’t think there’s any rules about how many ministers you need to have, although if there are it’s presumably far less than the current government payroll has been and there might be enough loyalists left to fill the ones which are actually needed.
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Amusing tweet from Jon Sopel
https://twitter.com/jonsopel/status/1544779070008950784?t=Rkq5kggDGGRh_k8FZ7YBqw&s=19
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This is properly crazy now https://news.sky.com/story/boris-johnson-live-updates-pm-fighting-for-political-life-after-sunak-and-javid-quit-12593360
42 members of government gone...
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Chris Mason says he's gone
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BBC reporting that he's out today.
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Except he's said that he'll resign -- but wants to stay in place until a new Tory leader is elected, by the time of the party conference in autumn.
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Wonder how many Tory MPs want him out earlier than that
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Quite a lot, I'm guessing. Especially given his performance over the last few days, which has made it clear that he'll trash anything and everything in pursuit of his own self-interest (for anyone who had not already figured that out).
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Well, he's gone (or going) but how can anyone realistically expect the Tories to conjur a functional government out of this morass of stupidity? Very little has changed, really.
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I do not understand from the news if Boris Johnson has actually quit or if he just has said that he will quit. Those are two completely different things, right?
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I do not understand from the news if Boris Johnson has actually quit or if he just has said that he will quit. Those are two completely different things, right?
Currently he is the leader of the conservative party and the prime minister. He's saying he will resign as leader of the conservative party which will allow a leadership election within the party, then when that's over the new leader of the party will become the pm. In the meantime he will still be pm. A cynic might suggest he's using it as a ploy to cling to power for a little longer...
There's always a pm, but as I understand it the usual order is to resign as both leader of the party and pm at the same time, then an interim pm steps in while the leadership election happens within the party.
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Basically Johnson has resigned in a limited and specific way...
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I do not understand from the news if Boris Johnson has actually quit or if he just has said that he will quit. Those are two completely different things, right?
He's trying to cling on to power for as long as possible, if only to have been PM longer than Teresa May!
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I understand it the usual order is to resign as both leader of the party and pm at the same time, then an interim pm steps in while the leadership election happens within the party
No, I think the usual order is what is happening - they agree to step down once a successor has been decided. However 'usually' the PM would still have some sort of intact cabinet with which to continue. This isn't the case here, so it looks much more sensible for him to just go and some sort of interim be inserted. Step up deputy Raab perhaps?
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Also seems like there are a bunch of Tories who think his behaviour within the last 48 hours was SO erratic and irresponsible that it'd be a disaster to leave him in situ.
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I understand it the usual order is to resign as both leader of the party and pm at the same time, then an interim pm steps in while the leadership election happens within the party
No, I think the usual order is what is happening - they agree to step down once a successor has been decided. However 'usually' the PM would still have some sort of intact cabinet with which to continue. This isn't the case here, so it looks much more sensible for him to just go and some sort of interim be inserted. Step up deputy Raab perhaps?
Yes that's what happened with Theresa May.
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Strong Trumpian 'denial of reality' vibes!
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Well, he's gone (or going) but how can anyone realistically expect the Tories to conjur a functional government out of this morass of stupidity? Very little has changed, really.
Unfortunately yes. Three leaders in six years suggests a party that has some deep structural problems. Voting for a party led by Johnson suggests something quite wrong with the U.K.
Looks like another couple of years of shite government.
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They have no way of dealing with the current cost of living crisis, no matter who is in charge, because the Tory Party as it exists right now doesn't have the ideas to resolve it. It's a party of blind commitment to idealogical undermining of the economy.
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Well, he's gone (or going) but how can anyone realistically expect the Tories to conjur a functional government out of this morass of stupidity? Very little has changed, really.
Unfortunately yes. Three leaders in six years suggests a party that has some deep structural problems. Voting for a party led by Johnson suggests something quite wrong with the U.K.
Looks like another couple of years of shite government.
"Strong and Stable" :-\
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Woohoo...... The law breaking liar is going. I'm not sure if any of the cabinet that supported him, then turned to save their own skin are fit to replace him tho.
Hopefully the 1922 lot get him out sooner rather than later.
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Woohoo...... The law breaking liar is going. I'm not sure if any of the cabinet that supported him, then turned to save their own skin are fit to replace him tho.
Hopefully the 1922 lot get him out sooner rather than later.
He's having his delayed Wedding Party at Chequers in the summer so he won't leave office before that.
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They have no way of dealing with the current cost of living crisis, no matter who is in charge, because the Tory Party as it exists right now doesn't have the ideas to resolve it. It's a party of blind commitment to idealogical undermining of the economy.
It's a very hard problem to fix now, but it could have been avoided or lessened if the tories hadn't spent the past decade stripping public services back to the bone in every sector, economically self-harming with Brexit, whilst cutting taxes for the wealthy and slipping a few million to their mates here and there. Yes a pandemic is always going to be a rare and difficult challenge but if you're starting from a point where the NHS is on its knees and struggling to survive a normal winter, it's obviously going to be a disaster.
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Well, he's gone (or going) but how can anyone realistically expect the Tories to conjur a functional government out of this morass of stupidity? Very little has changed, really.
Unfortunately yes. Three leaders in six years suggests a party that has some deep structural problems. Voting for a party led by Johnson suggests something quite wrong with the U.K.
Looks like another couple of years of shite government.
"Strong and Stable" :-\
Thank God we were saved from Chaos With Ed Milliband!
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Lots of versions of this pic floating around:
https://twitter.com/_jungleballs/status/1481589087773540352
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My fave,
(https://i.imgur.com/6DvV8t9.png)
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Mine from a couple of days ago:
https://twitter.com/mrjohnofarrell/status/1544259833385328640?t=hJOj7Q3cKJEA38sabJCXnQ&s=19
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Mine from a couple of days ago:
https://twitter.com/mrjohnofarrell/status/1544259833385328640?t=hJOj7Q3cKJEA38sabJCXnQ&s=19
Brilliant!
Paywalled, but BJs article for the Telegraph about Gordon Brown "lashing himself to the radiator" in order to avoid being evicted from no. 10, is really quite something in the current context.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/0/boris-johnson-gordon-brown-election-2010-bathroom-real-problems/
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Mine from a couple of days ago:
https://twitter.com/mrjohnofarrell/status/1544259833385328640?t=hJOj7Q3cKJEA38sabJCXnQ&s=19
Brilliant!
Paywalled, but BJs article for the Telegraph about Gordon Brown "lashing himself to the radiator" in order to avoid being evicted from no. 10, is really quite something in the current context.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/0/boris-johnson-gordon-brown-election-2010-bathroom-real-problems/
Ha, that's excellent :clap2:
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Although 3 years old and with a Brexit focus, this is well worth a watch. Including the eerily prescient line (although perhaps obvious to many) "All of the skills that helped Johnson to become Prime Minister will not paper over all of the deficits that are going to make him terrible at that job."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dXyO_MC9g3k
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Mine from a couple of days ago:
https://twitter.com/mrjohnofarrell/status/1544259833385328640?t=hJOj7Q3cKJEA38sabJCXnQ&s=19
Brilliant!
Paywalled, but BJs article for the Telegraph about Gordon Brown "lashing himself to the radiator" in order to avoid being evicted from no. 10, is really quite something in the current context.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/0/boris-johnson-gordon-brown-election-2010-bathroom-real-problems/
Read for free here https://web.archive.org/web/20220707175113/https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/0/boris-johnson-gordon-brown-election-2010-bathroom-real-problems/
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This wins today:
https://www.blackpoolgazette.co.uk/news/politics/boris-johnsons-madame-tussauds-waxwork-appears-outside-job-centre-in-blackpool-as-pm-quits-as-tory-leader-3760330
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Sensational
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Bought a new kitchen today, on the basis that 0% finance is a steal at the moment.
There's no chance this shower of fuckwits will get inflation under control. In a year's time the monthly payment of £173 will be roughly equivalent to the cost of a tin of beans
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Interest rates may be rising, but probably not by much, and certainly not to the same extent as they have in other historical periods of high inflation.
This is not so much because of the high level of personal borrowing many people currently have; but more due to the massive levels of government borrowing.
If interest rates on government debts were to go beyond 3 or 4% the nation would no longer be able to manage the repayments.
How to lower inflation without raising interest rates will be a major problem for the UK government (and many others) for some time to come.
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:read:you may find this interesting
https://mobile.twitter.com/kamilkazani/status/1503430216554795014
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Interest rates may be rising, but probably not by much, and certainly not to the same extent as they have in other historical periods of high inflation.
This is not so much because of the high level of personal borrowing many people currently have; but more due to the massive levels of government borrowing.
If interest rates on government debts were to go beyond 3 or 4% the nation would no longer be able to manage the repayments.
How to lower inflation without raising interest rates will be a major problem for the UK government (and many others) for some time to come.
I read something saying something similar - basically raising interest rates high enough to curb inflation will make gov debt unmanageable, so instead they're going to let inflation run higher than they would like (cost of living disaster!) but this helps reduce the real terms debt as its "inflated away".
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Interest rates may be rising, but probably not by much, and certainly not to the same extent as they have in other historical periods of high inflation.
This is not so much because of the high level of personal borrowing many people currently have; but more due to the massive levels of government borrowing.
If interest rates on government debts were to go beyond 3 or 4% the nation would no longer be able to manage the repayments.
How to lower inflation without raising interest rates will be a major problem for the UK government (and many others) for some time to come.
I read something saying something similar - basically raising interest rates high enough to curb inflation will make gov debt unmanageable, so instead they're going to let inflation run higher than they would like (cost of living disaster!) but this helps reduce the real terms debt as its "inflated away".
The fiscally incompetent drivel being spouted by most of the Tory leadership candidates is atrocious. I don't particularly like Sunak, but he's the only one who seems to be saying anything close to sane. If we end up with Truss, we're totally f****d.
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Yeah, similar. Actually met Sunak at work (had to give him a safety talk and some inane spiel about the wind turbine we ran) and he seemed to mainly just say soundbites and expect fawning responses. He didn't seem much of a listener!
I find his excessively privileged background pretty worrying (how can someone like that ever really understand the issues of the commoner) but he may be the least worst cunt of the bunch.
Or maybe Tom Tugendhat - anyone know much about him?
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I don't know anything about his policies, but Tugendhat is the only Tory MP Ive heard on the radio in the past few years where I've thought "you sound sensible" and not "you sounds like a tit/idiot"
Truss is presumably terrible given that Dorries - who is either a total fuckwit or reprehensible or both - is backing her.
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Choosing your favourite tory candidate is a bit like deciding which toilet you want to use at Glastonbury.
Tugendhat does seem the least bad to me.
At the point politics is at now, I would just take competence and some moral integrity, regardless of party, left/right leaning or policies.
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Choosing your favourite tory candidate is a bit like deciding which toilet you want to use at Glastonbury.
Tugendhat does seem the least bad to me.
At the point politics is at now, I would just take competence and some moral integrity, regardless of party, left/right leaning or policies.
Quite. I think Tugenhert seems like a reasonable person, as in some ways does Penny Mordant; but Sunak is more likely to win over which ever of the mentals ends up in the final two.
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Penny Mordaunt is currently polling as beating Sunak if those two went to the party membership. And by quite a way.
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I predict, on the basis of zero special insight, that it will soon be narrowed to Sunak/Truss, though perhaps not after today's first round of voting (e.g. there will still be more than two at the end of today). I no longer know what the process is but if the general membership has any role I would have thought that favours Truss.
More importantly, I find the terms of the debate - basically a competition to outbid each other on who is most low-tax/small state and most anti-"woke" - utterly depressing. It's like a monomaniacal obsession. They have no other vision of how to build a dynamic, forward looking society and economy.
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More importantly, I find the terms of the debate - basically a competition to outbid each other on who is most low-tax/small state and most anti-"woke" - utterly depressing. It's like a monomaniacal obsession. They have no other vision of how to build a dynamic, forward looking society and economy.
Agree with all that. On the other hand, were I in that race, I’d look at what has worked recently and quite reasonably I think, conclude that what works is candy floss promises of no tax, no state, huge prosperity. If the parliamentary Tory party and the membership and large chunks of the wider electorate seem to believe that Thatcherite fantasy hasn’t worked yet because we just haven’t haven’t had enough medicine, I’d give them promises of more, with a side helping of cultural anxiety to keep them sharp.
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More importantly, I find the terms of the debate - basically a competition to outbid each other on who is most low-tax/small state and most anti-"woke" - utterly depressing. It's like a monomaniacal obsession. They have no other vision of how to build a dynamic, forward looking society and economy.
Agree with all that. On the other hand, were I in that race, I’d look at what has worked recently and quite reasonably I think, conclude that what works is candy floss promises of no tax, no state, huge prosperity. If the parliamentary Tory party and the membership and large chunks of the wider electorate seem to believe that Thatcherite fantasy hasn’t worked yet because we just haven’t haven’t had enough medicine, I’d give them promises of more, with a side helping of cultural anxiety to keep them sharp.
Oh yeah, absolutely! Which is what is so depressing.
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I predict, on the basis of zero special insight, that it will soon be narrowed to Sunak/Truss, though perhaps not after today's first round of voting (e.g. there will still be more than two at the end of today). I no longer know what the process is but if the general membership has any role I would have thought that favours Truss.
More importantly, I find the terms of the debate - basically a competition to outbid each other on who is most low-tax/small state and most anti-"woke" - utterly depressing. It's like a monomaniacal obsession. They have no other vision of how to build a dynamic, forward looking society and economy.
I agree that this is the most likely outcome. The UK will be as bad under a Truss administration as it has been for the last 3 years. She is never across her brief properly and if she carries on saying what she has been saying recently, we'll have a nuclear war with Russia.
The panorama programme at 8 tonight sounds like it'll be worth watching, just heard a precis of it on the radio. In the final days Johnson was offering several different people the same promotion to try to stop them resigning and refusing to listen to any advice. The UK's pound shop January 6th investigation?
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I saw a tweet with all the polling runoffs for Sunak
https://twitter.com/MrHarryCole/status/1546832557395812352?s=20&t=J1000u5HSrX8aEoSTcjj5w
Not great tbh!
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Truss is presumably terrible given that Dorries - who is either a total fuckwit or reprehensible or both - is backing her.
Not just Dorries, but JRM, IDS and Mark Francois...... Quite the handful of c**ts.
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Sunak is more likely to win over which ever of the mentals ends up in the final two.
I think this is completely wrong based on all the polling?
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Truss is presumably terrible given that Dorries - who is either a total fuckwit or reprehensible or both - is backing her.
Not just Dorries, but JRM, IDS and Mark Francois...... Quite the handful of c**ts.
Don't forget Truss was an ardent Remainer as well!
As they were saying on the Rest Is Politics podcast yesterday, while the collection of weirdos and nutters is disconcerting, I guess you could say it's progress that there is at least a decent amount of diversity in the candidates in terms of them not all being middle aged white men.
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I can't imagine refugees sat on a flight to Rwanda are in any way consoled by the fact a woman of colour put them there.
Being abused by sociopaths of all genders and ethnicities is a certain kind of equality I guess.
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I can't imagine refugees sat on a flight to Rwanda are in any way consoled by the fact a woman of colour put them there.
Being abused by sociopaths of all genders and ethnicities is a certain kind of equality I guess.
I was thinking of a way of saying the same thing. It's a shame there are oppressors and bad agents from all colours, races, sexes and genders....
Give me a progressive compassionate middle class white man over any of those options...but better a woman etc...
Johnson was massively struggling on what I heard on PMQs today. How this "country" can keep voting Tory is just beyond me!
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Sunak is more likely to win over which ever of the mentals ends up in the final two.
I think this is completely wrong based on all the polling?
The problem with any polling at this stage in a contest is that how people say they will vote based on a hypothetical option is different to what they actually do. An opposition is usually ahead in the polls mid term, then people often actually go for the devil they know when an election is called. Of course this isn't guaranteed; but at this stage a sunak/mordaunt run off is the least worst outcome, in my opinion.
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Well, that's the same for all polling ever apart from the exit poll. I was just curious what you were based your "Sunak is more likely" comment on or is that just opinion? Cause the polls I've seen are not even close, he'll make the final two but if the other is Mordaunt he will probably lose. Against truss it's less clear cut.
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Well, that's the same for all polling ever apart from the exit poll. I was just curious what you were based your "Sunak is more likely" comment on or is that just opinion? Cause the polls I've seen are not even close, he'll make the final two but if the other is Mordaunt he will probably lose. Against truss it's less clear cut.
I'm doubtful that this picture will persist. Badenoch used to work at the Spectator so has a lot of powerful backers, who would be likely to go for Truss if she's eliminated and are already trying to portray Mordaunt as a woke pansy. The same lot helped to install Johnson to fulfil their Brexit dreams, it beggars belief that they think that their judgment is going to result in a better bet this time. My point was that when faced with the choice of 2 Rishi Sunak is likely to perform better but not necessarily by enough for him. I think Mordaunt would be considerably better than Truss as a PM, though frankly among the population Sunak looks like the most likely to beat Labour in the next election, the others are a less known quantity.
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Truss is presumably terrible given that Dorries - who is either a total fuckwit or reprehensible or both - is backing her.
Not just Dorries, but JRM, IDS and Mark Francois...... Quite the handful of c**ts.
Don't forget Truss was an ardent Remainer as well!
As they were saying on the Rest Is Politics podcast yesterday, while the collection of weirdos and nutters is disconcerting, I guess you could say it's progress that there is at least a decent amount of diversity in the candidates in terms of them not all being middle aged white men.
In the same sense in which Thatcher being PM was a great win for feminism, yes. Speaking as a feminist who grew up under the Thatcher regime ...
(And in a certain sense it was a win in that it should have shattered forever any idea that women would be morally superior, more caring more nurturing, blah blah blah, as leaders. Unfortunately it turns out that women are full human beings and moral agents and thus just as capable of being truly fucking evil as anyone else.)
There's also this weird thing whereby you can rocket up the ranks of the Conservative party by being a BAME person who's willing to declare loudly that RACISM DOESN'T EXIST, BRITAIN HAS NEVER DONE ANYTHING WRONG, CHILDREN SHOULD BE TAUGHT ABOUT THE POSITIVE SIDE OF THE SLAVE TRADE AND WE SHOULD TRAFFICK REFUGEES TO RWANDA. They loooooove that. Checkmate lefties you can't say it's racist if it's Priti Patel saying it!!!
And their own racism and misogyny gets reserved for the other side (in public at least).
They're not going round accusing Liz Truss of "opening her legs" in Parliament (as one of their delightful new ministers said about Angela Rayner). Kemi Badenoch would have been torn to shreds for her stupidity and total lack of professionalism if she was sitting where Diane Abbott is.
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There's also this weird thing whereby you can rocket up the ranks of the Conservative party by being a BAME person who's willing to declare loudly that RACISM DOESN'T EXIST, BRITAIN HAS NEVER DONE ANYTHING WRONG, CHILDREN SHOULD BE TAUGHT ABOUT THE POSITIVE SIDE OF THE SLAVE TRADE AND WE SHOULD TRAFFICK REFUGEES TO RWANDA. They loooooove that. Checkmate lefties you can't say it's racist if it's Priti Patel saying it!!!
And their own racism and misogyny gets reserved for the other side (in public at least).
Absolutely - I just meant that the "optics" weren't what you'd expect from the Tories.
I wonder to what extent they go into this knowing that they are a "useful idiot" for the reasons above.
So far, hard to know who the least worst option is from an awful bunch. Tugendhat and Mourdant are being painted an more centrist "from the left of the party" (whatever the hell that means), but who knows what moral sacrifices they would have to make to the ERG wonks to stay in power.
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Given the appalling views on colonialism, refugees, race relations, handling poverty, education etc.. that this lot hold. It's hardly a step towards equality. If anything it proves that if you want to reach the 'top' in the Conservative party you have to become or be a complete.......... anyway. Their ascent to power will do nothing for the average BME person in this country. In most cases it will make life worse.
The clip of a young Sunac talking about his friendships with 'upper class, middle class and working class, errrr I mean not working class' sums it up for me.
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Tugendhat and Mourdant are being painted an more centrist "from the left of the party" (whatever the hell that means), but who knows what moral sacrifices they would have to make to the ERG wonks to stay in power.
Both support/have pledged to continue with the Rwanda plan.
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Great fun :)
https://youtu.be/AY9s9n6ZR_A
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Can't find her way out of the room without help :lol: Bodes well. She'll have some intelligent advisors behind her though won't she. ;)
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Talking of advisory, Truss is the one who disbanded the government LGBT advisory panel -- after half of them had resigned in protest anyway -- because they kept having opinions she didn't like.
(Literally, she explained that it was because there was a "fundamental difference of opinion" over trans rights.)
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Tugendhat and Mourdant are being painted an more centrist "from the left of the party" (whatever the hell that means), but who knows what moral sacrifices they would have to make to the ERG wonks to stay in power.
Both support/have pledged to continue with the Rwanda plan.
I guess that's my point - it's a complete irrelevance what they say or do in this process, as when they get into the messy business of trying to (re)unite a fundamentally broken party, and actually govern, the whole machine of the right-ist factions and their media machine will force them in that direction anyway.
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Tugendhat and Mourdant are being painted an more centrist "from the left of the party" (whatever the hell that means), but who knows what moral sacrifices they would have to make to the ERG wonks to stay in power.
Both support/have pledged to continue with the Rwanda plan.
I guess that's my point - it's a complete irrelevance what they say or do in this process, as when they get into the messy business of trying to (re)unite a fundamentally broken party, and actually govern, the whole machine of the right-ist factions and their media machine will force them in that direction anyway.
I don't think that is necessarily the case. They all have to say these things in a leadership election, but I think that the Rwanda policy will be quietly dropped at some point unless the eventual winner keeps Priti Patel in her role. It's just such a ridiculous idea, costs a huge amount and won't achieve anything.
I feel that it's a real mistake to dismiss the Conservatives as all somehow evil, they are clearly not, most of us just don't agree with most of them. They have in the past achieved some good things in office, just not recently given that Johnson did sweet FA for 3 years.
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I've quite a few tory friends who are good people but if there is a hell plenty of Boris's cabinet will be heading there.
Back on Liz, her launch event was apparently even funnier than the YouTube clip indicates.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/jul/14/lost-to-spam-truss-had-only-one-thing-to-offer-it-was-still-the-convict
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It now looks probable that the Brexit hard right ultras in the party and at places like the spectator will install Truss to fight their pathetic culture war and screw up the Northern Ireland situation completely. She's basically the worst of Johnson and May combined: incompetent and robotic , I think she'd be a disaster but the elderly conservative voting population will probably love her pound shop Thatcher tribute act, and she'll probably win in the end. It's hugely depressing but I reckon it looks likely now.
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It now looks probable that the Brexit hard right ultras in the party and at places like the spectator will install Truss to fight their pathetic culture war and screw up the Northern Ireland situation completely. She's basically the worst of Johnson and May combined: incompetent and robotic , I think she'd be a disaster but the elderly conservative voting population will probably love her pound shop Thatcher tribute act, and she'll probably win in the end. It's hugely depressing but I reckon it looks likely now.
You think there’s going to be a big swing behind her after the weekend? She still seems to be quite far behind the front two in polling
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It now looks probable that the Brexit hard right ultras in the party and at places like the spectator will install Truss to fight their pathetic culture war and screw up the Northern Ireland situation completely. She's basically the worst of Johnson and May combined: incompetent and robotic , I think she'd be a disaster but the elderly conservative voting population will probably love her pound shop Thatcher tribute act, and she'll probably win in the end. It's hugely depressing but I reckon it looks likely now.
You think there’s going to be a big swing behind her after the weekend? She still seems to be quite far behind the front two in polling
Yup. The right wing media are hugely biased towards Truss, and against Mordaunt or Sunak, who they see as too soft and woke (their pejoratives not mine). These people will always win in the Tory party, they did for most of their previous leaders when they disappointed their dreams of the UK becoming a world beating imperial nation again. The likes of Charles Moore, Andrew Neil and the Johnson loyalists will get their way, I predict. The sole plus point is that if Labour sort themselves out a bit, and continue to look reasonably credible to middle England, Truss might be the most beatable in the next election.
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I was a bit gutted when Johnson resigned. I'd hoped he might cling on longer and sink deeper into corruption and scandal in ever more desperate attempts to stay in power, further damaging his and his party's reputation. Liz Truss gives me hope for the future of the Conservatives on the opposition benches.
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This piece is a couple of days old now, but I think pretty much on the money. The author is well connected in the Conservative party and about as level headed as Spectator columnists get (which might be damning with faint praise). https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/jul/13/tory-mps-focused-who-they-do-not-want-leader-rishi-sunak-liz-truss?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other
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I'm pleased to see Katy as a regular in the Guardian team.
Yes she misses the electoral maths that keeps Sunak out of the last two. Tugendhat etc al might not want him there but how would they achieve it?
I'm not going to cry if the tories shoot themselves in the foot. The deranged and incredibly wooden Truss would be an utter disaster as tory leader and gift the election to the opposition. Sunak would be more electable as a PM but much less likely to past the last hurdle of the lunatic fringe that is the tory membership (against Truss or Mordaunt). Even if he does win the leadership contest he is still deeply personaly and collectively wounded: the sleeze is dead, long live the sleeze, by his own actions and his Boris cabinet membership.
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The same lot helped to install Johnson to fulfil their Brexit dreams, it beggars belief that they think that their judgment is going to result in a better bet this time.
Arguably their judgement resulted in an ideal candidate last time, and Truss could be exactly what they need to keep pushing the policies Johnson was keen on, without probably a bit less of the blatant lying. After all, their Brexit dreams were fairly well fulfilled.
Let's not forget that while Johnson lost the support of many MPs, he still had plenty on board. Not enough to govern, but enough to indicate that the next replacement need not be the Anti-Boris, just a bit of a different look.
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Their ascent to power will do nothing for the average BME person in this country. In most cases it will make life worse.
Although I get where this statement is coming from, I don’t agree with it. Britain’s ethnic minorities are hugely varied and I have met plenty of Asian Tories who love strong leaders, making money and looking out for No 1 (and probably No 1’s extended family). I mean, this is basically Harrow and NW London! Those people won’t see themselves as having much in common with an Afro-Careibean family in Birmingham and don’t get me started on anti-Muslim views amongst non-Muslim British Asians.
So whilst maybe, on average, the Tories are bad news for black and Asian Brits, lots of high achieving and well-off people from those communities don’t see themselves as average (and their academic and professional achievements back this up). This is a point that many white left-wingers really need to bear in mind.
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I did quantify with average so not really sure what you're getting at here SK.
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What I’m getting at is that white left wingers are perhaps a touch too sanguine about ethnic voters and that viewing them as a block is a tendency we should guard against.
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What I’m getting at is that white left wingers are perhaps a touch too sanguine about ethnic voters and that viewing them as a block is a tendency we should guard against.
That's not what I did though is it?
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Well, whatever. My point still stands, take a look at US Democrats for the end point of this approach which I fear is also quite common amongst the U.K. left too.
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Well, whatever. My point still stands, take a look at US Democrats for the end point of this approach which I fear is also quite common amongst the U.K. left too.
Are we basing arguments on fears or facts then SK?
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There is a well-noted drift away from voting Labour amongst particular ethnic groups in the U.K. and I’m fairly convinced that a lot of left wingers overestimate the homogeneity that lies behind the phrase “BME voters”. Refusal to consider this has already been a vulnerability for Labour and will probably be so again.
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'Well noted' ,'I'm fairly convinced'... Not very scientific.
I'm fairly convinced it has something to do with other things but I'd want to back up what I've said with some information first. Any studies or research to back up what your saying SK?
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The same lot helped to install Johnson to fulfil their Brexit dreams, it beggars belief that they think that their judgment is going to result in a better bet this time.
Arguably their judgement resulted in an ideal candidate last time, and Truss could be exactly what they need to keep pushing the policies Johnson was keen on, without probably a bit less of the blatant lying. After all, their Brexit dreams were fairly well fulfilled.
Let's not forget that while Johnson lost the support of many MPs, he still had plenty on board. Not enough to govern, but enough to indicate that the next replacement need not be the Anti-Boris, just a bit of a different look.
Yes I totally agree with you.
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Here's a fact about African and Caribbean communities from when the 'left' were in charge (partially).
A study by the Runnymede Trust earlier this year showed a huge swing towards Labour from African and Caribbean communities at the 2017 general election, after decades of decline in successive elections. It showed African support running at 82 percent and Caribbean support at 87 percent.
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'Well noted' ,'I'm fairly convinced'... Not very scientific.
I'm fairly convinced it has something to do with other things but I'd want to back up what I've said with some information first. Any studies or research to back up what your saying SK?
There must be, especially in the US, it's widely acknowledged phenomenon that many Hispanic voters go Republican in the states due to various issues, not least a residual mistrust of anything left wing if they have emigrated from S American countries which have been screwed up by a warped version of Communism.
The reasons in the UK are very different but the outcome the same. BtB, I agree with your general point that on average Conservative government is bad for BAME communities, it's just that the term covers too wide and varied a population for that to be that useful as different communities will have very different priorities, but I'm sure you know that better than I.
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By left I mean the actual left of centre, not what the far left calls left, which basically means themselves. I’m talking about the whole of the Labour movement not just the hard left.
Here’s some survey results from the Carnegie Endowment on British Indian attitudes, which highlights changes in voting amongst British Hindus:
“The data show that while a plurality of British Indians self-identifies with the liberal end of the political spectrum and demonstrates a preference for the opposition Labour Party over the incumbent Conservative Party, their support for Labour appears to have eroded in recent years.”
https://carnegieendowment.org/2021/11/18/britain-s-new-swing-voters-survey-of-british-indian-attitudes-pub-85784
I regard ethnic minority voters as absolutely a potential growth area for the Conservatives and rue the simplistic association of Conservatism with racism and colonialism. White people banging on about colonialism to people whose grandparents were caught up in Partition seems somewhat tone deaf.
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Thanks SK a more constructive response and I can see a bit more of where your thinking is coming from. I have had a quick skim of the study/report, interesting to note a steady decline in British Indians voting intention for Labour from 2015 to last year (no Starmer up tick), a decline in voting intention for Conservative and a steady increase in voting intention for 'others'. Where are the 'others' going would be a good question...Lib Dems? Green? SNP? would be interesting to know.
Knowing the complexities of different communities, their historical relationships with the British State and a less generalised and less assumption based approach to BAME politics is I guess what you're talking about. I am with you here if that's the case.
Of course we have some heavily disenfranchised communities which the left (your broad definition applies here) would tend to focus on. My assumption is that you have an interest in how to engage and win votes from other perhaps less disenfranchised communities that don't associate themselves with this stereotype and are put off by it?
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He is nothing if not consistent:
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/jul/16/johnson-skips-emergency-cobra-meeting-as-experts-warn-thousands-may-die-in-uk-heatwave
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He is nothing if not consistent:
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/jul/16/johnson-skips-emergency-cobra-meeting-as-experts-warn-thousands-may-die-in-uk-heatwave
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Taking the piss.
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Anyway Dominic Raab thinks we should be "resilient enough" to "enjoy" the impending heatwave:
https://www.independent.co.uk/climate-change/weather-today-heatwave-met-office-uk-live-b2124974.html
Thanks, Dom, I'm sure elderly and medically fragile people stuck in top-floor flats will really be embracing that message!
For context, I have friends in Australia and the US who have looked at the predicted UK temps for Monday and Tuesday and gone OH FUCK THAT'S NOT GOOD. I have a friend who grew up in Ahmednagar who's gone OH FUCK THAT'S NOT GOOD. This is legitimately dangerous stuff in a country where most of us don't have air-conditioning at home and our houses are built to keep heat in not out.
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Anyway Dominic Raab thinks we should be "resilient enough" to "enjoy" the impending heatwave:
As long as the sea isn't closed eh. Another one to chalk up on his personal list of foolish gaffes.
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The Times has an eye popping statistic this morning; 48% of Tory members age65+ think it was a mistake to remove Johnson...
With logic like that, my money is on Truss, as the Johnson team will undermine the other candidates, hoping that she's most likely to give Johnson a seat in the Lords in a year or two, where he can hang out with all his dodgy Russian mates, who hes already put in there.
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The polling always indicated Mordaunt or Truss would beat Sunak in the members' stage of the election. The party membership is even more toxic on average than the PCP (which is at it's worse ever). The Fail has been traducing Mordaunt all week... today we have outright dogwhistle stuff that she disobeyed Boris"s boycott and spoke to the leader of the Muslim Council of GB (no islamophobia in tory ranks.. oh no).
On Truss I spotted this today (her dishonestly talking down her relatively successful school) which is worth posting for posterity
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/jul/18/liz-truss-roundhay-school-foreign-secretary-education
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Is it wrong to hope that Truss gets in on the grounds that she will look almost as incompetent as Johnson and present fair odds of a Tory GE defeat?
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Yes, because you'd be kidding yourself as a hedge against cognitive dissonance.
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Local politics... my tory Police Commissioner, who campaigned on being tough on speeding is now banned and fined after multiple 30mph speed limit breaches, two near schools. She apologies and looks forward to continuing in her role.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/jul/18/tory-police-boss-banned-driving-breaking-speed-limit-five-times-caroline-henry
What the hell happened to resignations?
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Local politics... my tory Police Commissioner, who campaigned on being tough on speeding is now banned and fined after multiple 30mph speed limit breaches, two near schools. She apologies and looks forward to continuing in her role.
Multiple breaches including 35mph in a 30 limit. Gosh, what a sinner.
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We clearly have very different views on the standards a Police and Crime Commissioner (especially one who was campaigning on speeding in 30 zones at the time) should be held to.
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Multiple breaches including 35mph in a 30 limit. Gosh, what a sinner.
Chance of killing a child increases from 1/2 to 9/10 between 30 and 40 mph.
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We clearly have very different views on the standards a Police and Crime Commissioner (especially one who was campaigning on speeding in 30 zones at the time) should be held to.
+1. There's absolutely no excuse; it's 30 for a reason.
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Local politics... my tory Police Commissioner, who campaigned on being tough on speeding is now banned and fined after multiple 30mph speed limit breaches, two near schools. She apologies and looks forward to continuing in her role.
Multiple breaches including 35mph in a 30 limit. Gosh, what a sinner.
I’d say these are serious offences. 30 limit is put in place to protect pedestrians.
Given the tolerance of the speed measurement for accuracy to ensure a conviction, you can be confident she was clocked at around and over 40mph in a 30mph limit several times.
30mph = 20% chance of killing a pedestrian vs 40 mph = 90% chance of fatality.
The reason is that bumpers hit pedestrians on their legs, below their centre of gravity. The energy at 30mph pushes a pedestrian backwards, whereas at 40mph it is sufficient to cause a rotation spinning the pedestrian up into the air with much more serious injuries as a result.
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I’d say these are serious offences. 30 limit is put in place to protect pedestrians.
Given the tolerance of the speed measurement for accuracy to ensure a conviction, you can be confident she was clocked at around and over 40mph in a 30mph limit several times.
I expect the PCC, police officers and judges to be just like us and to commit similar offences. And, similar to a police officer or judge, I don't think that a person responsible for the democratic control of the police to have to stand down for this or many other offences.
And, no, I doubt that the equipment to measure speed is as inaccurate as you suggest or it would be subject to challenge in court.
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The lowest speed she was clocked at was 35mph. So her speedo would have said about 38mph. Not the sort of thing that happens through a momentary lapse. Then she does it at higher speeds 3 other times over a long period. She clearly doesn't give a shit about the speed limits, which is a pretty shit position for a commissioner. Of course she should go.
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The lowest speed she was clocked at was 35mph. So her speedo would have said about 38mph. Not the sort of thing that happens through a momentary lapse. Then she does it at higher speeds 3 other times over a long period. She clearly doesn't give a shit about the speed limits, which is a pretty shit position for a commissioner. Of course she should go.
Especially since she ran on specifically lowering speeding.
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I expect the PCC, police officers and judges to be just like us and to commit similar offences. And, similar to a police officer or judge, I don't think that a person responsible for the democratic control of the police to have to stand down for this or many other offences.
And, no, I doubt that the equipment to measure speed is as inaccurate as you suggest or it would be subject to challenge in court.
I don’t suggest the equipment is inaccurate, you misunderstand the point about tolerances.
Nor did I comment on her career. I simply want people who are a danger to the community off the road. And make no mistake, the multiple offences in a short space of time are those for which she has been successfully prosecuted. There will be others.
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Dawes, Moon, Moffatt = celebrated in part for burning around in their hot hatches and waxing lyrical bullshit about ‘momentary grip’.
Stupid tory crime commissioner caught doing 35 in a 30 and being hypocritical = must resign and hang head in shame.
Such is life in the cesspit of politics.
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Dawes, Moon, Moffatt = celebrated in part for burning around in their hot hatches and waxing lyrical bullshit about ‘momentary grip’.
Stupid tory crime commissioner caught doing 35 in a 30 and being hypocritical = must resign and hang head in shame.
Such is life in the cesspit of politics.
About timing as much as politics I guess. Some 30something dude with a soul patch, wrap arounds and No Fear boasting about being able to get to Burbage in 5 minutes by speeding along Eccy Road might not go down so well today. Likewise our PCC here was probably only a brown envelope away from any problems in the ‘90s.
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"I expect the PCC, police officers and judges to be just like us and to commit similar offences" - how many people you know have been caught speeding 5 times in 3 months or whatever it was?!
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Dawes, Moon, Moffatt = celebrated in part for burning around in their hot hatches and waxing lyrical bullshit about ‘momentary grip’.
Stupid tory crime commissioner caught doing 35 in a 30 and being hypocritical = must resign and hang head in shame.
Such is life in the cesspit of politics.
I think you're under selling the hypocrisy part. If you're going to campaign on how important 30mph speed limits are then what does it say if you then go and flagrantly disregard those limits yourself? Where's the strength of her conviction? And given she clearly doesn't care about it as much as she professes too why should anyone else? If you make the law you fucking well need to stick to it.
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Or you know, be held to account by the law. Which she was. If anything she’s living proof that speeding in 30’s will likely get you motoring convictions. The system works. It’s a kind of logical fallacy to believe someone who ‘makes the law’ must ‘fucking well stick to it’ to be an effective lawmaker. She’s a bit of an idiot in her driving habits. On the other hand she might be a very good (or a really terrible) crime commissioner. The two things can be separated.
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If you make the law you fucking well need to stick to it.
I wonder if any incidences of law breaking by the people who have made them have recently been widely publicised? Where could the commissioner in question have possibly got the idea from?
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Or you know, be held to account by the law. Which she was. If anything she’s living proof that speeding in 30’s will likely get you motoring convictions. The system works. It’s a kind of logical fallacy to believe someone who ‘makes the law’ must ‘fucking well stick to it’ to be an effective lawmaker. She’s a bit of an idiot in her driving habits. On the other hand she might be a very good (or a really terrible) crime commissioner. The two things can be separated.
I've never heard of anyone in our area getting so many fines in village 30 zones in such a short period, let alone someone in her position. Nearly everyone close to losing their licence is careful (and incentivised by extra insurance costs). She hasn't been fined just for speeding, she has been fined for speeding repeatedly where there are cameras. She is completely taking the piss in areas where a speeding collision with a pedestrian significantly increases the chances of serious injury or fatality. Village cameras are only put up where there have been previous such incidents.
She hasn't been doing well as crime commissioner, and never will be able to, as she constantly faces questions about (and distrust due to) her own crimes (let alone the distractions of the court case). She is a lame duck clinging to the position.
As for should someone who broke the law like she did, with the timing of her conviction, be able to undertake her role, I think not.... even though it is legal currently (although being imprisoned prevents you standing as does a conviction under representation of the peoples act... and numerous conflicts of interest of a lesser concern). I think it's about time the Nolan principles in public life are included as clear guidance in those rules.
https://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/sites/default/files/2021-02/PCC%20Part%201%20-%20Can%20you%20stand%20for%20election.pdf
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/the-7-principles-of-public-life/the-7-principles-of-public-life--2
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She’s a bit of an idiot in her driving habits. On the other hand she might be a very good (or a really terrible) crime commissioner. The two things can be separated.
The core of it for me is that I don't believe she can be an effective PCC because I don't believe what she says. As an elected official I think you need the trust of the people who elected you, and hypocrisy seems a quick way to lose that trust.
I think perhaps we are talking at cross purposes a bit, as I do think it's very possible for an elected official to have broken the law and still be good at their job, for example I wouldn't give a shit if my MP smoked a spliff the other day if they're otherwise doing a good job.
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... I do think it's very possible for an elected official to have broken the law and still be good at their job, for example I wouldn't give a shit if my MP smoked a spliff the other day if they're otherwise doing a good job.
But only because it's a law that I'm guessing you disagree with anyway? What if they went fox hunting?
On another subject: the next PM that we'll have to put up with, if Tugenherts 31 votes last night 6 go to Sunak, and the reminder to Badenoch, theoretically, Truss will be out later today. Wishful thinking, obviously, but possible.
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But only because it's a law that I'm guessing you disagree with anyway? What if they went fox hunting?
Personally I find fox hunting distasteful so my opinion would be based on that, rather then the legality of it. However if they'd campaigned on anti-drugs laws/banning fox hunting I think that's a very different matter.
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On another subject: the next PM that we'll have to put up with, if Tugenherts 31 votes last night 6 go to Sunak, and the reminder to Badenoch, theoretically, Truss will be out later today. Wishful thinking, obviously, but possible.
I think that's more than wishful thinking.
Tugendhat and Badenoch are from opposite sides of the party. Other than some extreme tactical voting, there is no chance of any votes transferring from Tugendhat to Badenoch.
I expect Tugendhat's votes will get split between Mordaunt and Sunak.
Badenoch next one to fall, with almost all of her support transferring to Truss. Which I think means we'll see Sunak vs Truss in the final two. :sick:
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... I do think it's very possible for an elected official to have broken the law and still be good at their job, for example I wouldn't give a shit if my MP smoked a spliff the other day if they're otherwise doing a good job.
On another subject: the next PM that we'll have to put up with, if Tugenherts 31 votes last night 6 go to Sunak, and the reminder to Badenoch, theoretically, Truss will be out later today. Wishful thinking, obviously, but possible.
I can't see that happening... Tugendhat's support was from MPs looking to return to older conservative values. Badenoch typifies the new tory populist aggression. I'd expect Tugendhat's support to go to Sunak or Mordaunt. In the next round of votes Badenoch looks likely to lose and I think that will benefit Truss. In any case we will see soon enough... these really are the days of very hot air.
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Maybe get more popcorn out for the consequences of the latest government infighting.....
The tory MP and Boris critic Tobias Elwood has just lost the tory whip after failing to return on time from an overseas trip, for the rather pointless no confidence vote (in times of EU travel chaos). He was in Moldova supporting their cause, given the severe threat to the country from Russia.
Incidentally he was the 'one vote less' that Mordaunt got yesterday, that is being trumpeted by the Fail as a significant decline in support for her.
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News is coming thick and fast today. Gina Millar on hidden threats in the NI protocol bill:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/jul/19/tories-democracy-northern-ireland-protocol-bill-powers
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Incidentally he was the 'one vote less' that Mordaunt got yesterday, that is being trumpeted by the Fail as a significant decline in support for her.
Most of the Daily Mails readers are in care homes so that's why they can write whatever they like, and it'll be believed as they have no other connection to the outside world. Today their headline was snowflake Britain, and how they thought it wasn't that hot really.
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Advantage Truss?
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Advantage Truss?
Obviously, the inevitable result is that the UK ends up with this f__wit Thatcher tribute act in charge. After 3 years of the fourth rate Churchill tribute act has just ended.
The sole benefit might be that she's more likely to lose an election than Sunak.
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Advantage Truss?
The sole benefit might be that she's more likely to lose an election than Sunak.
Apart from Rio Ferdinand she's 110% the funniest character on Dead Ringers, though that's little consolation for the next 2 years.
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The Daily Mail :sick: is backing Truss, my money is on her. The Mail has huge influence over the 100k or so members that will be voting for the last 2, they will vote for Truss if she makes the last 2. Stop the bus, I want to get off! :'(
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The Daily Mail :sick: is backing Truss, my money is on her. The Mail has huge influence over the 100k or so members that will be voting for the last 2, they will vote for Truss if she makes the last 2. Stop the bus, I want to get off! :'(
I entirely agree with you. If the home office are still offering up free flights to Rwanda I might volunteer to go and take my chances there. I'm not remotely enthusiastic about any of the potential PM candidates but she's the worst by some margin.
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I'm not remotely enthusiastic about any of the potential PM candidates but she's the worst by some margin.
It's horrifying.. She even dresses herself up in Thatcher copy outfits FFS!
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Liz Truss as PM would be a uniquely depressing moment yes
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Liz Truss as PM would be a uniquely depressing moment yes
On the plus side, I think it would maximize the odds of the Tories losing the next election.
In the meantime, Penny Mordaunt thinks what the country really needs is a fucking theme song:
https://twitter.com/spectator/status/1549681133104861185
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Will this do?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jHPOzQzk9Qo
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Glad we can move on from the Johnson era and have a start fresh with... (checks notes) one of his most senior ministers.
:slap:
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Sunak or Truss. It's like being asked if you want to be stabbed or beaten to death.
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I'm not remotely enthusiastic about any of the potential PM candidates but she's the worst by some margin.
It's horrifying.. She even dresses herself up in Thatcher copy outfits FFS!
From an egotistical liar, to an Instagram obsessed image slave with an equally thin grasp on any actual policy, and, worryingly, Truss thinks we're going to defeat Putin and push Russian forces out of Crimea. It's certainly optimistic, but betrays a really special lack of understanding of the situation, unless all the actual experts on it are wrong.
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Sunak or Truss. It's like being asked if you want to be stabbed or beaten to death.
I'd go with Sunak every time, I'm not sure he's any good, but he's not mad.
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Sunak or Truss. It's like being asked if you want to be stabbed or beaten to death.
I'd go with Sunak every time, I'm not sure he's any good, but he's not mad.
Sunak is the lesser of two horrific evils. Thank fcuk Penny Mordor isn't in the final two. Truss may well be thicker than pig shit, but Mordor is an ERG ultrabrexittier nutcase.
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I'm not remotely enthusiastic about any of the potential PM candidates but she's the worst by some margin.
It's horrifying.. She even dresses herself up in Thatcher copy outfits FFS!
From an egotistical liar, to an Instagram obsessed image slave with an equally thin grasp on any actual policy, and, worryingly, Truss thinks we're going to defeat Putin and push Russian forces out of Crimea. It's certainly optimistic, but betrays a really special lack of understanding of the situation, unless all the actual experts on it are wrong.
It's less than 3 years since Truss said foreign policy was boring and that she couldn't understand why anyone would want to work in the Foreign Office.
If only cabinet positions were chosen based on expertise, knowledge and effectiveness, rather than slavish loyalty to, and a perceived low threat to, an egotistical liar.
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I'm not remotely enthusiastic about any of the potential PM candidates but she's the worst by some margin.
It's horrifying.. She even dresses herself up in Thatcher copy outfits FFS!
From an egotistical liar, to an Instagram obsessed image slave with an equally thin grasp on any actual policy, and, worryingly, Truss thinks we're going to defeat Putin and push Russian forces out of Crimea. It's certainly optimistic, but betrays a really special lack of understanding of the situation, unless all the actual experts on it are wrong.
It's less than 3 years since Truss said foreign policy was boring and that she couldn't understand why anyone would want to work in the Foreign Office.
If only cabinet positions were chosen based on expertise, knowledge and effectiveness, rather than slavish loyalty to, and a perceived low threat to, an egotistical liar.
Liz Truss argues passionately for remaining in the EU:
https://twitter.com/trussliz/status/701028930183110656?s=20&t=iTxF6AscM5LrghUsINs9sg
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Out of the mouths of babes
https://youtu.be/ngr_k3SwOXg
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Liz Truss would (will?) be an appallingly bad PM, but let's face it the home counties 75 year old golf club members who are also members of the Conservative party probably think she'd be their dream bit of totty and they'll just vote for her.
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something something gammons, something something pork markets
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I notice that Truss has been saying today how disgraceful the delays at Dover are; either not realising or refusing to accept that the glorious Brexit that she's now such an enthusiast of might have the odd downside?
Incidentally, this politico article is pretty amusing https://www.politico.eu/article/11-times-uk-tory-leadership-race-nuts-rishi-sunak-liz-truss/
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Simon Calder this am on Dover delays...they were inevitable and stuff all to do with the French
https://twitter.com/i/status/1550762787982528512
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Simon Calder this am on Dover delays...they were inevitable and stuff all to do with the French
https://twitter.com/i/status/1550762787982528512
Come again?
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The British government rejected a £33m proposal to double passport booths at Dover in 2020 (https://www.thelondoneconomic.com/politics/the-british-government-rejected-a-33m-proposal-to-double-passport-booths-at-dover-in-2020-330342/)
The foreign secretary called on France to act over “entirely avoidable” delays at the border, saying: “We need action from France to build up capacity at the border to limit any further disruption for British tourists and to ensure this appalling situation is avoided in future.”
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The entire establishment these days seems to be built on absolving oneself of any responsibility and putting that on the head of something else. Border issues? France. Energy prices? Ofgen. Cost of living? Bank of England. Rail disruption? Up to Network Rail.
It's government by excuses. They have no idea and no plan. There's nothing to it.
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The entire establishment these days seems to be built on absolving oneself of any responsibility and putting that on the head of something else. Border issues? France. Energy prices? Ofgen. Cost of living? Bank of England. Rail disruption? Up to Network Rail.
It's government by excuses. They have no idea and no plan. There's nothing to it.
Too true. There is a widespread reliance on arms length agencies to do things that the government ought to just be doing itself. They expect to make decisions and not take any flak if it goes wrong. You missed massive waiting lists blame the head of the NHS, not the health secretary; and if all else fails blame COVID, or Russia anyone but the f___ing incompetent government, and definitely not Brexit because there's no chance that's been a total disaster is there?
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The delays at Dover are obviously bad for France. Tourism is a principal export and a mayor contribution to the balance of payment (Tourism, art and luxury goods is basically what France does for a living). In French media, the local administration is blaming an unforeseen technical incident in the tunnel.
https://www.francetvinfo.fr/monde/royaume-uni/embouteillages-a-la-frontiere-le-port-britannique-de-douvres-accuse-la-france-de-ruiner-les-vacances_5272057.html
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The entire establishment these days seems to be built on absolving oneself of any responsibility and putting that on the head of something else. Border issues? France. Energy prices? Ofgen. Cost of living? Bank of England. Rail disruption? Up to Network Rail.
It's government by excuses. They have no idea and no plan. There's nothing to it.
Too true. There is a widespread reliance on arms length agencies to do things that the government ought to just be doing itself. They expect to make decisions and not take any flak if it goes wrong. You missed massive waiting lists blame the head of the NHS, not the health secretary; and if all else fails blame COVID, or Russia anyone but the f___ing incompetent government, and definitely not Brexit because there's no chance that's been a total disaster is there?
And then on the flip side, if something goes well (vaccines) then yes that was all us, and we'll take credit for it over and over again
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The delays at Dover are obviously bad for France. Tourism is a principal export and a mayor contribution to the balance of payment (Tourism, art and luxury goods is basically what France does for a living). In French media, the local administration is blaming an unforeseen technical incident in the tunnel.
https://www.francetvinfo.fr/monde/royaume-uni/embouteillages-a-la-frontiere-le-port-britannique-de-douvres-accuse-la-france-de-ruiner-les-vacances_5272057.html
I'm no less pissed off that we've left the EU than I was six years ago, it's regressive, it's crippled our currency, is ruining UK agriculture and fishing, makes holidays more expensive and more hassle, decreases employment opportunities... All of which we're all supposed to just accept.
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Liz Truss appears to be arguing that she had some sort of deprived childhood in the ghetto when she went to school in Roundhay. Jonny Mercer is quite right that its just embarrassing, from both candidates but especially Truss.
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Unlikely.
Mean house price Roundhay: £332,385. https://www.rightmove.co.uk/house-prices/roundhay.html
Mean house price Leeds: £251,878. https://www.rightmove.co.uk/house-prices/leeds.html
Mean house price UK: £283,000 https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/inflationandpriceindices/bulletins/housepriceindex/may2022
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Liz Truss appears to be arguing that she had some sort of deprived childhood in the ghetto when she went to school in Roundhay. Jonny Mercer is quite right that its just embarrassing, from both candidates but especially Truss.
Having a farther who was a maths professor at Leeds uni and a mother who was a nurse. They would hardly be on the breadline.
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To be fair the difference between her and someone on the breadline would become vanishingly small if your yardstick is Sunak. Being a senior conservative is a recipe for being woefully out of touch.
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Being a senior conservative is a recipe for being woefully out of touch.
Not just senior conservatives, plenty of the well off (and often conservative voters) are amazingly unaware of where they fit in compared to the wider population. Witness this guy from the 2019 election arguing that the labour party were lying when they said that an 80k salary puts you in the top 5% of earners.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/question-time-video-man-top-earners-tax-percent-80000-explained-a9213351.html
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Illustrative anecdote:
We had a family gathering at the weekend and met up with a cousin and his family who we rarely see. He is in a relatively low paid job (my assumption and only relative to the earnings band of myself and my peers; he does engine assembly on a production line with no prior experience of mechanics) and his wife is unemployed since she was made redundant from being a childcare worker prior to having her first baby.
They've got two kids, the eldest of whom is 2 years and 10 months old and who speaks very little (for those without kids, you'd expect a nearly-three year old to never shut up). They're seeing a speech therapist but it was mooted (after they'd left) that the child would benefit from time in nursery around other children his own age. When I pointed out that there was no way they would be able to afford nursery, and that even part time hours would cost over a £1000 a month, my dad was stunned.
The comfortably off have absolutely no idea what "the cost of living crisis" actually is, or how long it's really been going on.
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...
The comfortably off have absolutely no idea what "the cost of living crisis" actually is, or how long it's really been going on.
This is true, there's nothing more irritating than those articles in some newspapers about things like budget meals which involve nothing that anyone actually extremely hard up would have.
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Unlikely.
Mean house price Roundhay: £332,385. https://www.rightmove.co.uk/house-prices/roundhay.html
Mean house price Leeds: £251,878. https://www.rightmove.co.uk/house-prices/leeds.html
Mean house price UK: £283,000 https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/inflationandpriceindices/bulletins/housepriceindex/may2022
I'd wondered about that. Good link, I only lived in Leeds for three years or so but even I knew it was fairly posh as far as the city goes
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Liz Truss appears to be arguing that she had some sort of deprived childhood in the ghetto when she went to school in Roundhay. Jonny Mercer is quite right that its just embarrassing, from both candidates but especially Truss.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/jul/18/liz-truss-roundhay-school-foreign-secretary-education
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Liz Truss appears to be arguing that she had some sort of deprived childhood in the ghetto when she went to school in Roundhay. Jonny Mercer is quite right that its just embarrassing, from both candidates but especially Truss.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/jul/18/liz-truss-roundhay-school-foreign-secretary-education
The following is a quote from the Times front page this morning:
A YouGov survey of 507 Conservative Party members found that 50 per cent believed that the foreign secretary was the better performer in the first head-to-head debate on Monday, compared with 39 per cent who said that Sunak was better. Sixty-three per cent said that Truss came across as more in touch with ordinary people, with 19 per cent for Sunak.
Truss more in touch with ordinary people eh? Perhaps if they're seeing other Conservative party members as ordinary.
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For me, it was their flagship policies.
Sunak reducing cost of fuel if he feels we need it.
Truss telling the police to prevent more murders.
Is Truss just Boris in drag?
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Is Truss just Boris in drag?
Funny you should say that:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/jul/24/liz-truss-reminds-me-of-a-tory-leader-but-its-not-margaret-thatcher
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Being a senior conservative is a recipe for being woefully out of touch.
Not just senior conservatives, plenty of the well off (and often conservative voters) are amazingly unaware of where they fit in compared to the wider population.
For my masters dissertation I wrote a model to explore the causes of income and wealth inequality in the U.K. I’ve read dozens of papers on the topic looking at both historical trends and current rich-world economies. I’m afraid to say that ignorance of income and wealth distributions is fairly well represented across the political spectrum!
Don’t get me started on “I am wealthy if I earn £X..?” type discussions :no:
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Sam Tarry - Labour MP hit the picket line today. 'I'm here as Shadow Transport Minister backing transport workers who are on strike'. :clap2:
Heavy challenge to Keir Starmer's authority, perhaps he doesn't want his job anymore or is there enough dissent in the ranks to keep him in position? :popcorn:
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Because what we really need right now is infighting within Labour? :wall:
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That argument feels very old and tired PB.
If a LP MP can't support working people in need of a improved pay and conditions, against the interests of those whom have multiplied their wealth and extracted profits ruthlessly, then really what is the point of the LP? The majority of the public support the workers, there is a Labour movement happening, the Labour Party should be a part of it and would benefit from showing solidarity with the unions.
Given that the LP was founded by unions, is funded by unions, has many MPs from union backgrounds.... the dictat from Keir and his advisors feels like an inflammatory act in itself.
If it means getting closer to a fairer society and protecting the environment then I would argue that criticism and challenge (call it infighting if you like) are entirely necessary.
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That argument feels very old and tired PB.
If a LP MP can't support working people in need of a improved pay and conditions, against the interests of those whom have multiplied their wealth and extracted profits ruthlessly, then really what is the point of the LP? The majority of the public support the workers, there is a Labour movement happening, the Labour Party should be a part of it and would benefit from showing solidarity with the unions.
Given that the LP was founded by unions, is funded by unions, has many MPs from union backgrounds.... the dictat from Keir and his advisors feels like an inflammatory act in itself.
If it means getting closer to a fairer society and protecting the environment then I would argue that criticism and challenge (call it infighting if you like) are entirely necessary.
That’s the issue in a nutshell, isn’t it? ie does overt support for strikers mean getting closer to a fairer society? Or does it mean mostly consolidating votes Labour already has, whilst losing some of the undecideds in the political mid ground whom it must win over to gain power?
It’s the dilemma at the heart of the party.
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Look at polling on whether people support the strikes or not. They would gain the support of the majority of the general public on this one. Public ownership too amongst others.
The word is literally burning and we're all still lost in this bullshit. Serious action from serious people is required.
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I’d be especially interested to know what the polling data for the demographic of socially conservative voters they need to win back would be. I think this will be a high priority for setting party strategy.
You’re saying Starmer is too timid. I’m not saying you’re wrong, but regaining votes lost is not going to be as straightforward as simply doing the right thing.
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Labour is not interested in the average voter. It is interested in the marginal voter, the one who needs to be persuaded to vote for us. Appealing to what the average Labour voter wants is comfort blanket politics rather than gunning to win.
If you look up thread I posted a good thing about this from a US Democrat on just this topic.
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Look at polling on whether people support the strikes or not. They would gain the support of the majority of the general public on this one.
Watch those polls shift. The public generally start in favour of the strikers and quite quickly lose their rag when it inconveniences them. Who they turn their ire against depends on who wins the PR war.
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Labour is not interested in the average voter. It is interested in the marginal voter, the one who needs to be persuaded to vote for us. Appealing to what the average Labour voter wants is comfort blanket politics rather than gunning to win.
If you look up thread I posted a good thing about this from a US Democrat on just this topic.
Then once in power, Sir Keir Starmer will reinstate his 10 pledges, do all he said to the membership like standing shoulder to shoulder with workers, bring public services back into public ownership and he will create a new economy based on a zero carbon strategy. Is that the Strategy? Get elected by bullshitting the msm, the swing voters and establishment into thinking they have what they want. Then unleash some good 'ole environmental socialism on the masses with the huge majority gained.
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Looks like Sam Tarry has been sacked as Shadow Minister for Transport.
That was quick! See what happens next. :popcorn:
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Being a senior conservative is a recipe for being woefully out of touch.
Not just senior conservatives, plenty of the well off (and often conservative voters) are amazingly unaware of where they fit in compared to the wider population.
For my masters dissertation I wrote a model to explore the causes of income and wealth inequality in the U.K. I’ve read dozens of papers on the topic looking at both historical trends and current rich-world economies. I’m afraid to say that ignorance of income and wealth distributions is fairly well represented across the political spectrum!
Don’t get me started on “I am wealthy if I earn £X..?” type discussions :no:
That bloke on Question Time who told Corbyn he felt like he earned a below average salary cos he was only on £85k a year :wall:
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I don't agree that Labour should be showing solidarity with the unions and joining picket lines. The end goal should be the same (reducing inequality, fair pay and conditions for all workers) but the the unions job is to represent workers and if necessary organise strike action whereas the Labour party needs to formulate policies that make strike action unnecessary, and show they are fit to govern and gain the trust of the electorate. Joining picket lines just makes you a party of protest rather than of governance imho. Instead, Labour are doing the right thing - repeatedly hammering the Tories about making the cost of living crisis worse.
As for the chuntering about rowing back on nationalisation, do keep up at the back. Truss is likely to be the next PM, and looks like taking a wild ideological punt on lower taxes kick starting the economy. Anyone with any clue about this knows this will probably fail and will push inflation up even more. The average voter who is shitting themselves about how they will afford to eat after their fixed term mortgage deal runs out will not give a flying fuck about brexit, renationalisation of services or anything else by this stage, and Labour should not be committing at this stage to be borrowing money to buy back rail etc. They need to show they are putting everything possible into keeping Workington Man and all the other swing voters above water and anything else is on the back burner. Shit is going to get savage out there.
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I don't agree that Labour should be showing solidarity with the unions and joining picket lines. The end goal should be the same (reducing inequality, fair pay and conditions for all workers) but the the unions job is to represent workers and if necessary organise strike action whereas the Labour party needs to formulate policies that make strike action unnecessary, and show they are fit to govern and gain the trust of the electorate. Joining picket lines just makes you a party of protest rather than of governance imho. Instead, Labour are doing the right thing - repeatedly hammering the Tories about making the cost of living crisis worse.
As for the chuntering about rowing back on nationalisation, do keep up at the back. Truss is likely to be the next PM, and looks like taking a wild ideological punt on lower taxes kick starting the economy. Anyone with any clue about this knows this will probably fail and will push inflation up even more. The average voter who is shitting themselves about how they will afford to eat after their fixed term mortgage deal runs out will not give a flying fuck about brexit, renationalisation of services or anything else by this stage, and Labour should not be committing at this stage to be borrowing money to buy back rail etc. They need to show they are putting everything possible into keeping Workington Man and all the other swing voters above water and anything else is on the back burner. Shit is going to get savage out there.
Well said. If you're hoping to be a government, you don't stand on picket lines if you're on the front bench.
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Labour is not interested in the average voter. It is interested in the marginal voter, the one who needs to be persuaded to vote for us. Appealing to what the average Labour voter wants is comfort blanket politics rather than gunning to win.
If you look up thread I posted a good thing about this from a US Democrat on just this topic.
Then once in power, Sir Keir Starmer will reinstate his 10 pledges, do all he said to the membership like standing shoulder to shoulder with workers, bring public services back into public ownership and he will create a new economy based on a zero carbon strategy. Is that the Strategy? Get elected by bullshitting the msm, the swing voters and establishment into thinking they have what they want. Then unleash some good 'ole environmental socialism on the masses with the huge majority gained.
For the princely sum of £5 per month I am a member of the Labour Party. This is because I want to fund a centre left political party that does its best to win elections. I am under no illusion that this does or should provide me with an outsize role in the political life of this country. Promises to “the membership” loom far larger in far left mythology than they really should.
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Well said. If you're hoping to be a government, you don't stand on picket lines if you're on the front bench.
That was Starmer's argument when they discussed it on The Rest is Politics.
It's a nonsensical argument. The roles of the opposition and government are very different.
Joining a picket when in government would be showing support for the side negotiating against your own government. Joining a picket from the opposition is to show support for the side negotiating against a government who you are trying to replace in office.
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Well said. If you're hoping to be a government, you don't stand on picket lines if you're on the front bench.
That was Starmer's argument when they discussed it on The Rest is Politics.
It's a nonsensical argument. The roles of the opposition and government are very different.
Joining a picket when in government would be showing support for the side negotiating against your own government. Joining a picket from the opposition is to show support for the side negotiating against a government who you are trying to replace in office.
It's certainly not nonsensical, you don't agree for the reasons you explain, which is fine. However I'd argue that if you need to convince socially conservative voters that you're serious about government you definitely shouldn't.
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Ultimately I think it benefits the members of the rail unions to see a Labour government, rather than Labour MPs on their picket lines. This might not be a zero sum game, but it might be, and Labour is right to say "we support the right to strike and for people to get fair pay and conditions and as a government we would have avoided these strikes" and then leave it at that
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I don't agree that Labour should be showing solidarity with the unions and joining picket lines. The end goal should be the same (reducing inequality, fair pay and conditions for all workers) but the the unions job is to represent workers and if necessary organise strike action whereas the Labour party needs to formulate policies that make strike action unnecessary, and show they are fit to govern and gain the trust of the electorate. Joining picket lines just makes you a party of protest rather than of governance imho. Instead, Labour are doing the right thing - repeatedly hammering the Tories about making the cost of living crisis worse.
Well said Dan. Labour should be firmly standing up for workers rights, including the right to strike, but as far as I am aware it was only under Corbyn the leadership felt it was a good idea to get involved with supporting strikers in active public sector disputes ( Kinnock was lambasted by the far left during the 84 miners strike and this dates all the way back to the General Strike when Labour leadership were in opposition). A couple of weeks back Andy Burnham said he would expect Labour to pressure the government to be involved in negotiations (as they hold the purse strings) but not yet intevene more directly in the RMT dispute... but that joining picket lines was still OK for exceptional circumstances (like when he joined a transport workers picket: the striking staff were being subjected to a fire and rehire tactic).
As for the chuntering about rowing back on nationalisation, do keep up at the back. Truss is likely to be the next PM, and looks like taking a wild ideological punt on lower taxes kick starting the economy. Anyone with any clue about this knows this will probably fail and will push inflation up even more. The average voter who is shitting themselves about how they will afford to eat after their fixed term mortgage deal runs out will not give a flying fuck about brexit, renationalisation of services or anything else by this stage, and Labour should not be committing at this stage to be borrowing money to buy back rail etc. They need to show they are putting everything possible into keeping Workington Man and all the other swing voters above water and anything else is on the back burner. Shit is going to get savage out there.
Larry Elliot commented on the Truss and Sunak plans and isn't so sure about the level of the inflationary bit... the absence of help for the poor in Truss's plans was his biggest concern.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/jul/28/tory-candidates-tax-plans-liz-truss-rishi-sunak
I'd personally love to see renationalisation of rail and utilities in some ideal world (as I think the current management has been terrible, aside from their ability to funnel money from customers to shareholders) but the hard reality is in these tough times, which seem to be about to get much tougher, it will only be affordable to make small steps in that direction.
There seems to me no way out of the coming mess without some extra borrowing (which will be very expensive to service if interest rates go up) and/or some kind of tax or regulatory change, stimulating growth.
Truss also seems to me to be the most dishonest of the two bad eggs... she was happy for the one prominent economist, Minford, to support her tax cutting plans until he said the higher interest rates will likely force an overdue readjustment... including much higher mortgage rates (the older reactionary tory members are less exposed to this as they tend to own their own homes).
https://inews.co.uk/news/politics/liz-trusss-tax-cuts-could-cause-7-interest-rates-warns-her-own-economics-guru-1757989
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Starmer's strategy is clearly one of "not scaring the horses". Perhaps that will play well with swing voters. Is there any evidence of that?
On the flipside, not scaring the horses means letting the Tory press dictate the agenda, and therefore shying away from making a positive case.
Example - average annual energy bill Jan 2022 = £1271. Forecast for same bill Jan 2023 = £3850. Increase = £2579 (!). Max gov help = £1200. Shortfall £1379 per household minimum *on energy alone* - so before food, fuel to get to work / school etc. So everyone needs to find a lot more money to pay their bills.
Public sector pay settlements were running 5x less than private sector (1.5% vs 7.2%) until last week or so, when they came in at around 4.5%. Current inflation rate = 8.2% and rising. That is still a huge pay cut, a fall in living standards, for at least 5.7 million people who the government pays the wages of.
Centrica (ex-British Gas) today posted a 500% increase in profits year-on-year and the resumption of dividends to its shareholders (Note that they also own the now defunct Rough gas storage facility, the mothballing of which is part of the reason for high prices). Shell 200% increase. Just from these two that is an extra £11 billion of profit. The windfall tax hasn't started yet and does not apply to this quarter.
Each percentage point increase in public sector pay costs the the government £2.4Bn.
The money to pay these bills is out there. The question is do we prioritise Shell running profits of £40BN a year (roughly what we spend on defence!) courtesy of Mr Putin, or do we somehow get people a pay rise so they can heat their home?
On top of all that a lot of people's living standards have fallen since 2010.
Labour policy appears to be to say they'd rather not get involved. I don't think its an unreasonable question for people to ask whether a Labour government would ask them to take a pay cut, is it?
I really hope that this is the vote winner its meant to be!
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The problem is that energy, a fundamental input into life, is now more expensive in real terms. So everyone is going to be poorer. That is just a basic fact that a lot of people think there is a hack to avoid, but there is not. Naturally we could use fiscal policy to support the lowest paid (and we absolutely should) and we could probably tax energy companies better. But the idea that we could avoid hard choices is a fantasy. In the short run we are all going to be a little worse off.
Under such circumstances I suspect the best initial thing for Labour to do is… not much. Because the only questions are who is going to be poorer and by how much? I’m not sure this is fertile ground for an opposition party two years out from an election.
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Is it really the cost of energy going up or are the fat cats mugging us off more than they ever have? Certainly appears that those at the top of the private sector are having a field day whilst the rest of us are having a 'cost of living crisis'.
eg. Profits of Centrica (owner of British Gas)= £1,300,000,000 up 500% on last year.
Energy bills forecast to be up 200% on last year.
Doesn't really follow the narrative they're selling us or the one you're using SK?
Maybe energy does cost more but how does that explain the record profits and price increases??
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The best thing for Labour to do is nothing. :lol: That seems to be the policy.
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Starmer's strategy is clearly one of "not scaring the horses". Perhaps that will play well with swing voters. Is there any evidence of that?
I'd say Starmers strategy is little different to any previous Labour leader in opposition, except Corbyn.
quote author=Nigel link=topic=30397.msg663500#msg663500 date=1659015399]
On the flipside, not scaring the horses means letting the Tory press dictate the agenda, and therefore shying away from making a positive case.
Example - average annual energy bill Jan 2022 = £1271. Forecast for same bill Jan 2023 = £3850. Increase = £2579 (!). Max gov help = £1200. Shortfall £1379 per household minimum *on energy alone* - so before food, fuel to get to work / school etc. So everyone needs to find a lot more money to pay their bills.
Public sector pay settlements were running 5x less than private sector (1.5% vs 7.2%) until last week or so, when they came in at around 4.5%. Current inflation rate = 8.2% and rising. That is still a huge pay cut, a fall in living standards, for at least 5.7 million people who the government pays the wages of.
Centrica (ex-British Gas) today posted a 500% increase in profits year-on-year and the resumption of dividends to its shareholders (Note that they also own the now defunct Rough gas storage facility, the mothballing of which is part of the reason for high prices). Shell 200% increase. Just from these two that is an extra £11 billion of profit. The windfall tax hasn't started yet and does not apply to this quarter.
Each percentage point increase in public sector pay costs the the government £2.4Bn.
The money to pay these bills is out there. The question is do we prioritise Shell running profits of £40BN a year (roughly what we spend on defence!) courtesy of Mr Putin, or do we somehow get people a pay rise so they can heat their home?
On top of all that a lot of people's living standards have fallen since 2010.
Labour policy appears to be to say they'd rather not get involved. I don't think its an unreasonable question for people to ask whether a Labour government would ask them to take a pay cut, is it?
I really hope that this is the vote winner its meant to be!
[/quote]
I'd agree with most of the sentiment behind that but the money needs to go where it is most needed (not uniformly so that it mostly benefits the middle classes who are not struggling). I've said many times we are living in a kleptocracy (how else can we explain a decade of widening gaps in wealth between the top and bottom, leading to serious increases in poverty) and so our capitalism needs urgent proper reform in a social democratic sense, lest social unrest drives more drastic and dangerous change.
I'd add that at pretty much at every possible opportunity I see the Labour leadership as pushing the cost of living crisis as their top political priority.
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Is it really the cost of energy going up or are the fat cats mugging us off more than they ever have? Certainly appears that those at the top of the private sector are having a field day whilst the rest of us are having a 'cost of living crisis'.
eg. Profits of Centrica (owner of British Gas)= £1,300,000,000 up 500% on last year.
Energy bills forecast to be up 200% on last year.
Doesn't really follow the narrative they're selling us or the one you're using SK?
Maybe energy does cost more but how does that explain the record profits and price increases??
So energy is one driver of inflation, but it is not the only one. From the Bank of England:
"Higher prices for goods is one of the main reasons for this. As economies around the world opened up after Covid restrictions eased, people started to buy more goods. But the people selling these have had problems getting enough of them to sell to customers. That led to higher prices – particularly for goods imported from abroad.
"Higher energy prices have also played a big role. Large increases in oil and gas prices have pushed up petrol prices and energy bills.
"Services inflation is picking up a little. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has led to more increases in the prices of energy and food."
https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/monetary-policy-report/2022/may-2022
Check out chapter 2.3 of the last Monetary Policy Report to get a bit more detail. As an aside, isn't claiming everything is "narrative" kind of post-modern arseholery? I mean, there is stuff that happens, and we can try to describe it accurately and quantify it. Saying it's all a story is just a nonsense, even if there are several ways of presenting that story (world is complex shocker). I should also note that this is typical far left twaddle too - one can support increased taxes on utility firms but if you're not joining in with full throated denunciations of the running dogs of capitalism, one is a simpering apologist for the boss class. :wall:
As for the discrepancy in price rises vs profits, surely an element could simply be from firms with very high fixed costs which mean that the relationship between increased revenue and increased profit is not one-to-one? In addition, you are looking at one year rather than several which is presumably the best way to approach this.
I'm keen to read some decent articles on the relationship between energy prices and utility company profits actually works.
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I think the argument for greater tax on energy profits is strong, but don’t believe their retail arm (us) are where most profit is made, British Gas having made a lower profit this year, whereas the Centrica portfolio elsewhere made vastly increased profits according to Sky.
Shell attributed the enormous numbers to higher prices, refining profits and gas trading, though this was partly offset by lower liquefied natural gas trading. (https://news.sky.com/story/energy-giants-shell-and-centrica-enjoy-soaring-profits-as-prices-rise-12660367)
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I'd agree with most of the sentiment behind that but the money needs to go where it is most needed (not uniformly so that it mostly benefits the middle classes who are not struggling). I've said many times we are living in a kleptocracy (how else can we explain a decade of widening gaps in wealth between the top and bottom, leading to serious increases in poverty) and so our capitalism needs urgent proper reform in a social democratic sense, lest social unrest drives more drastic and dangerous change.
I'd add that at pretty much at every possible opportunity I see the Labour leadership as pushing the cost of living crisis as their top political priority.
What drives inequality is a very complicated issue and I'd be loathe to put it all down to one reason or another. It's a complex interplay between incomes, asset returns, churn in households' position in the income distribution, taxation and changes in the labour market. Some of these are more resistant to policy than others, particularly returns to skill and education in the labour market.
Also remember that wealth and income inequality are two linked but also quite different things. For example many Scandinavian countries that are quite egalitarian on income are very divided when it comes to wealth, simply because they have excellent state pensions and so relatively little private pension saving, which a key driver of wealth accumulation in countries like the UK.
As for "a decade of widening gaps in weath between the top and bottom", this is not quite true. From the FT, Jan 2022:
"Economists have warned of wealth inequality rising in Great Britain owing to the pandemic after 14 years of relative stability, which has bucked the trend of many other countries where divides have been steadily widening.
"The wealthiest 10 per cent of households owned 43 per cent of all the wealth in Britain between April 2018 to March 2020, data from the Office for National Statistics showed on Friday. In contrast, the bottom half of the population held only 9 per cent.
"However, over the past 14 years wealth inequality measured by the Gini coefficient has remained by and large stable, according to the ONS.
"This is in contrast with many countries where wealth inequality increased between 2000 and 2019, including in the US, Italy, Russia and China, according to estimates by Credit Suisse. Over that period, wealth inequality also remained largely stable or fell in France and Germany."
I am still very much in favour of a more social democratic system and UK capitalism is clearly in urgent need of reform!
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I'd rather look at the percentage in poverty than the percentage in the bottom half of income...and compare that with the rich getting richer. Also private untility and rail companies increasing profit in the face of poorer services. Its not just the energy companies on the utility side: water services are increasing profit but doing so badly on environmental protection that threats of jail are being considered as an incentive.
https://www.ft.com/content/09854cab-2be8-4d60-8259-40539d1985d6
The poor have been getting poorer for a decade according to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation.
https://www.jrf.org.uk/report/going-without-deepening-poverty-uk
It's saying something when the likes of Martyn Lewis are begging the government to act now to urgently relieve pressure on the poorest.
https://youtu.be/8DgCHblN_x0
https://www.theguardian.com/money/2022/may/25/im-begging-the-government-to-listen-martin-lewis-on-getting-political-mental-health-and-the-cost-of-living-crisis
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The FT story and associated ONS release reference stability in the UK’s wealth Gini coefficient which is a measurement of inequality which includes the entire wealth distribution. The lead paragraph in the FT story just highlights the bottom half as a rhetorical device.
But the major mistake you’re making here is to confuse wealth and income. They are two different things! Naturally when you wrote wealth I assumed you meant wealth, because that is the most respectful approach, but the RF research you link to talks about income. So perhaps you are talking about that instead? At its most basic, income is a flow variable and wealth is a stock variable, they are most definitely not the same thing.
Very deep and persistent poverty in the U.K. is a massive problem and I am a big fan of the Resolution Foundation’s work. The third child cap has been a vile policy to deliberately put families into poverty. I definitely think there is a crisis approaching very quickly, but nevertheless I find the “poor getting poorer” phrase overused and not always reflecting reality.
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I thought I meant wealth as most people see it (as a dictionary defines it, rather than strictly speaking as an economist), income and assets above essential expenditure.
JRT are saying in their report (with a graph) that numbers in deep poverty have trended up throughout the decade before the pandemic, to a point about 20% up overall. They are not saying that it's held steady then increased during the pandemic (however numbers in overall poverty have indeed behaved more in that way)
Gini coefficients have their weaknesses, especially in comparing the UK to countries where the essential costs of living are much lower.
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Wealth is the value of your assets, it is perfectly possible to have a high income and negative wealth (you just took out a 70k loan to do an MBA and you’re now earning big in the City) and likewise it’s possible to have low income and high wealth (pensioner with no mortgage). If you spend all your high income on the kids’ education then your wealth will take a hit. Wealth is also clearly dependent on when you bought the assets. The fact that most people confuse the two (as I mentioned up above; you’ve made exactly the mistake I alluded to) is really because they haven’t thought about it very much. It is most definitely not rocket science. Income distributions have nothing to do with expenditure, in general, as that can vary a lot over households (tho of course we can drill down into these figures). I think it’s good to make these distinctions between different things, regardless of what’s in the dictionary.
It is of course perfectly possible that wealth inequality has remained fairly constant at the same time as deep poverty numbers increase. That’s because the households in the bottom of couple of deciles hold virtually no wealth (this is something that tends to hold true across economies and across time), so changes in their income don’t much affect how wealth is held.
My post about Gini coefficients is that the analysis will have absolutely included the bottom 10%. Since they measure in-country distributions (essentially the difference from a perfectly equal distribution) I am not sure of your point about inter-country comparisons, as I wasn’t making one…
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For 8 of the last 10 years Centrica has been a genuinely hideous company for any shareholder who was invested in via misfortune (company pension) or stupidity (via direct stockpicking). The company only really turned fortunes around in 2020 with a new CEO. It stopped paying a dividend 3 years ago and is only reinstating a small dividend now. For shareholders watching Centrica's fortunes tank for year after year since 2013 it must have been like watching money being vaporised in the void of a failing business.
And now in the one year they turn a hefty profit due to force majeure completely outside their own doing and, Nigel-forbid, want to send a small part of some of that profit back to long-suffering shareholders, they're supposed to be penalised and slated for it? The ironies are many. Here are some:
Irony 1: Centrica's share price is down 78% over the last 10 years. As stated it's a truly dire business to invest in.
Irony 2: Centrica perform as a supplier of last resort and were obliged to take on those customers of failed utility companies you'll all have heard about - you may be one - who went bankrupt this year and last due to high wholesale prices. Centrica hardly makes any money from these new customers (and from retail in general), that it's obliged to look after following other's failures. As the price these customers pay Centrica for gas under their contracts barely keeps up with wholesale price: https://www.ft.com/content/403426e9-c3b2-4108-bab4-ff8692e789b9
Operating profits at the British Gas Energy segment of the business fell 43 per cent to £98mn, driven largely by the need to buy gas and electricity for new customers for whom it had not been able to hedge in advance.
Irony 3: If you look back over the years, bosses of failing Centrica have consistently warned that the small new utility players taking business away weren't operating a sustainable business model because margins on retail sales were tiny and any shock would bankrupt the market. Turns out they were entirely correct. As 30+ of the small utility players went to the wall once prices rose this year and last. Centrica was there to provide gas to the customers of those failed companies, at almost nil benefit to Centrica.
Irony 4: Centrica attempted to divest its UK oil and gas business over the last 5 years but failed to sell most of them as the business isn't an attractive investment - Centrica only owns UK gas production through no-one else wanting to buy it! Likewise its 20% stake in the UK's nuclear assets which nobody wanted and which will in years to come likely become very valuable as the west realises the real-world meaning of the word 'utility'! Funny how things can change so quickly, following reality hitting and the complete fuck-up of policy in sourcing cheap gas from a psychopathic fascist, while greenwashers applauded Germany for it 'quitting coal'... https://insideclimatenews.org/news/15102020/germany-coal-transition/
(apart from ironically another psychopathic fascist (Trump) who was impolite enough to actually publicly point out the obvious weakness in the German plan). Now Germany is scrabbling for coal wherever it can get it from.
Irony 5: Centrica is attempting to re-open the Rough gas storage facility using profits made this year - they've stated that the company isn't seeking any government investment to aid it.
Irony 6: The Centrica CEO actually turned down his £1m bonus this year. I mean £1m...my heart doesn't bleed for his charity! But how many bosses, or workers in any branch of life let alone utility companies - do you hear about actually turning down their bonuses..? Bet there are more than a few charity bosses, NGO's, principals of academic institutions etc. who don't walk the walk.
You don't hear the Nigels, Brutus's and other socialist talking-heads of this world acknowledging those sides of business. It would be laughable if it wasn't so ignorant. I suppose it's funny to see supposedly intelligent socially liberal people hitched-up to the same fury-bandwagon as the daily mail: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11057077/Fury-British-Gas-owner-Centrica-profits-increase-FIVE-FOLD-1-34-BILLION.html
I'm glad I wasn't unfortunate enough to be a long-term Centrica shareholder. (I'm doing far better than a Centrica shareholder could ever dream of, with massive capital gains this year investing in coal from New South Wales which is absolutely rocketing following the fallout from Germany et al's short-sighted energy-policy. Dividend to be announced in August... :) )
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It’s mad that a company can be making 1/2 a billion close to a billion profit for a few years, but they are still shit years be because their revenue is around 30 billion. I need to take a few zeroes off before the numbers make any sense.
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Our taxes are hoovered up into the profits and dividends of the private companies delivering our public services. This money then makes it's way offshore via legal tax avoidance schemes. There ain't no trickle down and none of it returns in investment to make things better. One great big scam in plain sight that has gone on for decades. It's corruption plain and simple. The Labour Party under it's current leadership will do nothing about this.
I think Energy supply should be publicly owned and I think you've made a solid detailed argument for that to be the case Pete.
You don't hear the Nigels, Brutus's and other socialist talking-heads of this world
:lol:
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I personally do agree that energy utilities should be publicly owned, absolutely, but I do also think initial supply costs at the moment are a huge issue that public ownership would still have to deal with
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For shareholders watching Centrica's fortunes tank for year after year since 2013 it must have been like watching money being vaporised in the void of a failing business.
And now in the one year they turn a hefty profit due to force majeure completely outside their own doing and, Nigel-forbid, want to send a small part of some of that profit back to long-suffering shareholders
One is tempted ask: how you like them apples? Shareholders have three options available to them: exit, voice, and loyalty. You're a great advocate for highly active personal investment strategies Pete (I really mean that, not as some backhanded compliment). Moreover, you know as well as anyone that markets punish, thought to be one of their great virtues. So I'm genuinely a little surprised to read you make this plea on behalf of Centrica's shareholders on the basis of their sheer haplessness.
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I'm going on holiday to a commune in Cuba shortly so I'll try to keep it brief..... My original point was that the Labour strategy with the rail strikes - of not handing any ammo to the right wing rags - might seem attractive in a 1997 sort of way, but I offer the counterpoint that this is not 1997. As danm rightly said things might well get very uncomfortable this winter coming. If other unions e.g. teachers, fire brigades etc. go on strike for better pay, all I ask is whether Labour aping Grant Schapps and keeping quiet is a good plan? Obviously lots of you think yes but I thought the counter view of getting ahead of events with a more full throated defence of why the population of workers (and voters) should not have to take *another* pay cut due to circumstances out of their control would be worth considering. If Labour agree with the Tories that people should take a pay cut this year then equally they should explain why? We know the Tories don't give a shit but people can join the dots and see that an alternative might be possible *if someone makes the case*. To refer back to my 1997 reference - Labour has lost Scotland and ruled out a deal with the SNP. It is averaging around 10% max higher in the polls but needs to be consistently much higher to win a majority in England (Blair was usually 20+% easily). Starmer is more or less level pegging popularity wise with the two new PM candidates. Hopefully the long term strategy is correct but atm it does seem a bit like blind trust...
Sean - lots to comment on but no time so two things. There seems to be a lot riding on the next GE being done when "due" in two years. With fixed term parliaments act gone now that is a gamble. Other thing is in amongst the block text on Gini coefficients you quoted this:
"The wealthiest 10 per cent of households owned 43 per cent of all the wealth in Britain between April 2018 to March 2020, data from the Office for National Statistics showed on Friday. In contrast, the bottom half of the population held only 9 per cent.
"However, over the past 14 years wealth inequality measured by the Gini coefficient has remained by and large stable, according to the ONS.
The Gini coefficient staying the same is not a cause for celebration in the context of the first sentence! Rather it is a scandal that things haven't got better. Surely in light of that there is space for something a little more distributive? I suspect you agree but thought it worth highlighting.
Pete - you started your own thread for long posts about share prices. On the politics thread I would say that the potted version of your post - "won't someone think of the poor shareholders" - is perhaps not the slam dunk you think it is, in the real world.
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We are approaching loads of crises in this country that are all tangentially related
1) energy, cost of it and where we get it from. The government has no solid energy policy and is focusing on building hugely out of date reactors and ditching renewables to satisfy Mail readers. I'm pro nuclear but numerous experts are clear on this; UK gov energy policy is madness, and the problem is getting worse.
2) Cost of living. Related to the above but wages are decking out compared to CoL, energy, fuel, food etc. Brexit compounding terrible gov decisions like getting rid of gas reserves and complete lack of willingness to engage in market intervention. And this will only get worse.
3) Brexit, a disaster in of itself. Currently making just about everything worse and nothing better. And it's getting worse.
4) Public services are languishing in funding holes, the NHS has never been struggling in the modern era like this. Ambulance responses, GP access, waiting lists, it's all bad and due to get worse
5) numerous more problems caused by government made up complete amateurs who are utterly incompetent. Forget ideology, it's actual sanity where these people fall down
There is no plan. There is no upcoming good news. This is not getting turned around, not by government policy. I'm not particularly bothered about whether this guy went to a picket line or not I'm desperate for some sane people to win an election and at this point I don't really care who it is but it's almost certainly going to have to be someone wearing a red rosette.
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Nigel, from one long-poster to another… I posted to illustrate some of the reality behind the ‘poor optics’ of an energy company making profit while people are feeling the pinch and being angry. Which I’m sure you probably knew.
Andy, I agree - the market giveth and the market taketh away. That’s largely the point behind this issue - the market has taken away from anyone unfortunate enough to be involved with Centrica’s business for the last decade. Now the market has given, but forces outside the market want to take it away again because they feel it isn’t fair on them - or at least they want to be *VERY ANGRY* about it. This is your point except subverted - it isn’t market forces acting when people are expressing disgust at Centrica making profits from high energy prices - it’s an exterior anti-market force.
Funny how those anti-market forces were absent in 2020 when Centrica made a pre-tax loss of £1.1 billion. (Although some will be used to offset profits in subsequent years.)
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Shareholders have three options available to them: exit, voice, and loyalty.
You are Albert Hirschman and I claim the Daily Messenger prize.
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I'd rather not get bogged down on Centrica but to the accusation that I'm being selective, so are you. The share pice has been dire over ten years yes. However if you bought in 1995 then you would have seen a 400% increase at the all time high in 2013. No link but you can look it up, We are now back to roughly where it started, which for a utility is probably as it should be I would argue. As Andy says if you bought in 2013 then that's your look out.
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I thought the counter view of getting ahead of events with a more full throated defence of why the population of workers (and voters) should not have to take *another* pay cut due to circumstances out of their control would be worth considering. If Labour agree with the Tories that people should take a pay cut this year then equally they should explain why? We know the Tories don't give a shit but people can join the dots and see that an alternative might be possible *if someone makes the case*.
How does that alternative actually work? Energy inputs are more expensive. There are problems with supply chains. Brexit has had a negative effect. The U.K. has a productivity problem. All these things make us poorer in real terms. All are hard to solve. I’m afraid the only alternative I see to below inflation rate pay rises for most people is higher unemployment which is much more selective.
That’s the short term choice: a bit of pain for everyone, or a lot of pain for a smaller number of people.
There are lots of things we could and should do in the long term to try to deal with those problems, and I totally agree that the Tories won’t (because their voter base doesn’t care about the health of the economy as long as their savings and house prices are unaffected). And we should absolutely be using fiscal policy to reduce the suffering of the very poorest (which the Tories won’t do, or might do but way too late). But magically making people not poorer immediately strikes me as unlikely.
Sean - lots to comment on but no time so two things. There seems to be a lot riding on the next GE being done when "due" in two years. With fixed term parliaments act gone now that is a gamble. Other thing is in amongst the block text on Gini coefficients you quoted this:
"The wealthiest 10 per cent of households owned 43 per cent of all the wealth in Britain between April 2018 to March 2020, data from the Office for National Statistics showed on Friday. In contrast, the bottom half of the population held only 9 per cent.
"However, over the past 14 years wealth inequality measured by the Gini coefficient has remained by and large stable, according to the ONS.
The Gini coefficient staying the same is not a cause for celebration in the context of the first sentence! Rather it is a scandal that things haven't got better. Surely in light of that there is space for something a little more distributive? I suspect you agree but thought it worth highlighting.
Okay, as I said above, the drivers of wealth and income inequality are very complicated. For a start, inequality in the U.K. has stayed constant for a long time, basically since the 1990s. That is not great but it is an achievement when you compare it to the US :tumble:
Secondly nearly everywhere has high wealth Ginis because it is just generally hard for the bottom couple of deciles to obtain (and more importantly retain) assets under nearly any political economy. And as I said above, many counties with strong welfare states have high wealth inequality because much of the population feels no need for a private pension (a lot of wealth particularly at the higher end is in pensions). So you could get a Scandinavian outcome which you’d like and this particular indicator would probably go the “wrong” way.
On income inequality, I think there is clearly a very strong argument that tax structures play a very large part. But - and this is a point that is uncomfortable for many on the left - there is also an element of income inequality caused by technological changes affecting the labour market. These changes are very resistant to policy. Very few counties have managed to buck this trend and I doubt their methods of doing so are possible in the U.K.
I think the U.K. does have a lot of room for a more distributive tax system but that has its limits as to what it can deliver, ie you’re always going to be disappointed!
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Now the market has given, but forces outside the market want to take it away again because they feel it isn’t fair on them - or at least they want to be *VERY ANGRY* about it. This is your point except subverted - it isn’t market forces acting when people are expressing disgust at Centrica making profits from high energy prices - it’s an exterior anti-market force.
I'm not sure it's possible to neatly separate forces interior and exterior to markets, but that's probably a debate for another day. One final point, the public have a long history of judging markets on their fairness, or morality. So long as markets are not perfect, automated mechanisms then questions of affect and morality will enter into them. C18th food rioters would seize grain, take it to market and sell it at fair or customary prices and at proper weights. They didn't object to markets, they objected to markets they perceived and felt to be rigged. They objected to engrossers - profiteers. Right or wrong, it's hardly surprising people are reacting in that vein today.
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Nigel, from one long-poster to another… I posted to illustrate some of the reality behind the ‘poor optics’ of an energy company making profit while people are feeling the pinch and being angry. Which I’m sure you probably knew.
Andy, I agree - the market giveth and the market taketh away. That’s largely the point behind this issue - the market has taken away from anyone unfortunate enough to be involved with Centrica’s business for the last decade. Now the market has given, but forces outside the market want to take it away again because they feel it isn’t fair on them - or at least they want to be *VERY ANGRY* about it. This is your point except subverted - it isn’t market forces acting when people are expressing disgust at Centrica making profits from high energy prices - it’s an exterior anti-market force.
Funny how those anti-market forces were absent in 2020 when Centrica made a pre-tax loss of £1.1 billion. (Although some will be used to offset profits in subsequent years.)
The execs in centrica haven't done so badly compared to public sector management pay; profits were made overall in the ten 'bad years' (let's not dig too deep where they went) and dividends were paid most years... all of which would have been re invested in a public run company. The only benefit of having centrica private is market efficiencies are supposed to make it run better than under public ownership!
I despair if you can't sympathise with millions of people who are struggling to afford fuel and energy being angry with huge Centrica and Oil company profits at the same time. What's the point of the regulated UK market if millions of people rely on food banks and can't afford to heat their house this coming winter. Never mind the gini index, the numbers in deep poverty have increased 20% in the UK until the pandemic and that's before the recent energy and inflation shocks...... shamefully a high proportion of those are disabled.
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I thought the counter view of getting ahead of events with a more full throated defence of why the population of workers (and voters) should not have to take *another* pay cut due to circumstances out of their control would be worth considering. If Labour agree with the Tories that people should take a pay cut this year then equally they should explain why? We know the Tories don't give a shit but people can join the dots and see that an alternative might be possible *if someone makes the case*.
How does that alternative actually work?
Well I think the leadership could be a lot louder about it and the left of the party could behave a lot better so the message gets through.
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I’m disappointed at the lack of Marxism on this thread. Marx recognised that individual capitalists had no choice but to cut costs and increase profits; if they didn’t, someone else would, and they’d go out of business. So no point on blaming them.
It’s the system, innit? Quite possible for the government to tax the profits, but executives are going to try and make those profits. Seems pointless to gripe about that.
Pete - I reckon you should use your new found man of leisure status to do an economics degree. I suspect you’d enjoy it a lot.
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We don't need Marxism to raise extra tax from the wealthiest:
https://www.lse.ac.uk/research/research-for-the-world/economics/how-much-tax-do-the-rich-really-pay#:~:text=The%20top%20one%20per%20cent,by%20just%20over%20300%2C000%20individuals
https://www.lse.ac.uk/News/Latest-news-from-LSE/2020/L-December/Wealth-Commission-report
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My my, you’ve gone from blithely eliding income and wealth to proposing wealth taxes. What a difference a day makes!
Sarcasm aside, that all looks very sensible and well within a Labour government’s grasp.
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Pete - I reckon you should use your new found man of leisure status to do an economics degree. I suspect you’d enjoy it a lot.
Ha, too many topics of interest and too little time!
I’ll certainly be retired (or at least not needing to work) in my forties thanks to resource investing, but the first step is completing on a house next month and mortgage companies don’t care for non-working people whatever their net worth. So man of leisure status will come later this year. Don’t know about economics - my time is going to be absorbed with installing a hefty amount of solar with battery storage, a heat pump and underfloor heating, with the goal to be off grid. Paid for with money made this year from investing in coal and oil/gas. I like the juxtaposition between where the profit was made and what it’s going to allow me to do.
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Looking like Truss is definitely going to win easily now: https://news.sky.com/story/tom-tugendhat-backs-liz-truss-in-tory-leadership-race-in-huge-blow-to-rishi-sunak-12661661
Lead by the economics of Patrick Minford, noted Brexit supporter. He acknowledged before the vote that leaving the single market would destroy the UK car industry, but thought that was a price worth paying. Hmmm.
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My my,
Now it's best to avoid deriding
some questionably defined eliding
even if right,
one just might,
look better if less patronising
The poorest will run out of money
avoidably and so not so funny
but Pete is OK
buy coal he will say
and join me in my milk and honey
The world just seems fated to burn
as crisis and war come by turn
yet while there's a chance
alongside our dance
we should plead with our leaders to learn
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Non quality non climbing poems?
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Looking like Truss is definitely going to win easily now: https://news.sky.com/story/tom-tugendhat-backs-liz-truss-in-tory-leadership-race-in-huge-blow-to-rishi-sunak-12661661
Lead by the economics of Patrick Minford, noted Brexit supporter. He acknowledged before the vote that leaving the single market would destroy the UK car industry, but thought that was a price worth paying. Hmmm.
Whoever wins the UK loses. The Tories and Brexshit will make sure of that.
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How does that alternative actually work? Energy inputs are more expensive. There are problems with supply chains. Brexit has had a negative effect. The U.K. has a productivity problem. All these things make us poorer in real terms. All are hard to solve. I’m afraid the only alternative I see to below inflation rate pay rises for most people is higher unemployment which is much more selective.
That’s the short term choice: a bit of pain for everyone, or a lot of pain for a smaller number of people.
Is this what you think the pitch to the voters should be?
But magically making people not poorer immediately strikes me as unlikely.
The proposal is not to use magic. It's to pay public sector workers in line with inflation. That would cost approximately 10bn over the current pay review proposal. That money is there, it is a choice not to do this (for all parties) - a choice that went the other way for pensioners who will get 10%, at a total cost of 20bn. Why is it "hard left" for workers to ask to get paid fairly, but fine for pensioners?
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The problem is that quite a few pensioners are pretty poor and on fixed incomes, whereas there are public sector staff on good wages with skills that give them outside options. You’re proposing a blanket solution that takes money from a retired dinner lady and gives it to a hospital consultant. I am exaggerating for effect, but not much - that is the effect of the kind of broad based pay scheme you propose. And it’s basically predicated on not really grasping that we are poorer, and just assuming government can do something about it. This refusal to engage with the idea of limits and trade-offs is *very* far left (and modern Conservative too, as it happens).
I prefer targeted help at the poorest via tax credits along with some kind of windfall tax on utilities. Because it’s possible to believe that the poorest are going to be very hard hit and absolutely need help, whilst also recognising that you can’t just magic away inconvenient facts like a society simply being able to do less.
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As far as I can see it the economic problems in this country (in the sense of poverty) come in a few stripes;
1) geographical i.e deprived areas, where there are barely any jobs and local opportunities are poor to non existent.
2) Occupational i.e jobs we absolutely need people to do but want to pay them fuck all for, essentially an unliveable situation when combined with inflation
3) Educational i.e a lot of young people don't get access to good education and as an adult it's very hard to retrain into a lot of jobs, even desirable ones that we ostensibly want and have vacancies for, like nurses and teachers
4) Permanent Welfare i.e people who can't work because they are disabled, because they are full time carers etc.
There's no magic bullet to deal with all those and the deep systemic issues in our economy and broader society which cause them. There is no socially acceptable stake through the heart of a system where private school educated kids going into well paid jobs in cities essentially dominate our society, that is to say, who your parents are hugely determines your future. Dealing with 1 and 4, or 2 and 3, or whatever, are interlinked but require specific focuses and targeted work.
The Conservative Party will never fix any of those things because they struggle to admit that they really are a systemic problem, and even when they recognise them they refuse to accept that it is the government's job to do something about it, and even when they do their instincts are always catastrophically wrong headed.
We need to deeply restructure society so 1) all areas have opportunities 2) all jobs provide a good, liveable quality of life 3) state provided top quality education and support for kids and adults is readily available 4) the welfare state fully provides for those who needs it
Most British people would agree with that they just don't want to pay for it.
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The problem is that quite a few pensioners are pretty poor and on fixed incomes, whereas there are public sector staff on good wages with skills that give them outside options.
Surely the reverse of this is also true? Ie, there are also quite a few pensioners on very good incomes as well as the state pension, with significant assets, and a lot of public sector staff on bog standard wages, renting, where that job is all they;ve ever done.
I don't know the figures in terms of which group is greater or even where to find them though.
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Spidermonkey beat me to it - the millionaire pensioner in their mortgage free country pile and nice private pension also gets the 10% uplift in the state pension, whereas the NHS nurse with a young family who worked through the pandemic saving for a house deposit and watching house prices constantly running away from them while paying someone else's mortgage in rent gets that taken from them.
It's an easy game to play, it's also divisive. The proposal should be both rather than and / or in my opinion. If its genuinely not affordable (which I don't accept), and we must have a trade-off then how about 7% each pensioners / working people (cost neutral atm)?
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The problem is that quite a few pensioners are pretty poor and on fixed incomes, whereas there are public sector staff on good wages with skills that give them outside options.
Surely the reverse of this is also true? Ie, there are also quite a few pensioners on very good incomes as well as the state pension, with significant assets, and a lot of public sector staff on bog standard wages, renting, where that job is all they;ve ever done.
I don't know the figures in terms of which group is greater or even where to find them though.
Of course it goes both ways! That was so obvious - and the situation you outline was the subtext of Nige’s post - that this was just an example of why a blanket policy is silly. Fundamentally I believe you have to pay public sector roles so that they get filled, as that is the most vital thing. There may be some issues with crowding out which to my mind is more a marker of the weakness of the U.K. outside London and the SE, but may be worth thinking about. I’d much rather see problems of poverty wages dealt with by tax credits or similar as it’s just much more targeted. Conversely pensions are a bit one size fits all but there are other options at either the lower end (one off payments etc) or the higher end (better wealth taxation).
But at heart, the rise in the real cost of energy means we are all poorer. That is inescapable. The question is how that pain should be divided. Clearly it should not be borne by families at the edge of poverty. But then it *is* going to be borne by middle class families and inevitably some of those will be public sector workers such as teachers, doctors, etc, and the way the pain will be transmitted is higher interest rates and higher prices.
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https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/aug/03/spiralling-inflation-crops-left-in-the-field-and-travel-chaos-10-reasons-brexit-has-been-disastrous-for-britain?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other
The underlying factors that are making everyone who lives in the UK worse off and less happy since Brexit.
Hooray for the sovereignty though eh.
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'Briton is indeed in a horrible mess'. The author's last sentence in the article below could be aimed at you Toby.
(https://i.imgur.com/8RhtdIB.png)
(source: https://data.oecd.org/price/inflation-cpi.htm)
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2022/08/04/mirabile-dictu-uk-inflation-oecd-average-growth-beating-europe/?WT.mc_id=e_DM16854&WT.tsrc=email&etype=Edi_Cit_New_v2&utmsource=email&utm_medium=Edi_Cit_New_v220220804&utm_campaign=DM16854
''If you think the UK has an egregiously high inflation rate by international standards, or is in worse economic shape than European peers, you have been misinformed.
The OECD’s June reading for developed states released this morning places UK inflation in the middle of the pack at 8.2pc (under their measure), and somewhat below the average of 10.3pc.
This may come as a surprise to many since news coverage has tended to portray the UK as a dysfunctional outlier, with every new twist of the cost-of-living crisis instantly weaponised by Team Brussels to indict Brexit.
The UK is below Spain (10.2), Belgium (9.6), the US (9.1), Sweden, Austria, and Portugal (8.7), or The Netherlands (8.6). We are all facing a commodity and supply-chain shock, and we all have New Keynesian central banks that fatally ignore the money supply.
The spike in Sweden surprises me since the country has the advantage of abundant hydro-power. It has not committed the German climate crime of shutting down good nuclear reactors and switching to fossils.
The UK’s inflation is the same as Denmark, and a little higher than Italy (8.0), and Germany (7.6), which has suppressed the headline with near-free tickets on trains and public transport – not a bad idea as a temporary measure.
France is much lower (5.8pc) but that is because the Colbertian French state has bucked the market and imposed price controls on gas and electricity. The annual rise in household power bills is capped at 4pc, marvellous if you can get it, which I do since my family have a start-up farm in the Perigord.
Thank you, President Macron: most generous, and I notice that it got you re-elected. However, I do not need or merit this indiscriminate subsidy. It violates standard advice given to emerging market states by the International Monetary Fund. Manipulating the price signal encourages waste when the imperative is conservation.
Somebody must pay for this bung, and ultimately it will be the French taxpayer through a state bail-out of EDF and the utilities. It is going to be expensive.
Half of the French nuclear fleet is out of action. The day-ahead spot market for electricity in France on Wednesday morning was €488 MWh, ten times the decade-long average. Futures contracts are pricing in yet higher levels over the winter.
The equivalent price in the UK is €256 MWh, which is why the UK is sending 2.06 gigawatts to France via the IFA 1&2 interconnectors right now, earning an enormous arbitrage spread and improving our monthly trade deficit, which needs a lot of improvement.
So yes, French inflation is lower but to suggest – as Team Brussels is apt to do – that France has got this energy crisis right while the UK has got it horribly wrong is a stretch.
The latest PMI survey data of manufacturing and services belies a second false narrative, that the UK economy is in worse economic shape than the eurozone this year and is clattering into a particularly severe recession.
S&P Global’s composite index for the eurozone fell below the boom-bust line in July and is signalling outright recession, even though fiscal policy has been much looser in France, Italy, and Spain.
The UK is still above water at 52.1 on manufacturing and 52.6 on services. The performance is soggy but not as bad as many predicted, or that I feared. It caps several months of relative outperformance.
In my view, the UK will slide into recession later this year as the global economy rolls over. The downturn could be severe if the Treasury continues to push a contractionary, pro-cyclical policy of budget consolidation into the teeth of a slump.
However, the eurozone is also in trouble. The underlying contraction of the real money supply is flashing a red alert, and the end of QE bond purchases by the European Central Bank has ripped away the Club Med debt shield. The long-standing pathologies of a half-baked monetary union are again coming to the fore.
Is there a lender of last resort for eurozone sovereign states in trouble under the legal constraints of the Maastricht Treaty, or is there not? We do not know.
The ECB has tried to fudge this confusion with a new “anti-fragmentation” tool but is so paralysed by political differences within the governing council, and so afraid of the German constitutional court, that nobody is sure whether it can be used, short of a systemic crisis. Therefore a systemic crisis is what markets will inflict.
Britain is indeed in a horrible mess but for reasons that mostly have little to do with Brexit. The eurozone is in an equally-horrible mess, and arguably suffering an even worse confluence of headaches for reasons that have a great deal to do with the construction of EMU.
Germany in particular has manoeuvred itself into an economic and political crisis of Zeitwende proportions by outsourcing everything: its energy supply to Putin’s Russia, its aggregate demand to Xi Jinping’s China, its military defence to America, and its monetary policy to the ECB – in the lapidary words of Deutsche Bank board member Paul Achleitner.
It is not Schadenfreude to point this out. The blunt truth is a necessary corrective to those in the UK’s internal Briton-to-Briton political debate who compulsively exaggerate the EU’s relative economic performance without having the foggiest idea what is actually happening across the Channel.
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But at heart, the rise in the real cost of energy means we are all poorer. That is inescapable. The question is how that pain should be divided. Clearly it should not be borne by families at the edge of poverty. But then it *is* going to be borne by middle class families and inevitably some of those will be public sector workers such as teachers, doctors, etc, and the way the pain will be transmitted is higher interest rates and higher prices.
... Which makes it patently absurd that the almost definite shoe in for next PM Truss is pledging £82bn of spending on infrastructure, defence etc and tax cuts at the same time. To make matters worse she's trying to talk tough on China/ Taiwan. I'm sure the CCP are quaking in their boots.
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Well, that’s dealt with one point out of ten in the anti-Brexit article…
As for the Telegraph piece, it’s basically a piece of arse covering from an organisation that loudly trumpeted an incredibly stupid policy. Does the author really think that lots of well-informed British people don’t know that inflation is a problem everywhere and that the Germans are having huge problems with their energy supply? This is all over the news. I hate Brexit but I’ve also posted links on here showing that it’s not a huge factor in the current bout of inflation. Of course Brexit has still had an inflationary effect on the U.K. but that was a few years ago, another reason why they Britons are on average poorer than the French or Germans.
The article does the usual trick of taking a couple of data points and turning it into a bigger story than those data points warrant (at least the Guardian article actually talks to a lot of people about what is going on in their sector of the economy). I’m also completely unconvinced by his chunterings about New Keynesian central banks and the money supply. If you want to believe a journalist with a history degree has a better handle on how monetary policy works than institutions stuffed full of people who have PhDs in the subject, then be my guest. And yes, that is a blatant appeal to authority as I simply can’t be bothered to write any more. But I should perhaps point out 30 years of price stability under this regime.
Much of what the Guardian article covers is the reality of the UK’s weak economy and probable poor growth for years to come. That our inflation rate is comparable to elsewhere in the G20 or that we are not yet in recession (by one measure that the author managed to find; economies are large and very complicated) does not negate the argument that the U.K. has put itself in a bad place that it will struggle to get out of.
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I hate Brexit but I’ve also posted links on here showing that it’s not a huge factor in the current bout of inflation.
This is my point about the current bout of inflation - that it has virtually nothing to do with brexit.
I'm not sure what the point of the rest of your post is. I know you hate brexit along with most others on here, and I respect that opinion. I long ago - around 2016 or 2017 - accepted the economic consensus that brexit would lower GDP by a small amount over the short and medium term. But am of the view that this would have close to fuck-all noticeable economic impact on everyday life for the average person, seeing as we all agree that small changes either +ve or-ve in GDP are virtually meaningless to the average person. There are many valid reasons to 'hate brexit' but 'GDP' doesn't seem one.
* I also long-age vowed not to discuss brexit on here as it's an invitation for ideologues on both sides to talk shit at each other. Much like much of this politics thread is. My reason for posting was for the inflation angle, not brexit.
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"I got 99 reasons but GDP ain't one"...
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I’m also completely unconvinced by his chunterings about New Keynesian central banks and the money supply. If you want to believe a journalist with a history degree has a better handle on how monetary policy works than institutions stuffed full of people who have PhDs in the subject, then be my guest. And yes, that is a blatant appeal to authority as I simply can’t be bothered to write any more. But I should perhaps point out 30 years of price stability under this regime.
His comments are hardly 'chunterings' about money supply and to label it this way makes you look churlish and an intellectual snob. It's a fairly mainstream view that unprecedented supply of money into the financial system since the 2008 crisis has inflated asset prices. Hence the central banks' current tightening in the form of rate rises and bond-buying roll-offs and even sell-offs, in an effort to tamper the economy. You don't need to be an economics PhD to be aware of this consensus view, simply look at what the central banks are actually doing and saying!
edit: the OECD (like most institutions) seem to think tighter money supply is implicated in inflation. Presumably the reverse (loose money supply) must be true to some extent in some situations:
OECD's General Assessment of the Macroeconomic Situation (https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/economics/oecd-economic-outlook-volume-2022-issue-1_45d74f9e-en)
The war in Ukraine has generated a major humanitarian crisis affecting millions of people. The associated economic shocks, and their impact on global commodity, trade and financial markets, will also have a material impact on economic outcomes and livelihoods. Prior to the outbreak of the war the outlook appeared broadly favourable over 2022-23, with growth and inflation returning to normality as the COVID‑19 pandemic and supply-side constraints waned. The invasion of Ukraine, along with shutdowns in major cities and ports in China due to the zero-COVID policy, has generated a new set of adverse shocks. Global GDP growth is now projected to slow sharply this year to 3%, around 1½ percentage points weaker than projected in the December 2021 OECD Economic Outlook, and to remain at a similar subdued pace in 2023 (Table 1.1). In part, this reflects deep downturns in Russia and Ukraine, but growth is set to be considerably weaker than expected in most economies, especially in Europe, where an embargo on oil and coal imports from Russia is incorporated in the projections for 2023. Commodity prices have risen substantially, reflecting the importance of supply from Russia and Ukraine in many markets, adding to inflationary pressures and hitting real incomes and spending, particularly for the most vulnerable households. In many emerging-market economies the risks of food shortages are high given the reliance on agricultural exports from Russia and Ukraine. Supply‑side pressures have also intensified as a result of the conflict, as well as the shutdowns in China. Consumer price inflation is projected to remain elevated, averaging around 5½ per cent in the major advanced economies in 2022, and 8½ per cent in the OECD as a whole, before receding in 2023 as supply-chain and commodity price pressures wane and the impact of tighter monetary conditions begins to be felt. Core inflation, though slowing, is nonetheless projected to remain at or above medium-term objectives in many major economies at the end of 2023.
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I’m certainly not making a point about QE. The quote is:
“we all have New Keynesian central banks that fatally ignore the money supply.”
As you posted, and I agree, central banks aren’t ignoring the money supply. But really this is the author clinging to the monetarist views I suspect he formed when he was a young man in the 70s, hence the barb at New Keynesianism which is the theoretical underpinning of modern central banking.
It’s not intellectual snobbishness to acknowledge that some people know more about a subject than others. And that this is a complex technical subject which Telegraph writers may not have the firmest grasp over. Fwiw I don’t think I have a particularly firm grasp over much of this stuff!
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Pete, what the OECD gives there are a whole bunch of reasons in the real economy for high inflation (ie not monetary or nominal causes).
“Consumer price inflation is projected to remain elevated, averaging around 5½ per cent in the major advanced economies in 2022, and 8½ per cent in the OECD as a whole, before receding in 2023 as supply-chain and commodity price pressures wane and the impact of tighter monetary conditions begins to be felt.”
All they are saying is that increased interest rates are probably going to reduce inflation at some point in 2023. Of course a tighter monetary supply will affect inflation, but the point the Telegraph article is making is about whether monetary conditions are the entire driver of inflation. This is basically an argument between two different schools of macroeconomics that was particularly prevalent in the 70s and 80s. The Telegraph writer is just grumpy that modern academics and central bankers tend towards a different view than the one he holds.
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..but the point the Telegraph article is making is about whether monetary conditions are the entire driver of inflation. This is basically an argument between two different schools of macroeconomics that was particularly prevalent in the 70s and 80s. The Telegraph writer is just grumpy that modern academics and central bankers tend towards a different view than the one he holds.
I think that's a bit unfair. I doubt that anyone reading that article will come away thinking that the author is making the argument that monetary conditions are the entire driver of inflation? To me it reads as if he's making the argument that there are various drivers - he states the consensus view about supply chain shocks due to lockdowns, continuing lockdowns in major Chinese ports and cities, commodity price rises including oil/gas/coal/fertiliser/food, Ukraine war, Russian sanctions.
His point about 'monetary conditions' is fleeting in context of the overall thrust of the article. And the theoretical background that you picked up on probably goes over the head of 99% of readers (including me, beyond knowing very roughly what Keynesianism is).
One of his main arguments (which I posted here) is he clearly believes current inflation has little to do with brexit.
Britain is indeed in a horrible mess but for reasons that mostly have little to do with Brexit
He also believes Europe's currency union is going to contribute to difficulty in combatting the effects of inflation; while the issues behind the UK's problems are different - as you've mentioned before productivity being one issue among many that hamstrings UK plc.
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Pete, I wasn't posting the guardian article to try to ascribe inflation to Brexit; I agree that other things are responsible for that.
However it has so far been only a bad thing for economic growth and living standards in the UK. I'm not necessarily arguing against it, but it would help if the government would recognise that and do something about it rather than pretending it doesn't exist. Perhaps it will have longer term benefits, but I don't see any right now.
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Germany in particular has manoeuvred itself into an economic and political crisis of Zeitwende proportions by outsourcing everything: its energy supply to Putin’s Russia, its aggregate demand to Xi Jinping’s China, its military defence to America, and its monetary policy to the ECB – in the lapidary words of Deutsche Bank board member Paul Achleitner.
Lapidary words? Interesting. Is this a typo or does it imply the rhetoric is so sharp you can polish gems with it?
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Cool word isn't it. Had to look up what it meant. Origin of the Lapis brush.
ADJECTIVE
relating to the engraving, cutting, or polishing of stones and gems.
NOUN
a person who cuts, polishes, or engraves gems.
So I assume he means cutting remarks.
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In this context it means precise and elegant.
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And the theoretical background that you picked up on probably goes over the head of 99% of readers (including me, beyond knowing very roughly what Keynesianism is).
For sure the exact details of the issue go over most people's heads but I suspect a reasonable number of readers of the Telegraph will have vague memories of the early 1980s arguments over monetarism, and it's a popular enough topic in undergrad economics so even PPE-ers will have heard of it. But the point is not to really engage with a theoretical background and complex question, rather it is to make the following argument: "Those pointy heads in central banks are all into an updated version of this thing that we know doesn't work from the last time around, what we need is not this nonsense but a good dose of the Thatcher/Reagan policies which we know worked. We know the boffins will never accept this so it's time to stop this central bank independence malarkey and bring it back under political control."
That may be a subtext but I'm fairly sure that's the train of thought that's gaining strength in conservative circles right now.
One of his main arguments (which I posted here) is he clearly believes current inflation has little to do with brexit.
Britain is indeed in a horrible mess but for reasons that mostly have little to do with Brexit
He also believes Europe's currency union is going to contribute to difficulty in combatting the effects of inflation; while the issues behind the UK's problems are different - as you've mentioned before productivity being one issue among many that hamstrings UK plc.
I don't think Brexit has a great deal to do with the current inflation. That's not to say Brexit hasn't had an inflationary effect, it has, but that was earlier. A paper from Warwick estimates it as adding about 2.9% onto inflation in 2018, roughly costing households £870 in the couple of years after the referendum (source (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/iere.12541)).
As for the issues that the UK faces, productivity is indeed one. And one way that Brexit is thought to hamper the UK in the long run is through decreasing productivity...
I long ago - around 2016 or 2017 - accepted the economic consensus that brexit would lower GDP by a small amount over the short and medium term. But am of the view that this would have close to fuck-all noticeable economic impact on everyday life for the average person, seeing as we all agree that small changes either +ve or-ve in GDP are virtually meaningless to the average person. There are many valid reasons to 'hate brexit' but 'GDP' doesn't seem one.
Yes, I mean the consensus was more certain over the medium to long term as to GDP loss (the short run was too messy to say accurately, needless to say we did not cover ourselves with glory) but to describe the amount lost as "small" is to misunderstand growth in modern developed countries. If a genie jumped out of a bottle in No 10 and offered the PM an economy almost instantly 4% bigger, every PM would jump at the chance, because that kind of free lunch is just about impossible for us to get. It would be hard even for the US which is economically much stronger than us. The reverse is as bad for us as the free lunch would be good.
Over the last couple of weeks various UK economics commentators have been shooting the shit about an article (https://sambowman.substack.com/p/boosters-and-doomsters) on the possibility of UK economic growth. Its author, Sam Bowman, is pretty right wing, worked for the Adam Smith Institute, wrote:
"I think the one policy choice that the Doomsters do think made a big difference was Brexit, which is certainly within our power to reverse in principle, but practically isn't really because of the politics of it. On this point I entirely agree – it was a bad decision that is already visibly making us poorer, with very limited benefits."
I strongly disagree that "small changes in GDP are virtually meaningless to the average person". There's a big difference between an economy growing at 2.5% and one that's hardly growing, as actual life experience of anyone who's been an adult since the 1990s shows. Whilst GDP is an imperfect measure of what we produce, it nevertheless reflects real activity undertaken. Less output means fewer goods and services and lower wages and living standards. Most of our public services are predicated on a trend rate of growth that is considerably higher than the one we actually have post-2008 and a long-term, low growth economy has real consequences in terms of health care, social care, education, etc. I'm aware of some research that suggests that periods of economic growth correspond to periods of political liberalism, whereas stagnation tends to lead to more authoritarian politics.
I know you've said in the past that you believe that other events that occur post-Brexit will make it impossible to ever assess the impact of leaving the EU. Whilst we can never be entirely sure, I don't think that's correct. There are ways to assess the damage of this policy and to blithely wave away the economic impact as "close to fuck-all" isn't - in my view - a particularly empirical way to approach the issue. Indeed, one could point to the Guardian article as a qualitative way of examining that impact.
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And the theoretical background that you picked up on probably goes over the head of 99% of readers (including me, beyond knowing very roughly what Keynesianism is).
For sure the exact details of the issue go over most people's heads but I suspect a reasonable number of readers of the Telegraph will have vague memories of the early 1980s arguments over monetarism, and it's a popular enough topic in undergrad economics so even PPE-ers will have heard of it. But the point is not to really engage with a theoretical background and complex question, rather it is to make the following argument: "Those pointy heads in central banks are all into an updated version of this thing that we know doesn't work from the last time around, what we need is not this nonsense but a good dose of the Thatcher/Reagan policies which we know worked. We know the boffins will never accept this so it's time to stop this central bank independence malarkey and bring it back under political control."
That may be a subtext but I'm fairly sure that's the train of thought that's gaining strength in conservative circles right now.
One of his main arguments (which I posted here) is he clearly believes current inflation has little to do with brexit.
Britain is indeed in a horrible mess but for reasons that mostly have little to do with Brexit
He also believes Europe's currency union is going to contribute to difficulty in combatting the effects of inflation; while the issues behind the UK's problems are different - as you've mentioned before productivity being one issue among many that hamstrings UK plc.
I don't think Brexit has a great deal to do with the current inflation. That's not to say Brexit hasn't had an inflationary effect, it has, but that was earlier. A paper from Warwick estimates it as adding about 2.9% onto inflation in 2018, roughly costing households £870 in the couple of years after the referendum (source (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/iere.12541)).
As for the issues that the UK faces, productivity is indeed one. And one way that Brexit is thought to hamper the UK in the long run is through decreasing productivity...
I long ago - around 2016 or 2017 - accepted the economic consensus that brexit would lower GDP by a small amount over the short and medium term. But am of the view that this would have close to fuck-all noticeable economic impact on everyday life for the average person, seeing as we all agree that small changes either +ve or-ve in GDP are virtually meaningless to the average person. There are many valid reasons to 'hate brexit' but 'GDP' doesn't seem one.
Yes, I mean the consensus was more certain over the medium to long term as to GDP loss (the short run was too messy to say accurately, needless to say we did not cover ourselves with glory) but to describe the amount lost as "small" is to misunderstand growth in modern developed countries. If a genie jumped out of a bottle in No 10 and offered the PM an economy almost instantly 4% bigger, every PM would jump at the chance, because that kind of free lunch is just about impossible for us to get. It would be hard even for the US which is economically much stronger than us. The reverse is as bad for us as the free lunch would be good.
Over the last couple of weeks various UK economics commentators have been shooting the shit about an article (https://sambowman.substack.com/p/boosters-and-doomsters) on the possibility of UK economic growth. Its author, Sam Bowman, is pretty right wing, worked for the Adam Smith Institute, wrote:
"I think the one policy choice that the Doomsters do think made a big difference was Brexit, which is certainly within our power to reverse in principle, but practically isn't really because of the politics of it. On this point I entirely agree – it was a bad decision that is already visibly making us poorer, with very limited benefits."
I strongly disagree that "small changes in GDP are virtually meaningless to the average person". There's a big difference between an economy growing at 2.5% and one that's hardly growing, as actual life experience of anyone who's been an adult since the 1990s shows. Whilst GDP is an imperfect measure of what we produce, it nevertheless reflects real activity undertaken. Less output means fewer goods and services and lower wages and living standards. Most of our public services are predicated on a trend rate of growth that is considerably higher than the one we actually have post-2008 and a long-term, low growth economy has real consequences in terms of health care, social care, education, etc. I'm aware of some research that suggests that periods of economic growth correspond to periods of political liberalism, whereas stagnation tends to lead to more authoritarian politics.
I know you've said in the past that you believe that other events that occur post-Brexit will make it impossible to ever assess the impact of leaving the EU. Whilst we can never be entirely sure, I don't think that's correct. There are ways to assess the damage of this policy and to blithely wave away the economic impact as "close to fuck-all" isn't - in my view - a particularly empirical way to approach the issue. Indeed, one could point to the Guardian article as a qualitative way of examining that impact.
Only just seen this.
That Warwick study you quote doesn't show what you say it shows. The 2.9% above average inflation you quoted is a localised outlier and is not representative of the UK. If you read the text - or just scroll down to 'fig 8' - it actually only shows CPI increased significantly above average in Northern Ireland, and to a much lesser extent in Wales. CPI for London, South East, South West and Yorkshire was actually below average... Other parts of the country show a negligibly +ve figure.
It looks to me that they've taken an outlier (NI) which skews the average, and come up with the headline '2.9% above average inflation'. Surely I'm wrong, and this isn't as misleading as it appears to be?
Also I don't need to point out to you that economic growth is often accompanied by inflation. When you look at Northern Ireland's economic growth (GDP) for the period you'll see that, since 2018 (https://www.ft.com/content/3b5059c4-4ef1-44d1-ae1f-43a875efb7ca), its economy outperformed the rest of the UK by far and in 2022 remains with by far the strongest GDP growth (https://www.irishnews.com/business/2022/06/17/news/northern-ireland-economy-grew-in-first-three-months-of-2022-2745676/) of any region of the UK. (It has been suggested by many commentators to be due to the much maligned NI protocol, flawed as this no doubt is).
So in this context the 2.9% above average inflation for 2018 in a strongly-growing Northern Irish economy would hardly be a surprise. It's pretty much exactly what you'd expect to see in NI isn't it? (It's also hardly today's 10% inflation in a shrinking global economy).
Also, in those localised areas of the UK that did see inflation (basically NI and to lesser extent Wales) the inflation is almost entirely attributed to depreciation of the pound following the brexit vote. I also don't need to point out to you that depreciation of the pound comes with pros and cons for businesses, depending on context.
For the rest of your discussion about GDP a great deal seems to depend on who 'us' refers to and I remain of the view that - much like in personal finance everyone has a 'personal inflation rate' depending on their lifestyle - one person's GDP experience is not another person's. The discussions around the relevance of GDP risk being biased by who's discussing it and the 'us' in the context of your points might mean 'not us' to a great many people in the UK. Unless a belief underlying your point is that GDP is representative of joe average and isn't massively skewed by the outlier of financial services and London, and trickle-down capitalism is in great health. Perhaps it is (especially in Northern Ireland...).
On forecasting in general, while I agree with you on the rough direction of the GDP trend post brexit, I don't put much faith in the accuracy of forecasts. There's a wealth of studies into the accuracy of economic forecasting that anyone can find without me needing to link them here. Added to that are various discussions that anyone can find without me needing to link them here - although I'd recommend anyone interested researches 'Tetlock, forecasting' - on the purpose and accuracy of forecasts and the role of forecasters. Precise accuracy being a secondary consideration to knowing rough direction and being tools to set policy etc.
Go on then I'll link. (https://medium.com/conversations-with-tyler/philip-tetlock-tyler-cowen-forecasting-sociology-30401464b6d9)
We want a lot of things from our forecasters, and accuracy is often not the first thing. I think that we look to forecasters for ideological reassurance, we look to forecasters for entertainment, and we look to forecasters for minimizing regret functions of various sorts. We would really regret not having anticipated X, Y, or Z, so we want to pump up the probabilities of those things.
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Ah, Phillip Tetlock, the inspiration behind that well known success story that was Dominic Cummings.
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Or the inverse: 'Ah Dominic Cummings, the failure who was inspired by the well-known success story that is Philip Tetlock'.
Readers have long been urged not to judge a book by its cover. They would also do well, as one author has implored, not to judge them by their biggest fans.
Philip Tetlock, the Canadian-American political scientist who wrote Superforecasting, has asked people not to form superficial opinions about his work after Dominic Cummings, the prime minister’s senior adviser, told his colleagues to read it before an away day next month.
source (https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/ignore-praise-by-dominic-cummings-says-author-of-superforecasting-book-dgs38nttb)
Superficial opinions and playing man not ball are par for the course here.
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I was only being flippant Pete, apologies for any offence caused. I have read superforecasting, incidentally. It seemed like reasonable pop science to me and nothing to do with whatever Cummings was bleating about, but that it wasn't anything special. However I'm not pretending to be an expert, only what I took from it.
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Only just seen this.
That Warwick study you quote doesn't show what you say it shows. The 2.9% above average inflation you quoted is a localised outlier and is not representative of the UK. If you read the text - or just scroll down to 'fig 8' - it actually only shows CPI increased significantly above average in Northern Ireland, and to a much lesser extent in Wales. CPI for London, South East, South West and Yorkshire was actually below average... Other parts of the country show a negligibly +ve figure.
It looks to me that they've taken an outlier (NI) which skews the average, and come up with the headline '2.9% above average inflation'. Surely I'm wrong, and this isn't as misleading as it appears to be?
I don't think the paper is very clear at this point.
At the start of section 7, "Cost of Living", they establish first the aggregate size of the inflation effect of the referendum. That's the headline 2.9% figure. In section 7.2 they begin to break this down a bit, using an ONS survey of 4,912 households to see how different types of households are affected by the inflationary effect of the drop in sterling. Note that this survey does not include Northern Ireland, although they are chosen to be representative of the distribution of households in GB.
They look purely at the inflationary effect of referendum induced depreciation by seeing how important foreign goods are in the budget shares of those households, and from that get the following distribution of inflationary effects (this is fig 6).
(https://i.imgur.com/vkAAv74.png)
As you can see, most households experience inflation ranging from 2% to 4%, with the median household close to the aggregate 2.9% figure.
They then try to break this down by household type. Fig 7 shows what happens when they do this by disposable household income: "For each decile, we show the estimated inflation increase due to the Brexit depreciation relative to the 2.9 percentage point effect for the average U.K. household." (My italics.) Clearly the effect is not large and doesn't really correlate with income.
Then they break this down by region. Again, they are graphing "the estimated inflation increase due to the Brexit depreciation minus the increase for the average U.K. household (in percentage points). The increase for the average U.K. household is 2.9 percentage points." So again, what we are seeing is how different regions cluster around the aggregate inflationary figure of 2.9%, in a similar way to how the overall distribution of households looks in relation to the aggregate which we see on Fig 6 above.
I should also point out that although NI is quite an outlier, it's also only got a population of 2m people which is tiny compared to London and smaller than Greater Manchester, so it would have to be a massive outlier to compensate for its relatively small population.
Also I don't need to point out to you that economic growth is often accompanied by inflation. When you look at Northern Ireland's economic growth (GDP) for the period you'll see that, since 2018 (https://www.ft.com/content/3b5059c4-4ef1-44d1-ae1f-43a875efb7ca), its economy outperformed the rest of the UK by far and in 2022 remains with by far the strongest GDP growth (https://www.irishnews.com/business/2022/06/17/news/northern-ireland-economy-grew-in-first-three-months-of-2022-2745676/) of any region of the UK. (It has been suggested by many commentators to be due to the much maligned NI protocol, flawed as this no doubt is).
So in this context the 2.9% above average inflation for 2018 in a strongly-growing Northern Irish economy would hardly be a surprise. It's pretty much exactly what you'd expect to see in NI isn't it? (It's also hardly today's 10% inflation in a shrinking global economy).
That's a good point. But it's worth bearing in mind that this study is only looking at inflation driven by depreciation and not from other sources such as a growing economy:
"By design, this estimate only incorporates price changes resulting from the impact of the sterling depreciation on import costs and does not capture any price effects of Brexit that are uncorrelated with import share variation across product groups."
Later on they add that they don't include other causes for inflation such as Brexit-induced loss of productivity, adding: "Similarly, any effects of Brexit on prices that are uncorrelated with variation in import shares, for example, due to monetary policy easing by the Bank of England following the referendum or domestic demand and supply shocks caused by anticipation of Brexit, are not captured by our estimates."
I'm not familiar with this type of model at all so I may be wrong about this, but I'm pretty certain their inflation data runs 2011 to 2018 (see section 6, estimating equation 13), whereas the NIP came into force at the start of 2021.
It's key to point out that the inflation in this study was not necessarily the actual inflation rate, as the other things mentioned in the quote above will also have an effect. I took a quick look and found a further paper by mostly the same authors that accouts for the "other stuff", ie it's a general equilibrium model. When those are taken into effect the inflationary effect is slightly smaller:
"Accounting for both the depreciation and other ‘general equilibrium’ effects of the referendum, we estimate that the Brexit vote increased aggregate inflation by 1.7 percentage points in the year following the referendum. There is uncertainty about the exact size of this effect, but our analysis unambiguously shows that the referendum led to a substantial rise in inflation."
(https://ukandeu.ac.uk/partner-reports/the-brexit-vote-inflation-and-uk-living-standards/)
As you say, not much in the context of the current surge in inflation. But an awful lot considering we had been at or around the 2% target for decades, and Brexit represented a choice in the way that the pandemic did not.
For the rest of your discussion about GDP a great deal seems to depend on who 'us' refers to and I remain of the view that - much like in personal finance everyone has a 'personal inflation rate' depending on their lifestyle - one person's GDP experience is not another person's. The discussions around the relevance of GDP risk being biased by who's discussing it and the 'us' in the context of your points might mean 'not us' to a great many people in the UK. Unless a belief underlying your point is that GDP is representative of joe average and isn't massively skewed by the outlier of financial services and London, and trickle-down capitalism is in great health. Perhaps it is (especially in Northern Ireland...).
Strong disagree. GDP is generally very well correlated with all sorts of outcomes in health, longevity, etc. Governent budget constraints are a real thing and have definite real world effects in terms of visible standards of living and of public services.
I think it's perfectly possible to believe that "trickle down economics" is a load of old tosh whilst noting that the UK's income inequality is quite strongly affected by tax and benefits (the UK's income Gini goes down by 13 percentage points according to the IFS, from memory this is pretty good in Europe) and of course the only parts of the UK that pay an overall positive amount of tax are London and the SE.
So yes, the overall GDP does matter, and decreasing it over the long term is absolutely going to have an effect on hospitals, schools, etc etc and on people's quality of life.
On forecasting in general, while I agree with you on the rough direction of the GDP trend post brexit, I don't put much faith in the accuracy of forecasts. There's a wealth of studies into the accuracy of economic forecasting that anyone can find without me needing to link them here. Added to that are various discussions that anyone can find without me needing to link them here - although I'd recommend anyone interested researches 'Tetlock, forecasting' - on the purpose and accuracy of forecasts and the role of forecasters. Precise accuracy being a secondary consideration to knowing rough direction and being tools to set policy etc.
Strong agree. My point was more that it is possible (tho difficult) to tease out the effects of Brexit looking backwards, despite other events.
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On Truss' economic folly (sorry, policy), apologies, its paywalled but available for any Times subscribers.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/reagan-guru-reveals-the-flaw-in-trussenomics-cg2rqj5fn?shareToken=1dbe91c9d8ab7b8bae92ea784e75add5
In a nutshell, she doesn't seem to understand, or want to admit that if you are going to cut taxes, you need to cut spending, or, in the medium to long term, you're screwed.
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Unless you want to stoke populist anger and expose the country to your rapacious political funders who will make money out of the reducing regulatory efforts. I look to the what is happening to the Republican party in the US and it terrifies me. Liz is pals with the same political thinkers and financial backers.
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Liz is going to struggle
She's woefully unprepared for this winter. Genuinely I give her less than six months
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I think she’ll be OK, she’s relatively young and probably owns a warm jumper and coat.
How long do you give Sunak btw?
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What to live or as PM? I doubt he'll become PM but I think if he did he'd last longer
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Unless you want to stoke populist anger and expose the country to your rapacious political funders who will make money out of the reducing regulatory efforts. I look to the what is happening to the Republican party in the US and it terrifies me. Liz is pals with the same political thinkers and financial backers.
The article I linked to discussed her allegiance to Reganite economics.
Liz is going to struggle
She's woefully unprepared for this winter. Genuinely I give her less than six months
I doubt it, she may have a hard time but will probably change what she's saying as soon as she's trying to appeal to the electorate and not just the party members.
She will probably also double down on EU bashing, migration etc etc to try to distract people.
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I don't think she's got any answers and she's not particularly likeable, she doesn't interview well, and she's said some very unpopular things. They lunatic base love her but their choice will be one the public rejects imo.
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She's not trying to appeal to the general public, she's talking to the tory membership who will elect her or Sunak. So she's saying things they like to hear. Like Toby says if she's elected then, if she has any sense, she'll probably start talking differently to appeal to a wider general public electorate. That's when their real policies will emerge blinking in the daylight.
It's all bullshit, uttered by wankers, listened to mostly by arseholes, and reported on by cunts. I may have got the order the wrong way around.
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She's not trying to appeal to the general public, she's talking to the tory membership who will elect her or Sunak. So she's saying things they like to hear. Like Toby says if she's elected then, if she has any sense, she'll probably start talking differently to appeal to a wider general public electorate. That's when their real policies will emerge blinking in the daylight.
It's all bullshit, uttered by wankers, listened to mostly by arseholes, and reported on by cunts. I may have got the order the wrong way around.
Sounds about right. Truss is politically clearly not a fool. Look at how long she's had a cabinet job for, and how many different positions she's adopted to suit the situation.
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She's not trying to appeal to the general public, she's talking to the tory membership who will elect her or Sunak. So she's saying things they like to hear. Like Toby says if she's elected then, if she has any sense, she'll probably start talking differently to appeal to a wider general public electorate.
If she (or less likely Sunak) had any morals / sense of fair play they would call a GE after they have been installed.
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I'm aware she's saying what she's saying to appeal to the party, but I don't think she'll be able to reconcile that with the electorate. She'll always be beholden to the party in some way, and she'll always be unlikeable and unpopular in the public at large. Her and the party also don't have any solutions to the problems we face, so she ain't going to alleviate the crises either.
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If she (or less likely Sunak) had any morals / sense of fair play they would call a GE after they have been installed.
They don't and they won't
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This. But also, any politician of any party would be stupid and politically incompetent to call a general election now, in the midst of the current inflationary environment when they don't need to hold one until 2024 at latest. Gives them time for things to calm down, whether or not they're capable of doing anything much to solve the problems.
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This. But also, any politician of any party would be stupid and politically incompetent to call a general election now, in the midst of the current inflationary environment when they don't need to hold one until 2024 at latest. Gives them time for things to calm down, whether or not they're capable of doing anything much to solve the problems.
Plus the fact that the boundary changes slated for 2023 will be in place by 2024 which is worth about 25 seats to the Tories from memory, so there is little to no chance of a GE.
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This. But also, any politician of any party would be stupid and politically incompetent to call a general election now, in the midst of the current inflationary environment when they don't need to hold one until 2024 at latest. Gives them time for things to calm down, whether or not they're capable of doing anything much to solve the problems.
If I were leader of the opposition I'd be making the point about the Prime Minister's lack of legitimacy on a weekly basis at PMQs. Not that I guess the current mess is something you would want to inherit.
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I expect that when it suits them, plenty of Labour MPs and supporters will argue that people vote for parties and policies, not personalities*. In which case the retort to you would be that, based on the last election, as leader of the opposition you’re in no position to be arguing about legitimacy.
* This however is probably bollocks.
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Given Gordon Brown came into office via a complete stitch up which didn't even involve a leadership contest I think it would be an easy line to counter.
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Given Gordon Brown came into office via a complete stitch up which didn't even involve a leadership contest I think it would be an easy line to counter.
Yeah, I mean that was only 15 years ago...the last 2 Tory PMs (over the last 6 years!) who were ushered in via their byzantine leadership process decided the need for a GE to verify their mandate so in terms of recent precedent, I'd be leaning on that!
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Perhaps an unpopular view but voting for an MP and hence a majority party is better than a presidential system precisely because we can change Prime Ministers in-between elections. This gives us a degree of flexibility if the current incumbent runs out of road and allows parties to change tack if the leader becomes untenable. The current Tory madness of appealing to party members rather than the country, good sense or even just Tory voters has been perfectly matched on the left, which is why Labour was saddled with Corbyn even though most of his MPs recognised his uselessness. And by Brown of course.
I suspect Truss will be a disaster not because she has over promised her right wing, or because she is over-contrarian, but because the Conservatives currently have no idea of the point of government any more.
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Perhaps an unpopular view but voting for an MP and hence a majority party is better than a presidential system precisely because we can change Prime Ministers in-between elections.
I think I’ve always misunderstood this, I thought that countries with presidents had them alongside a PM figure (Leader of the House etc.) and they we didn’t have a president because the monarch was still fulfilling that role?
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Yeah, as I understand it while the Prime Minister runs the government, Her Maj ultimately has the power to remove them.
In a presidential system, I don't know who wields the power to remove a rogue President (as arguably we've seen with Trump etc)
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Perhaps an unpopular view but voting for an MP and hence a majority party is better than a presidential system precisely because we can change Prime Ministers in-between elections.
I think I’ve always misunderstood this, I thought that countries with presidents had them alongside a PM figure (Leader of the House etc.) and they we didn’t have a president because the monarch was still fulfilling that role?
The Presidents of France and the US get - as far as I understand it - a personal mandate to rule from the electorate, and the head of state role also has executive powers. Whereas we vote for MPs to be our representatives and then they vote for a leader, mediated by a party system which gives members a day (too much say in my view).
I remember reading that parliamentary systems are thought to be a bit more stable than presidential ones, and that the US view (or at least the view of its policy making class) generally supported this assessment, being as they installed parliamentary systems in Germany, Japan and Iraq.
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I don’t see how the systems are too similar given that the queen is a figurehead head of state who abstains from anything legislative (apart from secretly in her own narrow interest, of course), whereas a president has a mandate and seeks to I,plement an agenda. Of course that might lead to deadlock where the president and the house majority are from different parties.
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Perhaps an unpopular view but voting for an MP and hence a majority party is better than a presidential system precisely because we can change Prime Ministers in-between elections.
I think I’ve always misunderstood this, I thought that countries with presidents had them alongside a PM figure (Leader of the House etc.) and they we didn’t have a president because the monarch was still fulfilling that role?
The Presidents of France and the US get - as far as I understand it - a personal mandate to rule from the electorate, and the head of state role also has executive powers. Whereas we vote for MPs to be our representatives and then they vote for a leader, mediated by a party system which gives members a day (too much say in my view).
I remember reading that parliamentary systems are thought to be a bit more stable than presidential ones, and that the US view (or at least the view of its policy making class) generally supported this assessment, being as they installed parliamentary systems in Germany, Japan and Iraq.
I think that parties giving their members a vote on the leadership is an awful thing. It produces the likes of Corbyn and Johnson, and often leaders who don't have the support of their MPs.
The British PM has far too much unregulated power, its become almost presidential without the checks and balances which are present in actual presidencies. This leads to, for example Johnson trying to put his mates into every quango going, or the house of lords, or both. The PM decides when to have an election, when by elections are held, and so on... none of which the US president can. Bad as Trump was, he really didn't get very much done. The fact that Johnson hasn't either has more to do with the fact he is lazy and incompetent than anything else.
On Truss, I think you're all underestimating her, I think she is if anything, a more worrying prospect than Johnson.
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https://news.sky.com/story/michael-gove-backs-rishi-sunak-for-tory-leader-as-he-accuses-liz-truss-of-taking-holiday-from-reality-12677032
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If Gove thinks you are mental you may be fucking insane
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https://news.sky.com/story/michael-gove-backs-rishi-sunak-for-tory-leader-as-he-accuses-liz-truss-of-taking-holiday-from-reality-12677032
"I cannot see how safeguarding the stock options of FTSE 100 executives should ever take precedence over supporting the poorest in our society, but at a time of want it cannot be the right priority."
Things you can say when you’re not getting anywhere near the Tory front benches again! And from someone who initially backed Kemi Badenoch?!
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If Gove thinks you are mental you may be fucking insane
Underestimating Truss is a mistake, I don't think she's insane, she's more dangerous than that. You can see how committed to social equality she is though, JRMogg is mooted as her levelling up minister...
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On the other hand, this is from Matthew Paris' Times article today:
In Times columns I’ve offered my first impressions of this candidate. They were that she was intellectually shallow, her convictions wafer-thin; that she was driven by ambition pure and simple; that her manner was wooden and her ability to communicate convincingly to an electorate wider than the narrow band of Tory activists was virtually non-existent; that she was dangerously impulsive and headstrong, with a self-belief unattended by precaution; and that her leadership of the Conservative Party and our country would be a tragedy for both. “There’s nothing there,” I wrote last December, “nothing beyond a leaping self-confidence that’s almost endearing in its wide-eyed disregard for the forces of political gravity.” I likened any decision to follow Johnson with Truss to the doner kebab which, after a night on the tiles, momentarily seems like a good idea — until you open the bread pouch.
Liz Truss is a planet-sized mass of overconfidence and ambition teetering upon a pinhead of a political brain. It must all come crashing down. Her biggest job has been foreign secretary. Does she join her new best friend, Tom Tugendhat, in condemning the UN security council for its criticism of illegal Israeli settlements in Palestinian territory? Does she really want to “review” (as she’s suggested) Britain’s decision not to join the Americans in moving our embassy to Jerusalem? What did she mean by saying Britain’s civil service culture “strays into antisemitism”? These explosive hip shots are only indicative.
Ouch.
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On Truss, I think you're all underestimating her, I think she is if anything, a more worrying prospect than Johnson.
Truss is very likely to be an extremely bad PM with many of Johnson’s faults and some more of her own. But I think the type of damage she will do will be dictated by events: she will be so busy dealing very badly with the various upcoming crises that she won’t have the time or energy to put in too many damaging ideas of her own. Governmental capacity is a thing (good piece here on how crises limited Obama’s room to act - https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/barack-obama-was-a-successful-president).
She’ll still manage to do a few very stupid and damaging things with possibly long term consequences. But mostly sins of omission. Maybe?
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And knee-jerk culture war nonsense to shore up support and distract from failing to cope with reality.
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And knee-jerk culture war nonsense to shore up support and distract from failing to cope with reality.
I'd expect a lot of this. She may be incompetent at government (endless meaningless trade deals, deeply suspect economics, foolish statements about Ukraine) but she is politically astute. Some of the danger may come from response to crises, especially Ukraine, if she thinks, as she has said, that Russia can be pushed out of the whole country and Crimea.
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I don't think she's particularly politically astute tbh. I think she's dead in the water in a general election
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I enjoy political list sites and have just come across this one for the first time (thanks to JLS ont'other channel) and thought it worth sharing more widely (plus at the bottom of the very long page there are links to other handy lists as well). Almost as good as Oborne's "Boris Lies" site. :)
https://yorkshirebylines.co.uk/regular-features/the-davis-downside-dossier/
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https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-08-22/citigroup-says-natural-gas-crisis-will-drive-uk-inflation-to-18?utm_content=economics&utm_campaign=socialflow-organic&utm_source=twitter&cmpid%3D=socialflow-twitter-economics&utm_medium=social
Yikes, 18% inflation predicted in January
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From an article by Matt Chorley today:
Despite gadding about the place with decreasing coherence like the principal of a deranged hen do, Truss is not going to enjoy a honeymoon. It will be a political wake. Every position will change. Every policy will be dropped. The only thing dafter than her vow to cut this, that and the other is Sunak saying it would be immoral madness, but he would vote for it anyway.
The simplest argument against Brexit was the faff. It’s one thing if you could flick a switch to be out and thriving. But we couldn’t and we aren’t. And lo, we have spent the past six years faffing while Westminster’s small minds thought even smaller thoughts. Six years of threats and Malthouse compromises and wallpaper and photo-ops in a country now so shrunken as to think it is fine for the actual foreign secretary to say “the jury’s out” on whether the French president is a “friend or foe”. Or maybe she thinks a foe is a small horse.
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I am not sure if this is strictly the thread for this but this...
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2022/aug/30/jeremy-vine-breached-impartiality-rules-over-safe-cycling-remarks-says-bbc?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other
...is absurd. Supporting a safer cycling environment should not be controversial! Grant Shapps has recently railed against cyclists and suggested ridiculous legislation against it, and yet as a cyclist, you are often faced with openly aggressive driving, abuse and ignorance.
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Nope, not absurd at all.
LTNs are a political issue, and it's a mis-characterisation to imply that they're solely a safer cycling scheme. Jeremy Vine has a duty of impartiality which by expressing support for LTNs he's explicitly breached.
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...is absurd. Supporting a safer cycling environment should not be controversial! Grant Shapps has recently railed against cyclists and suggested ridiculous legislation against it
Immediate u-turn on his dogwhistle!
https://www.lbc.co.uk/radio/presenters/nick-ferrari/no-plans-registration-plates-cyclists-grant-shapps/
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Nope, not absurd at all.
LTNs are a political issue, and it's a mis-characterisation to imply that they're solely a safer cycling scheme. Jeremy Vine has a duty of impartiality which by expressing support for LTNs he's explicitly breached.
He was, as far as I know only commenting on the cycling aspect as a keen cyclist. I do not feel that an enthusiasm for cycling constitutes a political slant.
Right wing politicians who want to be divisive pander to the small, vocal anti cycling minority but that shouldn't make everyone sink to this level.
Or is riding a bike now a political act? I suppose it's similar to many things that have been weaponised by politics, perhaps they shouldn't be so political, but they increasingly are, more seriously than cycling LGBTQ+ rights, feminism, abortion.... etc
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Well the problem with thinking of the issue in that way is it implies LTNs exist in some sort of vacuum where they make cycling safer and that's it; no other effects. And that is not the case. They have various other effects, including increasing congestion on main roads, increasing emissions on main roads, redirecting traffic away from local businesses which are included in the LTN, affecting their revenues, etc. Which is why people disagree with them, not because people want to actively make cycling dangerous.
And Jeremy Vine should know all this.
Or is riding a bike now a political act? I suppose it's similar to many things that have been weaponised by politics, perhaps they shouldn't be so political, but they increasingly are, more seriously than cycling LGBTQ+ rights, feminism, abortion.... etc
::)
Come on, that's just daft. People disagree with each other about societal issues; that's not weaponisation! LTNs are implemented as a policy by democratically elected local authorities, I.e. by politicians, and people are entitled to disagree with that policy especially given there are entirely legitimate reasons to do so.
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As someone who lives on a busy main road which was an LTN boundary road before the council reversed the scheme, I find anti-LTN people’s claims about my welfare to be shallow and hypocritical. Many of them struggled to understand that the LTN could and did really improve my quality of life even if it worked as expected and made my road a bit busier. Now the LTN is gone I see no attempt by any of those anti-LTN groups to continue campaigning for better air for me; I was simply a fig leaf to cover up the fact driving had been made a little harder for them, and if they had to degrade my quality of life a little to get that right back, so be it.
Despite having nothing but contempt for their arguments - often not based in any kind of fact - I grudgingly accept that the imposition of an LTN is a political act as it imposes new burdens on some citizens, even if those burdens are actually just forcing them to pay for the negative externality they impose on others. Vine could have done better journalism by interrogating the anti-LTN arguments rather than being a little bit polemical and getting into trouble with his employer.
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https://news.sky.com/story/sexual-misconduct-allegations-revealed-against-cabinet-minister-and-top-no-10-aide-12686969
How long until the culprits are named? The weekend?
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Well the problem with thinking of the issue in that way is it implies LTNs exist in some sort of vacuum where they make cycling safer and that's it; no other effects. And that is not the case. They have various other effects, including increasing congestion on main roads, increasing emissions on main roads, redirecting traffic away from local businesses which are included in the LTN, affecting their revenues, etc. Which is why people disagree with them, not because people want to actively make cycling dangerous
Firstly, LTNs are just for cyclists, they are for everyone not in a car. The anti-LTN lobby have been very good at making it about cyclists, who seem to be one of the bogeymen due jour.
Secondly, I would like to see the stats you have used to come to the conclusion that:
- increasing congestion on main roads, increasing emissions on main roads
- redirecting traffic away from local businesses which are included in the LTN, affecting their revenues
Taking the first point, we know that increasing car capacity (extra lanes) increases traffic (induced demand) and there is a fair bit of evidence that well planned LTNs bring a short term increase in traffic on boundary roads but then there is a often "traffic dissipation", leading to a decrease in traffic both in and around the LTNs. Some data to ponder:
https://nacto.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/disappearing_traffic_cairns.pdf
https://findingspress.org/article/17128-low-traffic-neighbourhoods-car-use-and-active-travel-evidence-from-the-people-and-places-survey-of-outer-london-active-travel-interventions.
https://enjoywalthamforest.co.uk/work-in-your-area/walthamstow-village/comparison-of-vehicle-numbers-before-and-after-the-scheme-and-during-the-trial/
Regarding the second point, cyclist and pedestrians spend more than motorists. As a topical example, Putney is seeing more traffic due to the closure to cars of Hammersmith bridge. This doesn't seem to have increase spend in any of the businesses there!
Reading:
https://content.tfl.gov.uk/walking-cycling-economic-benefits-summary-pack.pdf
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An comprehensive round up of the hundreds of things that Truss has promised to do as PM https://www.politico.eu/article/elizabeth-truss-uk-tory-government-policy-manifesto/
Just to take one, her defence spending promises alone would cost at least £157bn. So, along with tax cuts, and the numerous other pledges, that is either a lot of borrowing, a lot of lies, or no public services or schools at all, ever.
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https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/98992316-2adf-11ed-a4d5-afa440292fae?shareToken=97049bc5880af025e4d3a4d8ea035b30
Pasted from the Sunday Times:
"
Whatever the outcome of the battle for No 10, the process is a constitutional travesty. The leader of the Conservative Party is entitled to be prime minister because some 32 million voters elected a House of Commons with a majority of Tory MPs at the last general election. But the final choice of our next prime minister is not being made by those MPs. It is being made by some 160,000 party members. This would be fine if we were talking about a local Rotary club. But political parties are not just private associations. They do not belong only to their members. In a parliamentary democracy, they have a vital constitutional role as intermediaries between the public and the state.
Traditionally, members contributed support, funding and hard work, but political direction came from the parliamentary party. Conservative leaders were chosen by the party’s MPs until the leadership contest of 2001. The successful candidate that time was Iain Duncan Smith, who was supported by a minority of Tory MPs but nearly two thirds of members. The MPs booted him out two years later in a no-confidence vote. Labour MPs chose their leader until 1981. After some unsatisfactory experiments with an electoral college, Labour handed the choice to party members and supporters in 2015. They chose Jeremy Corbyn, a man with minimal support among Labour MPs, who tried several times without success to get rid of him.
Party members are by definition unrepresentative of the people who vote for their party. They are activists who naturally congregate at the edges of the political spectrum. This tendency has been aggravated by tactical entryism. The first-past-the-post system at general elections tends to create a duopoly of the two major parties, which forces the fringes to take over the centre if they want a voice in parliament. Labour has been invaded, since losing power in 2010, by the hard left of Momentum. Conservative constituency associations have been gradually occupied by powerful Europhobic groups whose natural home would have been Ukip or the Brexit Party in a more diverse political system. Conservative Party members are also significantly older and wealthier than the average voter, and heavily concentrated in the southeast. Imbalances like these are a problem for both parties. But they are a bigger problem for the country, because they undermine the way that democratic politics work.
A democracy comprises millions of individuals with conflicting opinions and interests, who will never agree on very much. Its first task is to accommodate these differences, so that people can live together in a single political community. Parliamentary parties have a major role here. They are coalitions of opinion, united only by a loose consistency of outlook and the desire to win elections. They operate in a political marketplace. To command a parliamentary majority, they have to appeal to a much broader range of opinion than their own members. Their whole object is to produce a slate of policies which perhaps only a minority would have chosen as its preferred option, but which the broadest possible range of people can live with. This has traditionally made them powerful engines of national compromise.
When choosing a new leader, MPs and party members have a very different outlook. MPs are there to represent the interests of their constituents and, in a broader sense, the public interest, whereas party members represent no one but themselves. MPs will look mainly to the impact of their choice on the electorate at large, because that will determine their chances of re-election. They know that this will involve a large measure of ideological compromise. By comparison, party members are rarely interested in ideological compromise and inclined to look no further than their own political positions. They will choose someone who shares their prejudices, and kid themselves that the rest of the electorate will see the light. Leadership contests become an auction in which candidates compete to promise political goodies calculated to appeal to their members but not necessarily to anyone else. Labour Party members and supporters nearly destroyed their party by selecting Corbyn, a man in their own image, as their leader. So far, no UK party leader chosen against the preferences of its MPs has ever gone on to win a general election.
This concentration on marginal sectors of the electorate polarises our politics and limits the choices available to voters at general elections. Sooner or later it will destroy the political market on which our democracy depends, and aggravate the dangerous alienation of the public from the whole political process. Arthur Balfour, who was Conservative prime minister from 1902 to 1905, is said to have declared that he would rather take political advice from his valet than from rank and file members of his party. Like many things that are better left unsaid, this has an inner wisdom, as the Conservatives are about to discover.
"
-
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/98992316-2adf-11ed-a4d5-afa440292fae?shareToken=97049bc5880af025e4d3a4d8ea035b30
Pasted from the Sunday Times:
"
Whatever the outcome of the battle for No 10, the process is a constitutional travesty. The leader of the Conservative Party is entitled to be prime minister because some 32 million voters elected a House of Commons with a majority of Tory MPs at the last general election. But the final choice of our next prime minister is not being made by those MPs. It is being made by some 160,000 party members. This would be fine if we were talking about a local Rotary club. But political parties are not just private associations. They do not belong only to their members. In a parliamentary democracy, they have a vital constitutional role as intermediaries between the public and the state.
Traditionally, members contributed support, funding and hard work, but political direction came from the parliamentary party. Conservative leaders were chosen by the party’s MPs until the leadership contest of 2001. The successful candidate that time was Iain Duncan Smith, who was supported by a minority of Tory MPs but nearly two thirds of members. The MPs booted him out two years later in a no-confidence vote. Labour MPs chose their leader until 1981. After some unsatisfactory experiments with an electoral college, Labour handed the choice to party members and supporters in 2015. They chose Jeremy Corbyn, a man with minimal support among Labour MPs, who tried several times without success to get rid of him.
Party members are by definition unrepresentative of the people who vote for their party. They are activists who naturally congregate at the edges of the political spectrum. This tendency has been aggravated by tactical entryism. The first-past-the-post system at general elections tends to create a duopoly of the two major parties, which forces the fringes to take over the centre if they want a voice in parliament. Labour has been invaded, since losing power in 2010, by the hard left of Momentum. Conservative constituency associations have been gradually occupied by powerful Europhobic groups whose natural home would have been Ukip or the Brexit Party in a more diverse political system. Conservative Party members are also significantly older and wealthier than the average voter, and heavily concentrated in the southeast. Imbalances like these are a problem for both parties. But they are a bigger problem for the country, because they undermine the way that democratic politics work.
A democracy comprises millions of individuals with conflicting opinions and interests, who will never agree on very much. Its first task is to accommodate these differences, so that people can live together in a single political community. Parliamentary parties have a major role here. They are coalitions of opinion, united only by a loose consistency of outlook and the desire to win elections. They operate in a political marketplace. To command a parliamentary majority, they have to appeal to a much broader range of opinion than their own members. Their whole object is to produce a slate of policies which perhaps only a minority would have chosen as its preferred option, but which the broadest possible range of people can live with. This has traditionally made them powerful engines of national compromise.
When choosing a new leader, MPs and party members have a very different outlook. MPs are there to represent the interests of their constituents and, in a broader sense, the public interest, whereas party members represent no one but themselves. MPs will look mainly to the impact of their choice on the electorate at large, because that will determine their chances of re-election. They know that this will involve a large measure of ideological compromise. By comparison, party members are rarely interested in ideological compromise and inclined to look no further than their own political positions. They will choose someone who shares their prejudices, and kid themselves that the rest of the electorate will see the light. Leadership contests become an auction in which candidates compete to promise political goodies calculated to appeal to their members but not necessarily to anyone else. Labour Party members and supporters nearly destroyed their party by selecting Corbyn, a man in their own image, as their leader. So far, no UK party leader chosen against the preferences of its MPs has ever gone on to win a general election.
This concentration on marginal sectors of the electorate polarises our politics and limits the choices available to voters at general elections. Sooner or later it will destroy the political market on which our democracy depends, and aggravate the dangerous alienation of the public from the whole political process. Arthur Balfour, who was Conservative prime minister from 1902 to 1905, is said to have declared that he would rather take political advice from his valet than from rank and file members of his party. Like many things that are better left unsaid, this has an inner wisdom, as the Conservatives are about to discover.
"
TL;DR - party leaders being chosen by paying party members as opposed to democratically elected MPs is bad. Couldn't agree more.
Well the problem with thinking of the issue in that way is it implies LTNs exist in some sort of vacuum where they make cycling safer and that's it; no other effects. And that is not the case. They have various other effects, including increasing congestion on main roads, increasing emissions on main roads, redirecting traffic away from local businesses which are included in the LTN, affecting their revenues, etc. Which is why people disagree with them, not because people want to actively make cycling dangerous
Firstly, LTNs are just for cyclists, they are for everyone not in a car. The anti-LTN lobby have been very good at making it about cyclists, who seem to be one of the bogeymen due jour.
Secondly, I would like to see the stats you have used to come to the conclusion that:
- increasing congestion on main roads, increasing emissions on main roads
- redirecting traffic away from local businesses which are included in the LTN, affecting their revenues
Taking the first point, we know that increasing car capacity (extra lanes) increases traffic (induced demand) and there is a fair bit of evidence that well planned LTNs bring a short term increase in traffic on boundary roads but then there is a often "traffic dissipation", leading to a decrease in traffic both in and around the LTNs. Some data to ponder:
https://nacto.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/disappearing_traffic_cairns.pdf
https://findingspress.org/article/17128-low-traffic-neighbourhoods-car-use-and-active-travel-evidence-from-the-people-and-places-survey-of-outer-london-active-travel-interventions.
https://enjoywalthamforest.co.uk/work-in-your-area/walthamstow-village/comparison-of-vehicle-numbers-before-and-after-the-scheme-and-during-the-trial/
Regarding the second point, cyclist and pedestrians spend more than motorists. As a topical example, Putney is seeing more traffic due to the closure to cars of Hammersmith bridge. This doesn't seem to have increase spend in any of the businesses there!
Reading:
https://content.tfl.gov.uk/walking-cycling-economic-benefits-summary-pack.pdf
All great points. Note I never said that "LTNs are bad" was my opinion, I was simply illustrating why it is a political issue.
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Surely everything is a political issue if some bunch of tw*ts chooses to make it such.
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Surely everything is a political issue if some bunch of tw*ts chooses to make it such.
Quite. That was what I was saying, or trying to. In my opinion it shouldn't be, they make it harder to use a car in an urban environment, and that should be something everyone can support.
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today we find out if we are going to get collectively punched or kicked for the next term
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Thought this was worth sharing on the Johnson contempt of Parliament 'opinion' published by the government. (thanks to JRS on t'other channel for spotting it)
https://davidallengreen.com/2022/09/the-not-at-all-devastating-devastating-johnson-opinion-on-contempt-of-parliament/
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Thought this was worth sharing on the Johnson contempt of Parliament 'opinion' published by the government. (thanks to JRS on t'other channel for spotting it)
https://davidallengreen.com/2022/09/the-not-at-all-devastating-devastating-johnson-opinion-on-contempt-of-parliament/
This might be a sound argument, indeed it appears to be so. However, the Johnson team's intention is clearly to try to make any future sanctions against him seem completely unjustified to the public, and therefore maintain his popularity and potentially justify him being able to somehow escape them. Sadly, this will probably work imho, and he'll probably have another stab at being PM at some point.
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today we find out if we are going to get collectively punched or kicked for the next term
I'm hoping for 'punched'
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We're going to get fucked and not in a good way
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As you've said though wells I don't think truss could win a general election, as long as she doesn't wreck the gaff too much in the mean time, there's light at the end of the tunnel.
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or a shite at the end the funnel.
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As you've said though wells I don't think truss could win a general election, as long as she doesn't wreck the gaff too much in the mean time, there's light at the end of the tunnel.
More of a damp squib at the end of a tunnel but I see your point...that's better than the eye level sewerage we are currently experiencing.
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As you've said though wells I don't think truss could win a general election, as long as she doesn't wreck the gaff too much in the mean time, there's light at the end of the tunnel.
I think that she definitely could, I really wouldn't underestimate her. She's not popular with the country generally at the moment but she's got considerable political experience and can clearly campaign to an electorate effectively.
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I think the sound bite of her saying British workers are lazy will leave her pretty much dead in the water, it's not just what she said so much as how she said it.
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I think that she definitely could, I really wouldn't underestimate her. She's not popular with the country generally at the moment but she's got considerable political experience and can clearly campaign to an electorate effectively.
I'm not sure that's true, the more the Tory candidates saw of her, the more their opinion of her dropped; I'm not sure dropping out of BBC interviews (as an example) is a sustainable direction?
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/sep/03/the-more-tory-voters-see-of-liz-truss-the-less-they-like-her-polls-show
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Before we all get our hopes up it's worth bearing in mind that it's actually very hard for Labour to win an election if Scotland continues to vote nationalist. Maybe a hung parliament?
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I think that she definitely could, I really wouldn't underestimate her. She's not popular with the country generally at the moment but she's got considerable political experience and can clearly campaign to an electorate effectively.
I'm not sure that's true, the more the Tory candidates saw of her, the more their opinion of her dropped; I'm not sure dropping out of BBC interviews (as an example) is a sustainable direction?
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/sep/03/the-more-tory-voters-see-of-liz-truss-the-less-they-like-her-polls-show
The membership loved her though, and that's who she pitched to by telling them what they wanted to hear. I'm sure she's capable of dropping all that to pitch to the wider electorate.
Boris Johnson did perfectly fine avoiding any difficult interviews for the past 3 years, I'm sure Truss will do exactly the same.
I'm not saying I approve of her as a PM incidentally, I just wouldn't underestimate her. I think her economic policy is batshit crazy.
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Some tippy top cabinet choices so far as one might expect 🤮🤮🤮
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Our new Foreign Secretary has held one secretarial post before, Education Security… which he held for a day under two months!
Truly a cabinet of all the talents.
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https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/liz-truss-energy-bill-uk-package-plan-b2160759.html
Further add to national debt while the energy companies make insane profits. Good start.
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Therese Coffey, new health secretary who is against abortions. How long before they reverse abortion laws in this country. Probably not long especially since she’s sworn she won’t undo them and we all know what happens when a Tory says one thing, they do the complete opposite.
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Therese Coffey, new health secretary who is against abortions. How long before they reverse abortion laws in this country. Probably not long especially since she’s sworn she won’t undo them and we all know what happens when a Tory says one thing, they do the complete opposite.
Optimistically, I don't think the public would allow this to happen in the UK.
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Therese Coffey, new health secretary who is against abortions. How long before they reverse abortion laws in this country. Probably not long especially since she’s sworn she won’t undo them and we all know what happens when a Tory says one thing, they do the complete opposite.
Optimistically, I don't think the public would allow this to happen in the UK.
The British public are the most passive people in the world. I doubt they’d do much other than a few protests if the tories came out saying they were gonna shut down the NHS and privatise healthcare. As you can tell I’m not as optimistic…
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A lot has been made of Coffey's abortion views, but haven't these been expressed in free votes on abortion issues (such as at-home abortion pills) when they've arisen? I'm not aware that she's actively campaigned against abortion, nor has any recent government tried to directly curtail abortion rights? Thank God, we don't have a culture war about it in this country, so it seems sensationalist to suggest that the Tories are about to try and ban abortions.
Coffey might be a Catholic in her private life, but that doesn't mean that she can't govern secularly and let people make their own decisions.
Apologies for seeming to defend the Tories. Please resume bashing them.
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Not seeing much of this astute political operator from Truss so far. Showing no awareness of the need to shore up support amongst MPs - the majority of whom didn't support her. No sign of the swivel from hard-right rhetoric to pandering to the electorate either. I give her six months.
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Rees Mogg in charge of energy and industrial strategy was the big gut punch for me. I look forward to my new employment scurrying beneath cotton jennies collecting dropped strands of fibre, all powered with lovely lovely coal. God save the Queen!
(https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/cms/asset/be2081fb-041c-49a9-af67-1f0263933505/ijur12375-fig-0001-m.jpg)
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Rees Mogg in charge of energy and industrial strategy was the big gut punch for me.
Nothing like a climate change skeptic in charge of energy strategy! Maybe there’ll be a boon for the north when he reopens t’pits.
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A lot has been made of Coffey's abortion views, but haven't these been expressed in free votes on abortion issues (such as at-home abortion pills) when they've arisen? I'm not aware that she's actively campaigned against abortion, nor has any recent government tried to directly curtail abortion rights? Thank God, we don't have a culture war about it in this country, so it seems sensationalist to suggest that the Tories are about to try and ban abortions.
Coffey might be a Catholic in her private life, but that doesn't mean that she can't govern secularly and let people make their own decisions.
Apologies for seeming to defend the Tories. Please resume bashing them.
To have a Health Secretary place her personal beliefs above those of ruling medical bodies and vote against at home abortion pills for me sets off alarms. I’m also surprised you would think better than this tory government rolling back waves of legislature. This new cabinet is composed of members who want to shrink the state and dismantle as many laws as they can. Why do you think they’re pushing to leave things like the ECHR?
I can’t believe you’d even give them the benefit of the doubt :lol:
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To have a Health Secretary place her personal beliefs above those of ruling medical bodies and vote against at home abortion pills for me sets off alarms.
When Coffey voted on that legislation she was Work and Pensions secretary.
I’m also surprised you would think better than this tory government rolling back waves of legislature.
Why do you suggest that I think the Tories won't attempt to de-regulate? Of course they will, they've campaigned on it, they never shut up about it. What I doubt is that they'll pursue a policy of banning abortion or making significant incursions into abortion rights, which (bar the starting of a culture war) would be incredibly unpopular in this country across almost all demographics.
This new cabinet is composed of members who want to shrink the state and dismantle as many laws as they can.
Erm, what? They want to shrink the state, and get rid of lots of regulation. They don't want to "dismantle as many laws as they can".
Why do you think they’re pushing to leave things like the ECHR?
So they can be cunts to migrants and criminals, among other reasons. I don't think widescale rolling back of abortion laws is specifically one of the reasons.
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To have a Health Secretary place her personal beliefs above those of ruling medical bodies and vote against at home abortion pills for me sets off alarms.
When Coffey voted on that legislation she was Work and Pensions secretary.
I’m also surprised you would think better than this tory government rolling back waves of legislature.
Why do you suggest that I think the Tories won't attempt to de-regulate? Of course they will, they've campaigned on it, they never shut up about it. What I doubt is that they'll pursue a policy of banning abortion or making significant incursions into abortion rights, which (bar the starting of a culture war) would be incredibly unpopular in this country across almost all demographics.
This new cabinet is composed of members who want to shrink the state and dismantle as many laws as they can.
Erm, what? They want to shrink the state, and get rid of lots of regulation. They don't want to "dismantle as many laws as they can".
Why do you think they’re pushing to leave things like the ECHR?
So they can be cunts to migrants and criminals, among other reasons. I don't think widescale rolling back of abortion laws is specifically one of the reasons.
Just because something is unpopular doesn’t mean they won’t roll it back. It was incredibly unpopular in the US as well but it happened anyways and they’re far more switched on when it comes to protesting and standing against their government. British citizens are too placated and docile.
Dismantling laws and deregulation go hand in hand. If there are laws that help regulate banking for example and they remove those, thats deregulation. One and the same.
Anyways the abortion thing is just one piece of the pie. They’re all cunts, at least we can agree on that and as an immigrant myself, I’m worried braverman will be doing her best to make my life more difficult.
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Rees Mogg in charge of energy and industrial strategy was the big gut punch for me. I look forward to my new employment scurrying beneath cotton jennies collecting dropped strands of fibre, all powered with lovely lovely coal. God save the Queen!
(https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/cms/asset/be2081fb-041c-49a9-af67-1f0263933505/ijur12375-fig-0001-m.jpg)
Rejoice, it'll be good for reducing lichen. (And increasing my investment account).
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You'll forgive me if your investment account isn't high on my list of concerns
Investing in coal is a fucking terrible idea because Climate Change. That's it. End of story.
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Dismantling laws and deregulation go hand in hand. If there are laws that help regulate banking for example and they remove those, thats deregulation. One and the same.
Yes, I know. Duh. You said they want to set about dismantling as many laws as they could, which is a stupid thing to say. They're not going to repeal the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act; and they're set to defend the Nationality and Borders Act (that's the one that tries to send people to Rwanda). There are lots and lots and lots of laws that they have no interest in repealing or diluting.
My point was that I can't see them touching abortion rights - the only way it could serve them is if it becomes a distractionary culture wars issue, which it is in America, but here there's more fertile issues for them to play to their advantage.
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The new foreign secretary likes painting Warhammer figurines.
https://twitter.com/cinemashoebox/status/1567436199907807232
We are being ruled by the likes of Fiend!
(Sorry Fiend couldn’t resist.)
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Not sure it's a redeeming enougb feature. For him, nor me!
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Judging by today’s jungle drums and Dit telegraph; she’s put a massive dent in her serving/veteran support base (a huge chunk of the enlisted grouping and not a few Officers); by give Johnny the boot. His wife has opinions about her too. I quite like the image of Truss as “Beaker” from the Muppets.
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Why do you think they’re pushing to leave things like the ECHR?
FYI, it looks like Raab's bonkers British Bill of Rights is getting canned so the ECHR might survive. On a similar note, as sickening as it is to see Dorries get sent to Lords, it might well save CH4 so swings and roundabouts.
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Judging by today’s jungle drums and Dit telegraph; she’s put a massive dent in her serving/veteran support base (a huge chunk of the enlisted grouping and not a few Officers); by give Johnny the boot. His wife has opinions about her too. I quite like the image of Truss as “Beaker” from the Muppets.
I think Mercer comes across as a total twat but his commitment to veterans interests can't be questioned. Enjoying his wife's tweeting of conversations that he had with Truss.
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Rees Mogg in charge of energy and industrial strategy was the big gut punch for me.
As awful as this appointment is, Graham Stuart is the Minister for Climate (and in the cabinet) and he's no climate denier* so there is some hope.
*His opinions in other policy areas however.....
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Enjoying his wife's tweeting of conversations that he had with Truss.
Links please.
An amusing Kit Malthouse story that popped up on my social media (apparently we used to go to the same school so it was shared in the alumni Facebook group):
"Story from scout camp when Kit came back as a leader after a number of years away...
He was keen to introduce himself to the other leaders and clearly living in London had had an influence on him.
He approached one guy sitting by the fire drinking a beer. With outstretched hand he said, "Hi! Kit; accountant; London."
The reply: "Hi. Dan; truck driver; Wigan."
:lol:
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Enjoying his wife's tweeting of conversations that he had with Truss.
Links please.
https://twitter.com/mercer_felicity/status/1567229997881987078
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Investing in coal is a fucking terrible idea because Climate Change. That's it. End of story.
Today coal is essential, the world needs it to progress to a world that doesn't require it. As the world makes progress we'll hopefully need less and less of it. In the meantime, price of an essential commodity is skyrocketing due to there not being enough supply to meet current high demand - that isn't investing in future coal it's making profits from demand for current coal.
Some realities below about steelmaking and decarbonising the process, about current coal use, the maths of a circular economy. WoodMac is good for getting a view of good-news pieces to do with various elements of the energy transition, recycling, green hydrogen, lower-carbon steelmaking, growth of battery storage for renewables. It's all moving forward, we aren't there yet but will get there eventually.
https://www.woodmac.com/news/opinion/sustainable-smelting-how-green-can-it-go/
https://www.woodmac.com/news/opinion/green-steel-three-milestones-on-the-road-to-lower-carbon-emissions/
https://www.teck.com/media/Understanding-Global-Demand-for-Steelmaking-Coal.pdf
https://yellowlablifecapital.substack.com/p/the-idea-of-a-circular-economy-for
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https://www.woodmac.com/news/opinion/green-steel-three-milestones-on-the-road-to-lower-carbon-emissions/
I'm interested in milestone 3, the company I work for are bidding on this:
https://www.h2greensteel.com/
but as I'm on the "Europe's greenest battery" project I think I'll miss out.
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The new foreign secretary likes painting Warhammer figurines.
https://twitter.com/cinemashoebox/status/1567436199907807232
We are being ruled by the likes of Fiend!
(Sorry Fiend couldn’t resist.)
Doing damage to "coolness" Henry Cavill had brought to painting tiny figurines.....
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I'm on the "Europe's greenest battery" project
This sounds like it belongs in the Wednesday 8pm slot on BBC1.
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Doing damage to "coolness" Henry Cavill Fiend had brought to painting tiny figurines.....
AHEM :chair:
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but as I'm on the "Europe's greenest battery" project I think I'll miss out.
I remember you mentioned you work on Northvolt. I'm invested in various suppliers to Northvolt - I used to be invested in Vale, who refine and supply nickel to Northvolt, which they get from the Voisey's Bay nickel mine where I'm invested in Altius Minerals and Anglo Pacific who each have a royalty on Voisey's nickel stream.
Have they announced where they've chosen to source their cobalt from yet?
Various recent projects in the nickel/cobalt/lithium mining are aimed at manufacturers such as Northvolt and others needing to meet the US and Euro traceability/ESG regulations. Obvs now increased focus on supply chain security since Ukraine/Russia. PNRL, Talon, PMET, CTM (Vale have already agreed offtake with CTM's Jaguar project) all are aimed at supplying the European and N.American battery manufacturers. Tesla did a small deal to offtake nickel directly from Talon's mine in N.America. Other carmakers who manufacture their own batteries looking to source minerals direct from miners. Will be interesting seeing which commercial model works out with EV's and their fuel source - carmakers manufacturing their own batteries through purchasing battery tech companies (possibility of Northvolt being bought by VW for e.g.?) or carmakers buying batteries from independent battery specialists..
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Judging by today’s jungle drums and Dit telegraph; she’s put a massive dent in her serving/veteran support base (a huge chunk of the enlisted grouping and not a few Officers); by give Johnny the boot. His wife has opinions about her too. I quite like the image of Truss as “Beaker” from the Muppets.
I think Mercer comes across as a total twat but his commitment to veterans interests can't be questioned. Enjoying his wife's tweeting of conversations that he had with Truss.
In the media he may do, however I listened to an interview with him on Politico's Westminster Insider podcast in which he comes across as genuine and a thoroughly nice person with a strong commitment both to veterans, Afghan refugees and his constituents.
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I dunno, I'd second the view that he comes across like a total twat regardless. The definition of a man with a hammer to whom everything is a nail. Agree that he made nice sounding noises about Afghan refugees but that was all it amounted to.
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I dunno, I'd second the view that he comes across like a total twat regardless. The definition of a man with a hammer to whom everything is a nail. Agree that he made nice sounding noises about Afghan refugees but that was all it amounted to.
He personally got several Afghan refugees out of the country and helped them to get here, he now employs one in his constituency office, he also got the mans family out, and found them housing etc. Not just noise.
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:He was quoted in the Guardian as saying
he was “disappointed” but accepted that the PM is “entitled to reward her supporters”.
Is it just me who finds it genuinely shocking that a departing minister would apparently regard that as a totally normal thing to say?
The whole population is affected by the actions of the Secretaries of State - they « should » be chosen for their ability, not their friendship group. Low standards and expectations are getting more and more normalised.
Felicity Mercer, however, rather exceeded expectations: Beaker for PM (https://twitter.com/mercer_felicity/status/1567229997881987078?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1567229997881987078%7Ctwgr%5Edd23c7d70c34e0eaa9cc8ea7bee1e3461b2fbc38%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fd-3716443366669795820.ampproject.net%2F2208242209000%2Fframe.html)
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Agree cabinet positions should be on ability, not loyalty. Have any of those who left in "the great quitting" been appointed to cabinet? I can't remember the full quitter list.
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Agree cabinet positions should be on ability, not loyalty. Have any of those who left in "the great quitting" been appointed to cabinet? I can't remember the full quitter list.
Loyalty is always going to play a pretty big part, they are after all, supposed to be able to work as a team.
It is remarkable how little experience is represented in the cabinet though. The Conservative party is full of hugely experienced ministers, whether you like them or not, the likes of Jeremy Hunt, Theresa May, David Davis, Andrew Mitchell, Sajid Javid etc etc must have a lot of knowledge about their previous briefs. It seems ridiculous that all this is effectively wasted.
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Totally agree with Toby on the waste of talent.
Interesting sketch of the new chancellor:
https://archive.ph/2022.09.07-171235/https://www.economist.com/britain/2022/09/07/kwasi-kwarteng-is-bold-brainy-and-weird
He is clearly intellectually gifted at the very least, and spent his time getting there.
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Totally agree with Toby on the waste of talent.
Interesting sketch of the new chancellor:
https://archive.ph/2022.09.07-171235/https://www.economist.com/britain/2022/09/07/kwasi-kwarteng-is-bold-brainy-and-weird
He is clearly intellectually gifted at the very least, and spent his time getting there.
I felt vaguely hopeful after reading that. Clearly not someone who has spent most of his time and energy politicking his way to the top. Maybe a man of more substance than most of the current crop (going back for a long time). We'll see.
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24 hours as PM and Truss has already killed the queen. Not the start she'd have been hoping for.
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Yeah she's deffo gone isn't she
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Looks like operation london bridge is in full swing.
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Looks like operation london bridge is in full swing.
Hadn’t heard of this before, some mad stuff in there like being worried that people would get upset if flags weren’t lowered fast enough
https://www.politico.eu/article/queen-elizabeth-death-plan-britain-operation-london-bridge/amp/
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I live under the flight path between central London and Brize Norton. Whenever there is a big gathering of statesmen/women from around the world we always see lots of large helicopters flying overhead in one direction or the other. Anyhow earlier this afternoon a brace of them flew over heading west… someone clearly going somewhere in a hurry.
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Heading to Heathrow to get private plane to Dyce? Too late it would seem. RIP.
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24 hours as PM and Truss has already killed the queen. Not the start she'd have been hoping for.
Yes, poor lady probably just gave up.
Clowns to the left of her, Jokers to the right…
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24 hours as PM and Truss has already killed the queen. Not the start she'd have been hoping for.
I should imagine Truss is delighted. PM's always get a political boost from such sad events and it avoids a lot of scrutiny for her dumping probably around £100 billion debt on the public; without asking those companies with energy profit windfalls to pay a bit more to help out. There are some big profit numbers on quite a few UK energy generators producing cheap electricity and being paid at the high marginal price rate for gas generation, some with a subsidy deal as well (albeit it, to be fair, some others have fixed lower payment deals).
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Me and W were speculating whether the Queen elected to stay in Balmoral as she was dying as a symbol of the Union and to influence the debate around independence. Thoughts?
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Don't think so. I think she just knew it was close and just wanted to be somewhere she loved and was more likely not well enough to travel.
I think she usually spends August to October there; midgies are dying off and she can rely on good connies to work on her redpoint projects at Pass of Ballater.
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Anybody else finding the “King Charles III” a bit odd to conceptualise? Having been Prince of Wale or my Duke for my entire life, it feels weird.
Glad I’m not still military as try to remember HMS now means “His” etc, is going to be difficult.
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Lots of little changes to go along with it, top lawyers becoming King’s Counsel for example, which also sounds wrong!
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Lots of little changes to go along with it, top lawyers becoming King’s Counsel for example, which also sounds wrong!
It feels even more anachronistic, to me.
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All I can think of is cavalier king charles spaniel.
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Anybody else finding the “King Charles III” a bit odd to conceptualise? Having been Prince of Wale or my Duke for my entire life, it feels weird.
Glad I’m not still military as try to remember HMS now means “His” etc, is going to be difficult.
Agree all this stuff seems really weird; all cash and stamps will be different etc. Otherwise life isn't intrinsically any different for the vast majority of people, but you notice these little things.
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Prescient by the Royal Navy to name the aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth (not II) in honour of the first Queen Elizabeth... Although still perhaps it breaking down* was a leading indicator...
*Not sure if breaking down is the correct terminology for a warship the size of village, Matt can correct.
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I'm now struggling with which words to use whilst singing along with Never Mind the Bollocks.
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Yeah, weird day. I guess some people are reminded of people they've lost recently, which might explain some of the ridiculous outpouring of collective grief but I can't abide the forelock tugging and the sycophantic 'tributes'.
An old woman of 96 has died and that's sad for her family but the rest is just flags and nonsense.
In a remarkable coincidence, yesterday was the 4th anniversary of my mother's death. She was a cool old woman but because she was just a peasant from Liverpool 8 she didn't get a 20-gun salute and a state funeral.
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Prescient by the Royal Navy to name the aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth (not II) in honour of the first Queen Elizabeth... Although still perhaps it breaking down* was a leading indicator...
*Not sure if breaking down is the correct terminology for a warship the size of village, Matt can correct.
Correct term is “FFM”…
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Would appear that Izyum has been liberated by Ukrainian troops, and they've captured a huge amount of territory, including the entire Kharkiv region. A pretty stunning victory apparently! Bit of good news at least
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This smooth transition between monarchs seems like a good argument for monarchy.
Charles may well have his flaws, and you can go on about privilege and things, but he seems like a generally decent bloke , has a long commitment to environmental issues.
What do you get with democracy? Divisive, expensive elections, and then you get Boris Johnson, Donald Trump, Brexit and Boaty McBoatface.
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This smooth transition between monarchs seems like a good argument for monarchy.
Charles may well have his flaws, and you can go on about privilege and things, but he seems like a generally decent bloke , has a long commitment to environmental issues.
What do you get with democracy? Divisive, expensive elections, and then you get Boris Johnson, Donald Trump, Brexit and Boaty McBoatface.
Yes, after the past decade, the idea of a benevolent dictator is becoming increasingly appealing
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This smooth transition between monarchs seems like a good argument for monarchy.
Charles may well have his flaws, and you can go on about privilege and things, but he seems like a generally decent bloke , has a long commitment to environmental issues.
What do you get with democracy? Divisive, expensive elections, and then you get Boris Johnson, Donald Trump, Brexit and Boaty McBoatface.
In the 20th and 21st Centuries we've had Georges V and VI and Elizabeth II who all made a reasonable go of being a constitutional monarch. We've also had Edward "the Caresser" VII, euphemistically described as a playboy, and Edward VIII, a fascist in all but name. Had Charles III overcooked a corner in his Aston Martin in his youth we'd be looking at King Andrew.
I'd rather try to fix our democracy.
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we'd be looking at King Andrew.
At least it would have been no sweat for him.
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Had Charles III overcooked a corner in his Aston Martin in his youth we'd be looking at King Andrew.
I'd rather try to fix our democracy.
I'm not sure if the vicissitudes of accidental death are any more or less discerning of leadership ability than the general populace. We weren't *that* far off having Jeremy Corbyn as PM for example.
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This smooth transition between monarchs seems like a good argument for monarchy.
Charles may well have his flaws, and you can go on about privilege and things, but he seems like a generally decent bloke , has a long commitment to environmental issues.
What do you get with democracy? Divisive, expensive elections, and then you get Boris Johnson, Donald Trump, Brexit and Boaty McBoatface.
Yes, after the past decade, the idea of a benevolent dictator is becoming increasingly appealing
Is that irony? If not, you’re not alone. https://twitter.com/JLPartnersPolls/status/1567443028364742658?s=20&t=m42W8ZavJhRptqFYTZEISQ
. J.L. Partners poll of 8,004 UK adults for @ukonward
% support for running the UK with "a strong leader who doesn't have to bother with parliament/elections"
All: 46%
18-34s: 61%
35-54s: 49%
Over-55s: 29%
Be careful what you wish for. Mummy/ daddy will not make everything ok. Dictators don’t do benign, they mostly just do dominance and the exercise of power. It can happen here, because it can happen anywhere. Even just ‘democracy lite’ will bring a lot of harm.
As for Charles and hereditary power Toby, :slap: Charles is at heart an interventionist fruitcake, nothing like his wiley mother. Maybe, as a good environmentalist, he’ll forgo the exemption from environmental legislation negotiated by his mother for the Crown estates? https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/jul/28/queen-secretly-lobbied-scottish-ministers-climate-law-exemption
Forfeiting the (now) King’s prerogative so that the royals are subject to the same democratic processes as the rest of us might be a good step too. The black spider memos (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_spider_memos)don’t offer hope.
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Had Charles III overcooked a corner in his Aston Martin in his youth we'd be looking at King Andrew.
I'd rather try to fix our democracy.
I'm not sure if the vicissitudes of accidental death are any more or less discerning of leadership ability than the general populace. We weren't *that* far off having Jeremy Corbyn as PM for example.
Yes, we were really lucky with how that panned out.
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It is desirable to have a political system where the incompetent or the unlucky can be removed from office and someone new take their place in an orderly fashion. I cannot believe that I felt like I had to write that sentence.
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It is desirable to have a political system where the incompetent or the unlucky can be removed from office and someone new take their place in an orderly fashion. I cannot believe that I felt like I had to write that sentence.
Purely as an aside, how do you feel it's going to go today in Sweden?
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It is desirable to have a political system where the incompetent or the unlucky can be removed from office and someone new take their place in an orderly fashion. I cannot believe that I felt like I had to write that sentence.
Purely as an aside, how do you feel it's going to go today in Sweden?
It is likely that the current government will continue in its current form.
I should probably not comment or speculate too much on Swedish politics as I have not lived there for ten years, so my social contacts are very limited (family and old friends that I have stayed in touch with).
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It is desirable to have a political system where the incompetent or the unlucky can be removed from office and someone new take their place in an orderly fashion. I cannot believe that I felt like I had to write that sentence.
Your definition of a 'desirable political system' is interesting jwi. Personally I think for the system to be 'desirable' it must include 'competence', but competence doesn't equal desirable. Dictators can be highly competent, they can create cohesive societies with services working etc. That doesn't mean having a competent dictator is necessarily desirable - it also depends on benevolence.
Isn't it possible that it might be more desirable to have a competent (benevolent) leader who can't be easily replaced, than to have a series of incompetent (benevolent) leaders who can?
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Dictators can be highly competent, they can create cohesive societies with services working etc.
For clarity of debate I think you should provide a list of competent dictators who created cohesive, functioning societies.
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It is desirable to have a political system where the incompetent or the unlucky can be removed from office and someone new take their place in an orderly fashion. I cannot believe that I felt like I had to write that sentence.
Your definition of a 'desirable political system' is interesting jwi. Personally I think for the system to be 'desirable' it must include 'competence', but competence doesn't equal desirable. Dictators can be highly competent, they can create cohesive societies with services working etc. That doesn't mean having a competent dictator is necessarily desirable - it also depends on benevolence.
Isn't it possible that it might be more desirable to have a competent (benevolent) leader who can't be easily replaced, than to have a series of incompetent (benevolent) leaders who can?
I mean, at least Mussolini got the trains to run on time…
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Surely depends on your definition of functioning, but you could point to any one of Saddam Hussain, Bashar Al Assad, Muammar Gaddafi, Josef Stalin, etc. and make an argument that things functioned under them. Evidenced by the breakdown which occurred when they were ousted e.g. Hussain and Gaddafi; both Iraq and Libya have been in a state of civil war for much of the period after their respective removals.
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Dictators can be highly competent, they can create cohesive societies with services working etc.
For clarity of debate I think you should provide a list of competent dictators who created cohesive, functioning societies.
Or the inverse - those that weren't cohesive functioning societies.
edit: actually in an ideal world I'd add on 'high overall levels of individual well-being' as an essential ingredient of a functioning society. This hasn't been studied until recently, so would be difficult to compare different societies through history.
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edit: actually in an ideal world I'd add on 'high overall levels of individual well-being' as an essential ingredient of a functioning society. This hasn't been studied until recently, so would be difficult to compare different societies through history.
Do you mean "happiness" (or similar) which has only been studied quite recently, or "standard of living," on which there are vast realms of historical literature, or some more complex aggregate measure? Genuine question.
I'm also struggling to think of many (any?) competent dictators. The list would certainly be shorter than for functioning democracies.
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I wouldn't describe myself as a monarchist; if designing a new state I don't think anybody would choose to have a monarchy, however I am pretty tolerant of our monarchy as it seems to function reasonably (for now) and I'm sceptical of the worth of changing to an alternative (again, for now).
Decision-making power is contained in parliament and, bar the need for some reform of the Lords, that's enough. I'm not enthused about having a president for all the reasons that Toby described.
The Queen enjoyed approval ratings that were, frankly, ludicrous. Charles is a much less likeable figure and I suspect lots of people will become less tolerant of the monarchy as a result. That's dangerous for the institution because if people decide not to tolerate them any longer then parliament can get rid of them. To take Duncan's example of King Andrew, I just don't think it would happen. If Charles had died before producing an heir then Andrew, by now, would have publicly stated that he would abdicate (even if he didn't want to the rest of the institution would have leant on him), and if he didn't then parliament would have forced him to do it or threatened to dissolve the institution. The other examples ignore the fact that we now have mass media and the royals are subject to very high levels of scrutiny.
People will deride this, but I pity the royals in the immediate family and line of succession. They may have immense privilege but they are not free and are subject to intense scrutiny; they live a life that they did not choose. Their schedule of public events is my idea of hell. If you offered that life to me I would reject it instantly. The extended family and hangers-on are different in that they get most of the privilege and much less of the duty.
As to TV coverage of Lizzie's death, well, it's not every day that a head of the state who's been on the clock for 70 years snuffs it. Press the red button or read a book!
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edit: actually in an ideal world I'd add on 'high overall levels of individual well-being' as an essential ingredient of a functioning society. This hasn't been studied until recently, so would be difficult to compare different societies through history.
I'm also struggling to think of many (any?) competent dictators. The list would certainly be shorter than for functioning democracies.
Here is my list of competent autocrats:
Lee Kuan Yew
end of list
Here is my list of benevolent autocrats:
end of list.
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You beat me to it with Lee Kuan Yew. They still have a very autocratic state with almost no real choice at elections. Perhaps an aberration as there is only one city to administer.
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Surely depends on your definition of functioning, but you could point to any one of Saddam Hussain, Bashar Al Assad, Muammar Gaddafi, Josef Stalin, etc. and make an argument that things functioned under them. Evidenced by the breakdown which occurred when they were ousted e.g. Hussain and Gaddafi; both Iraq and Libya have been in a state of civil war for much of the period after their respective removals.
That’s because dictatorship doesn’t solve political problems, it simply delays them. Rather than building long term and viable ways to handle genuine political problems it prevents their solution and leaves them ready to roar back with even more violence once the dictator has gone. Three of the states you mention were post-colonial constructs that probably weren’t all that viable, so the dictatorial “functioning” only worked in the context of states that were themselves dysfunctional, indeed the nature of the dictatorship may have been an expression of that dysfunction.
I’ve read - but lost, and I did look for them - some stats for WW2 output which show how spectacularly unproductive the USSR under Stalin actually was. I think in some years the U.K. came very close to producing the same amount of stuff as the Soviet Union (happy to be shown wrong on this if I mis-remembered it).
There’s a really good article by historian Adam Tooze on the book Life and Fate by Valerie Grossman (which I have not read but would like to):
“What he indicts is a regime that was wasteful and destructive of its people, their extraordinary talents and commitment. The gulag was a crime, but June 22 1941 was, as Talleyrand might have quipped, something worse, it was a mistake.”
https://adamtooze.substack.com/p/chartbook-21
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edit: actually in an ideal world I'd add on 'high overall levels of individual well-being' as an essential ingredient of a functioning society. This hasn't been studied until recently, so would be difficult to compare different societies through history.
Do you mean "happiness" (or similar) which has only been studied quite recently, or "standard of living," on which there are vast realms of historical literature, or some more complex aggregate measure? Genuine question.
I'm also struggling to think of many (any?) competent dictators. The list would certainly be shorter than for functioning democracies.
Mustafa Kemal.
At least when sober and not idly gesturing out of his train window, three sheets to the wind, and muttering “that village is ugly, flatten it”…
(Probably apocryphal, but a good take on the problems with dictators).
I vote for infallible Robot Overlords, but I’ll settle for strong Judiciary counterweight to a proportional representation Democracy and an upper house of life senators selected on achievement and merit.
We’re not there yet.
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There’s a really good article by historian Adam Tooze on the book Life and Fate by Valerie Grossman (which I have not read but would like to)
Life and Fate is superb, do read it.
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edit: actually in an ideal world I'd add on 'high overall levels of individual well-being' as an essential ingredient of a functioning society. This hasn't been studied until recently, so would be difficult to compare different societies through history.
Do you mean "happiness" (or similar) which has only been studied quite recently, or "standard of living," on which there are vast realms of historical literature, or some more complex aggregate measure? Genuine question.
I'm also struggling to think of many (any?) competent dictators. The list would certainly be shorter than for functioning democracies.
Yes happiness.
Pinochet? Tito? Hitler...? Franco? (although only recently, after he'd displayed competency outside north york moors).
(and the point is not to ask were they 'nice' or 'good'. Nor to ask if they were popular - although that might perhaps indicate some level of competency in making a nation function)
What about the most obvious? The second and imminently most powerful nation on earth - Xi Jingping is not a democrat.
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There’s a really good article by historian Adam Tooze on the book Life and Fate by Valerie Grossman (which I have not read but would like to)
Life and Fate is superb, do read it.
I currently can’t concentrate on novels with a large cast of characters, so it will have to wait.
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There’s a really good article by historian Adam Tooze on the book Life and Fate by Valerie Grossman (which I have not read but would like to)
Life and Fate is superb, do read it.
I currently can’t concentrate on novels with a large cast of characters, so it will have to wait.
Sorry Sean, I should have thought of that. It'll still be there when you feel up to it.
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edit: actually in an ideal world I'd add on 'high overall levels of individual well-being' as an essential ingredient of a functioning society. This hasn't been studied until recently, so would be difficult to compare different societies through history.
Do you mean "happiness" (or similar) which has only been studied quite recently, or "standard of living," on which there are vast realms of historical literature, or some more complex aggregate measure? Genuine question.
I'm also struggling to think of many (any?) competent dictators. The list would certainly be shorter than for functioning democracies.
Yes happiness.
Pinochet? Tito? Hitler...? Franco? (although only recently, after he'd displayed competency outside north york moors).
(and the point is not to ask were they 'nice' or 'good'. Nor to ask if they were popular - although that might perhaps indicate some level of competency in making a nation function)
What about the most obvious? The second and imminently most powerful nation on earth - Xi Jingping is not a democrat.
Nice analysis of Pinochet here:
https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/pinochets-economic-policy-is-vastly
Good kicker, in case anyone doesn’t make it through all the graphs, which is kind of relevant to this discussion:
“There was a dictator in recent history who slaughtered thousands of his own people, but who liberalized his country’s economy, privatizing state-owned enterprises, dropping price controls, and opening up to trade, and whose country did experience a miraculous and sustained economic boom as a result. Heck, he even took economic advice from Milton Friedman.
His name was Deng Xiaoping.”
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I think focussing just on economic policy (I realise you're an economist) is only part of the story of though. Rather than looking overall at a country and whether or not competence in making a society function is the sole preserve of democratic leaders, which was the point. I'm sure we could find economic policy failures in democratic countries just as easily, if we put our minds to it. Japan through the 90s, Ireland post 2008, Southern Europe since forever, Turkey (although not really democratic!)
And of course it's easy to find policies not to like about any of these people - they were (nonbenevolent) dictators after all!
edit: btw Sean I love this paragraph from the article.
It’s possible for commodity exporters to get rich — look at Norway, Australia, and Saudi Arabia. But you’re inherently limited by the ratio of resource endowments to population, and vulnerable to commodity price swings. Chile has undoubtedly managed its economy well since 1990, but a well-managed copper mine is still just a copper mine. Unlike authoritarian modernizers in Asia, Pinochet did nothing to switch Chile toward an industrial model that could propel it into the ranks of the developed countries.
Clearly written by somebody with very little knowledge of the base-metals mining industry, and its essential role in the coming energy transition and the drive for net zero. A bit like writing in the 1950s, just prior to the explosion of the petro-chemicals industry, about how a vast oil reserve in Norway or Saudi is 'still just a vast oil reserve'. :lol:.
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As a complete non-relevant aside but interesting nevertheless.
One of my friends, a fellow psychotherapy student (we’re very close to qualifying now) was born in the Basque region and speaks about a dozen languages. She came to the UK in the 70’s as a teenager ‘cos she liked punk music and wanted to get away from what was happening back home region. She ended up as a translator for the Met Police and part of her work was translating intercepts from ETA. Anyway I’ll get to the point.
One day she was asked to accompany some senior Met officers, Spanish police and intelligence officials. She was to be Pinochet’s interpreter during his arrest and subsequent year-long house arrest. I nearly fell of my chair when she told me about it. Fascinating..
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My original post was supposed to be pretty light-hearted! I'm not really arguing that a benevolent dictatorship is a good idea.
I'm completely tolerant of our monarchy, you'd never design our system from scratch but it more or less seems to work. I think that Charles fully recognises that he cannot continue to express his views on politics as king (one of his friends - Nicholas Soams - has said that he does in an interview on BBC)
His mother had the benefit that she was queen so young, that no-one knew what she thought beforehand, Charles can hardly be expected to get to 74 without expressing an opinion on anything.
The royals seem, on balance to be no better or worse than elected leaders. Occasionally you get Prince Andrew or Donald Trump but most of them are sort of okay.
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This smooth transition between monarchs seems like a good argument for monarchy.
Charles may well have his flaws, and you can go on about privilege and things, but he seems like a generally decent bloke , has a long commitment to environmental issues.
What do you get with democracy? Divisive, expensive elections, and then you get Boris Johnson, Donald Trump, Brexit and Boaty McBoatface.
Yes, after the past decade, the idea of a benevolent dictator is becoming increasingly appealing
Is that irony? If not, you’re not alone. https://twitter.com/JLPartnersPolls/status/1567443028364742658?s=20&t=m42W8ZavJhRptqFYTZEISQ
. J.L. Partners poll of 8,004 UK adults for @ukonward
% support for running the UK with "a strong leader who doesn't have to bother with parliament/elections"
All: 46%
18-34s: 61%
35-54s: 49%
Over-55s: 29%
Be careful what you wish for. Mummy/ daddy will not make everything ok. Dictators don’t do benign, they mostly just do dominance and the exercise of power. It can happen here, because it can happen anywhere. Even just ‘democracy lite’ will bring a lot of harm.
As for Charles and hereditary power Toby, :slap: Charles is at heart an interventionist fruitcake, nothing like his wiley mother. Maybe, as a good environmentalist, he’ll forgo the exemption from environmental legislation negotiated by his mother for the Crown estates? https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/jul/28/queen-secretly-lobbied-scottish-ministers-climate-law-exemption
Forfeiting the (now) King’s prerogative so that the royals are subject to the same democratic processes as the rest of us might be a good step too. The black spider memos (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_spider_memos)don’t offer hope.
Don't worry, I don't really want a dictator (of any sort). But there was a serious point that our democracy is not producing competent leaders who are anything other than self interested, and the constant treadmill of leaders and policy direction is very poorly suited to the long term challenges we face (e.g. climate change, Russia, China etc.)
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But there was a serious point that our democracy is not producing competent leaders who are anything other than self interested, and the constant treadmill of leaders and policy direction is very poorly suited to the long term challenges we face (e.g. climate change, Russia, China etc.)
Indeed. Charles may have many eccentricities and you can question the relevance of the royal family, but if more people had listened to him on environmental issues in the eighties, we'd be better off now.
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Though taking over 20 private flights last year to "avoid traffic", doesn't exactly make him a green champion in my eyes.
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Charles may have many eccentricities and you can question the relevance of the royal family, but if more people had listened to him on environmental issues in the eighties, we'd be better off now.
Or we could have listened to actual experts. The fact that we ignored a jug-eared titled inbred too is hardly an argument for the monarchy is it?
How many of you bootlickers agree with their exemption from inheritance tax? My problem with the royals is not the behaviour of the individuals, it is the normalisation of the special treatments that the so-called aristocracy get in the Uk. For centuries the development of our government and laws was done by the land-owning classes in their own interest - for only they had the vote. It was only in the Victorian era that this was granted to any other than the landed gentry (1832), but it took WW1 to seriously extend that to everyone. We remember the fight for women's suffrage as being embarrassingly recent (vote granted 1928) but not that it was only ten years earlier that the 40% of men who didn't own property were included.
Guy Shrubsole's Who Owns Britain is well worth reading for anyone with a passing interest in access to the countryside. It is, in the 2020's, staggering just how pervasively so many of these privileges endure and effect the country we live in. It is no accident the transfer of power is swift and smooth as this is exactly when its legitimacy is most likely to be questioned.
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Though taking over 20 private flights last year to "avoid traffic", doesn't exactly make him a green champion in my eyes.
Almost spat my coffee out when I read this morning that Heads of State invited to the funeral are being encouraged to use only commercial flights to travel, whilst Charles has been up and down the country like a lift in the last few days (e.g. addressing parliament this morning, then up to Edinburgh to walk behind the coffin this afternoon)!
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I agree they should be subject to inheritance and all other taxes, capital gains etc. No reason they shouldn't. Also if their gaff needs some work they should pay up too https://www.itv.com/news/2022-06-29/buckingham-palace-spending-tops-100-million-as-repair-work-is-ramped-up
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How many of you bootlickers agree with their exemption from inheritance tax?
Probably not many on this forum. It's within parliament's gift to regulate the royals better :shrug:
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Who owns Britain was a difficult read, mainly because my piss was actively boiling while I was trying to get through it. All the duchy stuff is bonkers.
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How many of you bootlickers agree with their exemption from inheritance tax?
Probably not many on this forum. It's within parliament's gift to regulate the royals better :shrug:
It doesn't bother me. I'm happy with the royals to be honest. I'm sure any revenue gained from taxing the royal family would pale into insignificance compared to the amounts of money Boris Johnson wasted while in office.
I'm far more bothered about the government, or lack of it.
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If you could have just mentioned Brexit in that comment you'd have had the jackpot Toby......
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If you could have just mentioned Brexit in that comment you'd have had the jackpot Toby......
Perhaps the single biggest waste of money of them all. Just imagine what a decent government could have done with what was spent pissing about with the roads in Kent, or on planes and lawyers trying to send a handful of people to Rwanda...
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The whole thing about reliability and seamlessness and all that... fair enough but I'm not convinced you couldn't do that with another system that doesn't require us to have a hereditary monarch that we're supposed to bow to and call "your majesty." Fuck all that noise. It's the principle of it for me; they sit at the top of a class system as a symbol of all the stupid inequalities of land, wealth, class and so on in this country.
I know most people here would say if you started from scratch you wouldn't have em, but it's not worth the change, well I think it is worth the change; we should abolish the monarchy and the sooner the better
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Perhaps the single biggest waste of money of them all. Just imagine what a decent government could have done with what was spent pissing about with the roads in Kent, or on planes and lawyers trying to send a handful of people to Rwanda...
..... ::)
Not everything is about Johnson and Brexit is my point. Its about the principle of it, for me anyway.
I agree with Wellsy, get them abolished ideally and at the very least dramatically cut back. Its not about the annual cost per person of the royals or correct taxation, its the idea that 'being born in the right family gives you special blood which puts you above others...no concept is further from equality than that of monarchy' (quote from a provincial French mayor who is refusing to fly flags at half mast).
Paraphrasing from someone whos name escapes me, but basically if people actively favour their head of state being chosen according to blood line they should say so; too many people accept and even celebrate a system they don't actually argue for.
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Perhaps the single biggest waste of money of them all. Just imagine what a decent government could have done with what was spent pissing about with the roads in Kent, or on planes and lawyers trying to send a handful of people to Rwanda...
..... ::)
Not everything is about Johnson and Brexit is my point. Its about the principle of it, for me anyway.
I agree with Wellsy, get them abolished ideally and at the very least dramatically cut back. Its not about the annual cost per person of the royals or correct taxation, its the idea that 'being born in the right family gives you special blood which puts you above others...no concept is further from equality than that of monarchy' (quote from a provincial French mayor who is refusing to fly flags at half mast).
Paraphrasing from someone whos name escapes me, but basically if people actively favour their head of state being chosen according to blood line they should say so; too many people accept and even celebrate a system they don't actually argue for on spurious grounds eg. 'the alternative might be worse.'
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The whole thing about reliability and seamlessness and all that... fair enough but I'm not convinced you couldn't do that with another system that doesn't require us to have a hereditary monarch that we're supposed to bow to and call "your majesty." Fuck all that noise. It's the principle of it for me; they sit at the top of a class system as a symbol of all the stupid inequalities of land, wealth, class and so on in this country.
I know most people here would say if you started from scratch you wouldn't have em, but it's not worth the change, well I think it is worth the change; we should abolish the monarchy and the sooner the better
This is all fine, but if you actually want to convince anybody then you're going to have to complete the argument by explaining 1) what your alternative system is and 2) how that system tackles the problems that you cite in a way that we couldn't do under the current system.
As it stands, parliament has the power to curtail royal privilege as much or as little as it wants, but it doesn't because it isn't worth the political oxygen it would consume (and given the feeling in the public we're seeing then there doesn't seem to be much public appetite for it).
If it's just about the principle of it then, yes, I agree that it is stupid and unfair that there's a special family who occupy this position (it's also somewhat unfair to them because they have to be Royals with all that entails without being given a choice about it; as I said upthread it's not something I would choose for myself), but to want to go about a huge constitutional shift to remove some titles from a small handful of people that you're probably never going to meet seems like a vanity project borne of fragility. When I was younger I would have enthusiastically argued with you but there is only so much political oxygen out there and I'd rather we used it to fix real problems that actually affect people's day-to-day lives.
Two asides: I had no idea that there were so many people who felt so strongly about the Queen. I had an email from a contractor this morning asking to postpone a piece of weather-dependent work on Monday so the staff (many of whom are ex-forces) could pay their respects to our "beloved Queen" :blink:
Also (just to rile you even further), the silly hats and the trumpets are indeed very silly, but a little bit of pomp and circumstance is good for you. God forbid we should conduct the affairs of state from a Portakabin on the outskirts of Crewe.
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Paraphrasing from someone whos name escapes me, but basically if people actively favour their head of state being chosen according to blood line they should say so; too many people accept and even celebrate a system they don't actually argue for on spurious grounds eg. 'the alternative might be worse.'
This is a silly piece of rhetoric that tries to divide opinion into either enthusiastic support or wholehearted rebuttal without any substance behind it. It really is possible to be ambivalent about this.
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Well I'm not a constitutional scholar so I think it's fair to say that I don't have to give a comprehending 10,000 word comprehensive alternative but they definitely do exist, lots of countries have gone from constitutional monarchies to not that and its worked fine.
Why does it tackle current problems? Class ruins this country; it dictates our lives in most circumstances and its bollocks, we all know it, and the Royal Family are the embodiment of that. This whole fuss over a symbol shows that they matter, what they represent matter, and what they say about us matter.
I know it'd be a ballache, I know there's loads of other shit, I know all that. But fundamentally to me; monarchies are not okay. It's not alright that they're "born to reign over us." Frankly it's fucking nauseating tbh, the way the nation falls over itself to tug the forelock, bow and scrape, tell ourselves how wonderful and saintly she was, that millionaire who lived in Palaces and had servants who did everything for her, who inherited her role and had no right to it other than blood, lining the streets in the morning and struggling to pay the rent that evening. Fuck that. Get rid.
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This is a silly piece of rhetoric that tries to divide opinion into either enthusiastic support or wholehearted rebuttal without any substance behind it. It really is possible to be ambivalent about this.
Yeah, fair point; what I'm getting at is that there seem to be an awful lot of people who simultaneously like the royals but would never support any other kind of hereditary or bloodline seat of power. They're in favour of meritocracy...but not for the royals. Thats what seems odd to me, the disconnect.
(it's also somewhat unfair to them because they have to be Royals with all that entails without being given a choice about it
Two asides: I had no idea that there were so many people who felt so strongly about the Queen. I had an email from a contractor this morning asking to postpone a piece of weather-dependent work on Monday so the staff (many of whom are ex-forces) could pay their respects to our "beloved Queen" :blink:
Also (just to rile you even further), the silly hats and the trumpets are indeed very silly, but a little bit of pomp and circumstance is good for you. God forbid we should conduct the affairs of state from a Portakabin on the outskirts of Crewe.
A couple of points on the above; they don't have to be fully fledged royals, they can opt out; nobody is suggesting demolishing the houses of parliament; and I'm under no illusions that mine anything but a minority view on this issue and I don't expect anything to change in my lifetime, so I'm definitely just pissing into the wind.
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I know it'd be a ballache, I know there's loads of other shit, I know all that. But fundamentally to me; monarchies are not okay. It's not alright that they're "born to reign over us." Frankly it's fucking nauseating tbh, the way the nation falls over itself to tug the forelock, bow and scrape, tell ourselves how wonderful and saintly she was, that millionaire who lived in Palaces and had servants who did everything for her, who inherited her role and had no right to it other than blood, lining the streets in the morning and struggling to pay the rent that evening. Fuck that. Get rid.
But you've got to feel it for them, they had no choice, they were born into it. /s
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I know it'd be a ballache, I know there's loads of other shit, I know all that. But fundamentally to me; monarchies are not okay. It's not alright that they're "born to reign over us." Frankly it's fucking nauseating tbh, the way the nation falls over itself to tug the forelock, bow and scrape, tell ourselves how wonderful and saintly she was, that millionaire who lived in Palaces and had servants who did everything for her, who inherited her role and had no right to it other than blood, lining the streets in the morning and struggling to pay the rent that evening. Fuck that. Get rid.
But you've got to feel it for them, they had no choice, they were born into it. /s
I don't feel for them if I'm honest. It's sad when a family member dies, I'll give em that. But we don't close the government for a few weeks when other 96 year olds pop it.
As for the demands of it; it's not that hard. Being a carer is hard. Being homeless is hard. Not being able to pay your electricity bill is hard. Cutting the tape on a new museum and then going back to the Palace to get served on hand and foot isn't that hard.
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Well I'm not a constitutional scholar so I think it's fair to say that I don't have to give a comprehending 10,000 word comprehensive alternative but they definitely do exist, lots of countries have gone from constitutional monarchies to not that and its worked fine.
Why does it tackle current problems? Class ruins this country; it dictates our lives in most circumstances and its bollocks, we all know it, and the Royal Family are the embodiment of that. This whole fuss over a symbol shows that they matter, what they represent matter, and what they say about us matter.
I know it'd be a ballache, I know there's loads of other shit, I know all that. But fundamentally to me; monarchies are not okay. It's not alright that they're "born to reign over us." Frankly it's fucking nauseating tbh, the way the nation falls over itself to tug the forelock, bow and scrape, tell ourselves how wonderful and saintly she was, that millionaire who lived in Palaces and had servants who did everything for her, who inherited her role and had no right to it other than blood, lining the streets in the morning and struggling to pay the rent that evening. Fuck that. Get rid.
Nice rant but, again, getting angry at a few ultra-privileged people doesn't fix the thing that I think you're probably angry about. I suspect when you say that class ruins this country you mean privilege. You might get rid of the royal family but that is absolutely not the same as getting rid of privilege, which you will never completely get rid of. The vast majority of privilege is dispersed throughout the population and privileged people tend to vote to keep it.
There's loads that we could do to improve the lot of those who are born with less privilege than others (compared to some people in other parts of the world then almost everyone in this country is very significantly privileged) but I don't believe that abolishing the monarchy would have any noticeable impact. High rents and house prices getting you down? Go after the NIMBYs who won't let us increase housing supply (and who often have a couple of nice buy-to-lets on the side) - oh no, wait, we won't do that because the NIMBYs are the same people who keep the Conservatives in power.
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Yes, in principle the monarchy is wrong. But given our politics, and the similar course to the USA we are on, can you devise a system that won't give us President Farage, or Johnson, or yet another revolving door for old Etonians, demanding the same trappings of state as the royals? I can't see how it's going to be an improvement... TBH one of the bonuses of having a monarchy is they are just there, we don't have to vote for them every 5 years.
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Two sides of the same coin. A country willing and able to address the issues you describe might also be one willing and able to move on from a hereditary monarchy. The two things are connected. I agree that neither will likely be addressed in the short to medium term.
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Well I'm not a constitutional scholar so I think it's fair to say that I don't have to give a comprehending 10,000 word comprehensive alternative but they definitely do exist, lots of countries have gone from constitutional monarchies to not that and its worked fine.
Why does it tackle current problems? Class ruins this country; it dictates our lives in most circumstances and its bollocks, we all know it, and the Royal Family are the embodiment of that. This whole fuss over a symbol shows that they matter, what they represent matter, and what they say about us matter.
I know it'd be a ballache, I know there's loads of other shit, I know all that. But fundamentally to me; monarchies are not okay. It's not alright that they're "born to reign over us." Frankly it's fucking nauseating tbh, the way the nation falls over itself to tug the forelock, bow and scrape, tell ourselves how wonderful and saintly she was, that millionaire who lived in Palaces and had servants who did everything for her, who inherited her role and had no right to it other than blood, lining the streets in the morning and struggling to pay the rent that evening. Fuck that. Get rid.
Nice rant but, again, getting angry at a few ultra-privileged people doesn't fix the thing that I think you're probably angry about. I suspect when you say that class ruins this country you mean privilege. You might get rid of the royal family but that is absolutely not the same as getting rid of privilege, which you will never completely get rid of. The vast majority of privilege is dispersed throughout the population and privileged people tend to vote to keep it.
There's loads that we could do to improve the lot of those who are born with less privilege than others (compared to some people in other parts of the world then almost everyone in this country is very significantly privileged) but I don't believe that abolishing the monarchy would have any noticeable impact. High rents and house prices getting you down? Go after the NIMBYs who won't let us increase housing supply (and who often have a couple of nice buy-to-lets on the side) - oh no, wait, we won't do that because the NIMBYs are the same people who keep the Conservatives in power.
I'm not saying it'll magically fix anything, certainly have never claimed it would? I'm saying having a monarchy or not having it does matter, is relevant, and does make a difference, and that being considered it should go.
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Yes, in principle the monarchy is wrong. But given our politics, and the similar course to the USA we are on, can you devise a system that won't give us President Farage, or Johnson, or yet another revolving door for old Etonians, demanding the same trappings of state as the royals? I can't see how it's going to be an improvement... TBH one of the bonuses of having a monarchy is they are just there, we don't have to vote for them every 5 years.
The system works pretty well tbh. Farage failed repeatedly to get anywhere near the house of commons. Bojo used all his wealth and privilege but only lasted two years before being booted out by his own. Likewise you can roll eyes at Trump but the system only gave him four years, and a lot of people learnt a lot from it. Meanwhile the Queen's favourite son buys time with teenage girls and the country lines up to pay its respects.
Seems a lot to me like most of the apologists for the monarchy, sorry bootlickers, would rather just not engage with the issue properly and are just pointing out that if you don't sweat it it's all chill, yeah?
getting angry at a few ultra-privileged people doesn't fix the thing that I think you're probably angry about. I suspect when you say that class ruins this country you mean privilege.
The existence of the royals props the whole thing up, enables and normalises it. It's fucking absurd and has no place in the 21st century. As I said, read up on how deep the rabbit hole goes and I'll be very surprised if you can retain the same view. The continued existence of the ruling class in this country is absolutely reliant on maintaining this conflation of their wealth and privilege as equivalent or inseparable from hard-earned success. It really isn't.
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Yes, in principle the monarchy is wrong. But given our politics, and the similar course to the USA we are on, can you devise a system that won't give us President Farage, or Johnson, or yet another revolving door for old Etonians, demanding the same trappings of state as the royals? I can't see how it's going to be an improvement... TBH one of the bonuses of having a monarchy is they are just there, we don't have to vote for them every 5 years.
The system works pretty well tbh. Farage failed repeatedly to get anywhere near the house of commons. Bojo used all his wealth and privilege but only lasted two years before being booted out by his own. Likewise you can roll eyes at Trump but the system only gave him four years, and a lot of people learnt a lot from it. Meanwhile the Queen's favourite son buys time with teenage girls and the country lines up to pay its respects.
Seems a lot to me like most of the apologists for the monarchy, sorry bootlickers, would rather just not engage with the issue properly and are just pointing out that if you don't sweat it it's all chill, yeah?
getting angry at a few ultra-privileged people doesn't fix the thing that I think you're probably angry about. I suspect when you say that class ruins this country you mean privilege.
The existence of the royals props the whole thing up, enables and normalises it. It's fucking absurd and has no place in the 21st century. As I said, read up on how deep the rabbit hole goes and I'll be very surprised if you can retain the same view. The continued existence of the ruling class in this country is absolutely reliant on maintaining this conflation of their wealth and privilege as equivalent or inseparable from hard-earned success. It really isn't.
Can you see the population at large supporting that?
Knock one down, the people invent another.
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There's a summary of recent sentiment here, collated around the time of the 'Platty Joobs' last year: https://yougov.co.uk/topics/society/articles-reports/2022/06/01/platinum-jubilee-where-does-public-opinion-stand-m
A majority remain currently in favour, but as you can imagine support is highest among old right-wingers, and lowest among young lefties, but there has a consistent decline. In Scotland support is now at only 45%. opinion of their importance has also declined, and, tellingly, less than 50% see them as lasting another century. I can't see Charles giving them much of a bounce, their best chance of retaining majority support is for him to die in the next decade and Will and Kate to tread extremely carefully. It's hard to overstate the power those vested interests hold (the power over the press remains extraordinary, but ) and they've been canny to last this long, but can you honestly see a future in which public support consistently grows? The removal of the boomers from the demographic will have profound effects on our democracy.
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Yes, in principle the monarchy is wrong. But given our politics, and the similar course to the USA we are on, can you devise a system that won't give us President Farage, or Johnson, or yet another revolving door for old Etonians, demanding the same trappings of state as the royals? I can't see how it's going to be an improvement... TBH one of the bonuses of having a monarchy is they are just there, we don't have to vote for them every 5 years.
The system works pretty well tbh. Farage failed repeatedly to get anywhere near the house of commons. Bojo used all his wealth and privilege but only lasted two years before being booted out by his own. Likewise you can roll eyes at Trump but the system only gave him four years, and a lot of people learnt a lot from it. Meanwhile the Queen's favourite son buys time with teenage girls and the country lines up to pay its respects.
Seems a lot to me like most of the apologists for the monarchy, sorry bootlickers, would rather just not engage with the issue properly and are just pointing out that if you don't sweat it it's all chill, yeah?
getting angry at a few ultra-privileged people doesn't fix the thing that I think you're probably angry about. I suspect when you say that class ruins this country you mean privilege.
The existence of the royals props the whole thing up, enables and normalises it. It's fucking absurd and has no place in the 21st century. As I said, read up on how deep the rabbit hole goes and I'll be very surprised if you can retain the same view. The continued existence of the ruling class in this country is absolutely reliant on maintaining this conflation of their wealth and privilege as equivalent or inseparable from hard-earned success. It really isn't.
Given that your contribution amounts to namecalling and an invitation to gaze into a nameless rabbit hole, I'm surprised that you can accuse people of not engaging with the issue properly with a straight face.
There's a lot of different tangents to this and maybe we're at cross-purposes. I thought the general thrust of the thread was to discuss politics as it might be found in the real world, rather than it being a place to pine for a fantastical utopia. If we're going to question the monarchy then there's questions about how that affects governance and questions about how their presence in society affects privilege and equality of opportunity. I'm not advocating for the monarchy, I'm saying that I'm unconvinced that it's worth changing it at the moment because I don't think it would redress the majority of entrenched privilege or have a material impact on anybody's lives. You surely can't assess whether this is right or wrong (and I'm happy to be wrong and change my mind) without understanding what the alternative might be, but nobody has suggested anything different yet.
On governance, you go as far as to say that "the system works pretty well tbh" when it comes to appointing officials. The system as it is invests all the decision-making power in parliament. We have a prime minister to appoint a government which will then set the direction of parliament and decide what the legislative agenda will be. The monarch invites the prime minister to form a government and is then supposed to walk away and only turn up when required to wear the posh hat at some state function. The fact that they aren't supposed to hold any decision-making power is what makes it possible to tolerate them as hereditary beneficiaries when it comes to governance. If we get rid of the hereditary bit then how do we nominate somebody to perform this ceremonial role? Who can we pick who we can trust to be apolitical? In all likelihood if we got rid of hereditary succession then we'd also invest some power into the role. What powers will they be, will they be different to that of the Prime Minister, will they allow executive decision-making? How will that work in our existing system of parliamentary representation, or will we change that too? One of the big problems that republics have, in my view, is not that people might get elected who I don't like (this is never a good argument against democratising things) but that they invest huge amounts of executive power into one individual, which is far worse for achieving governance by consensus than having a ceremonial monarch.
On privilege you say that "the existence of the royals props the whole thing up, enables and normalises it". What is the whole thing that is being propped up and enabled and normalised, and how does one family among tens of millions propagate it? You don't actually say? If you're talking about privilege then I call bullshit. You don't need mama and papa to give you an estate and a title to benefit from their position in society. The majority of privilege is felt throughout the population by people who benefit from who their parents are, or who their parents know, or what postcode their parents can afford for them to grow up in. We see it with the royals but that is very much the tip of the iceberg; most privilege sits quietly under the surface using its better education, resources, and connections to improve the lot of its own children while others miss out. The Conservatives let it happen because it is the more privileged people who vote Conservative. That's where the problem is and parliament has all the tools at its disposal right now to start improving things.
If you're cross about something in society then it's important to correctly identify the cause because otherwise you end up like all those working class voters who were dissatisfied with their lot and decided to leave the EU. We poured years of political effort into that and it didn't do anything to solve the issues it was supposed to.
That last bit was just for you, Jim.
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Just read Who Owns Britain and come back to me Will. Having been to a top public school I thought I had a good handle on privilege, but I didn't. It is an eye-opener.
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The system as it is invests all the decision-making power in parliament. We have a prime minister to appoint a government which will then set the direction of parliament and decide what the legislative agenda will be. The monarch invites the prime minister to form a government and is then supposed to walk away and only turn up when required to wear the posh hat at some state function. The fact that they aren't supposed to hold any decision-making power is what makes it possible to tolerate them as hereditary beneficiaries when it comes to governance.
If this role is purely ceremonial as you say, then why do we need anyone to invite the PM to form a government? It’s not as if Chuck 3 is going to step in and decide who should get to form a govt when there’s a hung parliament for example.
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I plead the Wellsy defence (I'm not a constitutional scholar).
Presumably we need to have some backstop in the event that politicians try and seize control unlawfully. Hence the armed forces have the monarch as their head so they can dismiss an unlawfully appointed government if there's cause to? It all seems totally academic at the moment (not least because when sitting governments act unlawfully it takes time for the courts to figure that out as in the case of the prorogation) but even republics like the States have something like the electoral college to act as an intermediary at election times.
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Just read Who Owns Britain
It’s Who Owns England, sorry. My bad.
The constitutional issues really seem like a red herring given the majority of countries who manage without a monarchy. So often such arguments require a sort of Schrodinger’s King, where it is a purely symbolic role without power or influence until it is a vital cog in the machinery of state. If the former it can easily be replaced, if the latter it absolutely must be replaced.
There is another argument that has some merit (ten years ago I might have been in Will’s position) which is the military pledging allegiance to an apolitical figure. I don’t but this. The evidence I’ve read suggests that in battle, the loyalty combatants fight for is for their comrades. Broader questions of right and wing are either best ignored or likely decided by the attitudes of local civilians. The importance of the nature of the figurehead back home is the sort of sounds-plausible-when-said-confidently-by-a-CO Victorian thinking that doesn’t really bear modern scrutiny.
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... but even republics like the States have something like the electoral college to act as an intermediary at election times.
And just look how close that was to being overturned in 2020. Now Trump / the Republican party are trying to get as many college members sympathetic to them as possible, clearly to try to influence future elections. I'd rather not follow any political examples from the US to be honest.
Read The Fifth Risk by Michael Lewis if you want to know how much better our civil service set up is than theirs.
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All this ignores the fact that there are plenty of European countries without constitutional monarchies which manage to hold free and fair elections and avoid coups. Its not beyond the wit of man.
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There's a summary of recent sentiment here, collated around the time of the 'Platty Joobs' last year: https://yougov.co.uk/topics/society/articles-reports/2022/06/01/platinum-jubilee-where-does-public-opinion-stand-m
A majority remain currently in favour, but as you can imagine support is highest among old right-wingers, and lowest among young lefties.........The removal of the boomers from the demographic will have profound effects on our democracy.
Slightly tangentially, the argument that, essentially, all we need to do us wait for the oldies to die is a strange one. It was trotted out frequently with Brexit, and it seems to imagine that all these old people simply sprung into being as >50s with conservative attitudes.
What actually happens is people gradually become more conservative in their thinking as they age, so those boomers who are currently so problematic will be replaced by the next cohort of people looking to protect their way of life.
Anyway, one point that hasn't been mentioned yet is the Monarch's position in the UK as the Head of the Church of England. In our increasingly secular society this often gets overlooked, but in many ways this is perhaps the most important part of the role.
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All this ignores the fact that there are plenty of European countries without constitutional monarchies which manage to hold free and fair elections and avoid coups. Its not beyond the wit of man.
Switzerland have done just fine without a king since they freed themselves from the Holy Roman Empire some eight to five hundred years ago. For example.
What actually happens is people gradually become more conservative in their thinking as they age, so those boomers who are currently so problematic will be replaced by the next cohort of people looking to protect their way of life.
Political attitudes are remarkably stable over the long term. Cf. https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/706889 and references therein. Then again, my father voted for a left-of-centre party for the first time in his life when he was 78, and as personal anecdotes trump social science, I say attitudes change ;)
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Anyway, one point that hasn't been mentioned yet is the Monarch's position in the UK as the Head of the Church of England. In our increasingly secular society this often gets overlooked, but in many ways this is perhaps the most important part of the role.
Why do you consider this most important? Be interesting how many people actually remembered this rather than thinking it was the Archbishop of Canterbury, who I guess is the PM equivalent here in terms of actually being in charge. Think it’s also worth remembering why the monarch is the head of CofE too!!
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What stubs said. I dont think that's remotely the most important bit. Society is overwhelmingly secular now bar Sunday trading laws!
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There is another argument that has some merit (ten years ago I might have been in Will’s position) which is the military pledging allegiance to an apolitical figure. I don’t but this. The evidence I’ve read suggests that in battle, the loyalty combatants fight for is for their comrades.
Don’t think Oliver Cromwell would buy this either. Struggling to see how forelock tugging is a bigger factor in winning battles than esprit de corps and a basic instinct to survive. Sounds like something that charlatans would think up. Perhaps some of the posters here with military experience would care to comment?
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What stubs said. I dont think that's remotely the most important bit. Society is overwhelmingly secular now bar Sunday trading laws!
White Anglosaxon maybe, but not all.
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If the argument that "lots of European countries get by without a monarch" holds water, then does it not also follow that lots of European monarchies (such as Scandinavian countries) do loads better than us on equality of opportunity while lots of republics do much worse (someone already made this point, can't remember who).
The point being that it isn't the system that causes the inequality but what the sovereign entity within that system chooses to do with its power.
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On the other hand, even the most cursory glance at the history books will show the opposite.
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https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/sep/13/king-charles-staff-given-redundancy-notice-during-church-service-for-queen?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
God save the king and all that.
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What stubs said. I dont think that's remotely the most important bit. Society is overwhelmingly secular now bar Sunday trading laws!
White Anglosaxon maybe, but not all.
That's true. Still willing to bet that secularisation is increasing across all religions and ethnicities though.
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What stubs said. I dont think that's remotely the most important bit. Society is overwhelmingly secular now bar Sunday trading laws!
White Anglosaxon maybe, but not all.
That's true. Still willing to bet that secularisation is increasing across all religions and ethnicities though.
The UK is definitely, as a whole more secular than the US. Faith is a huge part of how US politicians project a media identity, but many in the UK hardly mention it.
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Perhaps some of the posters here with military experience would care to comment?
I once eye-balled the Queen over the tip of a bayonet as she walked the line inspecting us after awarding new regimental colours. Missed my chance there to strike the first blow of the revolution : ) It'll probably happen eventually, hopefully quietly.
My views on the royalty, and unearned inherited privilege in general, broadly align with JB's. I joined the military for adventure not to serve an authority that for as long as I can remember have considered to be illegitimate.
That's not to say I spent my entire time in tension with the role, I just thought the whole idea of royalty was a bit bonkers but accepted if some people wanted to devote themselves to the idea then they can crack on. I felt able to step outside the idea and take a sideways glance at it all, without ever feeling like I was forced to lie to myself about 'serving the Queen'*
But I think it's more complicated than JB makes out. As always. Would require essays to go into the nuances of positive v negative aspects of royals, class, inheritance. I think the Queen and other royals did/do a good job in the weird world of diplomacy.
Also it's my suspicion that underlying the respect and seeming need for authority figures in some people is a sense of psychological comfort such ideas provide, stemming from a need for someone or something else to be in charge or to be responsible. Bit like with conspiracy theorists or any other cultish behaviour. Got to be some grand force or plan right scheming against us or looking after us. Royalty just another hook for people.
* despite having made an oath to such effect on signing up, as all military have to make. I guess along with the rest of it, I considered the oath was just another bit of bullshit box-ticking and didn't place much personal value in it. If the military stopped taking people just because they weren't strong royalists then there'd be a much smaller military. Ultimately you're a tool of force to enact the policy of the government of the day. Which I find more troubling somehow, since the lie of Iraq.
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Perhaps some of the posters here with military experience would care to comment?
I once eye-balled the Queen over the tip of a bayonet as she walked the line inspecting us after awarding new regimental colours. Missed my chance there to strike the first blow of the revolution : ) It'll probably happen eventually, hopefully quietly.
My views on the royalty, and unearned inherited privilege in general, broadly align with JB's. I joined the military for adventure not to serve an authority that for as long as I can remember have considered to be illegitimate.
That's not to say I spent my entire time in tension with the role, I just thought the whole idea of royalty was a bit bonkers but accepted if some people wanted to devote themselves to the idea then they can crack on. I felt able to step outside the idea and take a sideways glance at it all, without ever feeling like I was forced to lie to myself about 'serving the Queen'*
But I think it's more complicated than JB makes out. As always. Would require essays to go into the nuances of positive v negative aspects of royals, class, inheritance. I think the Queen and other royals did/do a good job in the weird world of diplomacy.
Also it's my suspicion that underlying the respect and seeming need for authority figures in some people is a sense of psychological comfort such ideas provide, stemming from a need for someone or something else to be in charge or to be responsible. Bit like with conspiracy theorists or any other cultish behaviour. Got to be some grand force or plan right scheming against us or looking after us. Royalty just another hook for people.
* despite having made an oath to such effect on signing up, as all military have to make. I guess along with the rest of it, I considered the oath was just another bit of bullshit box-ticking and didn't place much personal value in it. If the military stopped taking people just because they weren't strong royalists then there'd be a much smaller military. Ultimately you're a tool of force to enact the policy of the government of the day. Which I find more troubling somehow, since the lie of Iraq.
What he said.
There’s a surprising (at least, I think it would be surprising to the outsider) range of personalities and motivations amongst service personnel, even within individual specialities and branches. There are, for sure, ardent royalists amongst all ranks (who tend to assume everyone around them feels the same and that they are a majority, though they certainly are not). Otherwise, they’re probably broadly in line with the general population, as far as I can see.
I joined in January 1989, have had various roles, been in and out, been a “contractor” etc etc and I shall now, for the last time, become a proper civilian again at the end of this month; so if I may, could I posit that “the Military Type” is a bit of a myth. There will be a (one, single) characteristic that all (yes Pete, even the RAF Regiment) military personnel share. They have all undergone a rigorous and demanding (physically, psychologically and intellectually) demanding selection and initial training period, which will have had an attrition rate of greater than 40%. Contrary to popular belief, those who make it, will have done done so because they were able to draw on/develop they’re own motivations and individuality. They will have learned to work as a team, true, but unthinking robots get trodden under pretty quickly. So a community thats not as uniform as it’s clothing would suggest.
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Respect, not ride!
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2022/sep/13/worthy-of-the-stasi-british-cycling-in-queens-funeral-u-turn-after-ridicule
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Respect, not ride!
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2022/sep/13/worthy-of-the-stasi-british-cycling-in-queens-funeral-u-turn-after-ridicule
The avalanche of ridiculous things being cancelled, postponed or discouraged because of the royal funeral is getting pretty annoying.
As someone who is agnostic/ tolerant of the monarchy, I really fail to see how supermarkets being open, sports events or TV programs being on is offensive to anyone. Anyone who is actively against the royal family must be really pissed off.
It's also very worrying that the government made the biggest single spending commitment in living memory with no costing or scrutiny a week ago, and it's hardly making the news as it's subordinated by what colour shoes someone I've never heard of is wearing to the funeral or something.
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Come on Toby, it's not that bad, it's not as if Parliament is closed for party conferences soon or that civil service heads are being sacked, or that there is a national crisis. ;-)
Boris got himself in a right pickle with prorogation...... who knew you could just do this! Where are the calls for scrutiny?
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I was wondering if going for a surf on Monday at Aberdeen beach (always busy with walkers etc) would be seen as disrespectful. Might do it anyway as a social experiment.
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I was wondering if going for a surf on Monday at Aberdeen beach (always busy with walkers etc) would be seen as disrespectful. Might do it anyway as a social experiment.
As long as your Wetsuit is black and at half mast, you’ll be fine. Might help to belt out a couple of verses of the national anthem every time you catch a wave, just to force the point home.
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Surf forecast is looking good for Dunbar/Coldingham on Monday so I’ll be getting in for sure.
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Using the briny deep to mask your salty tears. Canny.
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this is my church....
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The avalanche of ridiculous things being cancelled, postponed or discouraged because of the royal funeral is getting pretty annoying.
As someone who is agnostic/ tolerant of the monarchy, I really fail to see how supermarkets being open, sports events or TV programs being on is offensive to anyone. Anyone who is actively against the royal family must be really pissed off.
I’m a hereditary republican and I’m extremely pissed-off at the enforcement of respect-showing.
Anyone fancy Sirhowy (https://www.ukclimbing.com/logbook/crags/sirhowy-1059/the_queen_is_dead-264629) on Monday?
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I hope no-one was planning on being aware of guinea pigs next week?
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Is having a wank on Monday disrespectful
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Depends who you are thinking about...
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I'd like some official guidance on who is an appropriate subject tbh
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Is having a wank on Monday disrespectful
Even if it is it won't stop Andrew.
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It's also very worrying that the government made the biggest single spending commitment in living memory with no costing or scrutiny a week ago, and it's hardly making the news as it's subordinated by what colour shoes someone I've never heard of is wearing to the funeral or something.
Turns out you just need to change the name of something if you don’t want scrutiny, it’s not a budget it’s a fiscal event!
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I'd like some official guidance on who is an appropriate subject tbh
Royal etiquette is not my area of expertise either. Consult with Nicholas Witchell, he's been spouting a load of wank about royals for years.
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We're meant to be going on a 2 day sea kayak (with a guide, a present from my mum), so I've just emailed to check that he's OK with showing our respects by a short pilgrimage to a remote island. I'm sure she'd approve.
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Is having a wank on Monday disrespectful
Not if it's done over GILF HUNTER :bounce:
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It's also very worrying that the government made the biggest single spending commitment in living memory with no costing or scrutiny a week ago, and it's hardly making the news as it's subordinated by what colour shoes someone I've never heard of is wearing to the funeral or something.
Turns out you just need to change the name of something if you don’t want scrutiny, it’s not a budget it’s a fiscal event!
A Special Fiscal Operation, if you will.
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I'd like some official guidance on who is an appropriate subject tbh
Diana?
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Arise, Sir Lancelot.
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I'd like some official guidance on who is an appropriate subject tbh
Diana?
Was thinking maybe Princess Margaret but that's a much better suggestion, I shall now have a patriotic wank on Monday, God Save the King etc
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If the weather is any good on Monday I'll probably go out on my bike. It has a black frame, hopefully that shows enough respect.
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I'm going climbing, i think i have an old pair Evolv Defys I might wear for a bit when warming up. Got a pair of black undies too.
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I hope no-one was planning on being aware of guinea pigs next week?
I'd wondered what the hell you were on about here, until I saw this https://twitter.com/jonsopel/status/1569995858577424385?t=SsoLjTAaQmlCxqLaH7kSyQ&s=19
Now I understand. I will remain respectfully unaware of any rodents.
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Anyway, one point that hasn't been mentioned yet is the Monarch's position in the UK as the Head of the Church of England. In our increasingly secular society this often gets overlooked, but in many ways this is perhaps the most important part of the role.
Why do you consider this most important? Be interesting how many people actually remembered this rather than thinking it was the Archbishop of Canterbury, who I guess is the PM equivalent here in terms of actually being in charge. Think it’s also worth remembering why the monarch is the head of CofE too!!
Firstly on pure numbers, Google tells me there are 85 million members of the Anglican Communion, so it is larger than the British population, with the Monarch as its head. Although the Archbishop is known as the first among equals, they are appointed by the Monarch as the Supreme Governer.
Anecdotally, several of my family are Christian and have said they viewed the Queen as the leader of their faith, more than a political figurehead. I suspect most Christians would say the same.
Of course whether as a political, religious or military leader the role is entirely symbolic / ceremonial, so I guess which is more important just depends on your own perspective.
Anyway, reading about the nearly 3 mile long queue to visit her coffin I'm left wondering; why on earth would you bother? Or is it me that's weird because I can't imagine anything I'd rather do less?
And why would Centre Parcs think it was a good idea to ask people to go home for the day on Monday, then come back on Tuesday?! Mental.
I hope no-one was planning on being aware of guinea pigs next week?
I'd wondered what the hell you were on about here, until I saw this https://twitter.com/jonsopel/status/1569995858577424385?t=SsoLjTAaQmlCxqLaH7kSyQ&s=19
Now I understand. I will remain respectfully unaware of any rodents.
Brilliant! Someone's pointed out the PR masterclass here; I am now aware of Guinea Pig Awareness Week! :lol: :wall:
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And why would Centre Parcs think it was a good idea to ask people to go home for the day on Monday, then come back on Tuesday?! Mental.
They've now 180ed and said they aren't kicking anyone out, they just can't use the facilities. Maybe not quite a 180 then.
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30 hours of queuing according to the Guardian
If you queue for 30 hours to walk past a coffin you're a fucking nutter imo
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Firstly on pure numbers, Google tells me there are 85 million members of the Anglican Communion, so it is larger than the British population, with the Monarch as its head. Although the Archbishop is known as the first among equals, they are appointed by the Monarch as the Supreme Governer.
On the other side of your pure numbers balance is that the monarch is still (for some reason) head of state of the commonwealth countries including Canada Oz and NZ, so adds a few 10s of million loyal subjects 😄
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Only 2.8 miles long at the moment, Wellsy. Get down there quick before the weekend rush.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cJxDwDzAwEs
Also, if anybody wants to watch a guard face plant off the steps then go to 0:25 on the grievestream:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/uk-62897146
I continue to be absolutely baffled and bemused by the amount of genuine sadness out there. The BBC have just interviewed a young Canadian lady, completely overcome with emotion, who had flown in especially.
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Also, if anybody wants to watch a guard face plant off the steps then go to 0:25 on the grievestream:
That looked awful! After the first couple of stumbles, and continued swaying, someone might have tried to lend a hand. Boxing rules, intervene when a knee goes down? I'd have waved it off earlier than that.
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The BBC have just interviewed a young Canadian lady, completely overcome with emotion, who had flown in especially.
And Catherine from Connecticut. Not even "her" Queen.
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Also, if anybody wants to watch a guard face plant off the steps then go to 0:25 on the grievestream:
That looked awful! After the first couple of stumbles, and continued swaying, someone might have tried to lend a hand. Boxing rules, intervene when a knee goes down? I'd have waved it off earlier than that.
Totally agree, poor refereeing, plus the towel should have been thrown in long before.
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Anecdotally, several of my family are Christian and have said they viewed the Queen as the leader of their faith, more than a political figurehead. I suspect most Christians would say the same.
I think this must be very Church of England biased. I too have lots of practicing christians in my family and can’t imagine any of them saying that. But then they probably attend or grew up in other denominations.
As for the the hardcore royalists, I’m always just shocked that I share this island with them. A bit like flat earthers. Shocking to know they are out there, shopping in Lidl next to you. 😂
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I continue to be absolutely baffled and bemused by the amount of genuine sadness out there. The BBC have just interviewed a young Canadian lady, completely overcome with emotion, who had flown in especially.
I'm not feeling particularly sad about it, but I can understand that people link it to personal grief or past losses, and feel it's an opportunity to express these in a way that they might not do if it was actually closer to them.
I think a lot of people see it as a real marker of time passing, and of themselves getting older. That seems strange written down, but I don't know how else to put that feeling.
There's no doubt that her death is very significant, although it doesn't upset me personally, I can see why some people might feel like that.
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I continue to be absolutely baffled and bemused by the amount of genuine sadness out there. The BBC have just interviewed a young Canadian lady, completely overcome with emotion, who had flown in especially.
Some people just follow the status quo. It's hard to comprehend for us internet types, but for many people, their world view is shaped entirely by the TV and (I hate to use this phrase) "main stream media". I imagine this must have an impact.
A bit like flat earthers. Shocking to know they are out there, shopping in Lidl next to you. 😂
These are the people who've done too much internet and not enough main stream media ;D
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Anecdotally, several of my family are Christian and have said they viewed the Queen as the leader of their faith, more than a political figurehead. I suspect most Christians would say the same.
I think this must be very Church of England biased. I too have lots of practicing christians in my family and can’t imagine any of them saying that. But then they probably attend or grew up in other denominations.
This is surely obvious no? The monarch has nothing to do with, say Catholicism...
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I continue to be absolutely baffled and bemused by the amount of genuine sadness out there. The BBC have just interviewed a young Canadian lady, completely overcome with emotion, who had flown in especially.
Glad it's not just me. It's utterly bizarre.
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Wonder if "Candle in the Wind" will get released again and people will stampede Our Price record shops to buy the single. Probably not.
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Firstly on pure numbers, Google tells me there are 85 million members of the Anglican Communion, so it is larger than the British population, with the Monarch as its head. Although the Archbishop is known as the first among equals, they are appointed by the Monarch as the Supreme Governer.
Anecdotally, several of my family are Christian and have said they viewed the Queen as the leader of their faith, more than a political figurehead. I suspect most Christians would say the same.
This obviously makes sense if one is Christian, but given the general decline in CofE attendance (more than halved from 40.3% of the population in 1983 to 16.3% in 2014, from a quick google), thats not going to the biggest part of the the monarchs role for a vast majority of the population. As you say its totally down to individual perspective.
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Firstly on pure numbers, Google tells me there are 85 million members of the Anglican Communion, so it is larger than the British population, with the Monarch as its head. Although the Archbishop is known as the first among equals, they are appointed by the Monarch as the Supreme Governer.
Anecdotally, several of my family are Christian and have said they viewed the Queen as the leader of their faith, more than a political figurehead. I suspect most Christians would say the same.
This obviously makes sense if one is Christian, but given the general decline in CofE attendance (more than halved from 40.3% of the population in 1983 to 16.3% in 2014, from a quick google), thats not going to the biggest part of the the monarchs role for a vast majority of the population. As you say its totally down to individual perspective.
The term here should be “Anglican”, not “Christian”. Most of my, very devout Christian, older family members would most certainly not view the Queen as the “leader of their faith” in any way, shape or form (in fact, some of them would view the pomp, gilding and ceremony of Monarchy itself, as positively anti-Christian and sinful).
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My view is probably warped because our eldest goes to a faith school (we're atheists but it's the best school locally so decided we will give some push back against the indoctrination at home).
I think you'd be surprised at how many people there are who do have some faith but who don't attend church or otherwise outwardly display it or declare it. When I go along to a school assembly and they read a prayer or say a hail Mary or whatever it is, I'm always surprised that all the other parents know what hand gestures to make and what to say and when to say it as I sit there being politely befuddled. If you met them you wouldn't think that these people were religious. Unsurprisingly they don't have two heads.
That sounds stupid. Parents who send their kids to a faith school are religious. Shock! I mean that just looking at church attendance or the behaviours of people that you know doesn't give a true reflection of who is actually religious in their private thoughts.
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Yeah thats definitely true. Church attendance is just a proxy for measuring religious feeling and whether its on the rise or fall. Obviously its as flawed as any other method of measurement (what others are there?)
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It's in the census. 59.3% of the population of England and Wales identify themselves as Christian as of 2011. Can't immediately see more recent data. A lot higher than the 16% attending Church anyway.
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Only 2.8 miles long at the moment, Wellsy. Get down there quick before the weekend rush.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cJxDwDzAwEs
Also, if anybody wants to watch a guard face plant off the steps then go to 0:25 on the grievestream:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/uk-62897146
I continue to be absolutely baffled and bemused by the amount of genuine sadness out there. The BBC have just interviewed a young Canadian lady, completely overcome with emotion, who had flown in especially.
It's baffling to me as well, just mad. 2.8 miles of queuing to look at a box containing a dead millionaire who had no idea who you were. Ah well.
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I think you'd be surprised at how many people there are who do have some faith but who don't attend church or otherwise outwardly display it or declare it. When I go along to a school assembly and they read a prayer or say a hail Mary or whatever it is, I'm always surprised that all the other parents know what hand gestures to make and what to say and when to say it as I sit there being politely befuddled. If you met them you wouldn't think that these people were religious. Unsurprisingly they don't have two heads.
They might have just attended church when they were kids. I haven't been to a service in about 14 years and I still remember all that jazz.
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Has anyone in this queue been seen to exit Westminster Hall? Starting to wonder if the viewing the Queen thing could be a ruse. Thinking trapdoor / shark-filled pool scenes. Then Boris re-emerges on the scene backed by his new model army.
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Has anyone in this queue been seen to exit Westminster Hall? Starting to wonder if the viewing the Queen thing could be a ruse. Thinking trapdoor / shark-filled pool scenes. Then Boris re-emerges on the scene backed by his new model army.
Soylent Green is now being served in the House of Commons dinning room and all royal palaces…
I think the “Identify as Christian” metric is also misleading (here, I am Christian, whether I like it or not, because “Atheist” is illegal). I mean, I should imagine an awful lot of people really haven’t thought about it much. They know they’re not one of the others, “Church” is just an accepted part of their landscape (and part of their Primary school life, even if it was just an annual Carol service), probably don’t know what agnostic means and declaring yourself Atheist sounds a bit radical. Path of least resistance.
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Has anyone in this queue been seen to exit Westminster Hall? Starting to wonder if the viewing the Queen thing could be a ruse. Thinking trapdoor / shark-filled pool scenes. Then Boris re-emerges on the scene backed by his new model army.
Or brainwashing. They exit indoctrinated into believing in a superior being that rules over us all.
Same as when they went in really.
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I think you'd be surprised at how many people there are who do have some faith but who don't attend church or otherwise outwardly display it or declare it. When I go along to a school assembly and they read a prayer or say a hail Mary or whatever it is, I'm always surprised that all the other parents know what hand gestures to make and what to say and when to say it as I sit there being politely befuddled.
Yes, I would be Will. Culturally conditioned and genuinely believing are very different beasts and knowing the gestures is not a reliable proxy for believing in the divine imo. I can recite the Protestant version of the Lord’s Prayer on autopilot (and did so, on my first day assembly in a Catholic school-embarrassing!) but it still doesn’t make me a believer. Nice poem, well rehearsed, like all the other little gestures. That’s it.
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Do you have to go full Pater Noster at Catholic school?!
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Last King, last priest, strangled, entrails, freedom etc
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Do you have to go full Pater Noster at Catholic school?!
No, but you would do well to know that the final
‘For thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory.’ is considered unbiblical and does not form part of the Catholic Lord’s Prayer.
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I can recite the Protestant version of the Lord’s Prayer on autopilot (and did so, on my first day assembly in a Catholic school-embarrassing!) but it still doesn’t make me a believer. Nice poem, well rehearsed, like all the other little gestures. That’s it.
I was showing the relationship between the Lord's Prayer and Kaddish, recently. I came to a grinding halt when I realised that I don't know the LP, have heard it, know what it's about but never went to school assembly to recite it, natch.
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At least yours wouldn't have been the only voice to ring out the last line in an otherwise silent hall. :-[
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I was showing the relationship between the Lord's Prayer and Kaddish, recently. I came to a grinding halt when I realised that I don't know the LP, have heard it, know what it's about but never went to school assembly to recite it, natch.
That's weird. I haven't even considered it since I last went to church at about age 18, and jus recited the traditonal one perfectly, then did Psalm 23. Amazing what the brain retains. I can still recite Old Macdonald Had a Farm and can count to 10 in Sotho from having to learn at about age 11, but can't remember what I was going into the kitchen for.
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That's why the strategy of religions is to target its victims while they're young, the shit sticks to young blankets.
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That's why the strategy of religions is to target its victims while they're young, the shit sticks to young blankets.
“Give me a child until he is seven and I will show you the man”, which is (I believe) Aristotle, though it has come to be associated far more with St Ignatius of Loyola (or sometimes Xavier) and the Jesuit Order.
Which is a less graphic version of Pete’s saw.
I prefer Pete’s version.
Edit:
It can’t be infallible though. I grew up a Wesleyan Methodist, in a sharply divided Cornish village. The split between Church (CoE) and Chapel (us) was deep and definitely class defined, too. For me until I stamped my foot and refused to go at age 10, every Sunday was Sunday school and service, there was absolutely not ornamentation in that chapel, white walls and fire, brimstone and damnation raining from the pulpit.
The old minister died when I was ~8 ish, his replacement was a “Happy Clappy” with three young children, including a boy my age, who is still a close friend (now David Young the celebrated artist). Anyway, the transition from black clad, lip frothing, wizened old dick, literally slamming a bible the size of his own torso onto the lectern as he gleefully explained we were all bound for hell and there was nothing we could do about it (and here’s what’s going to happen when you get there) to Dave’s dad, strumming Kumbya and telling happy tales of missionary work in Zambia, in a floral shirt and jeans; killed off half the over 60’s in the congregation.
Anyway, I never really listened, found it all too far fetched and a bit silly. I was openly critical, often tried very hard to not go (clamping on to radiator and having a loud tantrum etc) was constantly being sent back to the school room during the service for pissing around and was generally considered the anti-christ by most of the old ladies in the front pews. Then, one day, mum walked me into the Sunday school door, I walked through, straight out the back door and pissed off to climb trees and hunt rabbits. They gave up.
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That's why the strategy of religions is to target its victims while they're young, the shit sticks to young blankets.
But it's community, you know? And how are we to live in your country without it? Unless you assimilate to Judaism, which would be ideal, of course.
I'm at variance with others here bc I go to synagogue about 15* a year (festivals, yahrzeits, for mitzvot, when I'm on security duty and for things that I care about like Yom HaShoah).
Was at the normal Shabbat service during the recent Queen's jubilee weekend. The rabbi said that we would finish with singing the national anthem. Cool, I thought, HaTikvah (Israeli nat. anthem, The Hope), this is way of celebrating that I can really get behind. I scowled when God Save the Queen started and carried on discussing with the with the retired theatre impresario who sits next to me how I can get someone to pay an outstanding invoice. Whose advice was on-point, by the way.
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That's why the strategy of religions is to target its victims while they're young, the shit sticks to young blankets.
Just because i can still recite it, doesn't mean i believe a word of it.
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The saturation coverage of the royals seems to be largely distracting almost all the media from the fact that the government currently wants to enable bankers to get bigger bonuses (fiscally possibly a good idea depending very much on who you listen to, but it looks pretty tawdry at the moment whatever you think), it's sacked civil servants and Zac Goldsmith, is going to restart fracking, scotch the obesity strategy and the conservative party gets many hundreds of thousands of pounds in donations from the aviation industry.
They must be loving the opportunity to get all the bad news out while noone is paying any attention
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https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2001/oct/09/uk.past
not the first time.
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Nice set of graphs on income inequalty from the FT today:
https://archive.ph/2022.09.16-150230/https://www.ft.com/content/ef265420-45e8-497b-b308-c951baa68945
“In 2007, the average UK household was 8 per cent worse off than its peers in north-western Europe, but the deficit has since ballooned to a record 20 per cent. On present trends, the average Slovenian household will be better off than its British counterpart by 2024, and the average Polish family will move ahead before the end of the decade. A country in desperate need of migrant labour may soon have to ask new arrivals to take a pay cut.”
I should hasten to add that although I’m not a monarchist, I think the existence of a monarchy in the U.K. is almost certainly irrelevant with respect to the high income inequality here (the psychological effects I’m less sanguine about).
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Nice set of graphs on income inequalty from the FT today:
https://archive.ph/2022.09.16-150230/https://www.ft.com/content/ef265420-45e8-497b-b308-c951baa68945
“In 2007, the average UK household was 8 per cent worse off than its peers in north-western Europe, but the deficit has since ballooned to a record 20 per cent. On present trends, the average Slovenian household will be better off than its British counterpart by 2024, and the average Polish family will move ahead before the end of the decade. A country in desperate need of migrant labour may soon have to ask new arrivals to take a pay cut.”
I should hasten to add that although I’m not a monarchist, I think the existence of a monarchy in the U.K. is almost certainly irrelevant with respect to the high income inequality here (the psychological effects I’m less sanguine about).
The government has obviously hit on a solution to the problem of migrants on boats in the channel, making the quality of life in the UK so bad that noone wants to come in the first place.
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Apologies for FB link, but this tickled me this morning.
https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=pfbid0cHBDSqknAczKDfKPQEWNLn2ui8frVZ3h2kyV4QkhZVkLfewGYxC42U2c9U3rx1dHl&id=313774828684270 (https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=pfbid0cHBDSqknAczKDfKPQEWNLn2ui8frVZ3h2kyV4QkhZVkLfewGYxC42U2c9U3rx1dHl&id=313774828684270)
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Nice set of graphs on income inequalty from the FT today:
https://archive.ph/2022.09.16-150230/https://www.ft.com/content/ef265420-45e8-497b-b308-c951baa68945
“In 2007, the average UK household was 8 per cent worse off than its peers in north-western Europe, but the deficit has since ballooned to a record 20 per cent. On present trends, the average Slovenian household will be better off than its British counterpart by 2024, and the average Polish family will move ahead before the end of the decade. A country in desperate need of migrant labour may soon have to ask new arrivals to take a pay cut.”
I should hasten to add that although I’m not a monarchist, I think the existence of a monarchy in the U.K. is almost certainly irrelevant with respect to the high income inequality here (the psychological effects I’m less sanguine about).
While I'm sure there's a large element of truth in the general point being made about inequality in the UK vs other developed European countries I do get pretty irritated by this sort of use of stats particular in a publication like the FT.
If you want to compare a large moderately rich west European economy to other countries why would you choose two small extremely rich countries (Norway and Switzerland, both less than 10 million people and in the top 10 richest countries in the world) and one very small, probably richer than people think country (Slovenia, 2 million, GDP per capita ppp above Spain and just below Italy)? Being fairly cynical by nature I wonder if this because it supports the argument better than comparing against countries with similar characteristics e.g. Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Poland etc
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I don't understand, in the data dashboard you can compare to any country you like?
Eg
(https://i.imgur.com/Hx9OF4m.png)
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The FT data guy’s Twitter feed has this:
https://twitter.com/jburnmurdoch/status/1570832891588018176?s=20&t=FLtB5yjnmMWcIr2qThOVNQ
Also worth pointing out that the original article covers the US which is notably large. I suspect they include Norway and Switzerland as they are closer in per capita income to the US than most European countries.
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I don't understand, in the data dashboard you can compare to any country you like?
Eg
(https://i.imgur.com/Hx9OF4m.png)
I don't think I understand what you don't understand - obviously you can do your own analysis of the data, but shouldn't we expect an article like this to use non partial data to support the argument they are making?
You didn't include Spain, Italy or Poland in your image, shows quite a different picture to that in the FT ?
(I would include an image but on holiday and probably should talk to my better half instead ;) )
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Well worth having a look at, Truss' chief in number ten being investigated by the FBI: https://twitter.com/jonsopel/status/1571207166761091074?t=m3ciI31gi9wQ3-oC6Uc-iQ&s=19
That's a week in office before things start to sour?
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I’m of the view that if the U.K. isn’t considering France and Germany as its comparator counties, and say the Netherlands or Denmark as aspirations, then something’s gone wrong in both our politics and our self conception.
Yes, you’re slightly better off being poor in the U.K. than in a country that was under fascist dictatorship for decades and has then been lagging the rest of Europe, a country that was under communist dictatorship for 50 years (which had been badly destroyed in WW2) and the absolute basket case of the larger European countries. Plus two of those are stuck with the shitty end of the Euro. The fact that it’s only marginally better to be poor in Manchester - once the most innovative place in the world - than Sicily - which is and always has been an essentially agricultural society - is really rubbish!
(Also the FT has a big US readership so needs to appeal to them too.)
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I’m of the view that if the U.K. isn’t considering France and Germany as its comparator counties, and say the Netherlands or Denmark as aspirations, then something’s gone wrong in both our politics and our self conception.
Yes, you’re slightly better off being poor in the U.K. than in a country that was under fascist dictatorship for decades and has then been lagging the rest of Europe, a country that was under communist dictatorship for 50 years (which had been badly destroyed in WW2) and the absolute basket case of the larger European countries. Plus two of those are stuck with the shitty end of the Euro. The fact that it’s only marginally better to be poor in Manchester - once the most innovative place in the world - than Sicily - which is and always has been an essentially agricultural society - is really rubbish!
(Also the FT has a big US readership so needs to appeal to them too.)
To be clear I'm not arguing that the UK does not have significant issues with inequality, that's pretty obvious and is supported by the data. However I'm unconvinced that using a biased choice of data supports the argument. The data for Italy and Spain has UK poor sitting approx equidistant between France and Italy/Spain - pretty poor but not only 'slightly better off'.
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So you’re saying that rather than aspiring to be a rich but more equal country like Germany or France and seeing that we are lacking, we should really be comparing ourselves to the also-rans of the European economies? I mean, if you must, but do you really think the rural parts of Spain or Southern Italy are particularly comparable to the ex-industrial areas of the U.K.? They are regions that had a totally different path to getting to where they are now and presumably face very different challenges. I don’t see it as a biased choice of data, rather that making comparisons with Spain or Italy (never mind Poland!) is not particularly useful or informative.
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Interesting comments by Justin Welby today about "those who cling to power and privilege " in contrast to "those who serve". The latter was obviously about the queen, I wonder who the former was directed at?
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Interesting comments by Justin Welby today about "those who cling to power and privilege " in contrast to "those who serve". The latter was obviously about the queen, I wonder who the former was directed at?
The Lords Spiritual.
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Interesting comments by Justin Welby today about "those who cling to power and privilege " in contrast to "those who serve". The latter was obviously about the queen, I wonder who the former was directed at?
The Lords Spiritual.
Unelected they may be, but probably with a lot more experience, expertise and integrity than you would find in the elected government. I'd sooner trust Justin Welby with an important decision than the selection of the Conservative party's membership.
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Among all the other terrible decisions, rolling back on the sugar tax and anti obesity strategy as ‘it’s not the government’s place to interfere in people’s lifestyles’ seems almost designed to cause more pressure on the NHS. Sure the current strategy isn’t great but it’s better than nothing https://www.theguardian.com/society/2022/sep/19/truss-plan-to-axe-sugar-tax-runs-into-legal-and-parliamentary-hitches
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Interesting comments by Justin Welby today about "those who cling to power and privilege " in contrast to "those who serve". The latter was obviously about the queen, I wonder who the former was directed at?
The Lords Spiritual.
Unelected they may be, but probably with a lot more experience, expertise and integrity than you would find in the elected government. I'd sooner trust Justin Welby with an important decision than the selection of the Conservative party's membership.
Well the Tory Party (and it hurts me to say anything in their favour) legalised gay marriage, whereas Welby won't even say gay sex isn't a sin. And he's the leading figure in our state religion! He's a disgrace and he can get in the bin as far as I'm concerned.
As far as "those to cling to power and privilege" well number one on that list is the Royal family and others of their parasitic aristocrat kind.
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I had a moment of realisation over my morning coffee today. All of our national woes are payback for colonisation and Empire. Bear with me on this. Our place in the world was forged by the blood and toil of our exploited slaves and then fuelled by the plundered resources of the globe. We've never accepted or reconciled ourselves to these facts; our Empire somehow was good for those it subjugated, we abolished slavery (only after profiting handsomely from it mind) and now as a result have a distorted view of ourselves which forms the basis of British exceptionalism. That left us susceptible to Euroscepticism and tied to a vision of the past which enabled the continuation of an anachronistic and twisted legacy of Monarchy and Nobility (unelected House of Lords is fine whilst "unelected EU bureaucrats" are an anathema).
TL:DR You reap what you sow.
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or our past has come back to haunt us
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I had a moment of realisation over my morning coffee today. All of our national woes are payback for colonisation and Empire. Bear with me on this. Our place in the world was forged by the blood and toil of our exploited slaves and then fuelled by the plundered resources of the globe. We've never accepted or reconciled ourselves to these facts; our Empire somehow was good for those it subjugated, we abolished slavery (only after profiting handsomely from it mind) and now as a result have a distorted view of ourselves which forms the basis of British exceptionalism. That left us susceptible to Euroscepticism and tied to a vision of the past which enabled the continuation of an anachronistic and twisted legacy of Monarchy and Nobility (unelected House of Lords is fine whilst "unelected EU bureaucrats" are an anathema).
TL:DR You reap what you sow.
Although I'd certainly agree with some of that in part, I don't think such a wholly negative view is helpful, or indeed that it can represent hundreds of years of history. I think its impossible to say that the empire was all bad, or all good for that matter. The UK wasn't the only colonial country, just perhaps the most successful in the last few hundred years, the Netherlands, France, Germany all had empires, and now a different relationship with that history than us. In some ways the empire has a positive influence on the UK today, a diverse culture, cuisine and population. But also some of what you say is true, the atrocities of the empire are big parts of the history of India, Australia and many African countries to mention a few; and they're conveniently overlooked in the way history is taught here.
I'd highly recommend reading Empireland by Satnam Sangera for an interesting perspective on the legacy of empire in today's UK.
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Its not hard to find ways the imperial system worked really well for colonisers. Much harder to find ways it worked well for colonised peoples. Too much 'impossible to say whether the empire was good or bad' discourse (which also completely misses the point as Sanghera points out in his book) seems to ignore this fact.
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Weren’t the Bhuttos just minor league Sindhi landlords until the big landlords backed the wrong side in 1857 and got themselves killed or disempowered by the eventually victorious British, who then elevated the Bhuttos into a far more prominent role? And couldn’t one make the argument that those areas with long standing British influence like Calcutta, Chennai, Mumbai, overall have better outcomes now than the areas where British influence was far, far lighter, such as most of western Pakistan? Didn’t lots of Indian financiers (mainly Gujerati) do rather well out of the British, at least in the East India Co stages?
I’m not for a minute saying that being colonised was great for those at the wrong end of Empire. Merely that there were winners out of the process, otherwise it simply wouldn’t have worked. Anyhow aren’t you doing a PhD on this stuff, I’m sure you are more informed than I am.
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Definitely, British patronage has meant that some groups had better outcomes than others; as you say, without this balancing of interests the whole system wouldn't have worked (especially under Company rule). I suppose what I'm getting at is I don't see some wealthy families/ groups becoming wealthier or more influential through patronage as a good argument for 'the empire wasn't all bad' (I know you weren't making this argument!). Especially when viewed through the lens of centuries of slavery, imperial plunder, massacres etc etc etc. Probably easier to find individual/micro cases of 'beneficial effects of the empire' but harder to find general/macro ones.
What I'm more getting at is that I personally see 'the empire wasn't all bad' discourse as a way of drawing over the veil and diverting attention from research/raising awareness of the atrocities of empire which have been incredibly underresearched for years, which is one of the reasons our public awareness of empire is so poor. Its a favourite tactic of TV historians like Niall Ferguson, mostly because the audience like it and it avoids any engagement at all with difficulty issues. Sanghera has consistently argued against a 'balance sheet' approach to empire which I totally agree with; it reduces the debate to a binary distinction which is really ahistorical.
My research is on frontier violence in India and Queensland so I'm no imperial expert by any means but I do find it hard to see much thats positive in what I read!
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Fwiw - as a non-historian! - have to agree with all that.
By frontier violence does that mean any geographical area in particular, like NWFP, or is it broader than that?
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And couldn’t one make the argument that those areas with long standing British influence like Calcutta, Chennai, Mumbai, overall have better outcomes now than the areas where British influence was far, far lighter, such as most of western Pakistan?
I chose geography over history, but isn’t western Pakistan rather mountainous and arid, whereas the areas of India you mentioned are rather more verdant and fertile, making a direct comparison of their relative outcomes quite difficult?
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By frontier violence does that mean any geographical area in particular, like NWFP, or is it broader than that?
Yeah, so in India the geographical region I'm focusing on is the border with Afghanistan, the area that would eventually become the NW Frontier province in 1901 but was part of Punjab mostly before that (maybe a bit of it was Kashmir too). A lot of this area is now Pakistan. In Queensland the frontier tends to push out slightly ahead of settlement so the geographical region is necessarily broader as the frontier keeps moving, but basically covers anywhere north of present day Brisbane up to and including Cape York area.
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Jeez I bet that's some grim reading.
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Its not hard to find ways the imperial system worked really well for colonisers. Much harder to find ways it worked well for colonised peoples. Too much 'impossible to say whether the empire was good or bad' discourse (which also completely misses the point as Sanghera points out in his book) seems to ignore this fact.
I agree with you, I may not have put my post earlier very well, I was trying to say that a discourse which tries to say empire is good or bad is unhelpful and somewhat meaningless. I thought Sangera's points on education in this country were his best. I was telling a friend about the book, and they had never heard of the Amritsar massacre. I don't think that's unusual either, schools (well certainly the one I went to) taught the details of the battles of the world wars and lists of British monarchy, but little or no social history, or really anything about the empire.
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The balance-sheet approach to reckoning with empire is pernicious. It reduces things to utilitarian calculations, emptying them of moral content, quibbling about offsetting this against that. It suggests we look at the individual parts and not the whole, when the occurence of the "good" is inseparable from the occurence "bad." Empire was an evil and a moral crime, both in its parts and in toto. It was vicious, often racist endeavour aimed at appropriation and extraction. Empire and slavery played very significant roles in making Britain rich.
I think it's important to say this because I agree with danm: Britain has very largely failed to reckon with its colonial and imperial histories, distorting the nation's understanding of its history and its place and role in the world, both in the past and now. These distortions continue to have damaging effects on what we might call the national psyche.
I care about these thing because of where I sit in the field of history, seeing close up the nastiness of the campaigns launched against historians who try and make these arguments about the need for a reckoning with empire (I'm currently involved in something that I can see easily turning into accusations against me and others of "cancel culture"). The reactions against even the mildest attempts at "decolonizing" an institution such as the National Trust can be almost hysterical. There are active campaigns, launched by the like of History Reclaimed, to offer not merely apologetics for empire (and even slavery) but aim at its full rehabilitation as a force for moral good in the world, a policy that might even be considered again. I find it repugnant. And it is so often based in lies and distortions (and continues, very often, to be rooted in racism and white supremacy). I saw a Tik Tok video by popular right commentator Douglas Murray the other day (no doubt its been watched many, many times by now) in which he sneeringly proclaimed Britain's moral superiority re: slavery, championing the paying of reparations (entirely failing to mention to whom they were paid) and claiming that post-abolition Britain wouldn't and didn't trade with any slave nation. That is a lie and he knows it. As a nation we continue to lie to ourselves.
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Meanwhile, back in LaLa Land, "Liz Truss urges world leaders to follow UK with trickle down economics."
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/sep/20/liz-truss-urges-world-leaders-to-follow-uk-with-trickle-down-economics
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FFS. I didn't expect much, but her plans are worse than I'd even hoped.
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Can't dispute any of what Andy has said, and maybe because it is so close to home, but I am interested as to why British colonisation is seen as carrying more "weight" than any other European country?
Dutch, French, Spanish, Portuguese and German Empires were also pretty huge, and (arguably) had similar impact.
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Can't dispute any of what Andy has said, and maybe because it is so close to home, but I am interested as to why British colonisation is seen as carrying more "weight" than any other European country?
Dutch, French, Spanish, Portuguese and German Empires were also pretty huge, and (arguably) had similar impact.
The Roman empire, the Byzantine empire... when do you stop? None of them were wholly benevolent to say the least.
Traditional conservative (small c) thinking seems extremely against any attempt at retelling the traditional British school version of history, in which Britain won Ww2 at the battle of Britain with half a dozen Spitfires, won all the battles in the middle ages with long bows with some details added in about the conditions in the battle of the Somme being quite nasty.
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Can't dispute any of what Andy has said, and maybe because it is so close to home, but I am interested as to why British colonisation is seen as carrying more "weight" than any other European country?
Dutch, French, Spanish, Portuguese and German Empires were also pretty huge, and (arguably) had similar impact.
I'm not saying this is what you're doing Chris, but "but there were other empires" often turns into whataboutery. In any case, the British Empire was much larger and more long lasting than any other European empire of the modern era.
Ultimately, however, it is for France, Belgium, Germany, Italy, and even Denmark to come to their own reckonings with their imperial and colonial histories (and none of them are doing a brililant job). I'm most concerned about the British empire simply because I'm a British citizen (and to add weight to that, a historian of Britain to boot).
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Trust me, it's not even close to whataboutery, it just seems to that the British Empire seems to be held under closer scrutiny, but that may be just because it's closer to home.
Is it purely down to scale; I don't know enough about them to know where the difference lies.
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it just seems to that the British Empire seems to be held under closer scrutiny
Its not; if anything its the opposite. Spanish atrocities in South America have had enormous amounts of attention. Belgium in the Congo ditto (see King Leopold's Ghost). Germany in Namibia just pre WW1 widely considered to be the first example of modern genocide (against the Herero & Nama people), with all of the political angst that labelling an event as genocide brings.
Its really interesting you perceive additional scrutiny on the British Empire but I really don't think its the case. In any case, as Andy points out, if it was the case it would actually make sense as it was by far the biggest and most long lasting.
On whataboutery, Alan Lester recently wrote a good explainer on this:
On British Empire Whataboutery: When we draw attention to the British Empire’s racial violence, a common response of @History_Reclaim and other deniers is ‘what about other empires’, as if imperial history boils down to a polemist’s game of ‘which empire was worst’. There are two main reasons why such an exercise is silly, in principle and in fact: 1. The violence of other imperialists, much of it also racialised, does not mean that British racial violence never happened, is mitigated or excused. The response is akin to telling A, who is being bullied by B, that they should be grateful it’s not C bullying them. 2. What evidence there is of imperial violence *suggests* (we’ll never *know* due to lack of data) that British colonisation and the maintenance of rule over three centuries, and up to a quarter of the Earth’s land surface, killed more people than any other modern European empire. The Belgian & German empires were often vicious but affected smaller areas in a shorter timeframe, with undoubtedly fewer wars of aggression. Probably the only other contemporaneous empire that killed more was the Qing, as a result of the Taiping Rebellion. Including the Nazi and Soviet regimes might alter things. Presumably the Empire’s defenders would not see it as a great thing that Britons *may* have killed somewhat fewer than them?
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Trust me, it's not even close to whataboutery, it just seems to that the British Empire seems to be held under closer scrutiny, but that may be just because it's closer to home.
Is it purely down to scale; I don't know enough about them to know where the difference lies.
I don't want to proliferate any what about -ery either, I believe that for example, the war the German colonists prosecuted in Namibia was pretty unpleasant, but, purely observationally, German culture and discourse is occupied with coming to terms with more recent national behaviour.
Is there any argument for trade ties being a positive effect of empire? Or language? These are genuine questions, not an attempt to minimise the considerable downside.
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Economically colonialism, and especially exploitation colonialism, is absolutely awful for the colonised and pretty brilliant for the colonisers. I do not think there is any serious debate on this any more.
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Interesting. I was unaware of the harm done in Namibia, maybe because it was brushed under the carpet along with a lot of other South African history (lies) I was taught at school.
As jwi says, not much upsides for the colonised. We'll take you and your natural resources, and give you epidemics and indoctrinate you into religion in return. Cheers.
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Is there any argument for trade ties being a positive effect of empire? Or language? These are genuine questions, not an attempt to minimise the considerable downside.
My personal view is that I basically think that this line of inquiry serves to deflect away from the empire as a totality. It perpetuates the balance sheet approach that you have agreed is ahistorical, surely? I know you're trying to be intellectually curious rather than whatabouting but I don't think the effect is any different. Only my opinion of course!
I would agree that education and increasing awareness is absolutely key. I never knew about Amritsar until I was a Masters student at the earliest! Doesn't surprise me that the genocide in Namibia wasn't taught in SA either.
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Economically colonialism, and especially exploitation colonialism, is absolutely awful for the colonised and pretty brilliant for the colonisers. I do not think there is any serious debate on this any more.
Unfortunately, this is not really the case, at least in popular discourse, where there is currently a very serious push to rehabilitate empire. This push consists in part of "empire did good things too", in part of pure whataboutery (slavery probably attracts even more of this than empire), and in part of minimisation - "Britain would have got rich without empire/slavery and therefore it's irrelevant." It's hard to overstate how much of this is going on at the moment, and how effectively it is being seeded amongst the audiences it's directed at. I guess I'm hyperaware of it.
Apologies Chris, I should have been absolutely clear that I didn't think you were engaging in whataboutery, more that I intended a general caution about slipping into it.
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Can't dispute any of what Andy has said, and maybe because it is so close to home, but I am interested as to why British colonisation is seen as carrying more "weight" than any other European country?
Dutch, French, Spanish, Portuguese and German Empires were also pretty huge, and (arguably) had similar impact.
I'm not saying this is what you're doing Chris, but "but there were other empires" often turns into whataboutery. In any case, the British Empire was much larger and more long lasting than any other European empire of the modern era.
Ultimately, however, it is for France, Belgium, Germany, Italy, and even Denmark to come to their own reckonings with their imperial and colonial histories (and none of them are doing a brililant job). I'm most concerned about the British empire simply because I'm a British citizen (and to add weight to that, a historian of Britain to boot).
I’m not sure I’m wholeheartedly on board with this sentiment. Looking at “The British Empire” we are concerned about it because it existed (just) within living memory. What do mean “reckonings with their Imperial histories”, really? The formation of that Empire oft involved the conquest of other, then existing, Empires, both large and small. The Zulu Empire (for Chris) for example. Those Empires were only different in scale, I don’t think the Nguni of the day thought highly of Shaka’s almost genocide of their peoples.
This isn’t meant as an apologist argument, nor support for the colonial concept, however the sentiment you express seems to require considering history between narrowly define points, or (possibly worse) that Western, global, Empire builders should be held to a higher standard than more “native” varieties. Humans are humans. Whilst I think we all agree the concept of conquest and colonialism is abhorrent, it hasn’t gone away. I mean, what would you call the entire USA, except an imposed colonial Empire, oppressing the indigenous population? The Russian Federation? PRC? Etc etc etc. What, ultimately, defines a Nation anyway? Or it’s peoples? Who, exactly, is British and who isn’t? GB, is an Empire, isn’t it? Not just England’s dominance of Wale and Scotland either; start a few decades before Englaland (sic) was a thing and you’re looking at Wessex conquering Mercia, East Anglia, Northumbria et al. All the while ignoring the Saxon’s origins and conquest of Britain…
So, whilst there are, certainly, obvious “reparations” to be made, for recent history, such as sending back artefacts to their lands of origin (often, ironically, monuments exalting earlier Conquerers); what do you mean by “reckonings with Imperial histories”. Surely that statement applies to every human culture on the planet, including a few “un contacted” tribes, busy raiding neighbouring villages.
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The balance-sheet approach to reckoning with empire is pernicious. It reduces things to utilitarian calculations, emptying them of moral content, quibbling about offsetting this against that. It suggests we look at the individual parts and not the whole, when the occurence of the "good" is inseparable from the occurence "bad." Empire was an evil and a moral crime, both in its parts and in toto. It was vicious, often racist endeavour aimed at appropriation and extraction. Empire and slavery played very significant roles in making Britain rich.
Sorry this is a bit of an aside but out of interest, as an historian, what underlying philosophy do you adhere to when making moral judgements about the past? Or indeed the present and future as presumably it's the same answer!? Sounds like you'd say utilitarianism and presumably consequentialism more generally is the wrong approach? Appreciate this is a politics rather than philosophy thread but sometimes it's helpful to get to philosophical/ethical bedrock to see where people are coming from....
FWIW I can't bear Douglas Murray either.
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In a future life I look forward to the discussions by future-Andy and future-Spider Monkey on what the historical impacts were of earthlings colonising planet B-78234.
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Philosophically, how far back in time should the search for the origins of ‘ill-gotten’ wealth go, before it starts to become nonsensical? Isn’t that the question at the heart of this issue?
And I realise that question is what feeds the whole whataboutery narrative. But it seems to be a valid (the most important?) question despite that.
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I would agree that education and increasing awareness is absolutely key. I never knew about Amritsar until I was a Masters student at the earliest! Doesn't surprise me that the genocide in Namibia wasn't taught in SA either.
I only learned about Amritsar when it was mentioned in "Into The Silence".
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Philosophically, how far back in time should the search for the origins of ‘ill-gotten’ wealth go, before it starts to become nonsensical? Isn’t that the question at the heart of this issue?
And I realise that question is what feeds the whole whataboutery narrative. But it seems to be a valid (the most important?) question despite that.
Maybe a cutoff where it can be shown fairly conclusively that its lasting effects are no longer being felt* by those affected?
With usual caveats of magnitude of impact etc.
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Can't dispute any of what Andy has said, and maybe because it is so close to home, but I am interested as to why British colonisation is seen as carrying more "weight" than any other European country?
Dutch, French, Spanish, Portuguese and German Empires were also pretty huge, and (arguably) had similar impact.
I'm not saying this is what you're doing Chris, but "but there were other empires" often turns into whataboutery. In any case, the British Empire was much larger and more long lasting than any other European empire of the modern era.
Ultimately, however, it is for France, Belgium, Germany, Italy, and even Denmark to come to their own reckonings with their imperial and colonial histories (and none of them are doing a brililant job). I'm most concerned about the British empire simply because I'm a British citizen (and to add weight to that, a historian of Britain to boot).
I’m not sure I’m wholeheartedly on board with this sentiment. Looking at “The British Empire” we are concerned about it because it existed (just) within living memory. What do mean “reckonings with their Imperial histories”, really? The formation of that Empire oft involved the conquest of other, then existing, Empires, both large and small. The Zulu Empire (for Chris) for example. Those Empires were only different in scale, I don’t think the Nguni of the day thought highly of Shaka’s almost genocide of their peoples.
This isn’t meant as an apologist argument, nor support for the colonial concept, however the sentiment you express seems to require considering history between narrowly define points, or (possibly worse) that Western, global, Empire builders should be held to a higher standard than more “native” varieties. Humans are humans. Whilst I think we all agree the concept of conquest and colonialism is abhorrent, it hasn’t gone away. I mean, what would you call the entire USA, except an imposed colonial Empire, oppressing the indigenous population? The Russian Federation? PRC? Etc etc etc. What, ultimately, defines a Nation anyway? Or it’s peoples? Who, exactly, is British and who isn’t? GB, is an Empire, isn’t it? Not just England’s dominance of Wale and Scotland either; start a few decades before Englaland (sic) was a thing and you’re looking at Wessex conquering Mercia, East Anglia, Northumbria et al. All the while ignoring the Saxon’s origins and conquest of Britain…
So, whilst there are, certainly, obvious “reparations” to be made, for recent history, such as sending back artefacts to their lands of origin (often, ironically, monuments exalting earlier Conquerers); what do you mean by “reckonings with Imperial histories”. Surely that statement applies to every human culture on the planet, including a few “un contacted” tribes, busy raiding neighbouring villages.
Sorry Matt, but this is pretty much pure whataboutery. As I said above, I am fundamentally more concerned about Britain's imperial history than any other simply because I'm British. For most of my life I have enjoyed the rights and responsibilities of a British citizen. It has been British society and economy that has afforded me whatever opportunities I've enjoyed. It is the British political system in which I have participated. I may or may not think France or Belgium or wherever need a reckoning with these aspects of their history (and I do) but in the end that is up to those nations.
By a reckoning I simply mean a coming to terms with the realities of empire, a reframing of empire so it is no longer understood as a source of pride and greatness, an acknowledgement of empire's continuing legacies. Empire is normalised. We need to be shocked by what it did. That has not happened and until it does I believe Britain remains hobbled by it.
And it is much more than the fact it is still within living memory. There remain many extremely direct and unbroken ties between Britain's imperial and slaving history and many still extant institutions: across the economy; our systems of government and governance; the traditions and cultures that supposedly bind us; much of our built environment; the structure of land ownership; even our popular culture - let alone the wealth still enjoyed by many individuals and families. The British empire isn't dead, it lives on in these unbroken links. So long as they remain unbroken the issue remains relevant (I suppose this is now in partial answer to Pete).
To Steve R, I actually really regret using the word evil as I've always shunned it as an essentially theological concept that I don't recognize. So I kind of take that back. I know this is not the point you were making, but broadening things out, it is often said we shouldn't pass moral judgement on the past. I disagree. All history is written from a position and contains a form of judgement, whether explicit or not.
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I think regarding the empire;
1) We don't talk or learn about it nearly enough, and a lot of people have a ridiculously rose tinted idea of it.
2) That said I do think there is an increasing movement in this country towards doing that, and I think that's more present than in say France, Portugal, Belgium etc. I think we have a cultural push towards discussing the Empire in more realistic and sobering terms nowadays and this will continue over time. Look at this very discussion, I think this was much less likely to happen 20 years ago and still is in many other places.
3) I think a pros and cons table of history is ridiculous and shouldn't be used, one should endeavour to present the facts and the impact honestly and with clarity, and judgements should be made in respect of what suffering was caused then and what the legacy of that is now. I think the contemporary element is key; I doubt anyone in France is mad about the Roman Legions crucifying tens of thousands of Gauls, but the situation of many people in India now is directly related to the actions of the British Raj.
Whataboutism is not helpful and "human nature" is not an excuse imo, lots of people don't do the sort of things you see in, say, Amritsar, even people who have the opportunity to do so. I don't believe human nature is so imperialist and colonialist by default at all, that is a belief mind you, not a fact.
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In a future life I look forward to the discussions by future-Andy and future-Spider Monkey on what the historical impacts were of earthlings colonising planet B-78234.
I've seen Starship Troopers. It doesn't go well.
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And it is much more than the fact it is still within living memory. There remain many extremely direct and unbroken ties between Britain's imperial and slaving history and many still extant institutions: across the economy; our systems of government and governance; the traditions and cultures that supposedly bind us; much of our built environment; the structure of land ownership; even our popular culture - let alone the wealth still enjoyed by many individuals and families. The British empire isn't dead, it lives on in these unbroken links. So long as they remain unbroken the issue remains relevant (I suppose this is now in partial answer to Pete).
Oh I'm very aware of the colonial legacies surrounding me, I'm Welsh for one thing. But other than having that chip on my shoulder, I think I have quite a keen awareness of injustice and a low opinion of institutional authority. As I said in the thing about the Royals, I have a low opinion of the power of wealth because so often it's originally been stolen, or inherited and not earned.
I've always had an awareness and been curious about the back-story regards land ownership in Britain and how certain business wealth was originally accumulated. I've looked into the origins of various companies that sprung up based around the imports coming into Liverpool, Bristol and Glasgow for e.g. and the streets, buildings and institutions likewise. I only have to look around North Wales at the slate quarries and Penrhyn Castle to see recent examples of colonial practice and patterns of wealth-building and land ownership where there's been a power-imbalance between 'outsider' and indigenous.
I don't feel I need the 'shocking' education because I'm curious enough to know about much of it already. I'm more interested in the philosophical foundations and practicalities of how people think about that stuff today. You're probably correct that much of population need educating on how deep-rooted empire is in the foundations of wealth and power in Britain, but part of me wonders if it would do more harm than the good it might do.. hard thing to come to terms with your worldview being destroyed rightly or wrongly.
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I don't disagree with anything that Andy has said, but I'm uncomfortable with how any curiosity broader than British colonial history is shut down as an attempt to minimise or mitigate our own country's wrongdoing. It is surely possible to recognise the extent of Britain's colonial history and how this impacts on societies today while also wondering about what other countries and cultures have done in the past.
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Surely that statement applies to every human culture on the planet, including a few “un contacted” tribes, busy raiding neighbouring villages.
Slight tangent here, but I've been reading a good book recently - The Dawn of Everything - that takes issue with this Hobbesian view of prehistory. It's only recently that we've had the evidence to really challenge these sort of long-held presumptions, but evidence is steadily building that a lot, possibly most, of prehistorical societies were not nasty or brutish, and even that a lot of early towns managed to maintain hunter-gatherer egalitarianism into surprisingly big farming societies.
No surprises that if you want to make a tribe misbehave a quick way is to have a hierarchical expansionist civilisation appear nearby. History is above all written by the literate, and there are few records where the observer wasn't part of something bigger affecting the observed.
Pete, you sound like you might enjoy Who Owns England... has relevance to Wales and Scotland too.
An FT reporter (https://www.ft.com/content/57f2dec2-5e7d-11e6-bb77-a121aa8abd95), working through a standard set of questions, once asked the Duke of Westminster what advice he’d give to young entrepreneurs keen to emulate his success.
“Make sure they have an ancestor who was a very close friend of William the Conqueror,” he replied.
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Surely that statement applies to every human culture on the planet, including a few “un contacted” tribes, busy raiding neighbouring villages.
Slight tangent here, but I've been reading a good book recently - The Dawn of Everything - that takes issue with this Hobbesian view of prehistory. It's only recently that we've had the evidence to really challenge these sort of long-held presumptions, but evidence is steadily building that a lot, possibly most, of prehistorical societies were not nasty or brutish, and even that a lot of early towns managed to maintain hunter-gatherer egalitarianism into surprisingly big farming societies.
No surprises that if you want to make a tribe misbehave a quick way is to have a hierarchical expansionist civilisation appear nearby. History is above all written by the literate, and there are few records where the observer wasn't part of something bigger affecting the observed.
Hmm... try asking Homo Neanderthals and the 5 or 6 other species of hominid around at the same time as us how nasty and brutish or egalitarian Homo Sapiens were... except you won't find any as our species killed them all.
It looks an interesting book but I fear if I read it it might tip my already slightly anarchistic leanings over the edge and I'd be shooting burning arrows into the Duke of Westminster's house next weekend.
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Slight tangent here, but I've been reading a good book recently - The Dawn of Everything - that takes issue with this Hobbesian view of prehistory. It's only recently that we've had the evidence to really challenge these sort of long-held presumptions, but evidence is steadily building that a lot, possibly most, of prehistorical societies were not nasty or brutish, and even that a lot of early towns managed to maintain hunter-gatherer egalitarianism into surprisingly big farming societies.
Wasn't Hobbes talking about something more primitive than that? Humans with no society or social codes: the state of nature? A prehistoric society is still a society.
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I don't disagree with anything that Andy has said, but I'm uncomfortable with how any curiosity broader than British colonial history is shut down as an attempt to minimise or mitigate our own country's wrongdoing. It is surely possible to recognise the extent of Britain's colonial history and how this impacts on societies today while also wondering about what other countries and cultures have done in the past.
I don't think thats whats happening here, but clearly the impression has been given. I think it is surely context dependent. It depends on whether 'wondering about what other countries and cultures have done in the past' indicates curiosity about human nature and the violence that is inherent to human societies or is a transparent attempt at deflection. So much of the time the wondering is not in good faith, among historians as well as the public.
Another example of this in history is in genocide studies. Its really common, when discussing basically any modern, 20th century genocide, for responses to basically revert to 'well, it wasn't as bad as the Holocaust was it?' For a surprising amount of people, mass killings basically don't count unless they approach the numbers and scale of the Holocaust. I think we can all agree that research of the Rwandan genocide, Cambodia, Armenia and numerous others is debased by doing this. As much as anything else its incredibly disrespectful to the victims and people of those countries, and indeed to Jews and Holocaust victims as well. It amounts to a really grim hierarchy of atrocity where nobody wins except those who are using it to try and deny the genocides ever happened, which is surprisingly common.
The principle is exactly the same with imperial history. We can acknowledge that imperialism and empire building has been a phenomenon throughout much of human history without deflecting from a particular avenue of interest or research. Obviously the British Empire wasn't the only empire that committed atrocities but that isn't really the point I don't think, which is more that Britain has made a particularly poor effort at engaging with its past. Part of the reason for the lack of progress (although as Wellsy says I do think its improving) is because too often discussions of British colonial massacres are met with some version of 'it wasn't as bad as what the Belgians did in the Congo though' or even just 'stop talking Britain down.'
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Agreed.
This prompted me to flick back and see why we were talking about this! The conversation seems to have drifted into general chat about British colonialism, though it's interesting to note that Dan's original post, where he asserts that all of our national woes are fallout of colonialism, naturally invites comparison with other post-empire powers in order to test the hypothesis. For what it's worth, I'd say that a vision of a glorious British Empire is partly responsible for the British exceptionalism that contributed towards Brexit, but it's clearly not the only cause. I'd argue that the second world war is more present in people's minds when thinking about the national identity - it was certainly the case when I was growing up in the 90s and early 00s that the "national identity" still felt dominated by WWII and it's aftermath.
I had a moment of realisation over my morning coffee today. All of our national woes are payback for colonisation and Empire. Bear with me on this. Our place in the world was forged by the blood and toil of our exploited slaves and then fuelled by the plundered resources of the globe. We've never accepted or reconciled ourselves to these facts; our Empire somehow was good for those it subjugated, we abolished slavery (only after profiting handsomely from it mind) and now as a result have a distorted view of ourselves which forms the basis of British exceptionalism. That left us susceptible to Euroscepticism and tied to a vision of the past which enabled the continuation of an anachronistic and twisted legacy of Monarchy and Nobility (unelected House of Lords is fine whilst "unelected EU bureaucrats" are an anathema).
TL:DR You reap what you sow.
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Can't dispute any of what Andy has said, and maybe because it is so close to home, but I am interested as to why British colonisation is seen as carrying more "weight" than any other European country?
Dutch, French, Spanish, Portuguese and German Empires were also pretty huge, and (arguably) had similar impact.
I'm not saying this is what you're doing Chris, but "but there were other empires" often turns into whataboutery. In any case, the British Empire was much larger and more long lasting than any other European empire of the modern era.
Ultimately, however, it is for France, Belgium, Germany, Italy, and even Denmark to come to their own reckonings with their imperial and colonial histories (and none of them are doing a brililant job). I'm most concerned about the British empire simply because I'm a British citizen (and to add weight to that, a historian of Britain to boot).
I’m not sure I’m wholeheartedly on board with this sentiment. Looking at “The British Empire” we are concerned about it because it existed (just) within living memory. What do mean “reckonings with their Imperial histories”, really? The formation of that Empire oft involved the conquest of other, then existing, Empires, both large and small. The Zulu Empire (for Chris) for example. Those Empires were only different in scale, I don’t think the Nguni of the day thought highly of Shaka’s almost genocide of their peoples.
This isn’t meant as an apologist argument, nor support for the colonial concept, however the sentiment you express seems to require considering history between narrowly define points, or (possibly worse) that Western, global, Empire builders should be held to a higher standard than more “native” varieties. Humans are humans. Whilst I think we all agree the concept of conquest and colonialism is abhorrent, it hasn’t gone away. I mean, what would you call the entire USA, except an imposed colonial Empire, oppressing the indigenous population? The Russian Federation? PRC? Etc etc etc. What, ultimately, defines a Nation anyway? Or it’s peoples? Who, exactly, is British and who isn’t? GB, is an Empire, isn’t it? Not just England’s dominance of Wale and Scotland either; start a few decades before Englaland (sic) was a thing and you’re looking at Wessex conquering Mercia, East Anglia, Northumbria et al. All the while ignoring the Saxon’s origins and conquest of Britain…
So, whilst there are, certainly, obvious “reparations” to be made, for recent history, such as sending back artefacts to their lands of origin (often, ironically, monuments exalting earlier Conquerers); what do you mean by “reckonings with Imperial histories”. Surely that statement applies to every human culture on the planet, including a few “un contacted” tribes, busy raiding neighbouring villages.
Sorry Matt, but this is pretty much pure whataboutery. As I said above, I am fundamentally more concerned about Britain's imperial history than any other simply because I'm British. For most of my life I have enjoyed the rights and responsibilities of a British citizen. It has been British society and economy that has afforded me whatever opportunities I've enjoyed. It is the British political system in which I have participated. I may or may not think France or Belgium or wherever need a reckoning with these aspects of their history (and I do) but in the end that is up to those nations.
By a reckoning I simply mean a coming to terms with the realities of empire, a reframing of empire so it is no longer understood as a source of pride and greatness, an acknowledgement of empire's continuing legacies. Empire is normalised. We need to be shocked by what it did. That has not happened and until it does I believe Britain remains hobbled by it.
And it is much more than the fact it is still within living memory. There remain many extremely direct and unbroken ties between Britain's imperial and slaving history and many still extant institutions: across the economy; our systems of government and governance; the traditions and cultures that supposedly bind us; much of our built environment; the structure of land ownership; even our popular culture - let alone the wealth still enjoyed by many individuals and families. The British empire isn't dead, it lives on in these unbroken links. So long as they remain unbroken the issue remains relevant (I suppose this is now in partial answer to Pete).
To Steve R, I actually really regret using the word evil as I've always shunned it as an essentially theological concept that I don't recognize. So I kind of take that back. I know this is not the point you were making, but broadening things out, it is often said we shouldn't pass moral judgement on the past. I disagree. All history is written from a position and contains a form of judgement, whether explicit or not.
No, you can’t pull the whataboutery card. That’s exactly why the liberals are struggling to win over a substantial portion of the population. Mine is a very valid point and it is an important point to address. Pulling the WA card is simply dodging a difficult question (or series of) and academics and intellectuals seem to think it demolishes any argument. Unfortunately Joe Bloggs esq. see’s it for what it is and disengages.
Also, who is this “Britain” that isn’t engaging with it’s colonial past? We’re a pretty diverse bunch, possible more so now than ever.
The vast majority of the British population descend from people who did not even have the Franchise until the early 20th C. Many who lived under pretty dire conditions too. This isn’t “Whataboutery” it’s pointing out that those responsible, for the last few hundred years of Western Colonialism, were a very select group of ultra wealthy aristocrats. The “ruling class” if you will.
Yes, they still have undue influence over our institutions (and media).
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Oh I'm very aware of the colonial legacies surrounding me .. hard thing to come to terms with your worldview being destroyed rightly or wrongly.
Yes, sorry, I've got a bit preachy today, I know, but these are issues I'm passionate about. As to your last point, for sure, absolutely.
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Mine is a very valid point and it is an important point to address.
But you threw so much into that post I had no idea what the point was.
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Can't dispute any of what Andy has said, and maybe because it is so close to home, but I am interested as to why British colonisation is seen as carrying more "weight" than any other European country?
Dutch, French, Spanish, Portuguese and German Empires were also pretty huge, and (arguably) had similar impact.
I'm not saying this is what you're doing Chris, but "but there were other empires" often turns into whataboutery. In any case, the British Empire was much larger and more long lasting than any other European empire of the modern era.
Ultimately, however, it is for France, Belgium, Germany, Italy, and even Denmark to come to their own reckonings with their imperial and colonial histories (and none of them are doing a brililant job). I'm most concerned about the British empire simply because I'm a British citizen (and to add weight to that, a historian of Britain to boot).
I’m not sure I’m wholeheartedly on board with this sentiment. Looking at “The British Empire” we are concerned about it because it existed (just) within living memory. What do mean “reckonings with their Imperial histories”, really? The formation of that Empire oft involved the conquest of other, then existing, Empires, both large and small. The Zulu Empire (for Chris) for example. Those Empires were only different in scale, I don’t think the Nguni of the day thought highly of Shaka’s almost genocide of their peoples.
This isn’t meant as an apologist argument, nor support for the colonial concept, however the sentiment you express seems to require considering history between narrowly define points, or (possibly worse) that Western, global, Empire builders should be held to a higher standard than more “native” varieties. Humans are humans. Whilst I think we all agree the concept of conquest and colonialism is abhorrent, it hasn’t gone away. I mean, what would you call the entire USA, except an imposed colonial Empire, oppressing the indigenous population? The Russian Federation? PRC? Etc etc etc. What, ultimately, defines a Nation anyway? Or it’s peoples? Who, exactly, is British and who isn’t? GB, is an Empire, isn’t it? Not just England’s dominance of Wale and Scotland either; start a few decades before Englaland (sic) was a thing and you’re looking at Wessex conquering Mercia, East Anglia, Northumbria et al. All the while ignoring the Saxon’s origins and conquest of Britain…
So, whilst there are, certainly, obvious “reparations” to be made, for recent history, such as sending back artefacts to their lands of origin (often, ironically, monuments exalting earlier Conquerers); what do you mean by “reckonings with Imperial histories”. Surely that statement applies to every human culture on the planet, including a few “un contacted” tribes, busy raiding neighbouring villages.
Sorry Matt, but this is pretty much pure whataboutery. As I said above, I am fundamentally more concerned about Britain's imperial history than any other simply because I'm British. For most of my life I have enjoyed the rights and responsibilities of a British citizen. It has been British society and economy that has afforded me whatever opportunities I've enjoyed. It is the British political system in which I have participated. I may or may not think France or Belgium or wherever need a reckoning with these aspects of their history (and I do) but in the end that is up to those nations.
By a reckoning I simply mean a coming to terms with the realities of empire, a reframing of empire so it is no longer understood as a source of pride and greatness, an acknowledgement of empire's continuing legacies. Empire is normalised. We need to be shocked by what it did. That has not happened and until it does I believe Britain remains hobbled by it.
And it is much more than the fact it is still within living memory. There remain many extremely direct and unbroken ties between Britain's imperial and slaving history and many still extant institutions: across the economy; our systems of government and governance; the traditions and cultures that supposedly bind us; much of our built environment; the structure of land ownership; even our popular culture - let alone the wealth still enjoyed by many individuals and families. The British empire isn't dead, it lives on in these unbroken links. So long as they remain unbroken the issue remains relevant (I suppose this is now in partial answer to Pete).
To Steve R, I actually really regret using the word evil as I've always shunned it as an essentially theological concept that I don't recognize. So I kind of take that back. I know this is not the point you were making, but broadening things out, it is often said we shouldn't pass moral judgement on the past. I disagree. All history is written from a position and contains a form of judgement, whether explicit or not.
No, you can’t pull the whataboutery card. That’s exactly why the liberals are struggling to win over a substantial portion of the population. Mine is a very valid point and it is an important point to address. Pulling the WA card is simply dodging a difficult question (or series of) and academics and intellectuals seem to think it demolishes any argument. Unfortunately Joe Bloggs esq. see’s it for what it is and disengages.
Also, who is this “Britain” that isn’t engaging with it’s colonial past? We’re a pretty diverse bunch, possible more so now than ever.
The vast majority of the British population descend from people who did not even have the Franchise until the early 20th C. Many who lived under pretty dire conditions too. This isn’t “Whataboutery” it’s pointing out that those responsible, for the last few hundred years of Western Colonialism, were a very select group of ultra wealthy aristocrats. The “ruling class” if you will.
Yes, they still have undue influence over our institutions (and media).
I would say that whether ones argument resonates with the ordinary "man in the street" is not really relevant to whether the argument is right. Saying "what about all those other Empires" is literally whataboutism. The litany of human crimes is long, but the crimes of the British Empire need analysing, accepting and given sombre thought by British people far more than they are.
There are a lot of people who would take the more popular and easily swallowed line that the Empire was a good thing or at least no worse than anything else, many of them are in gov, but that doesn't make them right.
That the Empire is deeply related to our systems of class is very true. That said we've just had weeks of lauding our biggest symbol of class (who 100% benefited from the Empire) and so clearly this is still a big problem.
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Like the argument "but other people have done bad things" is obviously absurd when it comes to individual crimes and grievances, and human nature is no defence there either. If I overenthusiastically hurl a pad so hard that it lands on and kills Shark, I don't get to say "lots of people have killed others" or "it's in my nature, as a human, to hurl pads around." One is judged by one's crimes, and Britain in the past did create a massive empire built on violent race based imperialism.
Now we today didn't do that (although a few people who tortured dissidents in 50s Kenya are probably still around etc) but at the same time if we want to hold up our nation and institutions as laudable, we need to deal with the history as well, and that history is unquestionably awful at times. Yes, so do the Belgians, but I'm not Belgian and that's for them to do. It's not about whether it was a uniquely awful evil, it's about whether the history of one's culture, nation etc is being examined and engaged with in an honest and open way, working with those who have and still do suffer from the consequences of that history.
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Mine is a very valid point and it is an important point to address.
But you threw so much into that post I had no idea what the point was.
🤣 to be fair to me, that was rather my point.
If I try to ponder the issue, it just becomes apparent that both the pervasive, tendrils and branches, of the current influence and the vast, intertwined, root network of the tree of Imperial History, is pretty damn complex.
When you start to then add in the symbiotic ecosystem, both in the root structure and branches; that all link in to the forest that is humanity, it all gets a bit ineffable.
I do think certain points, events, atrocities and actions, can be identified, addressed and there I see scope for reparations, at least hypothetically. However, lumping vast swathes of various nations in together, as somehow holding corporate responsibility, is a bit rich. So, not “Britain”, for instance, but you could legitimately look at (say) the British Royal Family and their wealth etc.
Frankly, though, isn’t that family, actually the principle Royal Family of most of Europe? Cannot a great deal of modern Imperialism (say, 17th-20th century) and a couple of world wars, be laid at the feet of that family? Rather than the populace of their fiefdoms?
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One is judged by one's crimes, and Britain in the past did create a massive empire built on violent race based imperialism.
The 'relativism' point has been well debated, but just to point out that many of the people involved at the time wouldn't have believed they were committing any crimes. AFAIK they weren't according to the laws of the time. Obviously there were transgressions of the laws (as the laws were then) just as now and some people with genuinely malicious intent, just as now. But I don't think the empire and colonising was seen at the time as a mass crime against humanity.
It comes across as judging with hindsight sometimes with this stuff. They did what they did but you're no more moral then they were, you just have different societal parameters to live by, but which you mostly had no involvement at all in creating.
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One is judged by one's crimes, and Britain in the past did create a massive empire built on violent race based imperialism.
The 'relativism' point has been well debated, but just to point out that many of the people involved at the time wouldn't have believed they were committing any crimes. AFAIK they weren't according to the laws of the time. Obviously there were transgressions of the laws (as the laws were then) just as now and some people with genuinely malicious intent, just as now. But I don't think the empire and colonising was seen at the time as a mass crime against humanity.
It comes across as judging with hindsight sometimes with this stuff. They did what they did but you're no more moral then they were, you just have different societal parameters to live by, but which you mostly had no involvement at all in creating.
I would disagree with that. I'll give two examples at both ends of the Empire (in time and space);
1) The East India Company and their behavior in India is famous now for its cruelty, its exploitation and it's brutality, i am sure I dont need to go into it. Was that considered acceptable at the time? Well Edmund Burke MP (the father of Conservatism) gave an absolutely excoriating speech in the Commons in the late 1700s where he said that the EIC was a stain on the nation's history. He was by no means alone in the Commons or the papers for his criticism of their methods and actions. The company was actually forced to wind up at one stage due to public and political opinion, and descriptions of their behaviour drew criticism from the church, house of commons and ordinary citizens regularly
2) the Mau Mau "rebellion" (rebelling against imperial colonialists). The treatment of the rebels in terms of torture, rape, murder, ethnic cleansing was so hideous it drew comparisons with the Belsen concentration camp by officials at the time. British soldiers and colonial officials in the 50s would strap people to chairs, mutilate and torture them to death, and then dump the bodies in the bush. The British news presented the screening process for this kind of thing as like a trip to the school headmaster's study for kindly but firm guidance. The Attorney General of Kenya told the governor that the situation in the camps was like that of Nazi Germany, they needed to keep it under wraps and "sin quietly"
I could give many more examples. They knew it was wrong. Ordinary British people at the time knew it was wrong, and were often critical or lied to because officials knew that what they were doinh was unacceptable. This idea that it was just considered normal and okay is not true, and not a defence if it was. And how many people know what British soldiers did to Kenyan people while Elizabeth was on the throne? Vanishingly few.
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I notice that the news has talked about how the Queen during her reign saw the decolonisation of Africa, how lovely and grateful they must have been those colonial subjects, but entirely neglected to mention that the government in her name was complicit in thousands of Africans being tortured to death at the same time. But of course that would be a bit rude in a time of our national mourning, to talk about what actually happened rather than our bollocks fairy tale version of events.
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I think you’ve misunderstood my point.
Those are examples of crimes (which I was aware of) that are obviously crimes even in the context of the time and which we can all easily identify.
But it isn’t just those events people are talking about when they discuss empire. And it wasn’t what I was talking about although those events were definitely a part of the whole colonial project. What I meant was the whole project of empire and colonising is now held to be a crime by some people by their present day morals. Parts obviously were, but large parts weren’t by the standards of the day.
A bit like labelling the whole of the Vietnam War as one big crime (some think so!) because many criminal atrocities such as My Lai would have been committed, many we’ll never hear about. But most of the people involved wouldn’t have been committing atrocities and wouldn’t have been breaking any laws as they understood the law. Ditto empires, except the notion of human rights was far weaker in the 1700s.
In short Law isn’t a universal construct, it’s relative to time and place.
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I never knew about Amritsar until I was a Masters student at the earliest!
:o
That is quite some indictment of the British education system and our wider culture.
I went to Jallianwalla Bagh twenty years ago. Although I've not studied history past GCSE I'm definitely a South Asia-phile so knew the history, and was expecting to have to show some contrition - it's a public garden in India and Indians love to (a) talk to strangers and (b) talk about politics so I was prepared. But... totally unnecessarily! Obviously people mentioned what had happened but when they discovered I was British everyone I spoke to was all "oooh very nice country". I was surprised.
Via my partner I've been part of a Sri Lankan family for years and years now and the perspective of people at the other end of the colonial experience is perhaps interesting. Even my oldest living relative was still very small before independence, so the time of the British is more of a folk memory than anything. I've talked about Sri Lankan history and politics a fair amount with my partner and mother in law, both of whom were educated there - only up to GCSE in my partner's case - and very little weight is given to that period beyond "you guys stole all our stuff". The British were there but they were also remote. My mother in law grew up in the "big house" of the village, her dad had grown up in the very end of the British period and was definitely modern minded, he spoke English and had been a mechanic - this was very much the kind of new learning bought by the empire. He ended up running a small bus company so he travelled all over the island, but I never get the sense that he really had much to do with the imperial administration. If houses got flooded out in the monsoon it was the responsibility of my mother in law's family to take in the homeless - the "suddas" did nothing. A grisly and unprovoked murder took place in the village and the perpetrator was taken away to be tried and imprisoned by the British magistrate but the presence of the white man is very much peripheral to the story of the killing, at least the way I heard it.
What is absolutely uppermost in people's view of themselves and their country is the experience of the last forty years, primarily the civil war with the Tamil Tigers and particularly the period of near anarchy when it turned into a three way conflict between the government, the Tigers and a rural Maoist guerilla group. How the war ended, the regular outbreaks of Sinhala nationalism, the new violence against the Muslims, the current crisis, these are a huge deal, whereas the empire is reduced to "your lot were bad, the Dutch were worse, and the Portuguese were monsters!" Everyone talks about Premadasa, Chandrika and Gota (modern leaders) but I couldn't tell you who was involved in the struggle for freedom against the British because it's just not a thing.
So it's totally different to India where the the effects of Partition are still felt and public images of Gandhi are still common. In Sri Lanka the urgency and violence of modern politics and conflict seem to have obliterated much memory of the colonial period, and no one revives them because they are just not that relevant to the current problems. I saw a similar thing - at least on the surface - in Bangladesh, which is just full of public memorials and commemorations of the independence heroes of 1971, when the country took its modern form, again a very bloody episode (and one which involved everyone's grandparents). This is not to say there isn't resentment against the British in Sri Lanka but it doesn't seem to have the importance the colonial period holds in India. I sometimes think there is a tendency to believe that if only colonialism hadn't happened, that India would just have become a developed and rich country, which just strikes me as an attempt by Indian elites to paper over their own failures. While I agree that colonialism was terrible for the colonised people's countries, I don't think it's true to say that British wealth is entirely because "we stole it all" and had only that wealth remained where it was, India would now be enjoying a very high standard of living*. Partly because that seems to underplay the awesome productive power of modernity, but also I am just not convinced that South Asia had quite the institutions necessary to make that leap. A society with a huge pool of cheap labour doesn't strike me as an ideal environment in which to develop labour saving machines.
But... I think this makes a great story and is well worth fanning when annoying smart arses like Amartya Sen come along and point out that you're probably better off being poor in Bangladesh or even Nepal than you are in India. I guess this is the point where the experience of the colonised meets the experience of the colonisers - both of us are vicitims of contemporary politics which wants to shape things for the ends of the powerful, rather than trying to come to an honest reckoning of what happened and why. So we get this kind of hysteria in which acknowledgement of slave owning wealth becomes felt as a personal attack by people who really enjoy classical interiors. And because knowledge of the colonial period isn't well known even by British elites (as per the original comment above) we get blindsided when that history comes back to bite us, as we see just this week with Hindutva inspired violence in Leicester.
* I am open to seeing alternatives with some actual numbers and econometric analyses in them. Having a read around this subject has been on my to-do list of a while but life has gotten in the way.
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That is quite some indictment of the British education system and our wider culture.
Don't disagree; all I did in History at school was the Nazis and Tudors in rotation! There was a bit of Russian Revolution thrown in there too. I didn't get interested in imperial/British history until quite recently so didn't pick the modules at university that would have led me in that direction; I was much, much more interested in modern European and Middle Eastern history then. Completely agree re culture though.
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I have a friend, who shares my name. We met by Googling our names, only to each find the other at the top of the search list (in those days, I actually showed up on google).
We’re polar opposite’s and not simply because he’s Aussie. He’s a cartoonist and Christian minister. Great principles, went up against his church for LGBT rights and got got kicked out for it. A better bloke than me for sure. Great comfort during my wife’s illness too. Anyway, he just posted this on FB and it seemed quite apropos.
“A Chat With Matt
Part 2 - I'm a Racist.
I visited my mum on the weekend. She is ageing and forgets many things now. Our conversations repeat themselves frequently.
This week, the death of the Queen was the topic of conversation.
Mum was genuinely upset about her death.
As were a number of my friends and colleagues. They are mourning a head of State who they admired and loved.
I’m not a monarchist at all. In my mind, the Queen was simply a nice old lady who has always been there, but had no real impact on my day to day life.
Some of my republican friends have expressed their respect for her reign.
But in the last ten days or so, something has taken me by surprise.
And I’m ashamed by it.
In my nature based work with Forest Therapy Victoria and Nature Play 4 Kids, I work with a diverse cross section of the community, including some from the Indigenous community.
The response from them to the Queen’s death has been quite different.
Some have celebrated.
Some have been glad.
Some have seen it as an opportunity to highlight the oppression their people have endured at the hands of the British Empire.
And the response within me was to get angry.
I was angry at Indigenous people for using the death of an elderly woman for their own ends.
And then, I felt the shame.
My white privilege had blinded me.
I’ve thought for a long time we should change the date of Australia Day, or make it a day of mourning. But I have been blind to SO MUCH that the British Empire symbolises for our Indigenous people.
The slaughter of communities.
The stealing of children.
The extinguishing of culture and blood lines.
We’ve expected Indigenous athletes to stand on a podium as our flag, with a prominent Union Jack, is raised before them.
We’ve expected Indigenous students to perform when a Royal person has visited.
Even now, political leaders have said now is not the time for Indigenous people to raise these issue. More silence.
So why wouldn’t we expect there to be a groundswell of feeling from First Nations people?
Why wouldn’t we expect prominent Indigenous leaders and media people to be expressing their rage?
And why would I get angry when they did?
Because, whether I like it or not, I’m still racist.
There is no point making excuses or calling it something else.
Because it’s not.
Part of me would simply prefer they say nothing because it makes me feel uncomfortable.
I’m a privileged white male whose entire lifestyle has been built on the oppression of others. I live on Wurundjeri land, not far from the birthplace of William Barak. There are songlines and others sites of Indigenous significance that I pass every day. The only reason I know these things is that I went looking. The information was hard to find. Like it’s not really important to know. Like it doesn’t matter.
For me, the death of the Queen has highlighted something about myself that I don’t like.
A white life that extinguishes black.
And I am yet to really grasp how I could ever come close to making it right.”
Matt Glover (the other one).
Which has nudged me a bit further to Andy’s pov.
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Those are examples of crimes (which I was aware of) that are obviously crimes even in the context of the time and which we can all easily identify.
But it isn’t just those events people are talking about when they discuss empire. And it wasn’t what I was talking about although those events were definitely a part of the whole colonial project. What I meant was the whole project of empire and colonising is now held to be a crime by some people by their present day morals. Parts obviously were, but large parts weren’t by the standards of the day.
I’m interested in the legality at the time of rolling into other sovereign nations, planting a flag and declaring them part of the empire, I assume the new colony would have seen this as a crime even if England didn’t? Is the justification for this at the time covered in the book mentioned up thread? Must have been some pretty decent mental gymnastics going on.
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I never knew about Amritsar until I was a Masters student at the earliest!
:o
That is quite some indictment of the British education system and our wider culture.
I went to Jallianwalla Bagh twenty years ago. Although I've not studied history past GCSE I'm definitely a South Asia-phile so knew the history, and was expecting to have to show some contrition - it's a public garden in India and Indians love to (a) talk to strangers and (b) talk about politics so I was prepared. But... totally unnecessarily! Obviously people mentioned what had happened but when they discovered I was British everyone I spoke to was all "oooh very nice country". I was surprised.
Via my partner I've been part of a Sri Lankan family for years and years now and the perspective of people at the other end of the colonial experience is perhaps interesting. Even my oldest living relative was still very small before independence, so the time of the British is more of a folk memory than anything. I've talked about Sri Lankan history and politics a fair amount with my partner and mother in law, both of whom were educated there - only up to GCSE in my partner's case - and very little weight is given to that period beyond "you guys stole all our stuff". The British were there but they were also remote. My mother in law grew up in the "big house" of the village, her dad had grown up in the very end of the British period and was definitely modern minded, he spoke English and had been a mechanic - this was very much the kind of new learning bought by the empire. He ended up running a small bus company so he travelled all over the island, but I never get the sense that he really had much to do with the imperial administration. If houses got flooded out in the monsoon it was the responsibility of my mother in law's family to take in the homeless - the "suddas" did nothing. A grisly and unprovoked murder took place in the village and the perpetrator was taken away to be tried and imprisoned by the British magistrate but the presence of the white man is very much peripheral to the story of the killing, at least the way I heard it.
What is absolutely uppermost in people's view of themselves and their country is the experience of the last forty years, primarily the civil war with the Tamil Tigers and particularly the period of near anarchy when it turned into a three way conflict between the government, the Tigers and a rural Maoist guerilla group. How the war ended, the regular outbreaks of Sinhala nationalism, the new violence against the Muslims, the current crisis, these are a huge deal, whereas the empire is reduced to "your lot were bad, the Dutch were worse, and the Portuguese were monsters!" Everyone talks about Premadasa, Chandrika and Gota (modern leaders) but I couldn't tell you who was involved in the struggle for freedom against the British because it's just not a thing.
So it's totally different to India where the the effects of Partition are still felt and public images of Gandhi are still common. In Sri Lanka the urgency and violence of modern politics and conflict seem to have obliterated much memory of the colonial period, and no one revives them because they are just not that relevant to the current problems. I saw a similar thing - at least on the surface - in Bangladesh, which is just full of public memorials and commemorations of the independence heroes of 1971, when the country took its modern form, again a very bloody episode (and one which involved everyone's grandparents). This is not to say there isn't resentment against the British in Sri Lanka but it doesn't seem to have the importance the colonial period holds in India. I sometimes think there is a tendency to believe that if only colonialism hadn't happened, that India would just have become a developed and rich country, which just strikes me as an attempt by Indian elites to paper over their own failures. While I agree that colonialism was terrible for the colonised people's countries, I don't think it's true to say that British wealth is entirely because "we stole it all" and had only that wealth remained where it was, India would now be enjoying a very high standard of living*. Partly because that seems to underplay the awesome productive power of modernity, but also I am just not convinced that South Asia had quite the institutions necessary to make that leap. A society with a huge pool of cheap labour doesn't strike me as an ideal environment in which to develop labour saving machines.
But... I think this makes a great story and is well worth fanning when annoying smart arses like Amartya Sen come along and point out that you're probably better off being poor in Bangladesh or even Nepal than you are in India. I guess this is the point where the experience of the colonised meets the experience of the colonisers - both of us are vicitims of contemporary politics which wants to shape things for the ends of the powerful, rather than trying to come to an honest reckoning of what happened and why. So we get this kind of hysteria in which acknowledgement of slave owning wealth becomes felt as a personal attack by people who really enjoy classical interiors. And because knowledge of the colonial period isn't well known even by British elites (as per the original comment above) we get blindsided when that history comes back to bite us, as we see just this week with Hindutva inspired violence in Leicester.
* I am open to seeing alternatives with some actual numbers and econometric analyses in them. Having a read around this subject has been on my to-do list of a while but life has gotten in the way.
Sitting on the sidelines on this one, as I have more to learn than contribute. Just wanted to say it's good to see you string 5 paragraphs together Sean - must be a sign of some improvement!
I'm just back from Canada and my climbing partner had just finished "Barkskins" which is an epic novel covering multiple generations of colonialism in Canada, from the early settlers right through to present day, tracking the lives of various offspring and first nations peoples, with a strong theme of logging, plunder, climate destruction - all under the lens of the time - land improvement, civilisation, progress. Interesting that the Scots were portrayed as ransacking and barbarous, cut-throat even. I knew that there was some level of the "oppressed becoming the oppressor", I understand many of the early Scottish colonists were victims of the clearances (also not taught in history...).
Without dragging the debate down too much to settle a point (which may or may not be valid...) but is it fair to call it "British" exceptionalism? I know Glasgow was the second city of the Empire and all that, but I don't think Scotland is quite sucked under the same spell of English exceptionalism as Scotland is. Gavin Esler puts in much better than me in his book, How Britain Ends, but I do feel this is an English affliction that gave rise to Brexit - mainly through lacking a clear sense of national identity, not being reconciled with these issues of lost empire and not having robust local/regional democracy.
Ok....jumped from the sidelines there. I'll scurry back off to the bench now. Continue....
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Those are examples of crimes (which I was aware of) that are obviously crimes even in the context of the time and which we can all easily identify.
But it isn’t just those events people are talking about when they discuss empire. And it wasn’t what I was talking about although those events were definitely a part of the whole colonial project. What I meant was the whole project of empire and colonising is now held to be a crime by some people by their present day morals. Parts obviously were, but large parts weren’t by the standards of the day.
I’m interested in the legality at the time of rolling into other sovereign nations, planting a flag and declaring them part of the empire, I assume the new colony would have seen this as a crime even if England didn’t? Is the justification for this at the time covered in the book mentioned up thread? Must have been some pretty decent mental gymnastics going on.
Here’s some reading around the topic, from here:https://privycouncilpapers.exeter.ac.uk/contexts/law-and-the-british-empire/ (https://privycouncilpapers.exeter.ac.uk/contexts/law-and-the-british-empire/).
Law has always been central to British self-perception. The heritage of a balanced constitution, the rule of law, and the ‘rights of free-born Englishmen’ has been as important to the historical formation of British identity as language, Protestant religion, and perceived differences with enemies, rivals or subordinated populations. Unsurprisingly, law played an equally central role in imperial governance as well as in the justification of imperial rule. This role is still being evaluated by scholars, who continue to diverge widely in their opinions. These are not simplistic arguments highlighting or denying the blessings of English law – scholars argue over whether English law was indeed capable of being transported, and if not, what kind of laws came to be applied in the colonies. Scholars have also debated the motivations and visions underlying imperial legislation, the social effect of the laws as applied, and the role of colonial populations themselves in shaping these laws and their effects.
In what historians call the ‘second British empire’ – centred on Africa and Australasia – law was supposed to be Britain’s particular boon to previously benighted societies. By prohibiting the murder and mutilation of women and children, the freeing of the enslaved, the ending of arbitrary rule by despotic rulers, and the introduction of property rights and the incentives to free productive labour – Britain would bring such places to civilisation. In fact, that Britain would do so justified their rule over foreign people and the postponement of democracy while colonised people were prepared for that political privilege. Scholars however have demonstrated that reformism with relation to social evils such as ‘Suttee’ or the burning of Hindu widows with their husband’s corpses in India, or cliterodectomy in East Africa, British statesmen and legislators were cautious and more concerned with avoiding allegations of cultural aggression than with the experience of women themselves. Also, in all these cases, because legal reform came packaged as a much broader civilisational and political claim, its more specific aims could be challenged and frustrated by those resisting the broader and invalid assertions of cultural superiority and the necessity of undemocratic rule. Thus, Indian defenders of child marriage and Kenyan defenders of cliterodectomy could both assert that British efforts at legal prohibition were based not on self-evident universal principles, but on cultural prejudice and political domination. Of course, such arguments were equally guilty of privileging certain specific political and social visions, many of which are ethically questionable. What is undeniable is that historically, it has been impossible to separate imperial law from imperial politics.
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Sitting on the sidelines on this one, as I have more to learn than contribute. Just wanted to say it's good to see you string 5 paragraphs together Sean - must be a sign of some improvement!
Thanks so much for noticing! Yes I’m definitely better than I was six months ago. Those five paragraphs were definitely one of my main tasks of the day but I just couldn’t have got it together before.
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Sitting on the sidelines on this one, as I have more to learn than contribute. Just wanted to say it's good to see you string 5 paragraphs together Sean - must be a sign of some improvement!
I'm just back from Canada and my climbing partner had just finished "Barkskins" which is an epic novel covering multiple generations of colonialism in Canada, from the early settlers right through to present day, tracking the lives of various offspring and first nations peoples, with a strong theme of logging, plunder, climate destruction - all under the lens of the time - land improvement, civilisation, progress. Interesting that the Scots were portrayed as ransacking and barbarous, cut-throat even. I knew that there was some level of the "oppressed becoming the oppressor", I understand many of the early Scottish colonists were victims of the clearances (also not taught in history...).
Without dragging the debate down too much to settle a point (which may or may not be valid...) but is it fair to call it "British" exceptionalism? I know Glasgow was the second city of the Empire and all that, but I don't think Scotland is quite sucked under the same spell of English exceptionalism as Scotland is. Gavin Esler puts in much better than me in his book, How Britain Ends, but I do feel this is an English affliction that gave rise to Brexit - mainly through lacking a clear sense of national identity, not being reconciled with these issues of lost empire and not having robust local/regional democracy.
Ok....jumped from the sidelines there. I'll scurry back off to the bench now. Continue....
Similarly following this with interest but little to offer. Your post though made me think of Neal Ascherson's Stone Voices. I dont know how his credentials as a historian stand up, but i remember it being a great example of the multitude of stories and narratives that make up a national identity. And in this case, how Scotland as victim is just one (very succesful) narrative among others.
"Broken faimilies in launs we've hairriet
Will curse 'Scotlan the Brave' nae mair, nae mair"
All this discussion makes me despair at how much of our world is built on exploitation in some form or other. Imperialism at the most obvious end of the scale. Im not sure I share your confidence Wellsy that it isnt programmed into the human condition..
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Just to drag the thread back to contemporary politics, is Truss a) a maverick who will deliver the rocket of economic growth which will solve all the UK's ills b) a dangerous halfwit who says she's prepared to be unpopular, which is the only thing she's right about c) meh.
I strongly suspect they've focus grouped the shit out of the unpopular line, and it will do her more good than harm. I think that she might be awful at speeches but knows exactly what she's doing, but it's hard to see how cutting taxes is remotely sensible.
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She's a complete fuckwit but cutting taxes is usually quite popular
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Just to drag the thread back to contemporary politics, is Truss a) a maverick who will deliver the rocket of economic growth which will solve all the UK's ills b) a dangerous halfwit who says she's prepared to be unpopular, which is the only thing she's right about c) meh.
I strongly suspect they've focus grouped the shit out of the unpopular line, and it will do her more good than harm. I think that she might be awful at speeches but knows exactly what she's doing, but it's hard to see how cutting taxes is remotely sensible.
The markets will be the judge of that, starting on Friday.
But rockets of economic growth are not expected in the skies above any western country this year or next. The Fed has basically told everyone, without telling everyone, that it expects the US to enter recession imminently. The EU and UK likewise. It’s just a matter of time.
We get to judge a few years from now.
Agree with you that Truss’s policies seem destined to crash into the wall of economic reality. But *Kwasi’s Kwartang's an intelligent bloke, maybe he’ll pull a rabbit out the hat.
Some here might be interested in reading his book on the legacies of empire, might surprise some of those UKB readership more prone to knee-jerk assumptions: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/aug/30/ghosts-of-empire-what-kwasi-kwartengs-book-tells-us-about-him
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Just to drag the thread back to contemporary politics, is Truss a) a maverick who will deliver the rocket of economic growth which will solve all the UK's ills b) a dangerous halfwit who says she's prepared to be unpopular, which is the only thing she's right about c) meh.
I strongly suspect they've focus grouped the shit out of the unpopular line, and it will do her more good than harm. I think that she might be awful at speeches but knows exactly what she's doing, but it's hard to see how cutting taxes is remotely sensible.
The markets will be the judge of that, starting on Friday.
But rockets of economic growth are not expected in the skies above any western country this year or next. The Fed has basically told everyone, without telling everyone, that it expects the US to enter recession imminently. The EU and UK likewise. It’s just a matter of time.
We get to judge a few years from now.
Agree with you that Truss’s policies seem destined to crash into the wall of economic reality. But Kwasi’s an intelligent bloke, maybe he’ll pull a rabbit out the hat.
I think your knowledge here far outstrips mine, but I do wonder if it might work for her. Of the places I’ve lived, over the decades, those with lenient income tax regimes have always seemed the more prosperous. Often much more expensive places to live, mind you as things like VAT or government “fees” are much higher (though they seem to hit higher incomes harder).
Also, I wonder if under the circumstances, anything is worth a punt. Whatever happens, we’re in for a painful few years.
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My layperson's understanding (Sean and others will have far better understanding) is that both high and low income tax regimes can provide conditions for a prosperous society. IMO much of the difference seems to come down to political ideology around size and function of state. How that prosperity is divided out between the poorest and richest is another question. I'm sure there'll be stats that show inequality level of x is linked to tax regimes of y. Endless hole.
But the essential ingredients in either high or low tax regime are productivity and economic growth, which are both lacking in the UK and much of the west currently (productivity has been low in UK for a long time).
Truss is gambling that her policies will spark growth*. The question I think is timescale - because due to forces larger than any government policy there is going to be very little if any growth for the UK, EU or the US for the next 6 months, and possibly the next 12-24 months. We may tip into a severe recession depending on how events play out, but definitely a mild recession. Will she manage to face down the naysayers while we're in a recession? She'll need to if she wants to give her policies time to create conditions of growth, that's if they actually do work.
* my theory on why she's keen to expand north sea exploration and production, and fracking, is it has nothing to do with energy security - because the products will be too little and arrive too late to alter the current market - and everything to do with economic growth through exporting energy fuels.
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* my theory on why she's keen to expand north sea exploration and production, and fracking, is it has nothing to do with energy security - because the products will be too little and arrive too late to alter the current market - and everything to do with economic growth through exporting energy fuels.
Just on this one thing, if your theory is correct, isn't this a risky strategy in the light of the mooted Scottish independence vote next year? In 2014 the argument that declining North Sea revenues meant that Scotland would struggle to stand on its own two feet financially carried a lot of weight for unionist side. If the theory is now that in 2022 North Sea revenues are going to grow the entire UK economy, then that wicket becomes very sticky indeed surely?
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I think it's widely believed her policies are risky, yes.
On the hypocrisy point - well I'm shocked such a thing could happen in politics!
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I think it's widely believed her policies are risky, yes.
On the hypocrisy point - well I'm shocked such a thing could happen in politics!
It has been said that Truss is even more of an SNP / Indy asset than Boris was! That along with our new king might just push things more that way. https://www.businessinsider.com/liz-truss-king-charles-iii-could-end-the-united-kingdom-2022-9?r=US&IR=T (not the most convincing article, but it sets the scene).
I suspect the only way to save the UK for those who wish to do so, is to proceed with major reforms of Westminster (maybe an English government, plus a UK assembly?) and a proper modern written constitution.
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My layperson's understanding (Sean and others will have far better understanding) is that both high and low income tax regimes can provide conditions for a prosperous society. IMO much of the difference seems to come down to political ideology around size and function of state. How that prosperity is divided out between the poorest and richest is another question. I'm sure there'll be stats that show inequality level of x is linked to tax regimes of y. Endless hole.
But the essential ingredients in either high or low tax regime are productivity and economic growth, which are both lacking in the UK and much of the west currently (productivity has been low in UK for a long time).
Truss is gambling that her policies will spark growth*. The question I think is timescale - because due to forces larger than any government policy there is going to be very little if any growth for the UK, EU or the US for the next 6 months, and possibly the next 12-24 months. We may tip into a severe recession depending on how events play out, but definitely a mild recession. Will she manage to face down the naysayers while we're in a recession? She'll need to if she wants to give her policies time to create conditions of growth, that's if they actually do work.
* my theory on why she's keen to expand north sea exploration and production, and fracking, is it has nothing to do with energy security - because the products will be too little and arrive too late to alter the current market - and everything to do with economic growth through exporting energy fuels.
I think I largely agree, her plans could work, but, I've seen several articles by geologists as well as the one by the Cuadrilla founder in the Guardian saying that fracking in the UK just isn't going to be economically viable. Even if it was, wouldn't it be years before the country started reaping the benefits?
There are only so many billions that any country can borrow before they become an economic basket case.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46W5YlE8yEk
Just when you thought you couldn't get more annoyed by JRM, watch him blunder through this, then get torched by Milliband
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Reminds me of this.
https://youtu.be/ktIPiKwmnEI
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Ed Miliband is a great parliamentary performer, unfortunately he often tends to end up sounding supercilious in media interviews. He's clearly extremely intelligent but unfortunately modern politics doesn't reward that.
The right wing of the Conservative party's devotion to fracking confuses me. It is as though they think it's the new north sea oil, and it'll bring the same boom as that did in the 1980s. Whilst that's possible, it doesn't seem remotely likely, and the boom time would be many years in the future, rather than being a plan for economic growth in the medium term.
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Indeed, and as EM points out, unless there is a radical reform in the pricing approach (see other thread) the price will be fixed against international rates, so no direct benefit to consumer, just more money in producer's pockets.
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I just can’t believe they’re seriously trying to push fracking projects through given the dire level of public support. It’s an industry which is rotten to the core and any reported economic uplifts will end up pailing in significance compared with the environmental and safety concerns.
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It's such a bad idea that I can't help but think it is being used as a distraction ploy.
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Does anyone know if the tax cuts put forward today will have to go to a commons vote? Hard to see how red wall conservatives could back them…
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Agree with you that Truss’s policies seem destined to crash into the wall of economic reality. But *Kwasi’s Kwartang's an intelligent bloke, maybe he’ll pull a rabbit out the hat.
Some here might be interested in reading his book on the legacies of empire, might surprise some of those UKB readership more prone to knee-jerk assumptions: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/aug/30/ghosts-of-empire-what-kwasi-kwartengs-book-tells-us-about-him
Kwarteng is indeed a smart man, but like Truss he's also an ideologue and its hard to see how those two go together sometimes. This (mini)Budget doesn't make a lot of sense to me on any level. If it does work it won't show the benefits for several years. If it doesn't you've crashed the (undeserved) Tory reputation for economic competence.
Fair to ask what the headlines would be tomorrow if a Labour govt had just borrowed this much with so little evidence, to the extent that the markets have been a bit spooked. As it is there'll just be headlines about the slashing of stamp duty for first time buyers for houses up to £425k (they must know different first time buyers to me)
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Just on this: ''If it does work it won't show the benefits for several years''.
I don't understand your point - what in your view is an alternative, which if it did work, would show the benefits more quickly (than several years)?
On the riskiness I agree.
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Just on this: ''If it does work it won't show the benefits for several years''.
I don't understand your point - what in your view is an alternative, which if it did work, would show the benefits more quickly (than several years)?
Sorry; I was referring to the fact that theres an election due in 18 months, so there is very unlikely to be anything tangible to show the electorate as evidence that this policy will be working by then. Politically, it feels like the better option would have been something a bit harder for Labour to counter than this.
Agree that there are few options which would show benefits in the next 18 months; hence why if I was a Tory policymaker I would focus on making sure that your voter base felt supported over the next 18 months, even if that necessitated lots of borrowing, on the basis that its not an easy attack line for Labour to bang on about fiscal responsibility (unfair as this is imo). I think Truss and Kwarteng's free market ideology has blinded them to the politics of it a bit.
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Politically I agree with you. But then politics is why nothing ever gets done. It's a totally shite game of nobody moves nobody gets hurt. I can't stand it, or rather I can't stand the people who choose to play it.
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Politically I agree with you. But then politics is why nothing ever gets done. It's a totally shite game of nobody moves nobody gets hurt. I can't stand it, or rather I can't stand the people who choose to play it.
I sort of agree...but I think there is the question of timing. It would be a lot more honest to say, call an election on the basis of being a low tax, high growth party and if they win they have a mandate for four years of that policy. The fact they didn't run on that last time is on the Tory party.
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Sorry; I was referring to the fact that theres an election due in 18 months, so there is very unlikely to be anything tangible to show the electorate as evidence that this policy will be working by then.
Also is a very easy "Labour will put up taxes" starting point if they've just cut them...
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Well the markets seem to be, uh
Displeased. Pound is crashing a bit and the prospect is grim. Interest rates predicted to go over 5% by JP Morgan and Chase
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Well the markets seem to be, uh
Displeased. Pound is crashing a bit and the prospect is grim. Interest rates predicted to go over 5% by JP Morgan and Chase
Over the last month/6 weeks, since signing my contract, my salary (in AED) has gone up by more than a month’s pay in value remitted to the UK. Frankly, the trend over the last decade has been very much in that direction though.
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It's certainly been a good year to be invested in dollar-denomination shares all else being equal. Be that US$, C$ or Aus$ all have made significant gains against the pound and added a few percent to gains (or more likely offset a few percent in losses).
After this budget one thing is crystal clear: nobody commenting on ukb (or pretty much anywhere) is qualified to predict how this is going to play out over the next 12 - 24 months!
Reminds me of 'I don't make forecasts, and I never will.'
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Do you think you can keep your whacking off about stocks in the ‘Pete whacks off about stocks thread’ please? It keeps on creeping out into other threads
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Haha! :blink:
It was relevant to the previous post and the pound falling, the economy/markets is pervasive in politics, and the topic being discussed is about economics and markets… but yeah sure whatever, I won’t mention shares again.
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Kwarteng is indeed a smart man, but like Truss he's also an ideologue and its hard to see how those two go together sometimes.
The received wisdom certainly seems to be in favour of Kwarteng's smartness. I wonder what this is based on? I know he got good university results and was on university challenge but not a lot else. Is there more I am unaware of?
A comment on the budget https://twitter.com/DavidLammy/status/1573252138444128256?t=COwUeozUo8MFE6ZLYIdp7Q&s=19
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Richard Murphy seems pretty scathing over on Taxresearch, but we're in unprecedented times! In some ways lowering tax *should* stimulate growth, but I see his argument that due to the global, not local nature of the price rises - it (and interest rate increases) may not have the desired effect.). We'll see.
Absolute shiter for hier rate paying scots.... If it goes well, the Tories get praise. If it goes badly, we don't even get a damn tax cut!
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I can not begin to express how utterly disgusted I am at the budget. It seems the Tories are now so arrogant and confident in their position that they have discarded the veil that covered their contempt for the working classes and low income households. Telling people that the reason they are poor is because they aren't working hard enough completely ignored the structural inequalities in our society - many of which were certainly not helped by and indeed some were created by austerity.
A lot of part time workers are female balancing work around childcare. Not everyone has family that can look after children unpaid whilst you work and childcare in our area is over £50 per day. Having more than one child can make it cost more than you earn. If children are of school age what job do you know of that only wants people from 9am to 3pm (and that assumes no travel time).
This sums it up for me.
https://twitter.com/RosieisaHolt/status/1573353483566288896?t=VMh_Z-wv4pF_RiNsd-bd1Q&s=19
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I can not begin to express how utterly disgusted I am at the budget. It seems the Tories are now so arrogant and confident in their position that they have discarded the veil that covered their contempt for the working classes and low income households. Telling people that the reason they are poor is because they aren't working hard enough completely ignored the structural inequalities in our society - many of which were certainly not helped by and indeed some were created by austerity.
A lot of part time workers are female balancing work around childcare. Not everyone has family that can look after children unpaid whilst you work and childcare in our area is over £50 per day. Having more than one child can make it cost more than you earn. If children are of school age what job do you know of that only wants people from 9am to 3pm (and that assumes no travel time).
This sums it up for me.
https://twitter.com/RosieisaHolt/status/1573353483566288896?t=VMh_Z-wv4pF_RiNsd-bd1Q&s=19
I guess I'm not in any way surprised. True colours are showing now (I realise the irony of me saying that after my whingey comment above, but hey ho, no ones perfect).
18 months to the GE - let's hope this wakes everyone up to what the tories really stand for, but I don't hold much hope for some reason. If people haven't figured it out yet, will they ever?
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The received wisdom certainly seems to be in favour of Kwarteng's smartness. I wonder what this is based on? I know he got good university results and was on university challenge but not a lot else. Is there more I am unaware of?
A quick glance at his Wikipedia page mentions:
- He was a King's scholar at Eton (elected on the basis of good academic performance)
- He won the Newcastle Scholarship (an annual prize awarded at Eton College in England for the highest performance in a series of special written examinations taken over the course of a week)
- Firsts in both Classics and History at Cambridge
- Awarded a Kennedy Scholarship at Harvard (a postgraduate programme for 10 British students to "offer exceptional students unique opportunities to broaden their intellectual and personal horizons, in ways that are more important than ever in an era defined by global interaction.")
- Completed a PhD in Economic History at Cambridge
And I simply don't think you can manage all of that without being very intelligent. What more evidence could you want?
There are different types of intelligence of course...
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I guess I'm not in any way surprised. True colours are showing now
Now? It’s worth considering the redistribution from public assets to private that began in earnest in1980s, slowed somewhat for the decade to 2010, then accelerated with a massive boost from 2016 onwards. This is just its most naked expression.
18 months to the GE - let's hope this wakes everyone up to what the tories really stand for, but I don't hold much hope for some reason. If people haven't figured it out yet, will they ever?
Better late than never, I guess. Btw next GE must be held by Jan 2025, so more than 2 years is possible.
@Bradders. Intelligence is just a tool, it has no moral component. In what service is it to be used? The answers look clear to me here.
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@Bradders. Intelligence is just a tool, it has no moral component. In what service is it to be used? The answers look clear to me here.
I didn't say his intelligence was good or bad, moral or immoral. Toby asked what the consensus of Kwarteng's "smartness" was based on (presumably implying that he doubts it, most likely because he disagrees with Kwarteng's politics), so I outlined the ample evidence which indicates he is very smart indeed.
That underlying point is something I find distasteful and unhelpful in a lot of political discourse; that because people can reach different conclusions on political issues it must mean they're stupid, or at least unintelligent. It's simply not the case.
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Kwarteng is indeed very smart. But…
He may think he’s smarter than his officials. In fact, he probably is! But he lacks their domain specific knowledge and almost certainly lacks their technical skills. This wouldn’t be a problem if he listened to them or cared what they said.
What’s he done since his glittering academic career? Sure, his book on empire is supposed to be pretty good, but Britannia Unchained appears to be rubbish. Watching the BBC documentary on New Labour it was obvious how utterly engrossed in new policy formulation Gordon Brown was throughout the 80s and 90s. Same with Keith Joseph in the 70s. I’m not convinced that Kwarteng has been through that process.
Smart people can still do really bad politics. Trotsky was by all accounts very very intelligent but the Soviet Union was a very stupid system that eventually killed him and most of his colleagues. Political smarts and analytical smarts are not always the same thing.
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Politically both he and Truss appear very dumb, or out of this world genius. It's hard to tell.
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And, just to complicate world affairs…
Dubai is a buzz with rumour of coup in China. Apparently many senior Chinese managers were absent from work yesterday. Flights, both domestic and international have been cancelled, the trains shut down and long military columns have been seen entering Beijing.
My company handled the interior design and furniture manufacture for the Samarkand summit (it has to be done in a neutral country, under joint security and observation/inspection. They shipped 50 heavy lift transport aircraft, under military escort, to Samarkand from Dubai) and my boss was in attendance for the summit social activities; he said last week that the atmosphere was odd and Xi didn’t show up for anything (including his scheduled meeting with Putin), then left before the summit wound up.
Around here, the rumour is, he was arrested there and has been under house arrest ever since. It looks like the driving force are democratic reformers and the catalyst was Xi pushing on Taiwan?
Rumour and speculation, of course.
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Does this mini budget go to any kind of vote? Or can they just change taxes and all that stuff without one?
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I didn't say his intelligence was good or bad, moral or immoral.
That underlying point is something I find distasteful and unhelpful in a lot of political discourse; that because people can reach different conclusions on political issues it must mean they're stupid, or at least unintelligent. It's simply not the case.
Obviously :beer2: We agree. Unless you disagree with me, in which case you are stupid, because I am infallibly right. Mostly.
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Around here, the rumour is, he was arrested there and has been under house arrest ever since. It looks like the driving force are democratic reformers and the catalyst was Xi pushing on Taiwan?
Rumour and speculation, of course.
Well, that would be a scoop, OMM..
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https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-09-23/china-security-official-gets-life-in-jail-as-xi-crushes-clique
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Around here, the rumour is, he was arrested there and has been under house arrest ever since. It looks like the driving force are democratic reformers and the catalyst was Xi pushing on Taiwan?
Rumour and speculation, of course.
Well, that would be a scoop, OMM..
Indian MSM are starting to pick up the story and they’re a couple of hours ahead of us:
https://newsroompost.com/world/chinese-president-xi-jinping-tops-twitter-trends-after-reports-of-him-being-under-house-arrest-surfaces/5192001.html (https://newsroompost.com/world/chinese-president-xi-jinping-tops-twitter-trends-after-reports-of-him-being-under-house-arrest-surfaces/5192001.html)
https://tfiglobalnews.com/2022/09/23/is-xi-jinping-under-house-arrest/ (https://tfiglobalnews.com/2022/09/23/is-xi-jinping-under-house-arrest/)
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Does this mini budget go to any kind of vote?
Depends on your salary. Under £40k? Sorry nope.
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Does this mini budget go to any kind of vote?
Depends on your salary. Under £40k? Sorry nope.
Currently unemployed so vote for me…
But will it go to the commons?
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Not as far as I'm aware no.
But with the caveat that nobody knows what's going to happen least of all me, I'll be surprised if this government manage to carry out this set of policies. My guess is market sentiment is going to stop them before they get started. Maybe leading to yet another vote of no confidence, the shortest serving PM ever, and the end of this tory government's term?
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https://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2022/09/24/the-best-hope-is-that-the-tories-will-boot-truss-out-otherwise-disaster-looms/
It seems tat there's going to be a lot more pain before the dust settles.
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The £45bn of tax cuts announced by the chancellor would need to increase GDP in the long term by 4% to be self-funding. This, the thinktank (Resolution Foundaon} said, is implausible.
https://www.theguardian.com/inequality/2022/sep/24/mini-budget-benefits-london-and-south-east-england-study-shows
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Not as far as I'm aware no.
I was wrong, finance bill to be voted on in the commons either just before or just after the new year. Still think the markets will puke so much next week that it gets shelved.
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@Bradders. Intelligence is just a tool, it has no moral component. In what service is it to be used? The answers look clear to me here.
I didn't say his intelligence was good or bad, moral or immoral. Toby asked what the consensus of Kwarteng's "smartness" was based on (presumably implying that he doubts it, most likely because he disagrees with Kwarteng's politics), so I outlined the ample evidence which indicates he is very smart indeed.
That underlying point is something I find distasteful and unhelpful in a lot of political discourse; that because people can reach different conclusions on political issues it must mean they're stupid, or at least unintelligent. It's simply not the case.
That is simply not the case. I resent the implication that you ascribe to my question, I honestly just didn't know why everyone assumed that he is smart. As you say, his record is impressive and indicative of a considerable academic intelligence.
I would, for example, say Michael Gove is a very clever person, although I don't like his politics. Boris Johnson, on the other hand, I really suspect is not terribly intelligent.
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Not as far as I'm aware no.
I was wrong, finance bill to be voted on in the commons either just before or just after the new year. Still think the markets will puke so much next week that it gets shelved.
Cheers, Pete. It would seem crazy for it to go though without one. Hopefully it gets shelved…
Sounds like they are scrapping one of the few positives of Brexit too - the environment land management scheme. This was due to change subsidies to a nature-based approach and has had a huge amount of effort to get ready. It’s crazy that so many of the things being reversed have been developed by their party (and probably voted for by them!).
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Mark Fulbrook, Truss' chief of staff is literally a paid lobbyist while working in number ten.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/top-liz-truss-aide-mark-fullbrook-paid-through-his-private-company-b90hdkj5z?shareToken=0d57ecde55e7cc08f5f6039318ab5946
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Kwarteng's intelligence is rather a moot point, given that it is entirely in thrall to his ideology
The strength of this ideological commitment is captured in this from the Telegraph's Allister Heath: “This was the best budget I have ever heard a British chancellor deliver. The tax cuts were so huge and bold, the language so extraordinary, that at times I had to pinch myself to make sure I wasn’t dreaming, that I hadn’t been transported to a distant land that actually believed in the economics of Milton Friedman and FA Hayek.” To wake up in a land ruled by Friedman and Hayek really is their dream (quote via this article in the Guardian because of Telegraph paywall: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/sep/25/great-divide-pundits-reactions-to-mini-budget-run-from-alarmed-to-delighted).
Will it work? I doubt it, but what do I know? What I do know is that the utter conviction that tax cuts for the wealthy are the only true and sure route to growth is completely misplaced.
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Its hard to hold out much hope for the success of this "special fiscal operation" given that they can't even do bribery properly!
While the chancellor was on his feet stuffing the mouths of bankers with gold, they repaid him by a huge fall in the pound and a big hike in government bond yields. By the time he sat down, the same people who he had just given a tax cut funded by borrowing, had just made that borrowing more expensive for him than when he stood up. Who knew that the financial markets were so full of woke lefty remainer declinists? Obviously not the chancellor or he wouldn't be giving them a handout. He must feel daft as a brush. Unless he shorted the pound, or knew anyone that might...
Also - borrowing hundreds of billions just at the moment when interest rates are going up? This is the same lot that gave us a decade of austerity to rein in the deficit isn't it?
At least we swerved a John McDonnell budget in 2019.
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Kwarteng's intelligence is rather a moot point, given that it is entirely in thrall to his ideology
The strength of this ideological commitment is captured in this from the Telegraph's Allister Heath: “This was the best budget I have ever heard a British chancellor deliver. The tax cuts were so huge and bold, the language so extraordinary, that at times I had to pinch myself to make sure I wasn’t dreaming, that I hadn’t been transported to a distant land that actually believed in the economics of Milton Friedman and FA Hayek.” To wake up in a land ruled by Friedman and Hayek really is their dream (quote via this article in the Guardian because of Telegraph paywall: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/sep/25/great-divide-pundits-reactions-to-mini-budget-run-from-alarmed-to-delighted).
Will it work? I doubt it, but what do I know? What I do know is that the utter conviction that tax cuts for the wealthy are the only true and sure route to growth is completely misplaced.
As far as I know, it ultimately didn't work for Regan in the 80s. In the past, the strategy has largely produced short term growth, followed by soaring inflation and subsequently a change of direction. Truss cannot do again what Thatcher did in the 1980s, she doesn't have north sea oil income, can't re- privatise utilities, or re- sell council houses. Public services don't have much more than can be cut out of them, and she's been a part of leaving our best trading partner in the form of the EU single market. Hopefully I'm wrong though, and this will bring about a prosperous, fantastic country.
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This is quite good on exactly those arguments Toby (paywalled: I managed to read it once but am now locked out):
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/know-your-history-liz-truss-you-cant-do-thatcherism-twice-wx6w208qk
TL:DR - circumstances were very different. An additional argument is that both the US and UK had much more scope for economic restructuring as they entered the 80s than they do today. Both Reaganism and Thatcherism produced booms, after a lot of pain, but questions remain about the long-term effects and benefits of those booms.
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This is quite good on exactly those arguments Toby (paywalled: I managed to read it once but am now locked out):
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/know-your-history-liz-truss-you-cant-do-thatcherism-twice-wx6w208qk
https://archive.ph/W2RCp
What Sean says. Kwarteng comes across as a fairly common type: extremely clever in some ways - and knows he is clever - but is much less good at recognising his cleverness is not universally applicable.
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Still think the markets will puke so much next week that it gets shelved.
I guess the announcement was made on a Friday for a reason (though that might require the assumption that Truss/Kwarteng understood the markets were likely to react badly).
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Hard to know how it will play out given that historians still debate the effect of such measures in the past. It’s a risk, but I think being seen to do something major for the economy at the moment with all that is going on is good for the animal spirits of the various financial markets and consumer confidence (and spending) to head off spiralling into a bad depression due to knock on negativity.
I was pleased to see some tax breaks for business investment but had to scroll a long way down a report to find them.
Starmer’s alternative plans for green energy, as laudable as they are, will fall flat for most people and their priorities and reinforce that he is out of touch.
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Starmer’s alternative plans for green energy, as laudable as they are, will fall flat for most people and their priorities and reinforce that he is out of touch.
If that's true, then I want off - where's the exit of this doomed ship?
Have you seen what the US green package is delivering...THE US...it's way ahead of us, and we're happy to just continue on, business as usual, so long as profits are up and people are spending????
Sorry, that got me a bit triggered there Simon....
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With their backs to the wall and the immediacy of very personal short term threats of rapidly rising bills, interest rates and reducing prospects will push longer term global climate change concerns lower down the personal agenda of most voters. Personal opinion.
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Hard to know how it will play out given that historians still debate the effect of such measures in the past. It’s a risk, but I think being seen to do something major for the economy at the moment with all that is going on is good for the animal spirits of the various financial markets and consumer confidence (and spending) to head off spiralling into a bad depression due to knock on negativity.
I was pleased to see some tax breaks for business investment but had to scroll a long way down a report to find them.
Starmer’s alternative plans for green energy, as laudable as they are, will fall flat for most people and their priorities and reinforce that he is out of touch.
I feel like the package has been responded to quite badly by markets, concerned by the prospect of interest rates being driven up. They're going to be over 5%, the new package barely helps household finances, and it basically redistributes money towards the wealthier in society
It's a fucking insane budget and everyone knows it. Some people will profit, because they have certain investments. Most people won't. Those who thought they will get through winter now may not as their mortgage payments shoot up. Demand isn't going to increase. Government borrowing will go up as services get worse, not better.
It's the worst budget anyone could have delivered and even the Tory backbenchers know it. Its a risk in the same way that shooting yourself in the leg is a risk: you could die or merely be crippled.
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With their backs to the wall and the immediacy of very personal short term threats of rapidly rising bills, interest rates and reducing prospects will push longer term global climate change concerns lower down the personal agenda of most voters. Personal opinion.
In the case of most people 50+, I'm sure you're right; however younger voters (if they do vote) are more likely to be taking climate change a lot more seriously, I suspect.
A generalisation, but I reckon it will have some truth.
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This is quite good on exactly those arguments Toby (paywalled: I managed to read it once but am now locked out):
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/know-your-history-liz-truss-you-cant-do-thatcherism-twice-wx6w208qk
TL:DR - circumstances were very different. An additional argument is that both the US and UK had much more scope for economic restructuring as they entered the 80s than they do today. Both Reaganism and Thatcherism produced booms, after a lot of pain, but questions remain about the long-term effects and benefits of those booms.
Thanks Andy, I'd actually already read that piece this morning!
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With their backs to the wall and the immediacy of very personal short term threats of rapidly rising bills, interest rates and reducing prospects will push longer term global climate change concerns lower down the personal agenda of most voters. Personal opinion.
Tbh the politics of energy are becoming something of a moot point. The big energy companies and their investors have already decided which is going to win between renewables / nuclear and fossil fuels; it's the former. Rees-Mogg can bang on about fracking and North Sea licences all he likes, the money has already moved on.
With that in mind, it's Truss' government that is out of touch, not Starmer.
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But what will fracking and tax cuts for the wealthiest do for those
With their backs to the wall and the immediacy of very personal short term threats of rapidly rising bills, interest rates and reducing prospects
,
now or in the mid or long term? And "at least they did something" already seems to be coming up hard against the animal spirits of the market. Meanwhile, as Bradders and Wellsy note, other nations are forging ahead with a green energy transition. On this logic there will always be a more pressing short-term issue and Britain will perpetually kick the can down the road.
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Sounds like they are scrapping one of the few positives of Brexit too - the environment land management scheme. This was due to change subsidies to a nature-based approach and has had a huge amount of effort to get ready. It’s crazy that so many of the things being reversed have been developed by their party (and probably voted for by them!).
This does seem mad, and seemed to be maybe the only vaguely useful thing Gove did. Has this been confirmed now? Saw it was a rumour Friday.
Also FWIW I think the new CAP is more environmentally focused than previously https://agriculture.ec.europa.eu/common-agricultural-policy/cap-overview/new-cap-2023-27_en
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Hard to know how it will play out given that historians still debate the effect of such measures in the past. It’s a risk, but I think being seen to do something major for the economy at the moment with all that is going on is good for the animal spirits of the various financial markets and consumer confidence (and spending) to head off spiralling into a bad depression due to knock on negativity.
Very expensive way to have-a-go at injecting a bit of a "feel good factor" isn't it? Probably worth keeping an eye on the graphs of "animal spirit" today to see what they *really* think...
Also, interesting that its a "gamble / risk / doing something at least" to put billions-worth of tax cuts on the never-never. When Labour proposed borrowing to invest in 2017 and 2019 (in capital projects rather than tax cuts) the conservatives said it would cause a run on the pound. Were they right then? Or now in 2022?
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I feel like the package has been responded to quite badly by markets, concerned by the prospect of interest rates being driven up. They're going to be over 5%, the new package barely helps household finances, and it basically redistributes money towards the wealthier in society
It's a fucking insane budget and everyone knows it. Some people will profit, because they have certain investments. Most people won't. Those who thought they will get through winter now may not as their mortgage payments shoot up. Demand isn't going to increase. Government borrowing will go up as services get worse, not better.
It's the worst budget anyone could have delivered and even the Tory backbenchers know it. Its a risk in the same way that shooting yourself in the leg is a risk: you could die or merely be crippled.
Addressing these points as this all comes across as a bit hysterical!
The market reaction has I think a lot to do with how potentially inflationary these measures are. Such a significant reduction in the overall tax burden will have the effect of adding in demand to an economy which was already close to capacity as a result of a lack of supply, caused mainly by global issues rather than domestic.
In an inflationary environment the future profits of growth companies are worth less than they would be in a more sedate environment, and so investors value them lower, hence shares have fallen. This is kind of an argument for the budget as well though; with inflation already high by aggressively targeting growth you potentially limit the future loss of value in favour of short term pain today.
This is combined with the market also realising that the money for these cuts is coming from borrowing, and as is natural with more demand for borrowing supply becomes more expensive. Government bond yields go up, prices fall. Hence why we've seen losses across shares and bonds where in a traditional sense they're usually less correlated.
I'd be interested in why you think demand won't go up. The corporation tax cut alone is huge and has potential to release large sums for companies to spend on all sorts of things (potentially including wage increases for staff to keep up with inflation).
Describing it as insane is just over the top. It's not, and comes back to my earlier point about thinking that just because people disagree they must be mad / stupid / both. It's a budget based on a strong ideology; basically that government should get out of the way as much as possible so people can work, invest and build for themselves. Whether you agree with that or not (I'm somewhere in the middle), at least it's clear where they stand. Hopefully we'll all get a vote on whether we support them soon - it doesn't look good for them!
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The corporation tax cut alone is huge and has potential to release large sums for companies to spend on all sorts of things (potentially including wage increases for staff to keep up with inflation).
In a no doubt doomed attempt to highlight where the government's rhetoric collides with reality, can I point out that there is no cut in corporation tax. In the sense that there was no cut to benefits last year, simply the removal of an uplift.
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Businesses will have planned for the increase in their forecasting though.
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I'd be interested in why you think demand won't go up. The corporation tax cut alone is huge and has potential to release large sums for companies to spend on all sorts of things (potentially including wage increases for staff to keep up with inflation).
I thought we had been told by various economists that raising wages to try and keep up with inflation was A Very Bad Thing?
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Businesses will have planned for the increase in their forecasting though.
Have they planned in a very real risk of the pound hitting parity with the dollar soon (where many consumables, like oil, gas and fuel, get priced)?
Is it sane to put in the biggest budget changes in my living memory as a fiscal event with no OBR forecast or proper Parliamentary scrutiny? Is it sane to put growth full on the accelerator at the same time the BoE is hard on the brakes on inflation? When the market reacted badly was it sane to promise even more tax cuts are coming? How 'in' does a lack of sanity need to be?
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Good post Bradders, I’d hoped to say something similar in response to Wellsey’s somewhat hysterical tone but you put it much better than I would have.
There are far too many moving parts and future unknowns for anyone to know how this will play out. Some economists have pointed out how the counter-cyclical timing of this could work in the UK’s advantage by reducing the depth of the trough of the recession that the west is now in and accelerating the cycle back into growth ahead of other countries. But that outcome depends on a lot of things going right and the markets not killing momentum. But it is a possibility that in 12 months time we’ll be amazed at such a bold and seemingly prescient contrarian move. Personally I doubt it happening, but if I was a betting man today I’d put a small amount on that outcome as the odds are probably quite attractive due to all the fear and uncertainty in the world currently.
This isn’t a UK specific issue that they’re trying to deal with and all this sits in the wider context of far larger forces at play. The UK government are trying to weather a storm and come out in a position of relative strength but whatever they do the storm is going to happen to everyone.
Some people getting hysterical about the pound don’t appear to understand that the dollar has been on a tear this year against all currencies as investors piled into it to weather the tanking US stock markets. That context is important for estimating likely future movements. The weakness of the pound is better gauged against a similarly weak (against the dollar) euro. Yes the pound is also slightly down against the euro following this event but the magnitude is far less.
Pound has dropped 21% against the dollar this year. Pound against Euro has dropped 4% this year. The Euro has also dropped 17% against the dollar this year and the eurozone haven’t had this budget announcement.
The dollar is due a reversal this year or early next, it’s acting like a blow-off top move and that type of move usually isn’t sustainable. I’m fairly confident people involved in these policies also have a view on future likelihoods of dollar relative strength.
The nature of the inflation that they’re stimulating into isn’t demand-side led its supply side, and also very skewed by energy cost inputs. The demand side is in the gutter due to demand destruction from high costs. Hence accusations of stimulation into inflation aren’t necessarily correct. My amateur take is we’re looking at a drop in inflation imminently but to higher sustainable levels. If so this stimulus could be well timed.
A lot of the noise and fury is just that. The level of sound that Labour is making is partly justified due to the hypocrisy of the borrowing but also partly indicative imo of their fear that this set of policies might actually work. Cries of hypocrisy by political parties to me seem to me in themselves to always be hypocritical and a waste of time taking seriously. Labour wouldn’t reverse most of these taxes cuts, and if the 45% rate was so ideologically important to them they could have chosen to implement that rate as policy at the beginning of their term in power, they didn’t.
I’m in the middle ground on the budget announcement, some of it seems logical, some it seems risky, some of it seems plain illogical such as the stamp duty cut not just being confined to first time buyers. Instead giving BTL landlords and people wanting to buy second homes more margin, this will take house prices further out of reach in a market with house price to wage ratio that’s already too far out of reach for far too many. It appears to me designed to further kill hopes of home buying. Alternatively, they were concerned about heading off an imminent house price crash which some have predicted. Dunno.
I still expect the markets to kill this government unless Kwartang and Truss can privately quickly convince them to have confidence in the plan.
One final point which might sway markets in favour is something not many have mentioned - the tax thresholds haven’t been raised so actually this isn’t anywhere like as much of a tax cut as the media are saying. In high inflation like now, people will end up paying as much tax due to incomes rising over tax thresholds.
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I'd be interested in why you think demand won't go up. The corporation tax cut alone is huge and has potential to release large sums for companies to spend on all sorts of things (potentially including wage increases for staff to keep up with inflation).
I thought we had been told by various economists that raising wages to try and keep up with inflation was A Very Bad Thing?
Yeah. Meanwhile, in the real world, people are seeing the cost of everything go up and thus demanding pay rises to try to keep up. Companies now have potentially greater room in their forecasts to meet those demands.
Good post Bradders, I’d hoped to say something similar in response to Wellsey’s somewhat hysterical tone but you put it much better than I would have.
Ha, cheers, it's usually the other way round though.
Businesses will have planned for the increase in their forecasting though.
Have they planned in a very real risk of the pound hitting parity with the dollar soon (where many consumables, like oil, gas and fuel, get priced)?
Is it sane to put in the biggest budget changes in my living memory as a fiscal event with no OBR forecast or proper Parliamentary scrutiny? Is it sane to put growth full on the accelerator at the same time the BoE is hard on the brakes on inflation? When the market reacted badly was it sane to promise even more tax cuts are coming? How 'in' does a lack of sanity need to be?
Yes
No
Maybe
Maybe
A lot?
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I maybe overegged the pudding but I can't think of a worse budget since Osborne and even then I think this is more wrong headed
This budget will cause interest rates to be driven up, it will worsen inequality and it will spook the markets. Household income will take a hit from inflation well beyond any tax relief, and I think investment in resilient improvement in productivity will actually fall in real terms as high inflation and interest rates means it falls behind. Housing inequality and regional inequality will also get worse. Its a bad budget and I think it'll result in a worse economy and society.
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The corporation tax cut alone is huge and has potential to release large sums for companies to spend on all sorts of things (potentially including wage increases for staff to keep up with inflation).
can I point out that there is no cut in corporation tax...simply the removal of an uplift.
Businesses will have planned for the increase in their forecasting though.
Corporation tax is paid on company profits isn't it? (i.e. after overheads / expenses). So if a company reinvests by taking on more staff, wage increases, extra training etc then it would reduce their tax liability. Even some investment in new plant and machinery can reduce it further.
Wouldn't a forecasted rise in corporation tax be an incentive to reinvest in your business as a way to reduce that tax liability instead of having the money just disappear off to HMRC? (assuming reinvesting in the business is a priority over massive dividends).
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I suspect the answer to that can be guessed at by imagining if 'the business' was your own company. How would you go about allocating capital. Especially if some of that capital isn't yours to begin with.
And there's no correct answer in this case, or economists wouldn't exist and it would all just be an exercise in accounting. But a higher rate of tax takes more money away from a business than a lower tax rate, per unit of profit. The logical extreme to minimise tax therefore is to make no profit. And the logical extreme to maximise profit is to pay no tax (or other overheads such as labour). Obviously neither are realistic*.
*Unless you're a self-employed rope access contractor on high wages but with extremely high capital expenses for 'equipment...' (which doesn't exist or is part of your lifestyle), and thus make no profit. And even if any profit was made you don't pay income tax as you pay yourself a dividend. Then it's very realistic.
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Everyone using a simple supply and demand model to think about the effects of corporate taxation on growth should read this thread:
https://twitter.com/Gilesyb/status/1572607019928129537?s=20&t=6z9-_sCxpczx_Y3J3o0Iaw
Tl;dr it is extremely ambiguous for many reasons. I haven’t read the paper it is based on so don’t understand the specifics very well at all I’m afraid but this kind of set of results that is very sensitive both to model choice and when and where you study is really common. As Pete says, if it wasn’t this would all just be accounting.
I would love a government that really wanted economic growth and had some decent policies for that but Truss et al is not that government. There are lots of things one could do to try and push growth a little but I don’t think tax cuts funded out of borrowing - spending that is only sustainable if the U.K. reverses a 14 year long trend very quickly - is really the way to go.
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Corporation tax changed to 19% in 2017. So it has been 19% for 5 years. It was 20% for 2 years before then too so it has been at roughly the same level for 7 years now.
In May this year the previous chancellor said corp tax would go up to 25% from April 2023. Last Friday this future rise was cancelled. So corporation tax will now change by 0% i.e. stay exactly the same as it has been for ages. There is no actual tax cut.
I understand the theoretical argument that *actually* cutting tax might encourage investment = increased growth. So question - how does keeping everything as it is, at 19%, do the same thing? I understand the argument about business forecasting / expectations being adjusted, but I can't help thinking it looks like a two card trick - we will be back to the status quo surely? Where does the growth come from?
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I guess for something to grow the first condition is it has to be born, and then it has to not die. Rising the rate of corporate tax by 6% into a recession didn't look sensible for helping existing businesses survive, nor attractive to new business investment. This move alters that dynamic. Then I suppose there's the relative rates to consider, if the average in the EU is 20.5% then perhaps some business will decide to invest in the UK when taking things such as new policies on regulation and income tax into account, alongside the rate of corporate tax. Although a lot of tech prefers Ireland with their 12% corporate tax. https://tradingeconomics.com/country-list/corporate-tax-rate?continent=europe
edit, meant to add I wonder how much of the 'growth' logic is based on competing with Europe, and takes a view on the direction of travel for the EU economy and EU policies. And therefore relies on relative changes rather than absolute change.
Who knows.
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I'm pretty sure international tech prefers Ireland because it is low tax AND in the EU. I don't see our non-rise as being very tempting in that context.
Brexit is having massive ongoing effects, though the news don't like to talk about it. Getting Petzl kit from France used to take us 3 days. It now takes ten days minimum, and more usually 6-8 weeks.
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I'm pretty sure international tech prefers Ireland because it is low tax AND in the EU. I don't see our non-rise as being very tempting in that context.
Brexit is having massive ongoing effects, though the news don't like to talk about it. Getting Petzl kit from France used to take us 3 days. It now takes ten days minimum, and more usually 6-8 weeks.
This afternoon, I placed orders for machinery to the tune of €1.2M. I went with Dutch suppliers (to the UAE) over the UK (and US for straight currency reasons) because the Euro is down significantly (and with credit letters on the orders I’m buying those Euros today). Even though the Pound has tanked today, the UK manufacturers were offering more than 3 months greater lead time on production than EU suppliers, simply because the UK guys can’t get their parts in fast enough. We’re talking major marine Engine and Generator manufacturers here, not small bespoke stuff.
Of course, next week, on the next purchasing round, that might be completely different; however, today, Brexit made more difference than the drop in the pound (which should have made the order dirt cheap (ha ha) but didn’t compensate for 3 months delay in production here).
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The chancellor's connections point the way.
Tanking the pound is deliberate, this is a hedge funders budget and fairly straightforward political corruption.
They don't give a hoot about the economy per se just how much benefit can be extracted through (mis)managing it.
Good to see the LP conference backing renationalization of the railways, and a £15 an hour minimum wage, and supporting all LP MPs to attend picket lines today.
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I'm pretty sure international tech prefers Ireland because it is low tax AND in the EU. I don't see our non-rise as being very tempting in that context.
Brexit is having massive ongoing effects, though the news don't like to talk about it. Getting Petzl kit from France used to take us 3 days. It now takes ten days minimum, and more usually 6-8 weeks.
Worth remembering when reading things like this, and Matt's post, that the Brexit deal we ended up with is generally thought to be worse for trade in services than in goods. And of course services are our competitive advantage...
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“This is simply not a moment for the kind of naïve wishful thinking supply side economics that is being pursued in Britain… I think Britain will be remembered for having pursued the worst macroeconomic policies of any major country in a long time.” - Former US Treasury secretary Larry Summers last Friday.
Pretty much sums up the shambles.
What is going on is a complete and utter disaster.
It's the kind of economic insanity that made it impossible to vote for Jeremy Corbyn last time around. He'd have ballooned government debt by spending ridiculous amounts on pretty much everything. The extreme right wing of the Tory party are now ballooning goverment debt by cutting taxes at a monumentally stupid time purely because of ideology.
It is going to achieve next to nothing, because the fundamental problems affecting business are cost of energy, lack of staff and red tape at borders.
The first one is obviously mainly due to the war in Ukraine but partly also due to the pound not being worth anything because of Brexit and economic insanity on behalf of the UK government.
The second is partly due to the pandemic where staff left and never returned, and partly due to Brexit.
The third is entirely due to Brexit.
Reducing taxes when you have high unemployment can boost the economy and thus the tax take. But we do not have high unemployment. We've got a massive shortage of labour. So reducing taxes at this point isn't going to attract more companies or allow existing ones to grow as they haven't got the staff to run as they are currently.
So they are ballooning UK debt in a futile effort to increase growth, to try and make the total clusterf*ck that is Brexit, the war and the pandemic not cause the huge recession that is coming otherwise.
But ballooning UK debt is just making the pound slide and thus increasing inflation, whilst not actually resolving any of the three fundamental problems facing UK businesses.
Sure, the Bank of England will step in and increase interest rates to sure up the pound, but by the sound of things all that's going to do is give the clowns in government the thought that they have more wiggle room to reduce taxes even more.
Whilst I totally disagreed with all sorts of specific policies from John Major's goverment through the Labour ones through to Cameron. I'd take pretty much any of those governments at the moment over what we've had since the Brexit vote. The lunatics on the right of the Tory party - from Jacob Rees Mogg to John Redwood, from Mark Francois through to the new chancellor, are driving the country off an enormous cliff and everyone just seems to be sitting back and and taking it.
It would help if the Labour party stopped being so completely and utterly useless, moved into the 21st century, got rid of their ties to the unions and made it policy to at least reverse leaving the single market and customs union - if not rejoining the EU fully.
But of course that's not going to happen without a complete rejig of how political parties are funded and a shift in the mindset in the country around Brexit. At the moment, noone is talking about it because it's apparently been too divisive. Which is pathetic. Does anyone think Nigel Farage would have stopped talking about it if they'd lost 52% to 48%.
Maybe in a few decades, we'll wake up, rejoin the EU from a vastly weaker position than we were in before we left.
And then slowly rebuild the economy.
But more likely before then we'll end up needing an IMF bailout, Scotland, NI, Wales will probably have left, and we'll be sat here with a bunch of flag waving clowns living in poverty, still singing God save the queen.
I despair.
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Over the summer I read the manuscript of a colleague's forthcoming book on the Creditanstalt crisis of 1931, an Austrian banking crisis that morphed into a highly contagious financial/monetary crisis, ripping through Germany and culminating in Britain's exit from the Gold Standard on September 19th of the same year. It's a remarkable book; microscopically focused on key protagonists (in key central banks, the then new Bank of International Settlement, leading private banks) as they struggle through a sense-making process that tested their existing frames for understanding international banking and the role and limits of central bank action. It's a book not about the causes of the crisis but one that attempts to tell history forward - prospectively - rather than backwards - retrospectively - to understand the decision making of the actors in the moment.
We are not in anything like so serious a position for the moment, but I couldn't help but think about what sense-making processes must be taking place right now as all kinds of people, not least the BoE, struggle to understand how they should act. However, one suspects that Truss and Kwarteng's frames of reference and understanding are so far immune to such jolts and crises of confidence.
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I suspect the answer to that can be guessed at by imagining if 'the business' was your own company. How would you go about allocating capital. Especially if some of that capital isn't yours to begin with.
And there's no correct answer in this case, or economists wouldn't exist and it would all just be an exercise in accounting. But a higher rate of tax takes more money away from a business than a lower tax rate, per unit of profit. The logical extreme to minimise tax therefore is to make no profit. And the logical extreme to maximise profit is to pay no tax (or other overheads such as labour). Obviously neither are realistic*.
*Unless you're a self-employed rope access contractor on high wages but with extremely high capital expenses for 'equipment...' (which doesn't exist or is part of your lifestyle), and thus make no profit. And even if any profit was made you don't pay income tax as you pay yourself a dividend. Then it's very realistic.
Whatever analysis of business decisions we make, it needs to take into account that they'll struggle to borrow for the foreseeable future, as available rates on borrowing are shooting up.
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“This is simply not a moment for the kind of naïve wishful thinking supply side economics that is being pursued in Britain… I think Britain will be remembered for having pursued the worst macroeconomic policies of any major country in a long time.” - Former US Treasury secretary Larry Summers last Friday.
Pretty much sums up the shambles.
What is going on is a complete and utter disaster.
It's the kind of economic insanity that made it impossible to vote for Jeremy Corbyn last time around. He'd have ballooned government debt by spending ridiculous amounts on pretty much everything. The extreme right wing of the Tory party are now ballooning goverment debt by cutting taxes at a monumentally stupid time purely because of ideology.
It is going to achieve next to nothing, because the fundamental problems affecting business are cost of energy, lack of staff and red tape at borders.
The first one is obviously mainly due to the war in Ukraine but partly also due to the pound not being worth anything because of Brexit and economic insanity on behalf of the UK government.
The second is partly due to the pandemic where staff left and never returned, and partly due to Brexit.
The third is entirely due to Brexit.
Reducing taxes when you have high unemployment can boost the economy and thus the tax take. But we do not have high unemployment. We've got a massive shortage of labour. So reducing taxes at this point isn't going to attract more companies or allow existing ones to grow as they haven't got the staff to run as they are currently.
So they are ballooning UK debt in a futile effort to increase growth, to try and make the total clusterf*ck that is Brexit, the war and the pandemic not cause the huge recession that is coming otherwise.
But ballooning UK debt is just making the pound slide and thus increasing inflation, whilst not actually resolving any of the three fundamental problems facing UK businesses.
Sure, the Bank of England will step in and increase interest rates to sure up the pound, but by the sound of things all that's going to do is give the clowns in government the thought that they have more wiggle room to reduce taxes even more.
Whilst I totally disagreed with all sorts of specific policies from John Major's goverment through the Labour ones through to Cameron. I'd take pretty much any of those governments at the moment over what we've had since the Brexit vote. The lunatics on the right of the Tory party - from Jacob Rees Mogg to John Redwood, from Mark Francois through to the new chancellor, are driving the country off an enormous cliff and everyone just seems to be sitting back and and taking it.
It would help if the Labour party stopped being so completely and utterly useless, moved into the 21st century, got rid of their ties to the unions and made it policy to at least reverse leaving the single market and customs union - if not rejoining the EU fully.
But of course that's not going to happen without a complete rejig of how political parties are funded and a shift in the mindset in the country around Brexit. At the moment, noone is talking about it because it's apparently been too divisive. Which is pathetic. Does anyone think Nigel Farage would have stopped talking about it if they'd lost 52% to 48%.
Maybe in a few decades, we'll wake up, rejoin the EU from a vastly weaker position than we were in before we left.
And then slowly rebuild the economy.
But more likely before then we'll end up needing an IMF bailout, Scotland, NI, Wales will probably have left, and we'll be sat here with a bunch of flag waving clowns living in poverty, still singing God save the queen.
I despair.
As well as Brexit having screwed farmers, fishermen, scientists, students, travel companies....
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https://news.sky.com/story/labour-party-conference-live-battle-lines-drawn-with-mini-budget-frontbencher-says-labour-shouldnt-reverse-basic-rate-income-tax-cut-12593360
Sky news reports:
Labour have largest lead over Tories in more than 20 years - poll suggests
There’s some good news for Labour at the end of day two of the party’s conference in Liverpool with a new poll suggesting that Sir Keir Starmer’s party has surged to its largest lead over the Conservatives in more than two decades.
A YouGov poll for The Times newspaper tonight puts Labour 17 points clear of the Tories — a level of support not seen since former leader Tony Blair won his landslide victory in 2001.
It comes days after Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng’s tax-cutting mini-budget.
The survey also reveals widespread public opposition to these measures, with the decision to scrap the 45% rate of tax for those earning more than £150,000 opposed by 72% of voters - including 69% of those who backed the Conservatives in 2019.
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It would help if the Labour party stopped being so completely and utterly useless, moved into the 21st century, got rid of their ties to the unions and made it policy to at least reverse leaving the single market and customs union - if not rejoining the EU fully.
Out of interest, what do you think is useless? Labour are polling very well at the moment. The above reads like a combination of Conservative soundbites and extremely wishful thinking re rejoining the EU (which I agree with, but think is politically impossible and thus pointless to agitate for).
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Out of interest, what do you think is useless?
Labour delegates overwhelmingly back motion for Labour party to embrace PR. Labour leadership: no.
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Labour delegates overwhelmingly back motion for Labour party to embrace PR. Labour leadership: no.
I'd like PR as well, but I can see the political logic behind not committing to a radical restructuring of UK politics when your whole schtick has been to not scare the horses.
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I think that's it isn't it. Starmer's plan seems to be "play it cool, nice boring march to victory, then decide these things" and tbh it works for the Tories
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What spider monkey said. Right now the agenda seems to be outlining a different direction for the economy without proposing any fundamental changes which could potentially scare off voters.
By being pretty bland either unintentionally or by design starmer isn’t giving the tories and associated media much ammunition.
Fingers crossed we breeze through the next election and he turns out to be more left wing than he’s currently fronting to be ( potentially wishful thinking I know ).
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This summed up best the direction of travel for this new administration for me:tweet (https://twitter.com/AMOMARSDEN/status/1574446197728747522?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1574446197728747522%7Ctwgr%5E2c90a1afa3c978b87935f9e57cdb11e33bcd0d6e%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fpublish.twitter.com%2F%3Fquery%3Dhttps3A2F2Ftwitter.com2FAMOMARSDEN2Fstatus2F1574446197728747522widget%3DTweet)
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it works for the Tories
I don't think it does work for the Tories, thats my point. If Starmer was to make a barnstorming speech today saying he was going to rejoin the single market/customs union/EU or introduce radical electoral reform it would be front page of all the papers and knock the Tories fucking up the Budget off them. It would also be incredibly easy to counter with 'Labour want to reverse the referendum result' or 'Labour want to stitch up the system to benefit themselves' (I know the latter is unfair but thats how it would be presented.
Currently it will suit Starmer just fine to have the front pages about Tory economic turmoil, and a boring but competent piece on his conference speech on page 4 or 5 of the papers. It will perfectly position him as the competent alternative to visible incompetence. I understand people want more (in an ideal world I do too) but the political logic is inarguable right now.
Incidentally theres been some good left wing policies coming out of the conference so far on green energy, nationalising the railways and a UK sovereign wealth fund.
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it works for the Tories
I don't think it does work for the Tories, thats my point. If Starmer was to make a barnstorming speech today saying he was going to rejoin the single market/customs union/EU or introduce radical electoral reform it would be front page of all the papers and knock the Tories fucking up the Budget off them. It would also be incredibly easy to counter with 'Labour want to reverse the referendum result' or 'Labour want to stitch up the system to benefit themselves' (I know the latter is unfair but thats how it would be presented.
Currently it will suit Starmer just fine to have the front pages about Tory economic turmoil, and a boring but competent piece on his conference speech on page 4 or 5 of the papers. It will perfectly position him as the competent alternative to visible incompetence. I understand people want more (in an ideal world I do too) but the political logic is inarguable right now.
Totally agree, was going to say similar but well said.
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Incidentally theres been some good left wing policies coming out of the conference so far on ... ... ... and a UK sovereign wealth fund.
Just to note (not a commendation or a condemnation of either 'wing'), that a sovereign wealth fund is part of the tory's mini-budget policies. So I'm not sure it can be called a left wing policy. Perhaps just a 'sensible' policy.
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it works for the Tories
I don't think it does work for the Tories, thats my point. If Starmer was to make a barnstorming speech today saying he was going to rejoin the single market/customs union/EU or introduce radical electoral reform it would be front page of all the papers and knock the Tories fucking up the Budget off them. It would also be incredibly easy to counter with 'Labour want to reverse the referendum result' or 'Labour want to stitch up the system to benefit themselves' (I know the latter is unfair but thats how it would be presented.
Currently it will suit Starmer just fine to have the front pages about Tory economic turmoil, and a boring but competent piece on his conference speech on page 4 or 5 of the papers. It will perfectly position him as the competent alternative to visible incompetence. I understand people want more (in an ideal world I do too) but the political logic is inarguable right now.
Incidentally theres been some good left wing policies coming out of the conference so far on green energy, nationalising the railways and a UK sovereign wealth fund.
Sorry I wasn't clear! I totally agree with you tbh. What I mean is that what works for the Tories traditionally, both in internal and general elections, is do whatever you need to do to get in power and then once you're in power you can argue between yourselves in terms of what you want to do. I think Starmer wants to do what's needed to win an election, not risk it, let the government hang itself, and then after winning look at more in depth reform options.
Absolutely Labour and the Tories get a different response re. more radical ideas from general discourse, and their path to power is different.
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it works for the Tories
I don't think it does work for the Tories, thats my point. If Starmer was to make a barnstorming speech today saying he was going to rejoin the single market/customs union/EU or introduce radical electoral reform it would be front page of all the papers and knock the Tories fucking up the Budget off them. It would also be incredibly easy to counter with 'Labour want to reverse the referendum result' or 'Labour want to stitch up the system to benefit themselves' (I know the latter is unfair but thats how it would be presented.
Currently it will suit Starmer just fine to have the front pages about Tory economic turmoil, and a boring but competent piece on his conference speech on page 4 or 5 of the papers. It will perfectly position him as the competent alternative to visible incompetence. I understand people want more (in an ideal world I do too) but the political logic is inarguable right now.
Incidentally theres been some good left wing policies coming out of the conference so far on green energy, nationalising the railways and a UK sovereign wealth fund.
I agree, getting into power should be the absolute priority for labour at the moment, not anyone's idea of a perfect set of policies. I think they seem to be doing a reasonable job at the moment, three years ago labour was unelectable to many people who they need to vote for them.
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Anyway I am just hopeful they can keep up this lead and take it all the way to a GE win
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Interesting tweet from truss. Although 'jury's out' on Macron, it's clearly 'in' on Meloni:
tweet here (https://twitter.com/trussliz/status/1574476937015304192)
Congratulations to
@GiorgiaMeloni
on her party's success in the Italian elections.
From supporting Ukraine to addressing global economic challenges, the UK and Italy are close allies.
For those unsure of Meloni's political identity, she defines it here with real passion in this 2019 speech, worth watching from 11.00 onwards:
https://youtu.be/y_Z1LClnhsk?t=771
(https://youtu.be/y_Z1LClnhsk?t=771)
Dio, patria, famiglia
Dio, patria, famiglia
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Just to note (not a commendation or a condemnation of either 'wing'), that a sovereign wealth fund is part of the tory's mini-budget policies. So I'm not sure it can be called a left wing policy. Perhaps just a 'sensible' policy.
Have you got a link Pete? It's not on any of the summaries google provides.
All I can find is this: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2022/09/24/fracking-profits-diverted-sovereign-wealth-fund-plan-drive-growth/
Tories 'considering' a fund for, wait for it... fracking profits!!! Ahahahaha.
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It would help if the Labour party stopped being so completely and utterly useless, moved into the 21st century, got rid of their ties to the unions and made it policy to at least reverse leaving the single market and customs union - if not rejoining the EU fully.
This is quite amusing. It were the unions that formed the Labour Party, hence the name. The party has recently been close to bankrupting itself due to a reduction in union support (if they totally got rid of the union ties, as you suggest, the party would be financially ruined but in the 21st century :lol:). For some reason the current leadership has stopped the small donation funding drives that were very successful in recent years, probably because 'that's what Corbyn did'. Plus the party has lost hundreds of thousands of members under Starmer and the money that came with them..
Back to conference motions, motions are passed at conference and voted on by the delegates sent by branches. The current leadership is very good at blocking motions they don't like so they don't even reach the floor. The leadership will ignore a lot of the motions being passed. Democracy in action :lol:
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I’ll see if I can dig out a better link.
It isn’t only fracking profits it’s all energy profits. The fracking line is a good hook media use to lure in Joe public looking for outrage. Seems it worked :P
I’ll see if I can dig out a better link.
edit: 5 mins later I've failed. Although seems the idea was publicly floated in conservative circles in June this year: https://conservativehome.com/2022/06/10/ed-mcguinness-the-security-case-for-a-sovereign-wealth-fund/
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Back to conference motions, motions are passed at conference and voted on by the delegates sent by branches. The current leadership is very good at blocking motions they don't like so they don't even reach the floor. The leadership will ignore a lot of the motions being passed. Democracy in action :lol:
I understand the difference, but the PR one was a motion; the green energy, sovereign wealth fund and rail nationalisation are all from the front bench I believe?
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BTW anyone wanting to get a perspective from various angles (well, maybe not Truss’s) of the budget policies should pay a couple of quid for a telegraph subscription at the moment (cancel straight away). It usually has decent economic analysis which some may be surprised to learn isn’t necessary aligned with one right wing view, just as the centre and left media aren’t. When read alongside the guardian or FT I find it provides a good overview from most angles.
Good piece in there today I thought, by Ambrose Evans. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2022/09/27/liz-truss-must-choose-fiscal-u-turn-housing-crash/
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Back to conference motions, motions are passed at conference and voted on by the delegates sent by branches. The current leadership is very good at blocking motions they don't like so they don't even reach the floor. The leadership will ignore a lot of the motions being passed. Democracy in action :lol:
I understand the difference, but the PR one was a motion; the green energy, sovereign wealth fund and rail nationalisation are all from the front bench I believe?
Front bench motions are likely to be followed through. Didn't think PR was a front bencher's motion??.
The Corbyn Labour MP blocking motion will 100% be pursued though. Could be some interesting times for the North Islington branch!
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Front bench motions are likely to be followed through. Didn't think PR was a front bencher's motion??.
No it wasn't, we're on the same page I think; my point was that unlike the PR one, the frontbench ones will likely progress.
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It isn’t only fracking profits it’s all energy profits. The fracking line is a good hook media use to lure in Joe public looking for outrage. Seems it worked :P
I’ll see if I can dig out a better link.
edit: 5 mins later I've failed. Although seems the idea was publicly floated in conservative circles in June this year: https://conservativehome.com/2022/06/10/ed-mcguinness-the-security-case-for-a-sovereign-wealth-fund/
Are you sure the sovereign wealth fund line wasn't just a good hook the Tories used to try and sell fracking to Joe public because it's so unpopular?
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Funny then, that they failed to mention it to joe public if it was! They made the fracking part very clear in the budget and interviews.
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Just shit comms all round then.
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BTW anyone wanting to get a perspective from various angles (well, maybe not Truss’s) of the budget policies should pay a couple of quid for a telegraph subscription at the moment (cancel straight away). It usually has decent economic analysis which some may be surprised to learn isn’t necessary aligned with one right wing view, just as the centre and left media aren’t. When read alongside the guardian or FT I find it provides a good overview from most angles.
Good piece in there today I thought, by Ambrose Evans. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2022/09/27/liz-truss-must-choose-fiscal-u-turn-housing-crash/
Or use archive.ph and save paying for the £49/year subscription or having to sign-up and cancel.
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Shame Maggie didn’t think a Sovereign Wealth Fund was the way to go in the ‘80’s with the North Sea.
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The current situation is spookily similar in every way to exactly what Rishi Sunak said would happen: https://twitter.com/jonsopel/status/1574876213880954881?t=899DHG7ow9fVz3Z9FwySiw&s=19
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Front bench motions are likely to be followed through. Didn't think PR was a front bencher's motion??.
No it wasn't, we're on the same page I think; my point was that unlike the PR one, the frontbench ones will likely progress.
Yeah, we're saying the same thing. :) Begs the question, what's the point in spending all that money, bringing all those people together, debating ideas and agreeing actions which will just get binned by those in charge?
There are some genuinely great policy statements coming out of the conference, should Labour come into some sort of power (could be shared?), I really hope they follow through.
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https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/sep/27/kwasi-kwartengs-tax-cuts-likely-to-increase-inequality-imf-says
IMF now waded in
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https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/sep/27/kwasi-kwartengs-tax-cuts-likely-to-increase-inequality-imf-says
IMF now waded in
Who'd of thought that cutting the taxes of higher earners by a larger % than the taxes of lower earners would create an increase in inequality? Sharp people at the IMF, good that they've made a statement etc. but maybe they should substitute the word 'likely' with 'will'. I think polling is showing that the majority of the general public understand exactly what a piss take these tax cuts are.
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"Imagine you're Kwasi Kwarteng: you've got strident views about economic policy and you even wrote a book about it. you finally get the job as chancellor, the peak of your game, and get to test out your ideas! turns out they are garbage and the economy explodes" Jon Stone
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but maybe they should substitute the word 'likely' with 'will'.
Indeed. I think they need to cage their words carefully, due to their position.
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Very much enjoying the Dan Hanan/Lord Ashcroft line this morning, it wasn't the budget that crashed the pound, it was the fear of a Labour Government.
Re Kier, I think he is performing pretty well at the moment, he seems to have settled into his role and is sounding more confident. He was good on Radio 4 this morning and Rachel Reeves also seems the perfect shadow chancellor to counter this tory government. Ex BofE, good on detail, gets point across without sound like a patronising liberal leftie etc. I feel the current shadow front bench has a renewed sense of purpose and maybe even the outline of a vision they can get behind.
I totally understand the more leftwing members of the party being disappointed with the current status quo after the hope the Corbyn era brought but a competent Labour Party gaining in support with the electorate is, imho, a very good thing, even if they seem too centrist and a bit meh to me.
Using my mum as a bell weather for Labour's fortunes, she announced "I think I'll vote for that Kier next time". She has never, as far as I'm aware, ever voted anything but blue. That may appall the Corbynites but the fact we might actually get a Labour Government is a cause for hope imho.
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Using my mum as a bell weather for Labour's fortunes, she announced "I think I'll vote for that Kier next time". She has never, as far as I'm aware, ever voted anything but blue. That may appall the Corbynites but the fact we might actually get a Labour Government is a cause for hope imho.
Speaking as a socialist (I guess that makes me a Corbynite), I live in the hope that Keir's coyness in giving out policy detail is all a part of the grand 'stealth socialism' project he began when he became leader. He is ensuring that the MSM, big business, big money etc.. believe that he won't rock their gin palaces in order to get elected. Once in position as PM, he will reinstate his 10 pledges and unleash Corbynomics on the masses in a dramatic reversal of the tory playbook.
Realistically though, assuming the socialist group of MPs aren't all purged, they will hold a certain amount of negotiating power depending on the size of any majority. SNP are likely to hold significant sway as well. Meanwhile, the membership will continue to put pressure on to introduce things like PR, further nationalisation etc..
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I’m at a loss as to why my paying £5 a month to the Labour Party should give me a bigger say over policy than an MP who will have received thousands of votes to be elected. Is this the principle that those paying into the political system should get some return on their spending?
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I’m at a loss as to why my paying £5 a month to the Labour Party should give me a bigger say over policy than an MP who will have received thousands of votes to be elected. Is this the principle that those paying into the political system should get some return on their spending?
Not really certain what you're trying to say Sean. We ALL pay into the political system (well those of us that pay taxes). As pointed out above paying your £5 a month doesn't give you a bigger say over policy. I mean you get to put forward motions via your branch and delegates get to vote on them but that's about as far as it goes. The MPs in leadership positions then do what they want.
It feels like you're saying that if you can accrue the thousands of votes required to get elected as an MP, you are then entitled to do what ever you want. Is there not a responsibility to represent the constituents that voted for you or the members that canvassed and campaigned for you?
If not to participate in decision making and be a stakeholder in the party, why are you a member paying in £5 a month then?
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Somebody posted an article here recently which convincingly argued why it was not a good thing to hand too much decision-making power to the membership (applies to all major parties). If someone could repost that then that's my contribution to the discussion sorted :)
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Speaking as a socialist (I guess that makes me a Corbynite),
Not in my eyes. You can be a socialist but still understand Corbyn unsuitability for the role as PM. Corbynities are those who failed to see his flaws, the very sycophants that allowed some pretty popular core policies to be lost under a pile of rubbish, scandal and poor politics, allowing so much good will from the public to evaporate.
I live in the hope that Keir's coyness in giving out policy detail is all a part of the grand 'stealth socialism' project he began when he became leader. He is ensuring that the MSM, big business, big money etc.. believe that he won't rock their gin palaces in order to get elected. Once in position as PM, he will reinstate his 10 pledges and unleash Corbynomics on the masses in a dramatic reversal of the tory playbook.
Realistically though, assuming the socialist group of MPs aren't all purged, they will hold a certain amount of negotiating power depending on the size of any majority. SNP are likely to hold significant sway as well. Meanwhile, the membership will continue to put pressure on to introduce things like PR, further nationalisation etc..
I too hope he is more to the left than he seems and that if elected pushes the nationalisation agenda as far as is politically possible. The proof is in the pudding, anything is better than the current shower though!
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Jeremy Corbyn has flaws. :jaw:
Anything is indeed better than the :shit: show we have, a very sorry state of affairs. It would be great to be in the position of choosing something better over something good. Maybe one day.
Somebody posted an article here recently which convincingly argued why it was not a good thing to hand too much decision-making power to the membership (applies to all major parties). If someone could repost that then that's my contribution to the discussion sorted :)
Is that not an argument against democratisation and for dictatorships?
I think I could put a together a convincing argument as to why decision making should not be left to elected MPs with entrenched ideologies. Imagine, if you will, a group of MPs elected (with thousands of votes), implementing their extreme ideologies without contemplating or considering the catastrophic impact of their decisions.
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Just incredible stuff now: ongoing market turmoil; criticisms from every direction, including the Fed, the IMF, and even Tory MPs; crisis BoE interventions; pension funds on the brink of immediate collapse; a Chancellor having to deny he will resign and a Prime Minister having to assert she will stand by him ... all after just three weeks in post. I'm not sure I've ever witnessed anything like it. And much, much more to come, and very soon, would be my guess.
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I'm vaguely hopeful that she's managed to lose enough of her own mp's after this shambles to force an early election.
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Starmer pushing to recall parliament.
https://news.sky.com/story/amp/keir-starmer-calls-for-recall-of-parliament-over-economic-crisis-12706923
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Just incredible stuff now: ongoing market turmoil; criticisms from every direction, including the Fed, the IMF, and even Tory MPs; crisis BoE interventions; pension funds on the brink of immediate collapse; a Chancellor having to deny he will resign and a Prime Minister having to assert she will stand by him ... all after just three weeks in post. I'm not sure I've ever witnessed anything like it. And much, much more to come, and very soon, would be my guess.
It is insane. Especially when you remember that for twelve days of that there was a moratorium on usual activity because the Queen died.
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If not to participate in decision making and be a stakeholder in the party, why are you a member paying in £5 a month then?
Because helping fund a left-wing party is good! But the idea that members should have much of a say in decision making is terrible because many Labour members are overly idealistic and not very good at thinking about policy.
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"Not Kwarteng's fault" says govt minister :lol:
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Imagine, if you will, a group of MPs elected (with thousands of votes), implementing their extreme ideologies without contemplating or considering the catastrophic impact of their decisions.
Who in this case were elected by....the party membership, reversing the choice of the parliamentary party!
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Who knew that the financial markets were so full of woke lefty remainer declinists?
Hate to quote myself but this was intended as an offhand comment! Some Tory supporters are actually claiming this now - they are beyond parody...
https://twitter.com/andrew_lilico/status/1574876146390503424
https://www.standard.co.uk/news/politics/daniel-hannan-comment-conservative-home-labour-keir-starmer-government-b1028697.html
https://www.thelondoneconomic.com/politics/crispin-odey-says-remainers-are-to-blame-for-the-run-on-the-pound-335955/
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Somebody posted an article here recently which convincingly argued why it was not a good thing to hand too much decision-making power to the membership (applies to all major parties). If someone could repost that then that's my contribution to the discussion sorted :)
Is that not an argument against democratisation and for dictatorships?
I think I could put a together a convincing argument as to why decision making should not be left to elected MPs with entrenched ideologies. Imagine, if you will, a group of MPs elected (with thousands of votes), implementing their extreme ideologies without contemplating or considering the catastrophic impact of their decisions.
Of course it's not an argument against democracy. I'm not sure how you've reached that conclusion. Maybe a wind up? I'm not saying members shouldn't have a say in anything, but there needs to be a balance of decision-making power between party leadership, the parliamentary party, and rank-and-file.
Anyway, here's the article, which sums up my view perfectly.
https://ukbouldering.com/board/index.php/topic,30397.msg665447.html#msg665447
For Truss, it's not a good read. In each successive ballot of MPs she was 3rd (of 8), 3rd (of 6), 3rd (of 5), 3rd (of 4), and finally 2nd (of 3) choice. Results reminder here:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Conservative_Party_leadership_election_(UK)
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Starmer pushing to recall parliament.
https://news.sky.com/story/amp/keir-starmer-calls-for-recall-of-parliament-over-economic-crisis-12706923
Fuck me, if Shark is reading the non-climbing threads on this forum then we must be completely shafted!
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I think I could put a together a convincing argument as to why decision making should not be left to elected MPs with entrenched ideologies. Imagine, if you will, a group of MPs elected (with thousands of votes), implementing their extreme ideologies without contemplating or considering the catastrophic impact of their decisions.
The problem is that the membership (of both Labour and the Conservatives) have, on average, more extreme ideologies than either the MPs or the electorate.
It is selection by the membership that leads to leaders from the extreme wings of the parties who do not command support of either their own MPs or the electorate.
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I think I could put a together a convincing argument as to why decision making should not be left to elected MPs with entrenched ideologies. Imagine, if you will, a group of MPs elected (with thousands of votes), implementing their extreme ideologies without contemplating or considering the catastrophic impact of their decisions.
The problem is that the membership (of both Labour and the Conservatives) have, on average, more extreme ideologies than either the MPs or the electorate.
It is selection by the membership that leads to leaders from the extreme wings of the parties who do not command support of either their own MPs or the electorate.
:agree:
And said it many times before.
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Just incredible stuff now:
Just back from climbing.....Yanis Varoufakis at 17.45 on BBC news channel was saying there is a real risk a domino effect could occur that could bring down US treasury markets.... claiming that is the real reason the IMF intervened so strongly this morning. R4 on the drive home were talking about pension funds in serious trouble until the BoE intervened earlier. Talk of potentially forced departmental budget cuts in government at a time when arguably all are operating on deficits. I wonder how many now think the way the mini budget was handled was not insane?
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I wonder how many now think the way the mini budget was handled was not insane?
Two.
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Latest treasury directive appears to be finding “efficiency savings”, presumably to plug into the OBR forecast in Nov so ‘the plan’ looks vaguely credible.
What the fuck is there left to cut?
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A hospital in Nottingham reported they were having a critical incident today with 97% occupancy and over 700 people waiting at A&E. Talk of cuts will go down like a bucket of sick if grannies are dying in hospital corridors.
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I wonder how many now think the way the mini budget was handled was not insane?
Two.
The handling was/is the least of it, the content was/is insane.
Not a gambling man, but I would bet we see Kwarteng sacrificed sooner rather than later.
Edit: Tory MPs openly calling for Kwarteng to be sacked. One unnamed MP quoted in the Guardian: "But I think people are seriously underpricing the chance that it’s all over, that this government is dead on arrival.”
Extraordinary.
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I'm usually wrong on these things. But if Kwarteng stays, I don't see Truss contesting the next election.
I think there's only 2 things that could save her now:
1) ditch Kwarteng, ditch the fiscal event and enact a massive shift in policy. I don't see her doing this.
2) a massive global event that is so powerful that it overrides everything else similarly to how covid did for a year or two.
So I think the ball's in Putin's court.
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I wonder how many now think the way the mini budget was handled was not insane?
Two.
The handling was/is the least of it, the content was/is insane.
In fairness, if the quote along the lines of 'when the British enter the workplace, they are some of the worst idlers in the world' is at all representative of the book 'Britannia Unhinged' , we can be confident their ideas are comfortably detached from reality. Anyway, empiricism's a great teacher and all that, it'll be 'interesting' to see what happens next. My bet is the hole gets dug deeper, then it collapses on the diggers. God help all the just-about-managing who get dragged into the mire.
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The impression I was getting from earlier this thread was that there were UKB'ers who could see the sanity in this budget?
I asked earlier how a corporation tax cut of 0% is meant to cause a quadrupling of growth to 2.5%? Especially in the teeth of a global downturn? Er...Will borrowing-to-invest in tax cuts for the top few % do it? Not according to the marxists. Sorry, markets who due to this now charge us more to borrow than Italy and Greece. The answer apparently must lie in "supply side reforms" and "spending restraint". For that code please read dispensing with planning regs and increasing immigration, amongst other things, for the first. These are not popular with the Tories' own voters. To say the least. For the second read public sector pay freezes, funding cuts etc. This is not popular with anyone after a decade of austerity and the current rate of inflation.
If they do survive the current market turmoil then the "big reveal" of all this stuff will be the end of them.
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The impression I was getting from earlier this thread was that there were UKB'ers who could see the sanity in this budget?
I asked earlier how a corporation tax cut of 0% is meant to cause a quadrupling of growth to 2.5%?
:agree: To my limited economic understanding, that's why the markets are jettisoning the £. KK is saying growth will balance the books but presenting no meaningful vehicle to drive growth.
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Yeah, what Nige said. Sure there are supply side issues in the U.K. but you’re not going to solve problems like poor transport in provincial cities or ill health impacting the labour market by cutting taxes for a few top earners.
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Starmer pushing to recall parliament.
https://news.sky.com/story/amp/keir-starmer-calls-for-recall-of-parliament-over-economic-crisis-12706923
Fuck me, if Shark is reading the non-climbing threads on this forum then we must be completely shafted!
I’d laugh if I didn’t feel like crying
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Wonder how close we came today to our pensions being worthless? Absolute madness.
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Starmer pushing to recall parliament.
https://news.sky.com/story/amp/keir-starmer-calls-for-recall-of-parliament-over-economic-crisis-12706923
If they haven't gone before next week, then they will be back in parliament surely - I just can't see Truss brazening out Tory conference after this. Meant to start Sunday.
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The impression I was getting from earlier this thread was that there were UKB'ers who could see the sanity in this budget?
I asked earlier how a corporation tax cut of 0% is meant to cause a quadrupling of growth to 2.5%? Especially in the teeth of a global downturn? Er...Will borrowing-to-invest in tax cuts for the top few % do it? Not according to the marxists. Sorry, markets who due to this now charge us more to borrow than Italy and Greece. The answer apparently must lie in "supply side reforms" and "spending restraint". For that code please read dispensing with planning regs and increasing immigration, amongst other things, for the first. These are not popular with the Tories' own voters. To say the least. For the second read public sector pay freezes, funding cuts etc. This is not popular with anyone after a decade of austerity and the current rate of inflation.
If they do survive the current market turmoil then the "big reveal" of all this stuff will be the end of them.
I'll pipe up - I objected to the description of the budget as insane, mainly as that sort of excessive hyperbole in political discourse is unhelpful, and I think the language of both sides of the argument can make things worse. You can be wrong whilst still being perfectly sane.
People make all sorts of economic decisions which others think are mad (for me whenever anyone plays the lottery, for instance), but those decisions can make perfect sense in the context of that person's experience and outlook.
I can also see some sense in the changes, however context is everything and unfortunately for Kwarteng (and the rest of us), their timing really couldn't be worse.
When I say I can see sense; the way I've thought of it is it's a bit like a company running a big marketing campaign, whilst cutting their charges for the service they provide. They borrow some money to make an investment in that hoped for growth. If it works, and they bring in lots of wealthy people who spend lots of money (albeit at the reduced charge) then all is well and they can pay the money back, whilst the company has grown and therefore has more money on its own books, which it can reinvest and grow some more. The big problem with the way they've done it is they've at the same time stuck all the energy bills on a credit card, are still paying off last year's debt after a bout of sickness meant they had to hire more temp staff, and are doing it in the middle of a recession / cost of living crisis when fewer people have money spare. And they've refused to let their accountant look at the plan. All of which makes it less likely they'll be able to pay the money back, meaning they're charged a higher rate to borrow it.
I.e., the idea is not bad per se, but the timing of it is.
If these changes had been made in 2019 after the Conservatives won the election, there would be a hell of a lot less fuss than there is now.
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I had a good idea once, in a context free temporal anomaly vacuum
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If these changes had been made in 2019 after the Conservatives won the election, there would be a hell of a lot less fuss than there is now.
Apart from it basically setting fire to the 2019 manifesto on which they had just been elected of course?
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And they've refused to let their accountant look at the plan.
That seems to be key to the loss in confidence of the currency and bond market. I’m not clear whether the OBR where muzzled or hadn’t time to pass an opinion but either way it clearly looked reckless without some independent judgement to back it up which was a communication disaster.
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I thought it was made quite clear that the OBR weren’t given the opportunity to review the proposals, and that’s why they tried to call it a ‘fiscal event’ or whatever rather than a budget?
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The big problem with the way they've done it is they've at the same time stuck all the energy bills on a credit card, are still paying off last year's debt after a bout of sickness meant they had to hire more temp staff, and are doing it in the middle of a recession / cost of living crisis when fewer people have money spare. And they've refused to let their accountant look at the plan. All of which makes it less likely they'll be able to pay the money back, meaning they're charged a higher rate to borrow it.
I don't understand how you can write this and then question why people are calling it insane. Yes its a strong word but as you have just pointed out their actions would hardly be characterised as sane either.
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I’m not clear whether the OBR where muzzled or hadn’t time to pass an opinion but either way it clearly looked reckless without some independent judgement to back it up which was a communication disaster.
It was the former. Mel Stride (Tory chair of Treasury Select Committee) was on R4 earlier saying he’d spoken to the head of the OBR who confirmed they had a forecast prepared and Kwarteng refused to publish.
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Wonder how close we came today to our pensions being worthless? Absolute madness.
By all accounts, very close. I wonder how much stability £65bn buys these days? I guess we’ll find out very soon.
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And they've refused to let their accountant look at the plan.
That seems to be key to the loss in confidence of the currency and bond market.
I really don't think that's the principal issue or cause. It doesn't look reckless, it is reckless (as the OBR would probably have pointed out).
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And if it's principally a communications disaster then why aren't they fixing that by getting out in front of a camera and communicating?
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So now do they try and fix or soldier on and try to save face? My money is on the latter.
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And if it's principally a communications disaster then why aren't they fixing that by getting out in front of a camera and communicating?
I think it's clear that Truss doesn't feel able to stand up to rigorous interview on this. She's interviewing on local radio this morning while Chris Philp does the Today programme.
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She's also repeatedly mischaracterised the energy cap policy starting next week, saying twice that "nobody will pay more then £2500", which is simply not true.
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The big problem with the way they've done it is they've at the same time stuck all the energy bills on a credit card, are still paying off last year's debt after a bout of sickness meant they had to hire more temp staff, and are doing it in the middle of a recession / cost of living crisis when fewer people have money spare. And they've refused to let their accountant look at the plan. All of which makes it less likely they'll be able to pay the money back, meaning they're charged a higher rate to borrow it.
I don't understand how you can write this and then question why people are calling it insane. Yes its a strong word but as you have just pointed out their actions would hardly be characterised as sane either.
Sorry to get hung up on this but I do think it's important. As I said before, people make financial decisions which to someone else might look crazy, but make perfect sense to that person. I've already explained this though so probably best to leave it there.
If these changes had been made in 2019 after the Conservatives won the election, there would be a hell of a lot less fuss than there is now.
Apart from it basically setting fire to the 2019 manifesto on which they had just been elected of course?
Well their 2019 manifesto included a pledge not to increase national insurance, so I'm kind of ignoring that and assuming they could have run on any platform they liked and still beaten Jeremy Corbyn.
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And if it's principally a communications disaster then why aren't they fixing that by getting out in front of a camera and communicating?
I think it's clear that Truss doesn't feel able to stand up to rigorous interview on this. She's interviewing on local radio this morning while Chris Philp does the Today programme.
In fact these local radio interviews are 5 minutes apiece! Nick Robinson was quite pointed about her not being on Today and was positively licking his chops at the thought of interviewing her at conference.
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Well, that seems to have gone well.
https://twitter.com/sharonodea/status/1575381284091830273
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The impression I was getting from earlier this thread was that there were UKB'ers who could see the sanity in this budget?
There are sane policies in the budget as Mark Carney acknowledged this morning if you listened to his whole interview. What isn't wise is the timing, the communication and the oversight. Your appeal to 'this is insanity' might be popular, but it isn't factual.
Kwartang and Truss's bigger-picture market timing, their gauging of how market sentiment would react, their communication to markets and the public and their failure to back up the figures with OBR overview were all very shoddy and appear politically suicidal very high risk.
This was my early impression last week:
The markets will be the judge of that, starting on Friday.
But rockets of economic growth are not expected in the skies above any western country this year or next. The Fed has basically told everyone, without telling everyone, that it expects the US to enter recession imminently. The EU and UK likewise. It’s just a matter of time.
...
Agree with you that Truss’s policies seem destined to crash into the wall of economic reality. But Kwasi’s Kwartang's an intelligent bloke, maybe he’ll pull a rabbit out the hat.
and
Truss is gambling that her policies will spark growth*. The question I think is timescale - because due to forces larger than any government policy there is going to be very little if any growth for the UK, EU or the US for the next 6 months, and possibly the next 12-24 months. We may tip into a severe recession depending on how events play out, but definitely a mild recession. Will she manage to face down the naysayers while we're in a recession? She'll need to if she wants to give her policies time to create conditions of growth, that's if they actually do work.
and
But with the caveat that nobody knows what's going to happen least of all me, I'll be surprised if this government manage to carry out this set of policies. My guess is market sentiment is going to stop them before they get started. Maybe leading to yet another vote of no confidence, the shortest serving PM ever, and the end of this tory government's term?
and
Still think the markets will puke so much next week that it gets shelved.
and
I’m in the middle ground on the budget announcement, some of it seems logical, some it seems risky, some of it seems plain illogical such as the stamp duty cut not just being confined to first time buyers. Instead giving BTL landlords and people wanting to buy second homes more margin, this will take house prices further out of reach in a market with house price to wage ratio that’s already too far out of reach for far too many. It appears to me designed to further kill hopes of home buying. Alternatively, they were concerned about heading off an imminent house price crash which some have predicted. Dunno.
I still expect the markets to kill this government unless Kwartang and Truss can privately quickly convince them to have confidence in the plan.
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I guess we could argue over the use of the word "insane" all day but sure, I'm happy to not use it. I feel like there are plenty of other pejoratives applicable. Tbh even if the markets/currency hadn't crashed I still think it would be deplorable but that they have makes me wonder who actually wants this budget at all other than Truss and Kwarteng?
I'm not sure what will happen when the 1922 realises she needs to go. Who will they pick next? A General Election is desperately needed.
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TBH I'm far more interested in the dynamics that underlie the market's reaction to this budget. There's a much bigger picture at play here and we're only beginning to get glimpses of how it may play out. This week's terrified reaction by the markets and the public to the prospect of interest rate rises beyond a limit of mid single digits hints at the larger problem. The problem began with the supply of QE following 2008 which created liquidity in the markets, asset speculation on a huge scale (housing market being one) and a decade of artificially low interest rates for lots of people to get into high debt-to-wage ratios. I think the problem is now starting play out and will gradually snowball from here. More QE will be announced in Europe, the US and UK just like the BoE did yesterday but on a larger scale - the so-called Fed pivot. The widely-held expectation by market commentators is this will eventually devalue the dollar, pound and Euro beyond recovery. I mentioned this in a comment earlier this year, Sean didn't seem to think underlying debt was too big a concern. I wonder if he still doesn't.
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Your appeal to 'this is insanity' might be popular, but it isn't factual.
Where have I said that?!
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There are sane policies in the budget as Mark Carney acknowledged this morning if you listened to his whole interview. What isn't wise is the timing, the communication and the oversight. Your appeal to 'this is insanity' might be popular, but it isn't factual.
Kwartang and Truss's bigger-picture market timing, their gauging of how market sentiment would react, their communication to markets and the public and their failure to back up the figures with OBR overview were all very shoddy and appear politically suicidal very high risk.
This was my early impression last week
What's the sense in picking out sane bits of an overall insane package (a properly planned budget is the policy with OBR and BoE input, and the politics, its communication and the expected market response). The most worrying thing for me before yesterday was some big players effectively saying it was insane but being rather opaque as to why. Then DB pensions started in a 'death spiral' on liquidity yesterday and the BoE were forced to stop it (with an inflationary QE measure!) and hints were made the IMF input was partly due to risk of contagion spreading to the US treasury....these factors dwarf worries about changes in the pound... I notice your crystal ball missed them.
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I don't have a crystal ball and its a bit of a bell-endish thing to say, which is what I'd expect. On that note I know it's usually time for me to leave the discussion as soon as you turn up, as anything said from this point on will only be ideologically driven. Not what I'm interested in. :blink:
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The widely-held expectation by market commentators is this will eventually devalue the dollar, pound and Euro beyond recovery.
In favour of what? Renminbi? Or bitcoin, sounds a lot like the youtoob crypto-loon 'great reset' theory? Which despite some enthusiasm for crypto I have no truck with. It ignores that currency is ultimately a human tool, not some force of nature. North America and Europe collectively doing an Argentina is not realistic.
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What happened yesterday was the first public hint that the markets cannot take QT. The reasons are many but one reason is that the side effects would destroy the housing market. We'll see. The underlying reason housing markets would be destroyed is far too many people took advantage, quite rationally, of a decade of ultra-low intertest rates and speculated with the cheap debt to grow house prices beyond any sensible ratio to income. Which is all fine. Until a global force majeure comes along, or two in quick succession, which requires nations to have the freedom to raise interest rates to effectively combat the inflationary forces. But due to the side effects of QE since 2008 there is no room to manoeuvre to raise interest rates beyond mid single digits. This has been suggested for years now. Yesterday was another hint. The only rational action is more QE. The only outcome of more QE is devaluation.
This was even being publicly hinted at this week (rather than privately commentated on for years) when I heard commentary on R4 about the national debt of the US, UK and Eurozone countries not being sustainable beyond a certain rate of interest and getting into a death spiral.
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The widely-held expectation by market commentators is this will eventually devalue the dollar, pound and Euro beyond recovery.
In favour of what? Renminbi? Or bitcoin, sounds a lot like the youtoob crypto-loon 'great reset' theory? Which despite some enthusiasm for crypto I have no truck with. It ignores that currency is ultimately a human tool, not some force of nature. North America and Europe collectively doing an Argentina is not realistic.
There is the odd, major, Asian currency, knocking about for safe(r) haven given a storm in the West; before resorting Crypto-loon (sic).
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Ultimately the end game of the never-ending growth, debt fuelled merry-go-round is likely to commence at some point. It will start with turmoil, and everyone clamouring to maintain the "status quo", there will probably be some global geopolitical strife, maybe some kind of climate crisis thrown in for good measure. Sound familiar?
I guess trying to come up with an alternative that hasn't been shown to be an outright failure in the past (communism) that keep us all productive and happy and healthy, and allows some kind of markets to function, but doesn't rely on endless exploitation is just too hard for our ill-equiped human brains to figure out and agree on. So it'll probably all just go to shit in a massive war and we'll fight over the scraps afterwards.
That's my thesis. Fortunately a broken clock is right twice a day, so maybe one day I'll seem prescient 8)
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Yeah you're bound to be correct eventually in an infinite universe :)
Reminds me of the 'dr doom' character who was quoted earlier this week on the £/$ who predicted 27 of the last 2 recessions.
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Ideology can't be ignored, it is the basis behind the budget was brought in. As it is behind every budget, and indeed most things in politics, maybe everything. You can just pretend it doesn't exist if your own ideology is a kind of morally neutral capitalistic self-interest because that largely is in line with the centreline of modern society, but even then, it is a pretense, because that in of itself is an ideology.
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The widely-held expectation by market commentators is this will eventually devalue the dollar, pound and Euro beyond recovery.
In favour of what? Renminbi? Or bitcoin, sounds a lot like the youtoob crypto-loon 'great reset' theory? Which despite some enthusiasm for crypto I have no truck with. It ignores that currency is ultimately a human tool, not some force of nature. North America and Europe collectively doing an Argentina is not realistic.
You’re sort of missing my point. I’m uninterested what currency, if any replaces or doesn’t replace a perpetually devaluing western fiat. As you say all fiat currency is a (very useful) human construction anyway and in a situation of global peril the world could just keep constructing more fantasy currency.
I’m not a ‘great reset’ type of guy either. Although government digital has to make an appearance at some point.
The point is that the current system is beginning to meet the limits of room to manoeuvre in response to global events. To keep the current financial system working will eventually involve more QE because the alternative is far worse.
And to say currency isn’t a natural force is true, but misses out that the ‘real stuff’ it buys is. And the next decades of energy transition, digitalisation, 5G, automation etc. is all underpinned by the need to purchase a lot of real stuff that comes out of the ground.
All imo of course.
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Article about the pension situation which was useful to attempt to understand the mechanisms https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/sep/29/id-never-seen-anything-like-it-how-market-turmoil-sparked-a-pension-fund-selloff
I feel what I really need is Anthony Bourdain (RIP) explaining through the medium of a fish pie.
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Tories polling at 21% (-7) Labour at 54% (+9) according to Britain Elects
Womp woooomp
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Terrifyingly the talk in some places is now that Truss should stick with the tax cuts, but row back on the energy price cap! I think I'm starting to come around, that really would be mental!
Looks like absolute carnage in the housing market is now inevitable too. Offers being pulled all over the place. Something has got to give surely, it seems pretty obvious that whatever you think of the budget it cannot get past cold hard economic reality.
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Tories polling at 21% (-7) Labour at 54% (+9) according to Britain Elects
Womp woooomp
For an outside observer it will be interesting to see if the Tories will vanish as a political force, much like the Socialist party in France (from always being the biggest or the second biggest party to being the 10th largest) or the Christian Democrats in Italy (who went from being the biggest party forever to being dissolved) did.
Total implosion has happen before in other countries, and right now that looks what is going to happen in the UK, but I realise that a year is forever in politics.
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The energy price cap was also a terrible idea they way they had implemented it. Basically the govt would be on the hook for any spending about £2.5k, so those in big, inefficient houses could stop worrying about saving energy...
It would be much, much better to ring-fence a certain proportion of UK gas at a fixed rate for domestic use and shield us from the price hikes. If gas was profitable last year, then clearly the O&G companies don't *need* the high prices. That would be a bold but probably well supported move.
Seeing as Truss is in bed with the hedge fund managers and oil companies, the chances of that happening are...
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The energy price cap was also a terrible idea they way they had implemented it. Basically the govt would be on the hook for any spending about £2.5k, so those in big, inefficient houses could stop worrying about saving energy...
This isn't the case though is it? The energy price cap is a cap on the price of the units of energy based upon a maximum £2.5k for a theoretical average house (the government is to pay the difference between what the companies want for a kWh energy and this capped limit). If you use more energy you still get charged more and it can be significantly above £2.5k. I might be wrong however this is how I believe it to be implemented.
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The energy price cap was also a terrible idea they way they had implemented it. Basically the govt would be on the hook for any spending about £2.5k, so those in big, inefficient houses could stop worrying about saving energy...
This isn't the case though is it? The energy price cap is a cap on the price of the units of energy based upon a maximum £2.5k for a theoretical average house (the government is to pay the difference between what the companies want for a kWh energy and this capped limit). If you use more energy you still get charged more and it can be significantly above £2.5k. I might be wrong however this is how I believe it to be implemented.
You are right.
But it's not surprising that people are getting confused considering Truss keeps saying that no home will have to pay more than £2500.
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This isn't the case though is it? The energy price cap is a cap on the price of the units of energy based upon a maximum £2.5k for a theoretical average house (the government is to pay the difference between what the companies want for a kWh energy and this capped limit). If you use more energy you still get charged more and it can be significantly above £2.5k. I might be wrong however this is how I believe it to be implemented.
You are exactly right. £2.5k is an illustrative figure only.
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Tories polling at 21% (-7) Labour at 54% (+9) according to Britain Elects
Womp woooomp
For an outside observer it will be interesting to see if the Tories will vanish as a political force, much like the Socialist party in France (from always being the biggest or the second biggest party to being the 10th largest) or the Christian Democrats in Italy (who went from being the biggest party forever to being dissolved) did.
Total implosion has happen before in other countries, and right now that looks what is going to happen in the UK, but I realise that a year is forever in politics.
It is. It felt like the Conservative party was in as bad a place during party gate, and the Cummings: Barnard castle saga, but they're good at recovering from these things. People predicted that labour was finished after the 2019 election now it looks pretty good.
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This isn't the case though is it? The energy price cap is a cap on the price of the units of energy based upon a maximum £2.5k for a theoretical average house (the government is to pay the difference between what the companies want for a kWh energy and this capped limit). If you use more energy you still get charged more and it can be significantly above £2.5k. I might be wrong however this is how I believe it to be implemented.
You are exactly right. £2.5k is an illustrative figure only.
Ah, OK, that makes more sense, thanks. I hadn't dived into the detail myself, but I recall someone making the same argument against it I just did.
I still think a domestic ring-fence would be a good idea though....
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Article about the pension situation which was useful to attempt to understand the mechanisms https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/sep/29/id-never-seen-anything-like-it-how-market-turmoil-sparked-a-pension-fund-selloff
I feel what I really need is Anthony Bourdain (RIP) explaining through the medium of a fish pie.
Cheers. What's not so clear in that article is these LDIs are leveraging on gilts. I never knew this before this week and it's completely nuts. The story we are told is that gilts are the 'safe' part of a pension fund's assets...it seems they have been leveraging up gilts to help meet scheme yield requirements, and as such gilts become as unsafe as other more 'risky' portfolio assets.
An actuary popped in to explain things on t'other channel:
https://www.ukclimbing.com/forums/off_belay/pension_funds-752430?v=1#x9690505
It's really sad to find the markets have discovered a new way to destabilise what was an excellent financial product: the Defined Benefit pension. It's surely just a coincidence that DC schemes make the pension providers bigger profits. The broken DB valuation system (which cascades pessimistic assumptions) was bad enough... the one that said the Miners' DB scheme had a huge financial deficit and had the Telegraph frothing at the mouth about the government taking it over.....the reality is because the valuation methodology was way too pessimistic the Miners' scheme has provided huge profits for the government coffers...4.5 billion so far and still growing. Another nail in the DB coffin makes pension choices so much worse for future generations.
I ended up dealing with extensive information on this DB subject as the USS DB scheme valuation became a big issue. In USS, assets were growing 5-10% faster than inflation on average, wages growing consistently slightly less than inflation on average, staff numbers and grade distributions were roughly constant, highest pensions capped, yet the valuation kept going down, due to QE (and before that up and down like a yoyo). It was as clear as mud that the valuation methodology had become completely disconnected from the reality, of the scheme's ability to meet its future pension payments, and amplified market changes like a control system on the edge of stability.
On a similar subject I've just been reading a interesting Guardian article on how commodity deregulation has led to wild swings (that trigger cirises) that bear no relevance to actual supply and demand:
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/sep/30/rupert-russell-interview-price-wars
Word of caution though: I'm a centre left ideologist who believes in improved market regulation.
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A good read on DB pensions posted on t'other channel (cheers 'Max')
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2022-09-29/uk-pensions-got-margin-calls
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Kwarteng doubling down on the budget in the Telegraph today;
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2022/09/30/no-doubt-expensive-intervention-nothing-not-option/
Focus very much on the energy price cap, which is understandable but clearly not the bit that actually needs defending!
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Wonder if the OBR report will be ‘accidentally’ leaked next week rather than making everyone wait six weeks.
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Interview with Simon Case in the times today, he talks about trimming the extra fat off public services... As though a decade of austerity wasn't enough. You've got to wonder if this idealism will fly in an election.
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Simon Case or Clarke? Bit controversial for a civil servant to be doing political interviews if the former.
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Simon Case or Clarke? Bit controversial for a civil servant to be doing political interviews if the former.
Apologies, i was wrong, Clarke was who I meant, the treasury minister.
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This morning's U-turn just makes the government look weak and chaotic. One thing to be an adamant idealoge who claims not to change their mind, but then running away from your decisions is obviously going to make all their backbenchers think it's worth threatening to rebel on votes, if they might be able to get their own way.
Kwarteng sounded pretty awful when he was interviewed on the Today programme this morning.
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This lady is
not for turning.
Think it was a policy deliberately set up to back down (want to say straw dog, but not sure that's the right term) on while the other ridiculous new policies remain in place?
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I dunno if one would do something that makes them look so awful on purpose...
Robinson said in any other job Kwarteng would be sacked, and he's right. 65bn from the BoE is the cost of his idiocy.
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Probably right, hard to believe though.
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This lady is not for turning.
Think it was a policy deliberately set up to back down (want to say straw dog, but not sure that's the right term) on while the other ridiculous new policies remain in place?
No I think they genuinely think it's the right thing to do, and still do, but Shapps and Gove openly criticising it on the media and threatening rebellion meant they might lose a vote on the bill, which would have made them look worse.
I think Kwarteng and Truss are proper idealoges, they really believe all this crap, despite it being unpopular.
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This lady is not for turning.
Think it was a policy deliberately set up to back down (want to say straw dog, but not sure that's the right term) on while the other ridiculous new policies remain in place?
No I think they genuinely think it's the right thing to do, and still do, but Shapps and Gove openly criticising it on the media and threatening rebellion meant they might lose a vote on the bill, which would have made them look worse.
I think Kwarteng and Truss are proper idealoges, they really believe all this crap, despite it being unpopular.
Crispin Odey (Tory donor and Kwarteng's former boss) also thinks it's the right thing to do. He's been openly boasting about all the money he has made. Corruption! Not even trying to hide it.
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This lady is not for turning.
Think it was a policy deliberately set up to back down (want to say straw dog, but not sure that's the right term) on while the other ridiculous new policies remain in place?
No I think they genuinely think it's the right thing to do, and still do, but Shapps and Gove openly criticising it on the media and threatening rebellion meant they might lose a vote on the bill, which would have made them look worse.
I think Kwarteng and Truss are proper idealoges, they really believe all this crap, despite it being unpopular.
Kwasi strikes me as the typical Etonian; unshakeable self-confidence and thinks he is too clever to listen to what anyone else thinks. I'm not convinced that Liz believes anything, or even has her own ideas.
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I dunno if one would do something that makes them look so awful on purpose...
Robinson said in any other job Kwarteng would be sacked, and he's right. 65bn from the BoE is the cost of his idiocy.
Am I understanding correctly here? The big part of the tax giveaway to the rich (the part that crashed the pound) is still going ahead. They've backed down on a (relatively) small part only. So they've managed to distract everyone with the 45% rate part.
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Correct.
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Cheers
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This lady is not for turning.
Think it was a policy deliberately set up to back down (want to say straw dog, but not sure that's the right term) on while the other ridiculous new policies remain in place?
No I think they genuinely think it's the right thing to do, and still do, but Shapps and Gove openly criticising it on the media and threatening rebellion meant they might lose a vote on the bill, which would have made them look worse.
I think Kwarteng and Truss are proper idealoges, they really believe all this crap, despite it being unpopular.
Kwasi strikes me as the typical Etonian; unshakeable self-confidence and thinks he is too clever to listen to what anyone else thinks. I'm not convinced that Liz believes anything, or even has her own ideas.
I think she could swallow an entire pint of ice cream, in one, and not have to worry about brain freeze…
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Kwasi strikes me as the typical Etonian; unshakeable self-confidence and thinks he is too clever to listen to what anyone else thinks.
As mentioned before, classic Dunning Kruger.
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A lot of people say that Truss is a real idealist, a proper Hayekian. I'm not sure but she definitely seems dogmatic. Maybe she is just an empty vessel though
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A lot of people say that Truss is a real idealist, a proper Hayekian. I'm not sure but she definitely seems dogmatic. Maybe she is just an empty vessel though
And some are definitely in the latter, “empty vessel” camp:
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/04e69744-4285-11ed-abc9-d0d53e948d21?fbclid=IwAR1A197oDFCyq6BnL4Nz5KarN3FCyEbZKjlO1_H9vHCEzjLeXM7DMt9D_c8 (https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/04e69744-4285-11ed-abc9-d0d53e948d21?fbclid=IwAR1A197oDFCyq6BnL4Nz5KarN3FCyEbZKjlO1_H9vHCEzjLeXM7DMt9D_c8)
And thing like that must really smart back in Tory HQ…
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At this stage I'll take anyone who will get us a Labour government
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They’re living in a bizarre echo chamber of hand picked cronies. (Same as the rest of us, but most of us don’t have a country to wreck).
Party chair continues to issue tin eared nonsense “if you’re struggling with the cost of living, just get a better job” https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/tory-conference-jobs-bills-economy-b2190968.html
Continued mandate to march on with the 2019 manifesto… like no more austerity. Benefits will or won’t rise with inflation. That’s not then. Except the pensioners, good demographic to court that.
Tories become so much more credible out of office… https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/oct/03/liz-truss-picked-cronies-off-backbenches-for-cabinet-says-michael-heseltine
Strong hints of a sea change though, back benchers likely have more likely to rebel. It works, the whip line is becoming increasingly indefensible and a good chunk of them realise they’ll be out next time anyway.
Imagine making a £65bn mistake and thinking “ok, that was a distraction, let’s all move on”.
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Or approximately £1000 of additional government debt, serviced at higher interest, for every UK man, woman and child. Let’s hope he doesn’t make any big mistakes.
:wall:
Heseltine has always been more straightforward than the average Tory, fwiw.
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Or approximately £1000 of additional government debt, serviced at higher interest, for every UK man, woman and child. Let’s hope he doesn’t make any big mistakes.
:wall:
Heseltine has always been more straightforward than the average Tory, fwiw.
There are many well intentioned, highly capable Conservative MPs, of whom Heseltine was one.
However the front rank of the current government is so far looking extremely incompetent. I think that you always know that a politician is losing the argument, or has already lost it, if they say how clear they are. Liz Truss says how clear she is every 2 minutes.
Quote from Politico, today: “She started very poorly, and in my experience, what you see is what you get. People aren’t mysteriously really shit, and then become really good,” one senior Tory MP said.
https://www.politico.eu/article/liz-truss-is-for-turning-but-it-may-be-too-late/
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Yeah this. The contrast in ability between Truss and Sunak was stark imo but the loons chose the useful idiot in Truss.
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The last lot felt like the cabinet of none of the talents, these seem lighter still. I see now it was Heseltine that Johnson in when he gave up the Henley constituency. If only he could have been kept going with some complicated arrangement of wires and tubes we might have been spared some pain. He sits in the Lords as an independent now for having one too many of his own opinions. Their loss.
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I thought I'd pretty much seen it all last week, but they've managed to take government chaos and buffoonery to previously unimagined heights today. It really is something else. Bravo!
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Or approximately £1000 of additional government debt, serviced at higher interest, for every UK man, woman and child. Let’s hope he doesn’t make any big mistakes.
:wall:
Heseltine has always been more straightforward than the average Tory, fwiw.
There are many well intentioned, highly capable Conservative MPs, of whom Heseltine was one.
I beg to differ. You overestimate the quality and integrity of the intake if Heseltine was simply ‘one of many’ and at the same time do a disservice to the man.
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Or approximately £1000 of additional government debt, serviced at higher interest, for every UK man, woman and child. Let’s hope he doesn’t make any big mistakes.
:wall:
Heseltine has always been more straightforward than the average Tory, fwiw.
There are many well intentioned, highly capable Conservative MPs, of whom Heseltine was one.
I beg to differ. You overestimate the quality and integrity of the intake if Heseltine was simply ‘one of many’ and at the same time do a disservice to the man.
Back in the day, when my boss at the time, Ashcroft (not then lord) and Heseltine vied for control of the party. Hague was shadow PM and Ashcroft’s proxy/puppet. Ashcroft was appallingly heartless and keen to create an underclass of cheap labour in the UK and H seemed positively angelic in comparison. A socially responsible conservative, almost liberal (Ashcroft was the reason I left the party and have moved left dramatically since). I respect Heseltine, though I can’t say I’ve really followed his political career for a couple of decades (I guess I just ditched the UK as a bad job from 2000 until 2008 ish and came back pretty anti-Tory when I did return).
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Ashcroft was behind that whole pig gate story wasn't he?
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Ashcroft was behind that whole pig gate story wasn't he?
Yes. As I understand it, Cameron was H’s man (or, at least, H’s faction’s man) and it was a bit of a power play, that backfired. As far as I’m aware, they both lost out to another faction and both stars have faded, though Ashcroft remains quite influential. The Grandees really run the show. Power behind the throne, sort of thing. I think that’s why leadership choice was pushed out to party membership. To curtail the Grandee’s influence, to some degree. Analogous to factions of Labour moving to curtail Union influence, I suppose.
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Or approximately £1000 of additional government debt, serviced at higher interest, for every UK man, woman and child. Let’s hope he doesn’t make any big mistakes.
:wall:
Heseltine has always been more straightforward than the average Tory, fwiw.
There are many well intentioned, highly capable Conservative MPs, of whom Heseltine was one.
I beg to differ. You overestimate the quality and integrity of the intake if Heseltine was simply ‘one of many’ and at the same time do a disservice to the man.
Well, we'll have to agree to disagree then, I still think that there are many Conservative MPs who are capable and have the best intentions, I might not agree with them, but they are perfectly decent. I think the current situation is that the government is awful, and appears naive, arrogant and incompetent. Labour is looking pretty credible, for example Rachel Reeves is an ex B of E economist, Kwarsi Kwarteng , as far as I know, worked at a hedge fund. Yvette cooper is far more experienced and on top of her brief than Suella Braverman. The Conservatives seem to be mainly concerned with ripping chunks out of each other: https://news.sky.com/story/home-secretary-suella-braverman-attacks-tory-mps-who-staged-coup-over-45p-tax-rate-12711959
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No one on this, or any other thread, has said there aren’t decent and intelligent Tory members of parliament, so I don’t disagree with that Toby. But people of Heseltine’s stature, or Ken Clarke’s? There’s no one. Grieve, Stewart, Soubry, Gauke, even Mitchell, decent and able, undoubtedly. All trying unsuccessfully to stem a rising tide of vicious nonsense., but not at the same level, not yet at least.
The point you made which I disagree with, is that someone who has been genuinely impressive and open minded is ‘one of many’. It’s been a long time since you can make a credible case that there are many outstanding MPs of integrity and intelligence on the Tory benches. Run of the mill, decent constituency representatives- of course. But outstanding? No chance. Those days are well behind us, more’s the pity.
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Neither Grieve, Gauke, Stewart or Soubry are current MPs which dilutes the point even further. If Mitchell is the best example of a big hitter one can only laugh! Saying that there are Tory MPs who pass basic standards of human decency is not a glowing endorsement. There are some who do a decent job at representing their constituency but there is not a single bighitter in the entire party at the moment, it is completely barren. Suggestions welcome.
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Surely the recent leadership race proved that? It was a selection from a shower of shit, and we ended up with the shiniest turd.
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I used to think it was a bit far fetched when people suggested the Tories were throwing away the election to lump Labour with cleaning up their mess, but now I’m not so sure. Either that or Truss has been a sleeper inside the party.
They can’t seem to do anything without fucking it up, not even communicate a date without sewing confusion (23rd Nov or not?!). Or U-turn without doubling back. I can see why members are pining for Johnson to return.
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No one on this, or any other thread, has said there aren’t decent and intelligent Tory members of parliament, so I don’t disagree with that Toby. But people of Heseltine’s stature, or Ken Clarke’s? ...
The point you made which I disagree with, is that someone who has been genuinely impressive and open minded is ‘one of many’. It’s been a long time since you can make a credible case that there are many outstanding MPs of integrity and intelligence on the Tory benches. Run of the mill, decent constituency representatives- of course. But outstanding? No chance. Those days are well behind us, more’s the pity.
The ones you mentioned are essentially centrists, with whom I'd (and I'm going to suggest you) probably agree on many things. Okay I think you're right that there aren't many, I was wrong there. But, there are MPs I really don't agree with who probably would have considerable stature, if they hadn't been consigned to the back benches by Johnson and Truss, who appear to be terrified of being outperformed by their ministers. People such as Sajid Javid, Jeremy Hunt or Michael Gove are highly intelligent and actually interested in policy rather than populism, I don't agree with them politically but they'd be an awful lot more competent than the likes of the current bunch. It is a low bar, however!
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Chilling stuff from Braverman yesterday.
Her conference speech is getting all the headlines, which was bad...
https://www.independent.co.uk/independentpremium/news-analysis/suella-braverman-migrants-conference-speech-b2195581.html
... but the interview she did with the telegraph is arguably even worse. Much more wide ranging, attacking people on benefits, foreign students, police officers, the works.
True blue Suella Braverman faces down tax rebels
‘Unapologetic’ Home Secretary accuses Tory MPs of staging a ‘coup’ over 45p rate and sets out welfare and migration reforms
Suella Braverman has accused Tory rebels of staging a “coup” to force the Government to scrap its plan to abolish the 45p top rate of income tax.
In a wide-ranging interview for The Telegraph’s Chopper’s Politics podcast at the Conservative Party Conference, the Home Secretary entered the debate over welfare spending cuts by warning Britain still had a “Benefits Street culture”, even in the more prosperous South.
She also set out her vision to bring net migration down to tens of thousands in the long term while promising new laws to ensure anyone who deliberately entered the UK illegally from a “safe” country such as France would be returned to their home state or relocated to Rwanda to claim asylum.
A whirlwind series of conference appearances, starting with her Telegraph interview, established her reputation as a new heroine of the Tory grassroots with a standing ovation before she had even finished her speech in the main auditorium.
She opened with a defence of scrapping the 45p rate, saying: “I’m very disappointed that members of our own parliamentary party staged a coup effectively and undermined the authority of the Prime Minister in an unprofessional way.”
She singled out Michael Gove, her former Cabinet colleague, for “airing your dirty linen” in public rather than in private, adding that she was “very disappointed” by his intervention, though she accepted the reasons for the subsequent reversal of the policy.
Asked about her stance on the internal Tory row on whether benefits should be linked to inflation, Mrs Braverman said that she supported welfare spending cuts during her leadership campaign. She warned Britain still had a “Benefits Street-kind of culture”.
“There is a stubborn core of our population that sees welfare as the go-to option and is not motivated for financial or other reasons to get out there and work,” she said, arguing there should be more “sticks” to get people back into employment alongside the many “carrots”.
However, she said would not “take a view” in the current Cabinet debate, saying she was “sitting on the fence” and would support Liz Truss “in exploring this”.
Mrs Braverman declared that her “ultimate aspiration” was to get net migration down into the tens of thousands, a target that was scrapped by Boris Johnson. She declined to put a timescale on it, but maintained it was her “unfiltered, unvarnished, unapologetic” aim to bring down net migration despite the push for growth.
She indicated that she would be targeting foreign students on “sub-standard” courses in “inadequate” universities, their dependants and “low-skilled” workers in, for example, agriculture where farmers should be turning to automation and local UK employees.
Net migration is running at 230,000 people a year – similar to pre-Brexit levels – and Home Office figures this summer revealed that the number of visas for foreign nationals to live, study and work in the UK had exceeded a million for the first time. That included a 170 per cent rise in dependants.
She said: “You see quite a large number of students bringing family members. If you’re coming here for an undergraduate degree, is it justifiable that you bring your family members? If you’re coming here on low-skilled work on a temporary visa, is it justifiable that you bring your family members in? No.”
Mrs Braverman accepted high-skilled worker visas for “techno-geeks”, such as broadband or software engineers, could increase to tackle shortages and boost economic growth, but argued that was not “mutually exclusive” from bringing down overall immigration.
Acknowledging that there were no “quick fixes” to end the Channel migrant crisis, she confirmed plans to change the law to prevent illegal migrants and foreign criminals “abusing” the European Convention on Human Rights and Modern Slavery Act to avoid deportation.
Addressing the conference, she fleshed it out to applause from the party faithful: “I will commit to you today, that I will look to bring forward legislation to make it clear that the only route to the United Kingdom is through a safe and legal route.
“If you deliberately enter the United Kingdom illegally from a safe country, you should be swiftly returned to your home country or relocated to Rwanda that is where your asylum claim will be considered.”
She admitted it could be months before the legal challenge that has grounded deportation flights of migrants to Rwanda has completed its course through the British and European courts. However, she said that she was “actively looking” at other destination countries where migrants could be sent to claim asylum.
Mrs Braverman defended negotiating a new deal to pay the French to combat the record 33,000 migrant small boat crossings this year, saying that France had stopped 40 to 50 per cent of crossings, or 20,000 migrants.
“It’s not good enough, but it’s better than nothing,” she said, adding she wanted 70 to 80 per cent.
Mrs Braverman, a near fluent French speaker, hinted that she would like joint beach patrols in northern France with British law enforcement agencies working “hand in hand” with the French. “They have 200 gendarmes [on the beaches], we need to double that,” she added.
Turning to crime, Mrs Braverman revealed that she once had been on her phone in central London when a mugger on a moped plucked it from her hand and drove off without stopping.
She told police, but “all they were interested in was the crime number for insurance purposes… not actually getting any retribution or justice”.
She cited the incident as evidence of the “crisis of confidence” in the police, which meant criminals believed they could escape justice because they would not be caught or charged by officers.
“It’s a very sad state of affairs, particularly on a Conservative watch as the party of law and order,” she said.
She blamed a “distortion of priorities” where the “PC [politically correct] brigade” obsessed with inclusion, diversity and equality had taken officers away from the “common sense policing” doing the “basics” of solving crimes and catching offenders.
Criticising officers who took the knee or danced the macarena at Pride festivals, the Home Secretary said she believed in the “broken windows” philosophy of taking a tough stance on all crime.
“I want anti-social behaviour to no longer be dismissed as a nuisance by the police, but actually fundamental to law and order,” she said.
She urged police to take a hard line against cannabis and other “recreational” drugs, which she said was “absolutely the wrong term” for substances that were dangerous, harmful and which fuelled violence.
She criticised not only middle-class users who ignored the violence behind the drugs trade, but also middle-class parents “who turn a blind eye to their teenage kids who are routinely sourcing cannabis or weed or pot or whatever you call it”.
Mrs Braverman said she would not apologise for the British Empire, saying how her parents from Kenya and Mauritius extolled the virtues of the Empire which had provided infrastructure, legal systems, civil service and the military.
However, she told the audience that she feared Britain was losing sight of its core values and culture: “The unexamined drive towards multiculturalism as an end in itself combined with the corrosive aspects of identity politics has led us astray.”
She cited that even in Leicester, “a beacon of religious harmony”, there had been riots and civil disorder between Hindus and Muslims “because of failures to integrate large numbers of newcomers”.
Copied cos the telegraph is paywalled. Really troubling if she gets a big following of MPs, she's like another Patel but maybe even worse? The whole thing lacks any real substance but contains all the necessary quotes to whip up a right wing frenzy.
Hopefully this whole cabinet collapses soon enough and that can sideline her for the rest of this parliament.
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Did you see the video of her talking about planes to Rwanda, the glee in which she was talking about deporting people who've been through life changing trauma and tragedy. She's sick in the head that one!
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Hi Toby, I’ve no argument with you, I just think we view those politicians differently. The three you mention all have talent, but are not afraid to misuse it, so that disqualifies them from being men of stature in my eyes.
Javid has given too many dog whistles for me. I also think a country should take responsibility for its citizens. Stripping Shamima Begum of citizenship was populist and cowardly.
Hunt, defender of the NHS now, but when in office… not so much. Maybe the doctors here would share their views about Hunt, contracts and weekend working.
Gove? Good if you are happy about stopping the sports coordinators and the building schools for the future programme. Good if you like forced academisation against the will of local communities, the wilful destruction of expertise such as SIPs in Local Authorities and massive transfer of publicly held assets on school sites into private hands (or theft, as most would see it when something they own is given to private interests). Great if you don’t like oversight and believe the Secretary of State can effectively manage every one of the 5,539 academies in the country. Great if you are an academy exec, of which 98 were paid more than the prime minister (£158,750) in 2019-20. Paid by public taxation. Great if you think the £4bn+ spent on free schools has delivered value for money.
Not so great if you want evidence that academisation improves school results over time. Not so good if you want public funding per pupil to be spent on children, rather than company profit and wasteful messing around with structures. It’s 12 years since he and Cummings set all this in motion; a whole generation blighted. Williamson was useless, but Gove did the deeper damage.
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Did you see the video of her talking about planes to Rwanda, the glee in which she was talking about deporting people who've been through life changing trauma and tragedy. She's sick in the head that one!
‘I would love to be having a front page of The Telegraph with a plane taking off to Rwanda. That’s my dream. That’s my obsession’.
https://twitter.com/i/status/1577356617154183183
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edit. That's too unpleasant for quips.
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Interesting comment piece in the Times this morning by James Marriott:
"It’s now clear that an appreciation of Latin poetry and a PhD in 17th-century coinage aren’t enough to stop a man from crashing the economy. Kwasi Kwarteng’s intellectual armoury sounded intimidating but it turns out that when the pound is jittering and kicking like a spooked mule, you can’t soothe it with a few well-chosen verses from Horace. Intriguingly, even as bits of the economy were falling off and bursting into flames, the chancellor’s allies continued to insist their man was “formidably” intelligent. The guy writes poetry in Latin. And if you ever wanted an informed opinion on the coinage crisis of 1695-97 . . .
Obviously, these aren’t the limits of the chancellor’s achievements. But they have been strangely prominent in the case for the defence. The British reverence for stuffy, old-fashioned indicators of superior intelligence remains as fervent and misguided as ever.
Even after our last prime minister worked tirelessly to prove there is no link between fluency in ancient Greek and competence in government, many are still unduly impressed by an establishment drawl and a familiarity with some of the more obvious sayings of Shakespeare. Put an Englishman in a smart blazer, teach him a Latin aphorism and an alarming number of his compatriots will leap to acclaim him as an intellectual."
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And now they finally play their Trump card by denouncing anyone who opposes them as part of a traitorous anti-growth coalition. The slide into fascism continues.
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MGBGA doesn't quite work as well. Actually MEGA works though, when are the the indy refs :)
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And now they finally play their Trump card by denouncing anyone who opposes them as part of a traitorous anti-growth coalition. The slide into fascism continues.
It’s insanity, how long have they been in power and what has happened to growth during that time? They are the anti growth coalition! Surely they can't make this stick though..
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They are the anti growth coalition!
Anti-growth isolationists surely? Not sure there's anyone on their side to coalesce with apart from the "vested interests dressed up as think tanks" she bizarrely ranted against yesterday (IEA and Taxpayers Alliance).
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It’s insanity…
They are the anti growth coalition!
Well yes; just so.
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The IMF chief made a statement suggesting economic instability, high inflation and low growth (recession in fact) are here for the foreseeable. But, what do they know, they're woke remoaners after all! Truss and gang believe they know better than both the markets and most mainstream economists :badidea:
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And now they finally play their Trump card by denouncing anyone who opposes them as part of a traitorous anti-growth coalition. The slide into fascism continues.
Its clearly not facism. However it is an unpleasant and concerning slight on the media and anyone who criticises her policy. It was, I think a mark of desperation, an attempt to unite her party and distract them from trying to get rid of her before Christmas. She made no argument for her plans other than saying 'growth' 30 times, which is all very well, until she tells people it means no levelling up, reducing public services and increasing migration, which would lose most of the rest of the Conservative voters.
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She made no argument for her plans other than saying 'growth' 30 times, which is all very well, until she tells people it means no levelling up, reducing public services and increasing migration, which would lose most of the rest of the Conservative voters.
Don't forget tarmacing over the green belt which Tories in the shires love. Oh wait.
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https://www.euronews.com/green/2022/10/04/world-first-nuclear-fusion-plant-could-generate-carbon-free-energy-by-2040-uk-government-c
Given the utter lack of attachment to reality that our government has, what's the bets they've done zero due diligence on it and it's got about a 5% chance of even being built...
too cynical? Probably not: https://news.newenergytimes.net/2021/10/18/former-head-of-u-k-fusion-said-tokamak-energy-ltd-made-baseless-fusion-promises/
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Fusion seems to have been about 20 years in the future for the past 40-50 years, so this seems about right 😂
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She may yet be more successful at some point, but at the moment, it really doesn't seem likely that the Truss administration has the potential lifespan or basic competence to actually do very much of what they're threatening to. Braverman may want to stop anyone at all claiming asylum and increase police numbers, and get every robbery attended by a SWAT team, but she's unlikely to be allowed the funds to do much of it is my guess. The fact that she heavily massaged her legal CV to get where she is suggests that her knowledge of international law might not be that great either. Never mind the risk of Putin starting a wider European war, I wonder if Truss has considered it to save her political skin?
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She may yet be more successful at some point, but at the moment, it really doesn't seem likely that the Truss administration has the potential lifespan or basic competence to actually do very much of what they're threatening to. Braverman may want to stop anyone at all claiming asylum and increase police numbers, and get every robbery attended by a SWAT team, but she's unlikely to be allowed the funds to do much of it is my guess. The fact that she heavily massaged her legal CV to get where she is suggests that her knowledge of international law might not be that great either. Never mind the risk of Putin starting a wider European war, I wonder if Truss has considered it to save her political skin?
I don’t think a “wider European war” is a likely thing, at least not for more than a couple of days. Should he launch an attack on Europe or NATO, then his conventional forces would be decimated in hours or at most a few days. This would, I fear, mean an almost certain escalation to strategic weapon use, by Russia, or submit utterly to “the West”; which seems vanishingly unlikely. Gut feeling is, he won’t, or should he think of trying, someone on his “inside” will resolve the issue internally. Hopefully with a baseball bat and starting at his toes. Sorry, bit tired of that idiot now.
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She may yet be more successful at some point, but at the moment, it really doesn't seem likely that the Truss administration has the potential lifespan or basic competence to actually do very much of what they're threatening to. Braverman may want to stop anyone at all claiming asylum and increase police numbers, and get every robbery attended by a SWAT team, but she's unlikely to be allowed the funds to do much of it is my guess. The fact that she heavily massaged her legal CV to get where she is suggests that her knowledge of international law might not be that great either. Never mind the risk of Putin starting a wider European war, I wonder if Truss has considered it to save her political skin?
I don’t think a “wider European war” is a likely thing, at least not for more than a couple of days. Should he launch an attack on Europe or NATO, then his conventional forces would be decimated in hours or at most a few days. This would, I fear, mean an almost certain escalation to strategic weapon use, by Russia, or submit utterly to “the West”; which seems vanishingly unlikely. Gut feeling is, he won’t, or should he think of trying, someone on his “inside” will resolve the issue internally. Hopefully with a baseball bat and starting at his toes. Sorry, bit tired of that idiot now.
I think most people will emphasize with that. He's just made everything in Europe more expensive and difficult, whilst his demise can't come soon enough, I wonder if the replacement would be worse
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He's just made everything in Europe more expensive and difficult
Whilst simultaneously managing to achieve the same in Russia!
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I think most people will emphasize with that.
Is this a wild eggcorn?
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John Lanchester on government as LARPing.
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v44/n20/john-lanchester/inside-the-thatcher-larp (https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v44/n20/john-lanchester/inside-the-thatcher-larp)
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Re Michael Gove, he and Johnson wrote about the benefits of leaving the EU in the Sun newspaper on May 30 2016. See for yourself how many of their predictions have come good:
(unwilling to link to the paper, here’s the quote)
Writing exclusively for the Sun, the Tory "Out" campaigners promise: "Fuel bills will be lower for everyone."
Currently, VAT of five per cent adds over £60 to domestic dual-fuel bills.
Brussels bans member states from going below five per cent.
Labour’s Gisela Stuart has also signed the piece, which argues that leaving the EU will also boost wages and allow the UK to regain control of our borders.
It says: "We believe working people will be better off if we leave the EU.
"The NHS will be stronger, class sizes smaller, and taxes lower.
"We’ll have more money to spend on our priorities, wages will be higher and fuel bills will be lower.
"Leaving the EU is a great opportunity for us to take back control of our borders, our economy and our democracy."
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Strangely enough, the opinion of the IFS and almost every economist, those experts people had apparently had enough of, was entirely correct, and Johnson was wrong. Severing your best trading position with your nearest neighbour makes you poorer, not richer.
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A pithy opinion on the budget by an ft correspondent https://twitter.com/aljwhite/status/1580282141329719296?t=0UuOjQW4Fx1Jo99MLc797w&s=19
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A pithy opinion on the budget by an ft correspondent https://twitter.com/aljwhite/status/1580282141329719296?t=0UuOjQW4Fx1Jo99MLc797w&s=19
I was listening to Today yesterday morning when JRM first made this claim and I was willing Mishal Hussain to say exactly this to him.
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I loved the apology for it having been subtitled bullocks in the clip
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[wad] Krishnan Guru-Murthy
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Reports of a dude with a black hood and a big ax heading to Downing Street.
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Reports of a dude with a black hood and a big ax heading to Downing Street.
Sounds like Kwarteng is about to be sacked.
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Reports of a dude with a black hood and a big ax heading to Downing Street.
Sounds like Kwarteng is about to be sacked.
... and now he's gone according to the BBC
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Megalolz
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Megalolz
Indeed. Turning on each other like a pack of dogs.
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Reports of a dude with a black hood and a big ax heading to Downing Street.
The new secretary of state for Health and Social Care? Here to get rid of the demand-side issues the NHS is facing.
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Ms Coffey seems to be doing her best on that front by stopping any schemes that may help people not be obese, stop smoking, etc.
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Absolutely brutal questioning by the media for Truss after her statement;
- Are you going to apologise to your party?
- Why has Kwasi gone but you get to stay?
- What credibility do you still have?
Etc. And this from The Telegraph, The Sun, ITV and the BBC!
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The vacant goldfish effect as she scanned the room looking for a friendly face....
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Does anybody have a link to this snuff?
Edit: Oh my god, this is a bit too strong for me. Not nice seeing footage of someone dying (inside).
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/uk-politics-63221738
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Absolutely brutal questioning by the media for Truss after her statement;
- Are you going to apologise to your party?
- Why has Kwasi gone but you get to stay?
- What credibility do you still have?
These are all pretty fair and legitimate questions if you ask me, given the events of the last few weeks. Not exactly the Paxman treatment.
They only seem harsh ‘cos we’ve got so used to them getting such an easy ride. Or in her and Bojo’s case avoiding scrutiny altogether.
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Edit: Oh my god, this is a bit too strong for me. Not nice seeing footage of someone dying (inside).
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/uk-politics-63221738
If she says economic stability one more time I might start kicking over furniture.
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Careful with the furniture. We don’t want uneconomic instability.
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Careful with the furniture. We don’t want uneconomic instability.
We already have that so go wild with the furniture.
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The vacant goldfish effect as she scanned the room looking for a friendly face....
This was pure gold :popcorn:
Chris from the BBC was not what she was looking for. :lol:
Here you go WillH At 2 mins 5 secs..
https://youtu.be/v596DjZUmbk
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Does anybody have a link to this snuff?
Edit: Oh my god, this is a bit too strong for me. Not nice seeing footage of someone dying (inside).
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/uk-politics-63221738
It's ok, you can watch it with a clear conscience. She's been dead inside for a long, long time.
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I few like the fixed term parliament act needs some clause to avoid these sorts of omnishambles!
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Absolutely brutal questioning by the media for Truss after her statement;
- Are you going to apologise to your party?
- Why has Kwasi gone but you get to stay?
- What credibility do you still have?
Etc. And this from The Telegraph, The Sun, ITV and the BBC!
It was just dire wasn't it. If that's your first question and it's from the torygraph, you know it's only downhill from there.
The summary of her speech was she wants growth (who doesn't). The reality is she's achieved the opposite and has no plan.
Rishi in by December? I guess they'll avoid another leadership contest and come up with a way to slip him in quickly. And then do anything to avoid a GE for as long as possible, they would literally be wiped off the map as it stands.
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Absolutely brutal questioning by the media for Truss after her statement;
- Are you going to apologise to your party?
- Why has Kwasi gone but you get to stay?
- What credibility do you still have?
These are all pretty fair and legitimate questions if you ask me, given the events of the last few weeks. Not exactly the Paxman treatment.
They only seem harsh ‘cos we’ve got so used to them getting such an easy ride. Or in her and Bojo’s case avoiding scrutiny altogether.
Yeah of course, but have you ever seen a press conference like it?!
She's literally making it worse in her attempt to fix it. I can only imagine Hunt has accepted the Chancellor job because he thinks it'll give himself another shot at the top.
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Yeah of course, but have you ever seen a press conference like it?!
She's literally making it worse in her attempt to fix it.
Nope, it was diabolical. Johnson did some pretty abysmal speeches and press conferences but he did have an ability to bluster his way through somehow. She is completely out of her depth and has been found out.
Also ironic that as she was literally saying the words economic stability the pound was tanking again.
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I can only imagine Hunt has accepted the Chancellor job because he thinks it'll give himself another shot at the top.
The guy who wanted to cut corporation tax even further than Truss did :lol:
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Week a long time etc. I said the markets would kill this. Within 6 months Hunt to replace Truss as PM, Sunak returning as Chancellor. The trigger to justify Hunt replacing Truss will be some kind of systemic US and European financial markets instability event requiring another change of policy from all, which is v.likely just a matter of time now. Truss will be a footnote in history as shortest serving PM in ages, perhaps the idiot tory party members who elected her might have learned something about ideology meeting political reality although it's doubtful.
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Be interesting to see if they do get to have another PM without answering the calls for a GE, heck are coming from inside their party as much as outside
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I really wanted one of the journalists to challenge her when she said she would always act in the national interest; surely the only thing that would be in the national interest now is a general election.
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I can barely type out a post fast enough to be relevant and keep up with this absolute face.
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I really wanted one of the journalists to challenge her when she said she would always act in the national interest; surely the only thing that would be in the national interest now is a general election.
I thought this too, but she would no doubt just blunder through it with buzzwords aplenty. Been a long time since questions like that got genuine answers!
And apparently now, the new tactic is just leave when you think you've had enough of the questions :furious: next press conference, no questions at all?
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I really wanted one of the journalists to challenge her when she said she would always act in the national interest; surely the only thing that would be in the national interest now is a general election.
I thought this too, but she would no doubt just blunder through it with buzzwords aplenty. Been a long time since questions like that got genuine answers!
And apparently now, the new tactic is just leave when you think you've had enough of the questions :furious: next press conference, no questions at all?
It hardly seems worth asking her that many questions, I can't see her staying in office very long, maybe til Christmas but unless something changes not much longer. There's no way they'd call for an election now, it can't be much worse for them in the polls than now, can it? Having said that....
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Two thoughts;
- I wonder whether Hunt will now become the de facto leader, with Truss remaining as PM in name only. Mentions today of him being the "Chief Executive" to her Presidency, but I think her authority is so completely shot that she'll struggle to do anything she wants to do. It's the Jeremy Hunt administration now.
- Is this the logical conclusion of having party leaders chosen by party memberships and not by MPs? Less than a third of MPs supported her, so she was always going to find it difficult when a majority didn't want her in the first place. Clearly she's shot herself in both feet as well.
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Truss to be moved out and Hunt to take over I expect. He isn’t, in my view, one of the good guys. As the longest serving health secretary and culture secretary during Leveson, it is clear he’s a very skilful politician, but very right wing, despite his unctuous manner. I expect similar politics, just conducted intelligently.
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As an aside to the current tory volatility, it's an interesting display of tory parliamentary party preference (Hunt/Sunak) rapidly overriding tory party membership preference (Truss). In contrast to Labour party membership preference (Corbyn) overriding Labour parliamentary party preference (Burnham/Cooper). Although volatility of markets probably accelerated the change in the case of Truss in a way it didn't need to in the case of Corbyn.
In both cases party membership majority preference were shown to be unrealistic. Which perhaps hints at a larger truth that ideological extremes aren't tolerated by the 21st century economic system. Nice comfy centre only, doesn't matter what you call it.
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Truss is a political jellyfish compared to Hunt, and not the kind that stings. Just listen to him in this interview and compare to anything Truss has done. What a vast authority gap there is now on Downing St!
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m001d4mh
1:10:00
Incredible to think that his continued presence in the party is a miracle given that he never bowed to Johnson and sniped the govt from the Health Select Committee. This is one of the big issues the party has. They've purged or recently shafted so many of their most competent politicians.
For weekend lolz listen to Miriam Margolyes' hot take at 1:30:20.
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Week a long time etc. I said the markets would kill this. Within 6 months Hunt to replace Truss as PM, Sunak returning as Chancellor. The trigger to justify Hunt replacing Truss will be some kind of systemic US and European financial markets instability event requiring another change of policy from all, which is v.likely just a matter of time now. Truss will be a footnote in history as shortest serving PM in ages, perhaps the idiot tory party members who elected her might have learned something about ideology meeting political reality although it's doubtful.
What's your view as to what this market instability event might look like and how it might be triggered?
UK politicians would do well to remember this classic Clinton quote (from Bob Woodward's book, The Agenda:-(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EB-nJkYXsAAcqnU?format=png&name=900x900)
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It could be any number of triggers, it doesn't really matter what the trigger is that shocks markets into severe instability. What matters is that the pressures resulting from the particular set of circumstances the west finds itself in make severe market instability more likely than not.
The current favorite: the European energy trading market getting margin-called beyond its capacity to pay. This is the purpose of the next BoE emergency funding package to be launched on Monday. Which the media will no doubt make sound like the next end of the world. Likewise a similar ECB emergency funding measure with the same purpose - to backstop energy trading companies with central bank capital to meet margin calls.
BTW the BoE's £60Bn bond buying didn't happen. They bought ~£21Bn. And had to tighten the criteria mid way as hedge funds were gaming the extra liquidity to make profits from the BoE support measures. The same gaming the system is feared to happen if/when central banks intervene into margin calls on Euro energy companies.
These triggers will find the weakest spots in markets eventually. And predators will always find ways to game any system and profit from any efforts to provide stability.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2022/10/15/bank-englands-40bn-push-stop-another-lehman-moment/
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BTW the BoE's £60Bn bond buying didn't happen. They bought ~£21Bn. And had to tighten the criteria mid way as hedge funds were gaming the extra liquidity to make profits from the BoE support measures. The same gaming the system is feared to happen if/when central banks intervene into margin calls on Euro energy companies.
These triggers will find the weakest spots in markets eventually. And predators will always find ways to game any system and profit from any efforts to provide stability.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2022/10/15/bank-englands-40bn-push-stop-another-lehman-moment/
Good to know you can always rely on stock brokers to be cunts. Hopefully a few of them will end up in prison this crash unlike 2008.
I guess if the BoE had been forced to spend the whole £60bn it would be likely they would have had to fork out more, so it’s a good news story they didn’t?
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As an aside to the current tory volatility, it's an interesting display of tory parliamentary party preference (Hunt/Sunak) rapidly overriding tory party membership preference (Truss). In contrast to Labour party membership preference (Corbyn) overriding Labour parliamentary party preference (Burnham/Cooper). Although volatility of markets probably accelerated the change in the case of Truss in a way it didn't need to in the case of Corbyn.
In both cases party membership majority preference were shown to be unrealistic. Which perhaps hints at a larger truth that ideological extremes aren't tolerated by the 21st century economic system. Nice comfy centre only, doesn't matter what you call it.
If Corbyn had been in power I imagine the markets would have forced the same process on Labour that the Tories are undergoing. It says a lot about how detached and unrealistic party members are collectively on both sides and they shouldn't be allowed anywhere near the process if you want an an effective party leader with appeal outside their little bubble...
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Good to know you can always rely on stock brokers to be cunts. Hopefully a few of them will end up in prison this crash unlike 2008.
I guess if the BoE had been forced to spend the whole £60bn it would be likely they would have had to fork out more, so it’s a good news story they didn’t?
Hedge funds: https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/wild-uk-market-swings-opportunity-lifetime-hedge-funds-2022-09-28/
I'm sure they'd say they were just taking part in an open market process with great risk to themselves (with massive central bank liquidity as incentive and some forced selling going on). Doubt morality would come into it and you can probably argue every shade of grey once you get into the weeds. The pension funds' choices for instance. Sadly most markets are ponzis when you unwrap the onion layers for long enough, with a core value much lower than the frothiness. Some markets just have a more respectable mask created by the bullshit you're fed by banks and governments of any stripe.
If Corbyn had been in power I imagine the markets would have forced the same process on Labour that the Tories are undergoing. It says a lot about how detached and unrealistic party members are collectively on both sides and they shouldn't be allowed anywhere near the process if you want an an effective party leader with appeal outside their little bubble...
Yep no doubt. Wonder if, in an alternate universe, Corbyn and McDonnell would have persisted in the face of market pressure against whatever policy they were trying to pass. The hard left seem even more authoritative once they have their power challenged even than the hard right. Maybe would have had Andrew Bailey sent to the tower for re-education, or just prolonged turmoil.
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As an aside to the current tory volatility, it's an interesting display of tory parliamentary party preference (Hunt/Sunak) rapidly overriding tory party membership preference (Truss). In contrast to Labour party membership preference (Corbyn) overriding Labour parliamentary party preference (Burnham/Cooper). Although volatility of markets probably accelerated the change in the case of Truss in a way it didn't need to in the case of Corbyn.
In both cases party membership majority preference were shown to be unrealistic. Which perhaps hints at a larger truth that ideological extremes aren't tolerated by the 21st century economic system. Nice comfy centre only, doesn't matter what you call it.
If Corbyn had been in power I imagine the markets would have forced the same process on Labour that the Tories are undergoing. It says a lot about how detached and unrealistic party members are collectively on both sides and they shouldn't be allowed anywhere near the process if you want an an effective party leader with appeal outside their little bubble...
Quite right, there is no way that party members should have a say. Neither party has a fully transparent membership structure, or way of anyone knowing if they're even all UK citizens, or indeed real people (tortoise media did an investigation where they enrolled 'Mr tortoise' as a conservative party member, apparently). Memberships choose ideological leaders, rather than competent ones, it seems.
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As an aside to the current tory volatility, it's an interesting display of tory parliamentary party preference (Hunt/Sunak) rapidly overriding tory party membership preference (Truss). In contrast to Labour party membership preference (Corbyn) overriding Labour parliamentary party preference (Burnham/Cooper). Although volatility of markets probably accelerated the change in the case of Truss in a way it didn't need to in the case of Corbyn.
In both cases party membership majority preference were shown to be unrealistic. Which perhaps hints at a larger truth that ideological extremes aren't tolerated by the 21st century economic system. Nice comfy centre only, doesn't matter what you call it.
If Corbyn had been in power I imagine the markets would have forced the same process on Labour that the Tories are undergoing. It says a lot about how detached and unrealistic party members are collectively on both sides and they shouldn't be allowed anywhere near the process if you want an an effective party leader with appeal outside their little bubble...
Quite right, there is no way that party members should have a say. Neither party has a fully transparent membership structure, or way of anyone knowing if they're even all UK citizens, or indeed real people (tortoise media did an investigation where they enrolled 'Mr tortoise' as a conservative party member, apparently). Memberships choose ideological leaders, rather than competent ones, it seems.
The Conservative party tried to change the way in which it elects its leader in 2005 but the party/1922 committee voted against it. I've done a bit of reading but it is all so f****ing complicated that I got very lost very quickly - it's almost as if they don't want people to know how it does/doesn't/might work....
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Good to know you can always rely on stock brokers investment bankers / hedge funds to be cunts. Hopefully a few of them will end up in prison this crash unlike 2008.
Terminology correction; stock broking is a bit of an outdated term, and brokers aren't involved in this sort of thing anyway.
Hedge funds: https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/wild-uk-market-swings-opportunity-lifetime-hedge-funds-2022-09-28/
I'm sure they'd say they were just taking part in an open market process with great risk to themselves (with massive central bank liquidity as incentive and some forced selling going on).
The irony here being that one of the things Truss and Kwarteng were trying to address (badly) was the reliance on cheap money and extreme liquidity, which has essentially propped everything up artificially for the last decade.
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Good to know you can always rely on stock brokers investment bankers / hedge funds to be cunts. Hopefully a few of them will end up in prison this crash unlike 2008.
Terminology correction; stock broking is a bit of an outdated term, and brokers aren't involved in this sort of thing anyway.
Hedge funds: https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/wild-uk-market-swings-opportunity-lifetime-hedge-funds-2022-09-28/
I'm sure they'd say they were just taking part in an open market process with great risk to themselves (with massive central bank liquidity as incentive and some forced selling going on).
The irony here being that one of the things Truss and Kwarteng were trying to address (badly) was the reliance on cheap money and extreme liquidity, which has essentially propped everything up artificially for the last decade.
Why “artificially”?
All financial markets and financial systems are at heart artificial, aren’t they?
“Here mate, you Labour all day for me and I’ll give you this bit of paper, that you can swap for food (or beer).” It’s all LARPing, really, even if you replace the paper with a lump of soft, yellow, metal (which is actually pretty useless in the hands of the majority of the world’s population, you can’t even sharpen it into a knife).
So, it almost feels like you’re saying that one piece of paper, that some authority declares is worth X (or it’s digital equivalent) is actually worth less than a slightly different piece of paper, the same authority also claims is worth X.
Sometimes, from the outside, listening to those who are professionally engaged in this world, is a bit like listening to over enthusiastic D&D players.
Often I just want to scream “Fuck’s sake! The fucking Emperor’s dick is swinging in the fucking wind! Get a grip!”
Instead, I spend all day grubbing for more bits of paper and worry about how many, slightly different bits of paper from the other side of the world, my bits are worth today.
(I’m fully aware of how flippant I’m being here. It’s just that sometimes, if you lift up it’s skirts, you can’t help but remember it’s all standing on nothing but shared delusions).
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Hard to reply to that without sounding exactly like what you're railing against!
Isn't basically everything about human culture, society, religion, economics, etc. nothing more than shared belief/delusion?
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Hard to reply to that without sounding exactly like what you're railing against!
Isn't basically everything about human culture, society, religion, economics, etc. nothing more than shared belief/delusion?
Ah.
Yes.
Balls!
Well, here comes another existential crisis.
I believe I shall numb that out by heading to the wall and failing to climb something even more contrived…
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As you know Matt currently no better alternative has been discovered than the social construction* that is our financial system. We're all ears if you know a better way though. Lots have tried, most are in communes sharing food for labour. Try building a superyacht for carrots. :)
* social construction being a system of belief that has no external reality in the universe outside human beliefs. Other useful social constructions that smooth the sharp edges of different tribes of humans getting along on a shared planet: justice, human rights, the law, morality, values, religion.
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Hard to argue with this. The last few weeks is the inevitable conclusion of the Brexit delusion.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/oct/14/markets-take-back-control-brexit-humiliation-britain-suez
Even the Telegraph recently published an article admitting ‘Project Fear’ is being proved right.
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As you know Matt currently no better alternative has been discovered than the social construction* that is our financial system. We're all ears if you know a better way though. Lots have tried, most are in communes sharing food for labour. Try building a superyacht for carrots. :)
* social construction being a system of belief that has no external reality in the universe outside human beliefs. Other useful social constructions that smooth the sharp edges of different tribes of humans getting along on a shared planet: justice, human rights, the law, morality, values, religion.
Ahhh. The old the system is shit, suggest something better argument. 'Nothing has been discovered'; the present system wasn't 'discovered' it was created and as such it can be changed. Not even an attempt to improve it? Nope there's nothing better let's just keep on going until someone 'discovers' something. Madness.
Reminds me of a run in with my mentor when I was teacher training...
'You should have put him in detention'
'Oh, is he in detention a lot then?'
'Yes. Quite regularly since being at our school'
'Clearly, it's not an intervention that's working then.'
My mentor had steam coming out of every orifice, the cheek that I would challenge a system that's not working for someone. Could we try something else? Nope, that's the system we've always used. Madness!
OMM the emperor's dick is indeed swinging in the wind.. Found this interview with a former top city trader really informative and depressing but it's good to know what these people are up to. UKB middle class dad massive be afraid THEY ARE COMING FOR YOUR HOMES!
https://youtu.be/ViY-zI3b5JQ
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Umm.. I was talking about money being the best system we've so far devised for a means of exchanging goods and services. Not capitalism per se.
Don't let that stop you being triggered into a rant about capitalism though. :beer2:
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Worth it though for getting the link to the video! Very interesting stuff and well explained.
People have explored alternatives to the current economic system which is both unsustainable and which is making the vast majority of us poorer, read this for example: https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/49098225-another-now (https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/49098225-another-now)
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Umm.. I was talking about money being the best system we've so far devised for a means of exchanging goods and services. Not capitalism per se.
Don't let that stop you being triggered into a rant about capitalism though. :beer2:
:beer2: It was brewing... The rant that is. Probably because I'd just watched the video and then read OMMs post.
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It's definitely aggravating when you're a regular person just going to work and paying your mortgage and doing the odd bit of reading and climbing and taking drugs until 6am, and then the cunts who run the government and control the markets and generally profit of all our lives fuck everything up and suddenly your mortgage is way more and the cost of living is shooting up faster than whatever it is Elon Musk has wet dreams about.
Like I get the nature of the system and it is useful at times (if distasteful) but it definitely feels like it could be a lot lot lot fucking better.
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Interesting vid Brutus. He talks with clarity. What he didn't mention was the long-term trend dates since the early 80s as neoliberal economic policies have held sway, inequality somewhat obscured for a while by the influx of North Sea oil. Looking at the % increase in house prices over time there's a clear correlation. It should be obvious that if home ownership becomes increasingly out of reach and the threshold keeps getting higher, those who feel safe now, in time will not be. The tide keeps rising and eventually will wash away the middle classes as well as the poor.
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(https://goodmove.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/Changing-house-prices_Desktop.jpg)
Source https://goodmove.co.uk/blog/average-uk-house-prices-1980-2050/ Whether the detail is accurate or not, the overall trend is unarguable.
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Are those figures adjusted for inflation? I’m not sure they are. And the website says they just used a linear forecast function. For 30 years into the future.
:tumble:
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For illustration only… if you have time to produce a more reliable picture, please do. Here’s another adjusted view, https://www.allagents.co.uk/house-prices-adjusted/
The overall trend is still massive inflation compared to median wages ie increasing unaffordability since the early 80s. As for the future, who knows, but I can’t see house prices failing to rise relative to wages.
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But using a time series of prices without adjusting for inflation doesn’t tell you anything about how expensive something really is…
I think it is unlikely we will see house prices go down in real terms but you never know. Crashes happen. The point is that it’s a complex interplay of factors and any graph that just makes a linear extrapolation is junk!
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If Corbyn had been in power I imagine the markets would have forced the same process on Labour that the Tories are undergoing. It says a lot about how detached and unrealistic party members are collectively on both sides and they shouldn't be allowed anywhere near the process if you want an an effective party leader with appeal outside their little bubble...
Yep no doubt. Wonder if, in an alternate universe, Corbyn and McDonnell would have persisted in the face of market pressure against whatever policy they were trying to pass. The hard left seem even more authoritative once they have their power challenged even than the hard right. Maybe would have had Andrew Bailey sent to the tower for re-education, or just prolonged turmoil.
If MPs had the whip hand we might well be several years into an Owen Smith government. If only eh? There are good arguments for party members to have a say but I can't see them getting a hearing given the system has just given us Truss! Don't forget Tory MP's do carry half the can on that - they put a white Thatcher tribute act into the final two against a non-white tax-raiser the members saw as the one who brought down their darling. What did they expect to happen? They must have met their membership, they can't all be tortoises / Russian bots.
So I actually wanted to make a futile rearguard defence of this lazy equating between the "hard left" and hard right. Yes, Corbyn and McDonnell may well have received a similar market reaction to thir plans *if* they had won the 2019 election. In fact there was plenty of commentary at the time warning of this. Here you go https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2019/11/25/labours-manifesto-could-cause-run-sterling-economists-warn/ Look who they got for a quote, Mark Littlewood of the free-market nutters behind Truss, the IEA. How easily he forgot his own advice eh?
Anyway, there are numerous differences between then and now - Labour's 2019 manifesto was costed. I know that involves lots of guesswork especially on nationalisation but at least they tried to do the sums. Truss just delivered an actual budget which was not costed. Labour in their extreme leftness did not accuse the OBR of orthodoxy and leave them out of the loop. Truss did. They didn't accuse the Treasury of the same, and sack the top civil servant on day 1. Truss did. They didn't spend weeks undermining the Bank of England on TV. Truss did. McDonnell toured the city flagging his plans in advance. Truss didn't. In terms of "hardness", Truss is much, much more extreme to the right than Corbyn was to the left, although no-one even calls them hard right! Except...according to a survey of economists by the FT, at the mini-budget they were the most economically right wing government in the developed world:
(https://www.ft.com/__origami/service/image/v2/images/raw/https%3A%2F%2Fd6c748xw2pzm8.cloudfront.net%2Fprod%2Fbef89650-4005-11ed-bebd-6f2bf97c3db2-fullwidth.png?dpr=1&fit=scale-down&quality=highest&source=next&width=1260)
Labour 2019 proposed to borrow 400 billion over 10 years at very low interest rates to invest in capital projects - green energy and new schools and hospitals i.e. growth. They wanted to fund day to day spending by increasing corp tax to 26% (look familiar!) and increasing the top rate of tax. It was not communism, it was more akin to how normal European countries operate. Tories 2022 proposed to borrow money at much higher interest rates to keep corporation tax very low and give a tax cut to the very rich, along with bunging energy companies lots of money to keep energy bills at a still high level. Both Corbynomics and Trussonomics have a large element of faith in that they rely on being able to placate the markets re future debt payments, so in that way they are similar. On everything else to do with economic orthodoxy Truss is way, way more out there...
Anyway, that's old news I know, as the country actually had a vote on Corbynomics and although over 10 million people voted for it, it was rejected. Fair enough. However what the voted for instead was Brexit + Levelling Up (remember that) i.e. 40 new hospitals, 20,000 more police and nurses, reduced regional inequality, investment in infrastructure. After this summer's right wing coup they were being force fed Singapore-On-Thames. Absolutely no-one voted for that. This whole episode is the denouement of that hardest version of Brexit, which appears to have exploded on contact with reality. If anyone is looking for a silver lining in all this, then that is it.
Since the rich persons trade union (Tories) went on strike over the summer to fight amongst themselves during an energy crisis, the UK 10 year bonds went from being similar rates to Spain's, to increasingly less credible, until more or less on a par with Italy at point of mini-budget. At the same time Italy were electing a government which our own media happily describes as "far-right" - and their borrowing costs barely flinched! The past view months have seen our international borrowing credibility trashed and that is UK specific and directly caused by the Truss budget - shown by our red line moving out of step with other countries here https://en.macromicro.me/collections/43/eu-market-relative/535/eu-10-years-bonds-yield-rate-countries-in-europe
If now to fix the financial black hole caused by this we have to return to austerity then there is no mandate for that either.
With 2022 hindsight, in 2019 you had a "hard left" nutter offering to build a UK green energy network, repair austerity, and reverse the flow of inequality that has led to the top 10% holding 44% of the wealth (https://equalitytrust.org.uk/scale-economic-inequality-uk). The risk was market instability. Now we have the market instability but with absolutely nothing to show for it. It doesn't look worth it. Just my opinion.
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But using a time series of prices without adjusting for inflation doesn’t tell you anything about how expensive something really is…
I think it is unlikely we will see house prices go down in real terms but you never know. Crashes happen. The point is that it’s a complex interplay of factors and any graph that just makes a linear extrapolation is junk!
Until the rich have their assets taxed to recoup the ongoing and vast transfer of wealth from the many to the few, house prices will continue to rise, because what else are the rich going to spend their vast hoard of cash on otherwise?
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My point is not that taxing wealth is bad. It’s more that there are many determinants of house prices and any of them could change, either as an intended policy outcome, as an unintended policy outcome, or from some outside shock or trend. We don’t know what those will be yet, and history is full of examples of periods in which things seemed settled but which later turned on a dime. Total market chaos in 1930, but in just 20 years you see the imposition of a world financial system that overturns that of the previous century and which still exists in part 70 years later.
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And there it is, killed by the Hunt. Tory left and Labour right now the same party hooray.
Until the rich have their assets taxed to recoup the ongoing and vast transfer of wealth from the many to the few, house prices will continue to rise, because what else are the rich going to spend their vast hoard of cash on otherwise?
The heating bill.. Can't even burn £10 notes to stay warm anymore since they went synthetic.
More seriously. For a tax there there has to be a figure in black+white above which a tax applies, or it doesn't work. Who in your socialist utopia classes as rich? What figure do you have in mind when you say this stuff? Personally, I'd not argue with any government making owning more than two houses financial suicide. Taking the asset price inflation out of a speculative housing market would cure many ills. Would be one of the largest wealth transfers in reverse ever. But entrepreneurs growing a business (no not a buy-to-let 'business'), no way should they be over taxed imo.
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So Labour’s position on energy price cap was to review after 6 months.
Truss spent the entirety of last week’s PMQs repeating ad nauseam how her policy was better cos it lasted 2 years and Labour were cunts for not supporting it.
That’s now been changed to…errrm…let’s review it after 6 months.
This week’s PMQs is gonna be awks.
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And there it is, killed by the Hunt. Tory left and Labour right now the same party hooray.
You can almost taste the democracy, its visceral! I for one welcome our new IMF / bond market / unelected placeman overlords....
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Actually I don't, because the happier they all are, then by implication the steeper the spending cuts will be. If only there were some way of putting various proposals out there to ask ordinary people what they think?
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I for one welcome our new IMF / bond market / unelected placeman overlords....
Correct. Money talks… And there’s going to be an awful lot of further cheap QE money and lowering of bank rates needed to be available as tools for the CB’s to flood markets at some point in the early-mid 2020s, at just the most effective moment to to pull the west out of the hole. Can’t have bank rates rising too high too rapidly at the wrong moment. Ceiling of pain is the historically completely normal 5 - 6% rate, above this US and European economies in their current post-GFC low borrowing cost forms become crippled by debt costs. Part of the reason these policies needed to be killed so quickly. Ineptness at communicating and politics of course being another big reason.
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Not my view at all, but a question from a friend which I couldn’t answer…
Any decent rationale to the below question?
“Bond markets were fine with us being 2.3 trillion in debt. So why did this extra 40bn nearly caused a meltdown.”?
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Hunt as Chancellor tearing down Truss' entire economic plan and now she's ducking the UQ from Starmer and sending out Mordunt.
Feels very much like the end a somewhat brief stint as PM.
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You can almost taste the democracy, its visceral! I for one welcome our new IMF / bond market / unelected placeman overlords....
I lived through a long period in the early nighties of using a weak currency, shaky government finances, and having an incompetent but confident government. I do not recommend. If this were to happen to me again, I would — as a card carrying member of the citizens of nowhere — look for a job in another country.
The currency market is mostly just ordinary people. Regular consumers doing everyday choices about what to buy from where and when, and how much to save in what form. Speculators have almost no cash at hand compared to the aggregate demand of all citizens in a country together with all consumers in every country that trade with that country.
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Not my view at all, but a question from a friend which I couldn’t answer…
Any decent rationale to the below question?
“Bond markets were fine with us being 2.3 trillion in debt. So why did this extra 40bn nearly caused a meltdown.”?
That has the relationship a bit wrong. The bond market *is * the debt. In this case government debt is paid for by the DMO selling government bonds (guilts) to pay for government spending.
The cost of that debt is the yield on the bond. And the yield on the bond goes up when confidence in the ability of the government to adequately finance said debt goes down.
It wasn't £40Bn that tipped anything. The cost of the Energy Price Guarantee was/in £60Bn in the first 6 months, and it was going to last for up to 2 years. Then the tax cuts amounted to around another £45Bn in tax take not coming in.
Without details forthcoming of how this could be afforded, market participants in bond markets demanded a higher yield to compensate for the perceived higher risk of investing in UK bonds. So bond yields rose as market confidence lowered.
In reality there's far more to it than that - not least the market taking advantage of the government putting itself into the position of being a forced seller of bonds by the way it positioned itself with its timing and language when announcing the 'mini budget'. Ineptness. 'Laying the pitch' and all that bollocks is partly preparing the market participants to accept (by believing its a good investment) what you want to sell, in this case guilts.
But compounding the situation was the unintended consequence of defined benefit pension funds having their dirty secrets unearthed by an unlikely set of events, in that to juice their balance sheets a bit they'd been using more leverage than widely supposed, via a sequence of hedges which normally wouldn't be an issue except in a highly unlikely scenario of rapidly rising bond yields... This forced some funds into forced selling of assets to cover balance sheet losses because guilt prices had suddenly dropped (price of a bond drops when its yield rises). Forced selling of guilts dropped guilt prices further, doom price spiral ensues as more funds' balance sheets start to turn red. BoE step in as buyer of last resort.
Bigger picture again is the fact the west cannot, following 12 years of ultra low borrowing costs and imaginary money pumped in to bond markets to provide liquidity in the wake of the GFC leading to repress interest rates, cannot afford rates to rise higher than 5-6% and can’t afford them rising too rapidly (before, some suggest, the last decade of debt is inflated down to more managable levels...) without a crippling severe recession possibly needing further QE type stimulus to get out of. We’ve become too used to low rates and our borrowing habits and debt levels reflect that. Can't have rates rising too rapidly without it all failing. There's quite possibly/probably some heavy CB/US/IMF influence going on to prevent the 'wrong' policy at the wrong time.
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Thanks for the explainer. I like the idea of guilts.
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And there it is, killed by the Hunt. Tory left and Labour right now the same party hooray.
Until the rich have their assets taxed to recoup the ongoing and vast transfer of wealth from the many to the few, house prices will continue to rise, because what else are the rich going to spend their vast hoard of cash on otherwise?
The heating bill.. Can't even burn £10 notes to stay warm anymore since they went synthetic.
More seriously. For a tax there there has to be a figure in black+white above which a tax applies, or it doesn't work. Who in your socialist utopia classes as rich? What figure do you have in mind when you say this stuff? Personally, I'd not argue with any government making owning more than two houses financial suicide. Taking the asset price inflation out of a speculative housing market would cure many ills. Would be one of the largest wealth transfers in reverse ever. But entrepreneurs growing a business (no not a buy-to-let 'business'), no way should they be over taxed imo.
It's not about a socialist utopia it's about saving society as we know it. We're in the situation now where you can work/study hard, get a decent job, and never be able to afford a house or start a family unless your wealthy family can spare you a 6 figure sum. It's crackers! We're on the cusp of moving from democracy to techno-feudalism
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I can’t analyse of the change in uk salaries (where, what age, what sector?), nor houses (location, for whom, bracket in the market?) but to make a rough point about affordability trends this website gives some simple figures of change since 1980:
https://propertyindustryeye.com/house-prices-have-increased-by-1010-since-1980/
% increase in inflation - 255%
% increase in average salary - 43%
% increase in average house price 1010%
Put another way, if in 1980 we call the relation of house to salary a benchmark 1:1, now it’s over 20:1. Unless you are on big bucks or given sums beyond what you can reasonably earn or save, that’s a problem. The profile (and indebtedness) of first time buyers in 1980 vs 2022 will be very different. Even if these figures are quite contestable, I don’t disbelieve the core message from that data: what was affordable then is not now, has declined steeply, is on course to deteriorate further and will have massive implications for (deteriorating) quality of life through progressive generations. That should be a massive concern to all of us imo.
If anyone with a deeper grasp of economics and knowledge of where to pull data from cares to do so, thank you.
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The site that that link references shows average salary increasing by ~160% since 1992 so unless salaries crashed from 1980 to 1992 I suspect that 43% figure is likely to be very, very wrong.
Your broad point will still stand (house prices rising much faster than salaries over that period), but the figures look likely to be very wrong (and, as pointed out earlier, the "forecast" wasn't a forecast it was just the most basic scenario you could draw on a graph)
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Yeah probably, I'm not going to dig deep for figures (maybe you'd like to look?), but the point, as you say, remains. As does the trend.
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I quickly googled but couldn't obviously see data back before the 90s. You'd need to compare methodologies to make it worth it to put the time in too... basically the data shown is terrible, the point that house prices have gone up faster than earnings will still be true, but if anyone wants to make forecasts about what will happen I'll probably only listen if they've put the groundwork in...
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I lived through a long period in the early nighties of using a weak currency, shaky government finances, and having an incompetent but confident government. I do not recommend. If this were to happen to me again, I would — as a card carrying member of the citizens of nowhere — look for a job in another country.
We have a slight self inflicted problem with that as you no doubt know!
RE Pete's explanation of why the "mini-budget" caused such an upheaval in the markets, as an analysis it was spot on. The only point where I would correct it slightly would be the bit which says "price of a bond drops when its yield rises" which would be more correctly expressed as "the yield of a bond rises as the price drops" since the yield is effectively fixed at bond issuance e.g. a 10 year gilt at a 3% coupon, and changes as that existing bond changes hand for a lower price.
RE house prices there is a graphic doing the rounds atm which attempts to express house price inflation in simple terms by snapshotting 1990 vs 2020. Caveats obviously apply but it is worthwhile for illustrative purposes:
(https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-ttTO3H23ols/YD9K_1iCe7I/AAAAAAAAkPk/vqOA3bASsZ423680UMBgC5_ws2SveFSiwCNcBGAsYHQ/image.png)
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Thanks for the explainer. I like the idea of guilts.
Hah! Freudian slip.
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The 'Moneyvator' site is good for most things markets and economics. They've comprehensibly answered the question of house price rises in real terms taking account of inflation. If you want the details it's here: https://monevator.com/historical-uk-house-prices/
The TLDR is house price rises have reliably beaten inflation (and easily outstripped wage rises) over the past 30 years. The period post 2008 GFC has seen the most rapid dislocation between house price rises and wage rises. This is not news. But the data's interesting.
Inflation data for 2022 is not yet available. Let’s therefore use 2021 as our base year, given how hot inflation has been running for the past eight months.
Nationwide says the average house cost £251,133 at the end of 2021
At the same point in 2011, the average house cost £164,785
Using the Bank of England’s calculator, we can see that the 2011 house price equates to £196,776 in 2021 money. (That is, adjusting for CPI inflation.)
Play with Monevator’s compound interest calculator and you’ll see that it takes about 2.5% a year over ten years to turn £196,776 into £251,133.
Therefore house prices went up by about 2.5% a year ahead of inflation over the ten years to 2021.
This is mildly interesting for property nerds. But it gets more dramatic looking further back.
Consider that by the end of 1991 the average house cost £53,635. That’s £99,618 in 2021 money.
In nominal terms, house price growth was about 5.3% a year over the 30 years from 1991 – or 368% overall.
But in real terms – after-inflation – annual growth was only a little over 3%, or 152% in total.
Clearly 152% is a lot less vertigo-inducing than a 368% nominal terms price rise.
Although as we’ll see later on, it’s still a lot faster than wages have grown. Which is why we keep hearing about a housing crisis!
(It’s also a reminder of how property has protected you against inflation).
They go on to make a very good point that, while house prices are outstripping both wages and inflation, it doesn't make complete sense to look at an asset such as a house has compared in the same inflationary frame of reference as a basket of goods including food, fuel and cinema tickets. One is daily/weekly living costs. The other is a (potentially) lifetime investment. Hence long term low cost loans for houses, not cinema tickets. The problem (imo) is houses have been turned not into lifetime investments but speculative assets and inflation hedges by over-cautious over-moneyed middle classes. Hi UKB(oomers). At the expense of younger generations more so than ever before. One sphere of life where I'm definitely very socialist and redistributive is housing as it's so important to society but so potentially expensive and out of reach once it gets beyond a certain point - where we are now. Unlike other essentials where the affordability gap between poor-wealthy is important still but not as terminally unbridgeable as housing threatens to become imo. Anyway, looking at a real crash if rates don't toe the party line.
Longer term:
Academics have made various stabs at estimating the returns from property over more than a century.
For example, in the paper The Rate of Return on Everything: 1870-2015, the authors calculate that the very long-run return on property across 16 countries was just over 7%, in real terms.
Interestingly that’s very similar to the long-term real return from equities.
However this 7% annual return isn’t comparable to the house price series we’ve been looking at. That’s because its property values also incorporate the return from rent, to come up with a total return. In contrast, the house price data series only track prices.
But a bit later on the same paper estimates UK capital gains on housing since 1895 at 5.4% in nominal terms, or 1.25% real.
Which would indeed suggest the past 30 years have been a bit frothy, historically-speaking.
Meanwhile a more recent paper, The Best Strategies for Inflationary Times, pins UK annualised real housing returns from 1926-2020 at 3%. And as best we can tell that’s capital gains only. (It’s based on ONS data, which uses Land Registry house prices.)
My interpretation of these studies – together with the data from Nationwide and Halifax – is that property prices in the UK have been going up for over a century, but that growth has accelerated in the past few generations.
This would correlate with the popular notion that an increasingly egalitarian Britain has steadily transformed from a nation of renters to homeowners. At least until the past decade or so, when sluggish wage growth hurt affordability.
Two visual representations of the ratio of house price to average earnings. You can see it's gone from 2x average earnings in 1995 to 6x average earnings today. Or 3x to 9x average earnings if you're in London.
(https://monevator-monevator.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/house-price-earnings-ratio.jpg)
(https://monevator-monevator.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/price-to-earnings-150-years-UK.jpg)
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My dad's political outlook has not changed since some time in the 1980s. He doesn't pay much attention anymore. He defends the Tories as the party of budget responsibility and wouldn't trust Labour with the public finances.
Today he said that it was time for a Labour government.
That is incredible.
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Not my view at all, but a question from a friend which I couldn’t answer…
Any decent rationale to the below question?
“Bond markets were fine with us being 2.3 trillion in debt. So why did this extra 40bn nearly caused a meltdown.”?
That has the relationship a bit wrong. The bond market *is * the debt. In this case government debt is paid for by the DMO selling government bonds (guilts) to pay for government spending.
The cost of that debt is the yield on the bond. And the yield on the bond goes up when confidence in the ability of the government to adequately finance said debt goes down.
It wasn't £40Bn that tipped anything. The cost of the Energy Price Guarantee was/in £60Bn in the first 6 months, and it was going to last for up to 2 years. Then the tax cuts amounted to around another £45Bn in tax take not coming in.
Without details forthcoming of how this could be afforded, market participants in bond markets demanded a higher yield to compensate for the perceived higher risk of investing in UK bonds. So bond yields rose as market confidence lowered.
In reality there's far more to it than that - not least the market taking advantage of the government putting itself into the position of being a forced seller of bonds by the way it positioned itself with its timing and language when announcing the 'mini budget'. Ineptness. 'Laying the pitch' and all that bollocks is partly preparing the market participants to accept (by believing its a good investment) what you want to sell, in this case guilts.
But compounding the situation was the unintended consequence of defined benefit pension funds having their dirty secrets unearthed by an unlikely set of events, in that to juice their balance sheets a bit they'd been using more leverage than widely supposed, via a sequence of hedges which normally wouldn't be an issue except in a highly unlikely scenario of rapidly rising bond yields... This forced some funds into forced selling of assets to cover balance sheet losses because guilt prices had suddenly dropped (price of a bond drops when its yield rises). Forced selling of guilts dropped guilt prices further, doom price spiral ensues as more funds' balance sheets start to turn red. BoE step in as buyer of last resort.
Bigger picture again is the fact the west cannot, following 12 years of ultra low borrowing costs and imaginary money pumped in to bond markets to provide liquidity in the wake of the GFC leading to repress interest rates, cannot afford rates to rise higher than 5-6% and can’t afford them rising too rapidly (before, some suggest, the last decade of debt is inflated down to more managable levels...) without a crippling severe recession possibly needing further QE type stimulus to get out of. We’ve become too used to low rates and our borrowing habits and debt levels reflect that. Can't have rates rising too rapidly without it all failing. There's quite possibly/probably some heavy CB/US/IMF influence going on to prevent the 'wrong' policy at the wrong time.
Thanks for that, Pete. Makes sense to me!
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RE Pete's explanation of why the "mini-budget" caused such an upheaval in the markets, as an analysis it was spot on. The only point where I would correct it slightly would be the bit which says "price of a bond drops when its yield rises" which would be more correctly expressed as "the yield of a bond rises as the price drops" since the yield is effectively fixed at bond issuance e.g. a 10 year gilt at a 3% coupon, and changes as that existing bond changes hand for a lower price.
I understand what you are trying to say, but I think it's misleading to ever say the yield is fixed, it is the interest rate (coupon) that is fixed
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Dear oh dear. Anyway ...
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Dear oh dear. Anyway ...
Is the tofu eating wokerati membership the same as the anti growth coalition one wonders?
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Dear oh dear. Anyway ...
Is the tofu eating wokerati membership the same as the anti growth coalition one wonders?
I eat so much tofu I'm a black hole of anti-growth.
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Joke as we may, it's really, really not funny anymore.
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This afternoon I went out to roll around the skatepark for an hour or so and when I came back I discovered the Home Secretary had resigned. :o
Well it’s all been a bit politics heavy lately so I had my tea and watched some TV and by the time I’ve done that there’s been bouts of scuffling in Parliament like it’s 1750 or something, the PM didn’t vote for her own fracking bill and no one knows if the government’s chief whip has resigned or not.
Jesus fucking Christ this is not normal.
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This afternoon I went out to roll around the skatepark for an hour or so and when I came back I discovered the Home Secretary had resigned. :o
Well it’s all been a bit politics heavy lately so I had my tea and watched some TV and by the time I’ve done that there’s been bouts of scuffling in Parliament like it’s 1750 or something, the PM didn’t vote for her own fracking bill and no one knows if the government’s chief whip has resigned or not.
Jesus fucking Christ this is not normal.
It’s the new normal…
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This afternoon I went out to roll around the skatepark for an hour or so and when I came back I discovered the Home Secretary had resigned. :o
Well it’s all been a bit politics heavy lately so I had my tea and watched some TV and by the time I’ve done that there’s been bouts of scuffling in Parliament like it’s 1750 or something, the PM didn’t vote for her own fracking bill and no one knows if the government’s chief whip has resigned or not.
Jesus fucking Christ this is not normal.
It’s the new normal…
Actually bonkers. I sort of hope that Truss stays in a very strange way, or that Sunak/ Hunt are brought in, due to the nagging feeling that the next cretinous thing that the conservative party will do is to bring back Boris Johnson as a last ditch attempt to be less unpopular. While I'd like to think he was gone for good, I think a lot of people would probably like to see him back, and he's as bad for democracy as Truss is bad for the economy.
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Speaking of Johnson. How is it that he’s able to be on holiday in the Caribbean while Parliament is sitting?
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Jesus fucking Christ this is not normal.
It’s the new normal…
Yep, they are making it normal. Last night seemed next level, but its easy to forget it was only 3 months ago that basically the entire government resigned en masse to force out Johnson. That in itself was not normal - ps Chris Pincher, the guy who admitted groping, the reason that precipitated all that, is still an MP, wandering around the commons and taking a wage! Also not normal. Another ps - Johnson is currently on holiday in the Carribean, taking his MP's wage and PM severance pay, despite parliament sitting. Imagine taking an unauthorised holiday from work like that? Is that normal?
If they wanted to carry on with the business of government after they themselves forced out the last PM, then that was the time to install the deputy PM as PM (or what are they for?) with the express intent to carry on with the 2019 manifesto, or call a new general election. Instead they pressed pause on the machinery of government while there was an energy crisis and war in Europe so they could have a faux general election campaign, televised on shows with names like "Your Next Prime Minister", which to a rounding error basically no-one watching could vote in. Its one party state stuff. Truss explicitly campaigned against the government she was part of, complete with manifesto breaking promises e.g. fracking. Sunak campaigned for the government he was part of which also included lots of manifesto breaking promises e.g. tax rises, and somehow elided the fact that he had also broken the law in office and would rather live in America thank-you-very-much. Neither of them mentioned going to the country with their brand new plans.
Then you get the mini-budget / not a budget / biggest budget ever which exploded norms on fiscal policy. Now we are effectively led by a person who went for the leadership and actually came last on MP's votes. Who does he represent? There hasn't been anything vaguely normal for ages.
I expect our new masters "the market" are feeling reassured right now at least :slap:
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Lectern just been set up outside Downing Street..... :popcorn:
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Lol fuck off and stay gone
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Remarkable. Another leadership election in the next week.
Ladies and gentlemen, place your bets.
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Inevitable.
Buy shares in hat and ring makers.
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Remarkable. Another leadership election in the next week.
Surely questions have to be asked about their fitness to govern? Great how our much lauded unwritten constitution fails us completely in times like these! There should be a defined process if shit goes as bad as this.
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Absolutely.
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smirking tick during the resignation speech (?)
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Jesus fucking Christ this is not normal.
It’s the new normal…
Yep, they are making it normal. Last night seemed next level, but its easy to forget it was only 3 months ago that basically the entire government resigned en masse to force out Johnson. That in itself was not normal - ps Chris Pincher, the guy who admitted groping, the reason that precipitated all that, is still an MP, wandering around the commons and taking a wage! Also not normal. Another ps - Johnson is currently on holiday in the Carribean, taking his MP's wage and PM severance pay, despite parliament sitting. Imagine taking an unauthorised holiday from work like that? Is that normal?
If they wanted to carry on with the business of government after they themselves forced out the last PM, then that was the time to install the deputy PM as PM (or what are they for?) with the express intent to carry on with the 2019 manifesto, or call a new general election. Instead they pressed pause on the machinery of government while there was an energy crisis and war in Europe so they could have a faux general election campaign, televised on shows with names like "Your Next Prime Minister", which to a rounding error basically no-one watching could vote in. Its one party state stuff. Truss explicitly campaigned against the government she was part of, complete with manifesto breaking promises e.g. fracking. Sunak campaigned for the government he was part of which also included lots of manifesto breaking promises e.g. tax rises, and somehow elided the fact that he had also broken the law in office and would rather live in America thank-you-very-much. Neither of them mentioned going to the country with their brand new plans.
Then you get the mini-budget / not a budget / biggest budget ever which exploded norms on fiscal policy. Now we are effectively led by a person who went for the leadership and actually came last on MP's votes. Who does he represent? There hasn't been anything vaguely normal for ages.
I expect our new masters "the market" are feeling reassured right now at least :slap:
All accurate except the last sentence. There's nothing new about markets being the ultimate political masters. See the US response to Suez in 1956 for e.g.
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The next week is going to be an absolute bloodbath. I can't wait :popcorn:
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Shit! I drove to and spent an hour in the gym. Get home and Britain’s leaderless again! FFS
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The next week is going to be an absolute bloodbath. I can't wait :popcorn:
Other than the distinct feeling that if Johnson runs, he'll win, and its another 2 years at least of chaos, incompetence and lying.
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Is there any candidate who won't provide that?
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Well. You can keep tabs on it here (https://order-order.com/).
At the time of writing the three candidates’ nominations are:
Mordaunt 16
Sunak. 35
Johnson 48.
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You're fucking joking
48 want him back already?!?
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Er no, look at the link above. 49 now.
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Well. You can keep tabs on it here (https://order-order.com/).
At the time of writing the three candidates’ nominations are:
Mordaunt 16
Sunak. 35
Johnson 48.
Fuck, if that's the case can in just tap out now?
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What dunnyg said. Its a very transparent tactic by Johnson supporters to get out early and put his name in the headlines to build an impression of momentum. I still get the impression he would be short of 100 nominations but obviously I know nothing. It would also risk defections to Labour. I think it will be Sunak.
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Well. You can keep tabs on it here (https://order-order.com/).
At the time of writing the three candidates’ nominations are:
Mordaunt 16
Sunak. 35
Johnson 48.
What dunnyg said. Its a very transparent tactic by Johnson supporters to get out early and put his name in the headlines to build an impression of momentum. I still get the impression he would be short of 100 nominations but obviously I know nothing. It would also risk defections to Labour. I think it will be Sunak.
Yeah, I'm not sure what that Guido Fawkes thing is based on but it includes "a whip" 10 times for Boris Johnson, along with Shaun Bailey, who is not, and never has been, an MP....
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I think he might get his hundred votes. If that happens and it goes to the membership, he’ll be back. If it doesn’t, it’s Sunak. There were reasons why he had to leave office and they haven’t gone away. Chris Bryant and the committee investigation into misleading parliament have yet to give their judgment. I expect more than mere chaos if he returns.
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Yeah, I'm not sure what that Guido Fawkes thing is based on but it includes "a whip" 10 times for Boris Johnson, along with Shaun Bailey, who is not, and never has been, an MP....
Agree with the fact Guido is pushing the Boris agenda by padding the list to give the impression he's more popular than he is to get him in the press but bizarrely, there are two Shaun Bailey's in the Tory politico-sphere:
https://www.shaunbailey.org.uk/
I made the same mistake......
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Huh, learn something new every day!
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There were reasons why he had to leave office and they haven’t gone away.
Because they were literally a matter of weeks ago! Incredible to think some will try to claim we can move on from all of that already
I expect more than mere chaos if he returns.
Agreed. This has got to be the tipping point. Not that any other Tory PM would be much better, but returning to Johnson crosses a line for sure.
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Notably, Johnson backers either have very marginal seats, or they are no hopers in search of cabinet glory. Naked self interest. Since 2016, the best bet is that things can always get worse, he'll probably win, although Sunak should.
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Notably, Johnson backers either have very marginal seats, or they are no hopers in search of cabinet glory. Naked self interest. Since 2016, the best bet is that things can always get worse, he'll probably win, although Sunak should.
JRM have just piped up in favour of Big Dog, I’m hoping his seat is now marginal!
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As seen on Twitter yesterday: "Boris Johnson: The Wilderness Weeks."
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https://www.ft.com/content/60fdceb7-bed0-4947-a436-ccc62cab498b
FT comes out for a GE. All the right wing tabloids predictably rowing in behind Johnson. The Times continues its descent into comic book territory by saying Truss was right to resign in its leader after several weeks of dissembling and obfuscation. It really is a disgraceful rag currently, and with new editor Gallagher (formerly of the Sun) this will only get worse. Paper of record? :wank: :wank: :wank:
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Yeah, I'm not sure what that Guido Fawkes thing is based on but it includes "a whip" 10 times for Boris Johnson, along with Shaun Bailey, who is not, and never has been, an MP....
As expected, Guido is inflating numbers:
https://twitter.com/CWhittaker_MP/status/1583392419554693120?s=20&t=kn5OVbnfh5wNa7hZQD5LTw
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Don't be relying on Guido Fawkes for accurate/truthful/impartial information. Well known for spouting :shit: .
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Some interesting background on some economists supporting Truss's plans and the warnings they gave which were ignored...all just before she became PM.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/oct/21/liz-truss-ignored-economists-stark-warnings-over-mini-budget
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Some positive news amongst the torrent of myopic/amnesiac Conservative leadership coverage. Seeing Rishi Sunak described as competent and kind is triggering me :wall:
Anyhow here's the good news, the airline that was contracted to fly people to Rwanda has bailed after a fantastic targeted email/information campaign they want nothing more to do with the deportations. :2thumbsup:
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This may cheer you up a bit Brutus (keep scrolling) (https://order-order.com/2022/10/18/in-full-the-mps-set-to-lose-their-seats-on-current-polls/)
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Looking onwards I fear that Labour will only get one term of government due to the frankly enormous shit pile they are set to inherit.
I can see the general populace becoming fairly swiftly disillusioned if they aren't able to pull quite a few rabbits out of a shit load of hats.
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The thing I can't wrap my head around here is who are these 100 suporting the return of Johnson? And are any of them the same people who resigned 3 months ago? I know we've seen a lot of madness since 2016, but this is just bonkers. I can't help feel that if he runs, he'll win, and somehow win the next ge.
I feel physically sick.
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The thing I can't wrap my head around here is who are these 100 suporting the return of Johnson? And are any of them the same people who resigned 3 months ago? I know we've seen a lot of madness since 2016, but this is just bonkers. I can't help feel that if he runs, he'll win,
Agree.
and somehow win the next ge.
Don’t agree. Brexit hasn’t brought prosperity, his record is emphatically not one of delivery on his manifesto and Starmer is not unacceptable to middle England as Corbyn was. A bit of bombast may be good for a laugh, but when voters can’t afford the things they used to, the house is cold and prospects are dire, its appeal will be greatly lessened. I think he’d fail.
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What dunnyg said. Its a very transparent tactic by Johnson supporters to get out early and put his name in the headlines to build an impression of momentum. I still get the impression he would be short of 100 nominations but obviously I know nothing. It would also risk defections to Labour. I think it will be Sunak.
As I was saying...
Also no fucking way did he have even close to 100 supporters. Fucking narcissistic charlatan.
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The political equivalent of "yeah I have got a girlfriend but you won't know her 'cos she goes to a different school".
Nicked from Twitter
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See also:
‘Early Morning, Spanish Belayer’
and
‘Entered Marathon Under a Friend’s Name’
and
‘It’s a Peg’
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The political equivalent of "yeah I have got a girlfriend but you won't know her 'cos she goes to a different school".
Nicked from Twitter
Well put, even if you did nick it.
Over 100 backers, and still wouldn't run? O, that's why he just rushed back from holiday, and spent all weekend desperately phoning MPs to gain support, only getting 8 more public supporters, and suddenly he just doesn't feel that the time is right?
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As depressing as this saga has been, Johnson's failed attempt to drum up support and then now dropping out is fucking hilarious.
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As depressing as this saga has been, Johnson's failed attempt to drum up support and then now dropping out is fucking hilarious.
I’d like to imagine, we’re they still at it, the writers of “Yes Minister”; throwing down their pens in utter exasperation, as life outstrips even their wildest, discarded, scripts…
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As depressing as this saga has been, Johnson's failed attempt to drum up support and then now dropping out is fucking hilarious.
As someone who's MP came out in support of Boris I'm struggling to see the funny side.
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I'm struggling to see the funny side.
I have to agree with Paul here. I can see why in theory all this chaos and nonsense should be funny. And I expected myself to enjoy a good laugh at the Tories expense. But I just can't. All this shit isn't happening at a time when the UK is ticking along nicely, there are numerous actual major issues that need sorting out by a competent government. And instead we get the freak show. I'm equally depressed and angry. I think it is really going to hit home this winter how far we've sunk.
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more shitshow than freakshow.
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I'm struggling to see the funny side.
I have to agree with Paul here. I can see why in theory all this chaos and nonsense should be funny. And I expected myself to enjoy a good laugh at the Tories expense. But I just can't. All this shit isn't happening at a time when the UK is ticking along nicely, there are numerous actual major issues that need sorting out by a competent government. And instead we get the freak show. I'm equally depressed and angry. I think it is really going to hit home this winter how far we've sunk.
Agree with the above and would also add, I find the "Thank God it's Sunak" narrative the epitome of this. Part of Johnson's awful partygate government, disastaerous spring statement (for those who aren't comfortably well off), lost the leadership race to Liz Truss (lost to LIZ TRUSS!) and now we are meant to welcome him with open arms. Bonkers, with Sunak and Hunt I feel we will see the demise of our public funded services, austerity 2.0, whilst those on lower incomes find it even harder to make ends meet.
I find Kier's statements this morning on protests and unions pretty depressing and his general pitch totally uninspiring but God we need the Tories out.
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I find the "Thank God it's Sunak"…lost the leadership race to Liz Truss (lost to LIZ TRUSS!)
Don’t disagree with the sentiment, but not sure Sunak can be criticised for this part. It just shows how racist and batshit crazy the Tory membership is.
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I find the "Thank God it's Sunak"…lost the leadership race to Liz Truss (lost to LIZ TRUSS!)
Don’t disagree with the sentiment, but not sure Sunak can be criticised for this part. It just shows how racist and batshit crazy the Tory membership is.
No, true, but quite a year to go through all that and end up as our PM and "Saviour of the Conservative Party".
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I'm struggling to see the funny side.
I have to agree with Paul here. I can see why in theory all this chaos and nonsense should be funny. And I expected myself to enjoy a good laugh at the Tories expense. But I just can't. All this shit isn't happening at a time when the UK is ticking along nicely, there are numerous actual major issues that need sorting out by a competent government. And instead we get the freak show. I'm equally depressed and angry. I think it is really going to hit home this winter how far we've sunk.
To be clear, I agree entirely that this is a terrible state of affairs for the whole country, there's no denying that. We are being completely screwed by a thoroughly incompetent government who are doing serious damage to people's lives.
However, after relentless depressing news, and the time spent wondering if Johnson really is returning so soon...
There were reasons why he had to leave office and they haven’t gone away.
Because they were literally a matter of weeks ago! Incredible to think some will try to claim we can move on from all of that already
I expect more than mere chaos if he returns.
Agreed. This has got to be the tipping point. Not that any other Tory PM would be much better, but returning to Johnson crosses a line for sure.
... I do find the pathetic downfall and backtrack to be pretty comedic. We're currently pretty powerless to do anything but feel angry, but when Johnson and co. have to publish embarrassing backtracks, yeah I'm gonna laugh at them.
As someone who's MP came out in support of Boris I'm struggling to see the funny side.
I get that - fortunately I've recently moved but the MP for the area I've spent the vast majority of my life was one of Johnson's backers. We did already know how shit he is though so I guess I just didn't see it as any surprise. I feel for you that you still have to deal with them - fingers crossed for a timely unseating.
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Tweet by Larry the Downing Street Cat:
Rishi Sunak is becoming Prime Minister. His family is loaded so caviar and lobster on the menu for me from tomorrow.
I mean, sure he was recently rejected in an actual election and had the bright idea of subsidising people to eat indoors while an airborne virus was killing tens of thousands of people, but, you know, lobster and caviar.
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What the fucking fuck is this fucking cabinet? So much for settling things down and not causing waves etc.
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New cabinet has solid experience
Ah yes, solid experience... of being previously removed from ministerial roles for breaking the rules. Robert Jenrick, Gavin Williamson, Suella Braverman literally 7 days ago. There are no doubt more I've missed :wall:
Edit: Williamson x2. Grant Shapps.
Honourable mention too to Michael Gove - he doesn't fit this list, but he is a colossal dick and should never be near government at all. I'll stop there though, before my list of honourable mentions stretches to the entire cabinet.
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A bellend to the very end
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/oct/25/jacob-rees-mogg-quits-with-handwritten-letter-dated-st-crispins-day
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New cabinet has solid experience
...
Honourable mention too to Michael Gove - he doesn't fit this list, but he is a colossal dick and should never be near government at all. I'll stop there though, before my list of honourable mentions stretches to the entire cabinet.
What did you expect? You clearly don't like Gove- I have no particular liking for him either- but there's no doubt hes extremely experienced, effective in government. He has been doing some decent work around building cladding I believe, and politically, a wise choice as hes obviously someone who might be dangerous to have on the back benches. People like Mel Stride and Andrew Mitchell have the potential to be decent ministers and have experience. I didn't vote for them, and I'd rather the Labour front bench were there, but its better than Truss or Johnson.
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It’s clearly better than Truss or Johnson*. Unless you’re poor; I doubt you’ll notice any improvement then.
The markets will be happier with more balanced accounting. The BoE will probably push interest rates less high than otherwise, which may mean less pain for mortgages ( but still lots of pain, to be clear). The moron premium may come down. Nevertheless, this round of austerity won’t be cutting fat; it’ll be bone.
*(Braverman and Coffey excepted)
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It’s clearly better than Truss or Johnson*. Unless you’re poor; I doubt you’ll notice any improvement then.
The markets will be happier with more balanced accounting. The BoE will probably push interest rates less high than otherwise, which may mean less pain for mortgages ( but still lots of pain, to be clear). The moron premium may come down. Nevertheless, this round of austerity won’t be cutting fat; it’ll be bone.
*(Braverman and Coffey excepted)
Perhaps no improvement from the current circumstances, but no government would suddenly make everything better at the moment, and things won't be as bad as if Truss had continued with her crazy economic strategy. Although Braverman in particular seems an odd choice, its clearly a political sop to the Conservative hard right, and he may be thinking that the home office is a difficult department, and she'll probably do something incompetent and get herself sacked again within a few weeks so he can put someone better there.
I'm trying to look on the bright side, it could have been the return of Johnson, which would have been much worse. It is also a good thing that the UK has a British Indian PM, when many governments around Europe are heading into some pretty dark right wing places. I'm not cheerleading for the Conservative party, but it could be worse.
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it could be worse.
Yes, it could be. We agree on that.
I think we should temper relief that sterling is not about to collapse with the realisation that our public services will instead. Schools are going bust; social care and the health service can’t cope; food banks to feed people who would otherwise starve in our much vaunted 6th biggest economy in the world no longer think they can feed all those in need. The environment which our society stands on is also in serous, dangerous decline.
I see no evidence that Sunak will seriously address these multiple crises. I’d be ecstatic to be proven wrong.
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I honestly don't think he's going to last that long. Partly because he is in an impossible position, being pulled in various directions because of all the warring in the party - he blew his honeymoon in a matter of hours by bringing in Suella Braverman on the basis of a deal with her to get the ERG support at the weekend.
But ignoring all the most serious stuff, he's a hopeless performer. He gets incredibly tetchy when asked questions under pressure. He once walked out of a Sky News interview which gives such a great insight into his personality - an irritable control freak who doesn't like being scrutinised. His leadership contest debate stuff with Truss (admittedly it's tricky trying to debate with a robotic zealot) were so 6th form debating team it was embarrassing. That speech he gave on Monday was equally shocking. And there's already so much ammunition about his complete lack of awareness re how to pay for something with a debit card / pretending to fill up some supermarket employee's car / donating hundreds of thousand pounds to Winchester, etc. Not to mention that weird unleashing of Rishi-branded content that looked like a diffusion range at Ann Summers.
Once he starts fucking things up I think he'll get so much negative press that (hopefully) he'll finally realise that not would've been a far better idea to take advantage of that green card and disappear off to California never to be seen again.
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He (Gove) has been doing some decent work around building cladding I believe...
He introduced the Building Safety Act 2022 which, in the government website's own words, means that:
Many leaseholders will for the first time be legally protected from unfair bills to make their homes safe as measures in the Building Safety Act 2022 come into force today (28 June 2022).
Those responsible for historical safety defects, and those who own buildings, will instead be required to fund essential repairs.
So a mere 5 years after the Grenfell Tower fire the government makes a legal commitment to residents of similar fire hazard high rise blocks that for the first time (!) they won't have to pay tens / hundreds of thousands of pounds to make safely habitable the worthless and unsaleable flats they are now trapped in through no fault of their own.
Gove is appreciated for doing this by cladding campaign groups that is true, so we'll give him that. Of course the other way of looking at it is that the above is the absolute bare minimum required. In fact it should have been the case pre-Grenfell that leaseholders should not be paying for developer's corner cutting. He was simply doing the right thing after the previous epic failure to lift a finger by government. Its a very low bar to clear to be classed as "effective" these days isn't it?
Also....that low bar was set there by his immediate predecessor as Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government Robert Jenrick. He did absolutely fuck all about cladding, cladding action groups hated him. Developers didn't. He notably admitted unlawful behaviour in assistance of a property developer while actually in post as SofS. Thank goodness someone with such an unblemished track record of impartially doing the right thing is now immigration minister eh???
We're into desperate cap doffing territory if we're meant to be pleased about Gove and Sunak because the alternatives that have been tried are worse. They are all in the same government!
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That's an exasperating post, Nigel. All Toby has done is recognise that Gove did some good on cladding (and caveated it with "I have no particular liking for [Gove]" and later with "I'm not cheerleading for the Conservative part"). You accuse him of cap doffing. It's hard to see how he's any more doffed his cap than you when you said "Gove is appreciated for doing this by cladding campaign groups that is true, so we'll give him that."
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New cabinet has solid experience
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Honourable mention too to Michael Gove - he doesn't fit this list, but he is a colossal dick and should never be near government at all. I'll stop there though, before my list of honourable mentions stretches to the entire cabinet.
What did you expect? You clearly don't like Gove- I have no particular liking for him either- but there's no doubt hes extremely experienced, effective in government. He has been doing some decent work around building cladding I believe, and politically, a wise choice as hes obviously someone who might be dangerous to have on the back benches. People like Mel Stride and Andrew Mitchell have the potential to be decent ministers and have experience. I didn't vote for them, and I'd rather the Labour front bench were there, but its better than Truss or Johnson.
This was very much my thought; who else should he have appointed?
I honestly don't think he's going to last that long. Partly because he is in an impossible position, being pulled in various directions because of all the warring in the party - he blew his honeymoon in a matter of hours by bringing in Suella Braverman on the basis of a deal with her to get the ERG support at the weekend.
It's clear from everything he's said so far that his line of attack will be to stick to the 2019 manifesto. This is the obvious approach to attempt to avoid an early general election, as he can therefore continue to claim they have a mandate which neuters Labour's ability to ask, rightly, who voted for what they're doing. The problem he'll have though is most of those commitments just aren't possible anymore, or maintaining them involves such enormous cuts in other areas it can't be done, or the way out involves compromising hardline conservative principles like controlling immigration. How can you put more money into the NHS if you're committed to freezing national insurance? How can you maintain the pensions triple lock if it means you can't keep recruiting more NHS staff?
Apparently Labour are looking to force votes on each issue, meaning Tory MPs will have to vote specifically on any cuts to services.
The 2019 manifesto is a populist approach which simply isn't going to work in the current economic climate, Sunak will find it impossible to stick to, and hopefully this means a GE next year.
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Gove is appreciated for doing this by cladding campaign groups that is true, so we'll give him that. Of course the other way of looking at it is that the above is the absolute bare minimum required. In fact it should have been the case pre-Grenfell that leaseholders should not be paying for developer's corner cutting. He was simply doing the right thing after the previous epic failure to lift a finger by government. Its a very low bar to clear to be classed as "effective" these days isn't it?
Indeed it's a low bar but when Boris 'fell' I was reading plenty of opinions on Gove regarding his work in this area and levelling up where the consensus seemed to be he did more than most.
Sunak's choice with Braverman pretty much epitomises the current state of the Tory party. You can't keep your hands even vaguely clean and come out on top as you need the support of the lunatics.
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The Braverman one bends my brain. In any company in the world, where someone resigns to avoid being sacked after a breach of rules, would the CEO then employ that same person again?
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The problemm (ha! as if there's one problem) is that the party has got itself into a huge mess in the past 7 years. By forcing through such a divisive issue as Brexit, which if I remember correctly most of their MPs weren't in favour of during the campaign, they've forced out a load of moderates when they wouldn't be loyal to the new party line, or when they questioned the sense in what was happening. They further hollowed themselves out under Johnson, a populist who racked up scandal after scandal and anybody who spoke up against him was turfed out or cast off to the back benches.
The result is a party where political skill and competency in managing a department is extremely thin on the ground. Just remember that the last line of defence for Johnson's supporters was that there wasn't anybody else fit to lead the party. Just imagine how bad things have become if you're promoting your party as a political entity in which Boris Johnson is the brightest and best. It's a shambling mess of a party, drunk on its own hubris, staggering from crisis to crisis, unable to deal with those that are forced upon them and unable to prevent those that they initiate themselves.
Fuck them.
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I partly agree with some of the above posts, the Conservative party is deeply divided into multiple factions at the moment; probably more than Labour. Labour are also looking better disciplined and probably have a much better depth of talent on their front bench.
But, it's no use pretending that any party wouldn't have to make so horrible choices on spending at the moment. I'd love to have public services that were even adequate, especially transport, healthcare and continuing education. I'd also prefer foreign aid spending to be higher. But something has to give. The price of borrowing would have increased without the Truss budget, just not quite as much. Defence of Ukraine I'd say is essential as well. I think Sunak hasn't done anything terrible yet, I'd prefer to give him half a chance, despite the fact I'm extremely unlikely to vote Conservative.
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I partly agree with some of the above posts, the Conservative party is deeply divided into multiple factions at the moment; probably more than Labour. Labour are also looking better disciplined and probably have a much better depth of talent on their front bench.
But, it's no use pretending that any party wouldn't have to make so horrible choices on spending at the moment. I'd love to have public services that were even adequate, especially transport, healthcare and continuing education. I'd also prefer foreign aid spending to be higher. But something has to give. The price of borrowing would have increased without the Truss budget, just not quite as much. Defence of Ukraine I'd say is essential as well. I think Sunak hasn't done anything terrible yet, I'd prefer to give him half a chance, despite the fact I'm extremely unlikely to vote Conservative.
There's no probably about it, it's far more divided than labour. Saying that Labour is divided at the moment is rehashing old tabloid headlines rather than looking at the reality. Sure, there have been periods when it's been hugely divided, this isn't one of them.
Re adequate public services, I find it interesting you say "something has to give" like there is nothing to be done. In the absence of Brutus (so far!) ill say it; we could raise taxes to fund this! The vast majority of the population should be paying more in income tax. This is not a far left view, the NS podcast last week had a contributor saying that the basic rate should be 21%. I agree. We have the most generous tax regime in Europe I think, its no surprise everything is shit.
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The Braverman one bends my brain. In any company in the world, where someone resigns to avoid being sacked after a breach of rules, would the CEO then employ that same person again?
As if she resigned over the rule breach, if you read her resignation letter it's plainly obvious it was all part of forcing Truss out. The rule breach itself was ridiculously minor and in no way a resignation/sacking offense.
I partly agree with some of the above posts, the Conservative party is deeply divided into multiple factions at the moment; probably more than Labour. Labour are also looking better disciplined and probably have a much better depth of talent on their front bench.
But, it's no use pretending that any party wouldn't have to make so horrible choices on spending at the moment. I'd love to have public services that were even adequate, especially transport, healthcare and continuing education. I'd also prefer foreign aid spending to be higher. But something has to give. The price of borrowing would have increased without the Truss budget, just not quite as much. Defence of Ukraine I'd say is essential as well. I think Sunak hasn't done anything terrible yet, I'd prefer to give him half a chance, despite the fact I'm extremely unlikely to vote Conservative.
There's no probably about it, it's far more divided than labour. Saying that Labour is divided at the moment is rehashing old tabloid headlines rather than looking at the reality. Sure, there have been periods when it's been hugely divided, this isn't one of them.
Re adequate public services, I find it interesting you say "something has to give" like there is nothing to be done. In the absence of Brutus (so far!) ill say it; we could raise taxes to fund this! The vast majority of the population should be paying more in income tax. This is not a far left view, the NS podcast last week had a contributor saying that the basic rate should be 21%. I agree. We have the most generous tax regime in Europe I think, its no surprise everything is shit.
Not sure where you've got that from; according to a quick Google and Wikipedia only Romania and Denmark have a higher "lowest marginal rate" of income tax. Only Belgium, Finland and Portugal have higher "highest marginal rates"...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tax_rates
The current rate of corporation tax is relatively low but as we know, that's on the way up.
The overall tax burden in the UK as a percentage of GDP is at by far its highest level in the last 70 years already, and things like fiscal drag due to the freezing of tax thresholds, despite the highest rate of inflation in 50 years, are only going to make it even higher. And you want to raise rates even further?!
https://ifs.org.uk/articles/mini-budget-response
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As if she resigned over the rule breach, if you read her resignation letter it's plainly obvious it was all part of forcing Truss out. The rule breach itself was ridiculously minor and in no way a resignation/sacking offense.
Hmmm didn’t she use her private email to share govt docs with another MP (I assume to say things she didn’t want on record) and accidentally cc’ed the wrong person? Hopefully we will have a standards commissioner again at some point who can decide how minor her activity is, but the last one quit because they couldn’t deal with the Tory shit show!
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Hopefully we will have a standards commissioner again at some point who can decide how minor her activity is
Alas they’ve already ruled out this being investigated because it happened “under the previous administration”. What a crock of shit.
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I can't get excited about Braverman's breaking of the rules. She sent a draft document that was due for public release the next day and she probably did it as the most minor offence she could imagine to give herself an excuse to resign and write a scathing resignation speech.
I'd much rather slag her off because she gets a moisty thinking about sending asylum seekers to Rwanda.
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https://taxfoundation.org/top-personal-income-tax-rates-europe-2022/
https://ifs.org.uk/taxlab/taxlab-key-questions/how-do-uk-tax-revenues-compare-internationally
While UK taxes are higher than in most other English-speaking developed economies (such as Australia, New Zealand, Ireland and the United States), they are considerably lower than in most other western European countries (average tax revenue amongst the EU14
was 39% GDP.
I am no tax expert by any means, will have a look at your links, but the top rate seems. Higher in other European countries no?
Appreciate now may not be the time to raise basic rate to 21% but I stand by the view that middling incomes should be taxed more as well as those on megabucks, definitely an unpopular view though!
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Not sure where you've got that from; according to a quick Google and Wikipedia only Romania and Denmark have a higher "lowest marginal rate" of income tax. Only Belgium, Finland and Portugal have higher "highest marginal rates"...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tax_rates
The current rate of corporation tax is relatively low but as we know, that's on the way up.
The overall tax burden in the UK as a percentage of GDP is at by far its highest level in the last 70 years already, and things like fiscal drag due to the freezing of tax thresholds, despite the highest rate of inflation in 50 years, are only going to make it even higher. And you want to raise rates even further?!
https://ifs.org.uk/articles/mini-budget-response
This is all over the place I'm afraid.
Taking the "overall tax burden in the UK as a percentage of GDP is at by far its highest level in the last 70 years already" bit first - no it isn't, not yet. Its about 33%, and it has been around 33% fairly consistently since 2000. The nugget of truth in this line from Tory HQ is that the UK tax revenue to GDP ratio is forecast to reach 35% by 2025/6, which would indeed be the highest since 1951. If it happens. And apart from in 1969 when it was 35.1%. Info here https://ifs.org.uk/taxlab/taxlab-key-questions/how-have-government-revenues-changed-over-time
Tax to GDP ratio is a decent way to compare overall tax regimes of different countries. The UK at 33% is at about the OECD average, and lower than an awful lot of OECD countries. In fact I make it the lowest in Europe except for Switzerland, Latvia, Lithuania, and Ireland. You can check very easily here https://www.compareyourcountry.org/tax-revenues by clicking the arrows to filter each column. So to your question "And you want to raise rates even further?!" - in terms of overall tax take in the whole UK economy - yes. For comparison with countries people usually use, France is 45.3%, Germany 37.9%.
Now, I think you conflated this question with personal income tax rates. These are devilishly difficult to compare across countries due to different bands and allowances. The quick google you did to the wikipedia page is *incredibly* misleading in having the UK so high for lowest marginal tax rate, which it gives as 32% (20% basic rate + 12% NI). The crucial bit is in brackets where it says "0% income tax on the first £12,500". This is pretty generous relative to other European countries. For e.g. France and Germany have personal allowances of about £8700ish. On the wiki page France gets 0% compared to our 32%! On that basis we should also be 0% - this would definitely shoot us down the rankings! In addition other European countries often have much higher social security taxes which might not class as "income". For e.g. Germany has 10% pension contribution, 8% health, and 2.5% care and unemployment insurance, which sends them way over our 12% NI.
Similarly with the higher tax rate we are placed artificially high. Don't have the energy to continue but high earners are taxed more in France and Germany when you add in social security.
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I'd much rather slag her off because she gets a moisty thinking about sending asylum seekers to Rwanda.
Unfortuntely the big thing you mention (having horrible policy ideas) isn't against the code, whilst the minor thing is, so I will take what I can get! Also think it just seems way less minor than it might have done before the clusterfuck of the past few years, and the talk is that this was one of many offences.
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Now, I think you conflated this question with personal income tax rates. These are devilishly difficult to compare across countries due to different bands and allowances. The quick google you did to the wikipedia page is *incredibly* misleading in having the UK so high for lowest marginal tax rate, which it gives as 32% (20% basic rate + 12% NI). The crucial bit is in brackets where it says "0% income tax on the first £12,500". This is pretty generous relative to other European countries. For e.g. France and Germany have personal allowances of about £8700ish. On the wiki page France gets 0% compared to our 32%! On that basis we should also be 0% - this would definitely shoot us down the rankings! In addition other European countries often have much higher social security taxes which might not class as "income". For e.g. Germany has 10% pension contribution, 8% health, and 2.5% care and unemployment insurance, which sends them way over our 12% NI.
Similarly with the higher tax rate we are placed artificially high. Don't have the energy to continue but high earners are taxed more in France and Germany when you add in social security.
I think that you should find the energy and you should continue, and let us know the data for high earners proportional tax take versus comparator nations. Because the data for the high earners is absolutely central to your (your being 'the left wing') views on redistribution.
That isn't an attack of your viewpoint btw and I genuinely don't know the data. Just pointing out that it's always the high earners that the left targets. So it would be good if you posted with the same energy and level of research the same data for the higher tax bands that you just posted for the lower tax bands.
For instance, I've often heard the top 1% to 20% of earners in the UK pay a huge proportion of the total tax take, but also the wealthiest tend to take 'income' from various sources outside of paid work - capital gains and dividends for e.g. which makes it harder to calculate. I have personal experience of this having paid more in capital gains tax in one year last year then I paid in cumulative income tax over the last 10 years of full-time paid work in a relatively high-paying job. I feel like I've paid more than my share of tax for one lifetime, much more than a typical citizen. And as a typical low-maintenance climber I have an extremely low footprint on society in terms of services used.
This for e.g. from the LSE (https://www.lse.ac.uk/research/research-for-the-world/economics/how-much-tax-do-the-rich-really-pay):
In one respect, the UK tax system already looks top heavy. The top one per cent pay 30 per cent of all income tax revenues: a higher share than at any time in past twenty years. In other words, three in every ten pounds that the government receives in income tax is paid by just over 300,000 individuals. Not surprisingly, this statistic is often quoted by those who argue that the rich cannot be asked to pay more. But it doesn’t tell the whole story.
Our recent research shows there’s a lot of variation in the taxes paid by the rich. Most of the revenue from the top one per cent comes from a cohort of high-earning employees, who pay the often-quoted top rate of 45 per cent income tax plus two per cent national insurance contributions, with minimal deductions or reliefs. But a substantial minority pay much lower rates, especially taking into account capital gains, which offer an alternative way of taking rewards, mainly for the richest.
Where you get your money from (or at least how you package it) matters, because investment income and capital gains are taxed at lower rates than income from work.
Using anonymised data from personal tax returns, we show that in 2015-16 the average rate of tax paid by people who received one million pounds in taxable income and gains was just 35 per cent: the same as someone earning £100,000. But one in four of these paid 45 per cent – close to the top rate – whilst another quarter paid less than 30 per cent overall. One in ten paid just 11 per cent—the same as someone earning £15,000. The rich, it seems, are not all in it together.
These low rates are not driven by complex tax avoidance schemes; they’re part of how our system is designed. Where you get your money from (or at least how you package it) matters, because investment income and capital gains are taxed at lower rates than income from work. What’s more, as the National Audit Office recently highlighted, the government offers tax reliefs claimed to incentivise activities like entrepreneurship, without actually checking whether they achieve these aims.
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This is all over the place I'm afraid.
Taking the "overall tax burden in the UK as a percentage of GDP is at by far its highest level in the last 70 years already" bit first - no it isn't, not yet.
I perhaps should have added the simple qualifier "under existing government plans" to that sentence. In which case it's completely correct no? Especially since it was Sunak who drew up those plans.
Tax to GDP ratio is a decent way to compare overall tax regimes of different countries. The UK at 33% is at about the OECD average, and lower than an awful lot of OECD countries. In fact I make it the lowest in Europe except for Switzerland, Latvia, Lithuania, and Ireland. You can check very easily here https://www.compareyourcountry.org/tax-revenues by clicking the arrows to filter each column. So to your question "And you want to raise rates even further?!" - in terms of overall tax take in the whole UK economy - yes. For comparison with countries people usually use, France is 45.3%, Germany 37.9%.
Helpful, thanks.
Now, I think you conflated this question with personal income tax rates. These are devilishly difficult to compare across countries due to different bands and allowances. The quick google you did to the wikipedia page is *incredibly* misleading in having the UK so high for lowest marginal tax rate, which it gives as 32% (20% basic rate + 12% NI). The crucial bit is in brackets where it says "0% income tax on the first £12,500". This is pretty generous relative to other European countries. For e.g. France and Germany have personal allowances of about £8700ish. On the wiki page France gets 0% compared to our 32%! On that basis we should also be 0% - this would definitely shoot us down the rankings! In addition other European countries often have much higher social security taxes which might not class as "income". For e.g. Germany has 10% pension contribution, 8% health, and 2.5% care and unemployment insurance, which sends them way over our 12% NI.
Similarly with the higher tax rate we are placed artificially high. Don't have the energy to continue but high earners are taxed more in France and Germany when you add in social security.
Fair enough on the comparison to France and Germany but SM's point was that "we have the most generous tax regime in Europe", which is clearly nonsense (sorry Jim :)). I'm well aware of the impact of variations in allowances, which is why I made the point about fiscal drag in the face of very high inflation. I also don't think it's unfair to "conflate" it with personal taxation, since after all personal taxes are what we all have to pay. The idea of increasing taxes on average earners whilst staring down >10% inflation and a significant recession seems like total madness to me.
I can't get excited about Braverman's breaking of the rules. She sent a draft document that was due for public release the next day and she probably did it as the most minor offence she could imagine to give herself an excuse to resign and write a scathing resignation speech.
I'd much rather slag her off because she gets a moisty thinking about sending asylum seekers to Rwanda.
Precisely.
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https://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2022/10/26/austerity-is-something-we-simply-cant-afford/ but it's something that will be imposed, again.
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I'd much rather slag her off because she gets a moisty thinking about sending asylum seekers to Rwanda.
Unfortuntely the big thing you mention (having horrible policy ideas) isn't against the code, whilst the minor thing is, so I will take what I can get! Also think it just seems way less minor than it might have done before the clusterfuck of the past few years, and the talk is that this was one of many offences.
The Rwanda policy may not be against the ministerial code, but it may well be against international law, and its definitely a big waste of money and time. I agree with Will, her minor code breach is not very significant compared with almost anything Johnson did, or indeed Priti Patel bullying her staff, and while that doesn't make her better, the fact she seems incompetent concerns me more.
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Pete, I would love to but it would have to wait a day or two if so, I do have a good excuse currently! Not that I need one of course. RE the top 1% paying a very large proportion of all income tax - that is my understanding as well. Suffice to say that I take the leftist view that all this demonstrates is the ridiculous inequality across the income scale in the UK i.e. its an argument for redistribution, not against. You no doubt expected that ;D Although actually I would ultimately prefer to rebalance income so that redistribution was not needed as much, wage differentials were reduced and tax take was more widely distributed. You could call it Levelling Up! But one step at a time.....
Bradders, if you add that qualifier and also remove "already" then yes its correct. After a fashion, its still a forecast. Although I'm still not convinced by the weird rhetoric of comparing our total tax take to the UK of 70 years ago - what good is that comparison? It seems like an obvious rightwing diversionary tactic to keep our state really quite small. As the figures show going from 33% to 35% is a) not that big a change and b) brings us in line with other European countries. I find it hard to get worked up about. Where the taxes fall across the whole economy is the (very!) difficult question, as you identify.
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I think that you should find the energy and you should continue, and let us know the data for high earners proportional tax take versus comparator nations. Because the data for the high earners is absolutely central to your (your being 'the left wing') views on redistribution.
That isn't an attack of your viewpoint btw and I genuinely don't know the data. Just pointing out that it's always the high earners that the left targets. So it would be good if you posted with the same energy and level of research the same data for the higher tax bands that you just posted for the lower tax bands.
For instance, I've often heard the top 1% to 20% of earners in the UK pay a huge proportion of the total tax take, but also the wealthiest tend to take 'income' from various sources outside of paid work - capital gains and dividends for e.g. which makes it harder to calculate. I have personal experience of this having paid more in capital gains tax in one year last year then I paid in cumulative income tax over the last 10 years of full-time paid work in a relatively high-paying job. I feel like I've paid more than my share of tax for one lifetime, much more than a typical citizen. And as a typical low-maintenance climber I have an extremely low footprint on society in terms of services used.
This for e.g. from the LSE (https://www.lse.ac.uk/research/research-for-the-world/economics/how-much-tax-do-the-rich-really-pay):
In one respect, the UK tax system already looks top heavy. The top one per cent pay 30 per cent of all income tax revenues: a higher share than at any time in past twenty years. In other words, three in every ten pounds that the government receives in income tax is paid by just over 300,000 individuals. Not surprisingly, this statistic is often quoted by those who argue that the rich cannot be asked to pay more. But it doesn’t tell the whole story.
The top 1% paying 30% of income tax appears to be true but seems a fairly disingenuous figure to concentrate on since income tax is only one part of direct taxation, surely a more sensible figure would be the total of income tax and NI (particularly since NI payment is much more concentrated on lower/middle earners).
Some useful charts here:
https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-8513/
- Income tax is nearly 10% of GDP, NI nearly 7% so not including NI on the tax analysis is very significant.
- Top 1% earn 12.5% of total income so already the 30% doesn't look quite so outlandish particularly since NI isn't included in that 30% figure.
Possibly more important is the total tax (direct and indirect) paid as percentage of income - two charts towards the end show that while direct taxes increase from approx 15% on bottom quintile to 30% on the top quintile indirect taxes go in the opposite direction , approx 23% for bottom quintile to just over 10% on the top.
This, https://blogs.canterbury.ac.uk/expertcomment/who-really-pays-for-national-insurance-contributions/, summarises some of this. The overall UK tax system is not particularly redistributive with the bottom 20% paying the highest proportion of tax (though I guess that the effect of benefits should be considered on this) and then from the 2nd to 5th quintile the overall tax percentage only increasing very slightly from around 30%.
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Thanks. Without having looked, does that data also include non-income and non-NI tax take? The most wealthy also the most likely to pay additional taxes related to capital gains tax, dividends tax, tax on interest on savings etc.
Slightly related, I see Shell paid 65% in corporation/windfall taxes on its UK profits this quarter. That's a pretty hefty tax band.
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Have now looked at the links, good source. Your point about about NI is covered in this chart.
Total tax take including NI and most indirect taxes, as a proportion of household income is shown by the purple line. The top 10% pay 30% of all tax. The top 50% pay 80% of all tax. I say 'all', it says it actually covers around 75% of all taxes. Presumably the actual total tax take will be even more skewed to the wealthiest deciles because, as noted above, the most wealthy will be paying capital gains taxes, dividend taxes, tax on interest etc. not covered by the chart.
(http://i.imgur.com/I4CVOqE.png) (https://imgur.com/I4CVOqE)
I'm not seeing a case for wealthier people paying too little tax in the UK tbh. I can see an issue with the lowest 20% paying too much council tax and indirect taxes as a proportion of their household income. That lowest 20% also pays a lot of VAT proportional to their income, this seems difficult to change as it applies evenly on bought goods and services and presumably they're spending their money wisely.
(http://i.imgur.com/lIk5tOD.png) (https://imgur.com/lIk5tOD)
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Thanks. Without having looked, does that data also include non-income and non-NI tax take? The most wealthy also the most likely to pay additional taxes related to capital gains tax, dividends tax, tax on interest on savings etc.
Slightly related, I see Shell paid 65% in corporation/windfall taxes on its UK profits this quarter. That's a pretty hefty tax band.
I caught a glimpse of the headline this morning, didn’t they post £10B in profit in the Third Quarter? Pretty sure that’s after taxation…
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£8.2Bn profit in Q3.
But only a tiny proportion of that profit came from work carried out in the UK. And as noted, on this they paid 65% tax. The rest is elsewhere around the world, where it's taxed by the relevant nation. I presume people don't expect Shell, or any other business, to pay double taxation on profits earned in for e.g. the US?
The media love this shit because it riles people and stirs up a good moral panic. As usual the reality isn't what the media portray.
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The media love this shit because it riles people and stirs up a good moral panic. As usual the reality isn't what the media portray.
I was also listening to the Today programme this morning and to be fair they did clearly provide the context for this - as you've repeated here. Not sure which media is portraying it unfairly?
Also worth remembering that this additional profit has come from them doing sweet FA. Investment into the UK hasn't changed at all - as they also pointed out this morning.
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I'm not seeing a case for wealthier people paying too little tax in the UK tbh.
Reading between the lines Pete, is this the root issue? There are a lot of questions in your earlier post, and they only go up in number as you go back and edit it! ;) Boiling it down, is it that you are interested in hearing a case for wealthier people paying more tax?
If not, what exactly is it you want to discuss? Comparisons with foreign countries?
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I'm not seeing a case for wealthier people paying too little tax in the UK tbh.
Reading between the lines Pete, is this the root issue? There are a lot of questions in your earlier post, and they only go up in number as you go back and edit it! ;) Boiling it down, is it that you are interested in hearing a case for wealthier people paying more tax?
If not, what exactly is it you want to discuss? Comparisons with foreign countries?
There is also the question of interpretation of the data - for me the absolute minimum tax burden distribution for a modern society is that the well off pay the same percentage of their income as the less well off. Since we are pretty close to that point there must be a least some room to argue that the well off should pay a bit more.
Where I probably do agree with Pete is that I don't believe that often stated simplistic view that we can raise all the money we need just by increasing taxes on the 'very rich (top 0.1%, top 1%?).
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A problem with that though Ian is what are you classing as income? Because it isn't at all simple to look at someone of high net worth and say what their income is, in contrast to most middle and low earners who generally have a salary, and maybe a bit of interest or a gain on a house.
As noted above, a lot of wealth comes in the form not of a wage but in the form of dividends, capital gains, interest, pensions, annuities etc. And a large chunk of that money is quite rightly kept inside tax-free wrappers such as ISA's and SIPPS that we all use to incentivise saving for our retirement.
What you're suggesting sounds sensible, but isn't possible without completely changing the tax treatment of savings and investments for everybody, which also changes incentives for saving and investing.
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It’s complicated but modern developed states have a pretty high level of capacity and can work out how to do this. And if there are undesirable consequences, well we do not set tax policy once every quarter century. We can tweak it as we go!
In short it’s a political problem, not a technical one.
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A problem with that though Ian is what are you classing as income? Because it isn't at all simple to look at someone of high net worth and say what their income is, in contrast to most middle and low earners who generally have a salary, and maybe a bit of interest or a gain on a house.
As noted above, a lot of wealth comes in the form not of a wage but in the form of dividends, capital gains, interest, pensions, annuities etc. And a large chunk of that money is quite rightly kept inside tax-free wrappers such as ISA's and SIPPS that we all use to incentivise saving for our retirement.
What you're suggesting sounds sensible, but isn't possible without completely changing the tax treatment of savings and investments for everybody, which also changes incentives for saving and investing.
According to:
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/974540/SPI_National_Statistics_Commentary_tables_3_1_to_3.17_1819.pdf
significantly over 50% of income for additional rate tax payers (not a bad proxy for the top 1%) is still employment income (figure 2.5, page 10) so I'm not sure that is the main problem. Tax relief on pensions is limited to £40k per year (and reduced as earnings increase), so there's only so much (quite legally) avoided by that route.
In the end taking more tax from the well off and rich (top 10% say) is more of political decision than a technical problem. And part of the difficulty is that lots of rich people really don't like seeing large numbers going to the tax man - witness Adele moaning a few years ago about her £4 million tax bill, even though that meant she had earned many millions more than that.
To be clear I'm not of the 'squeeze the rich' persuasion particularly but do think if we are going to have increase the tax burden and potentially decrease benefit/pension payments in real terms we should consider spreading the pain and maybe that should include some increase on tax paid by those higher up the income scale.
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Lots of good 1% info in here: https://ifs.org.uk/publications/characteristics-and-incomes-top-1
Partnership and dividend income account for over a quarter of the total income of the top 1%, and over a third of the total income of the top 0.1%, a much higher share than for those with lower incomes. Partnership and dividend income are taxed at lower rates than normal salaries – a policy choice to tax the incomes of business owners at lower rates than employees, which therefore benefits a significant share of the top 1%.
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Pete you are absolutely right it isn't easy to compare across deciles. It matters what your metric is. For e.g. it is very easy to say "the top 10% pay 30% of income tax" and make it look like the rich pay way over the odds (poor lambs!).
However.... it is missing so much as to not be useful. What proportion of national income do the top 10% take? If its 30% or more (I think it is about 30%) then are they really paying over the odds? And actually is it worth calculating at all since its so narrow, only being concerned with income tax? The overall tax on someone is surely what matters and that is not just income tax, but also includes social security tax (NI in the UK), VAT on consumption, council tax, tax on dividends, tax on capital gains etc. Then you have to add in any benefits which come in the other direction.
The ONS try to capture all of the above using the unit of an "equivalised household" rather than an individual. This is useful https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/personalandhouseholdfinances/incomeandwealth/bulletins/theeffectsoftaxesandbenefitsonhouseholdincome/financialyearending2021 This is my broadbrush understanding of the UK situation:
+ The UK has huge income (before taxes and benefits) inequality between the richest and the poorest ends of the scale - much much bigger than other countries apart from the US.
+ The UK is actually very highly redistributive relative to other countries - there is a big transfer from the top end to the bottom end, everything in the middle also gets brought up a bit. This happens via taxing rich to give benefits to poor.
+Once the final household income after taxes and benefits is worked out then the UK system is largely flat i.e. people pay tax in proportion to their share of income before tax. I.e. top 10% pay 30% of tax as they take 30% of income. The poor get benefits but they get rinsed by VAT.
+Our Gini coefficient (measure of inequality) after taxes and benefits is high relative to other countries - meaning even after redistribution we still have high inequality, relatively.
A few links which I think capture the above:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41599-020-0514-4#Tab1
https://www.resolutionfoundation.org/comment/what-share-of-tax-do-the-top-1-per-cent-pay-less-than-you-might-have-heard/
https://www.ft.com/content/ef265420-45e8-497b-b308-c951baa68945
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_equality#EU27_countries
In light of the above a brief summation of a case for higher tax on th rich. For me there are two main issues - income inequality, and public services.
The UK is very high income inequality, and very highly redistributive. The two are linked. As you say the top 10% pay most tax, the bottom 50% hardly pay any. There is a transfer between the two groups via the state. If incomes were less unequal then the tax base could be more widely spread, and the rich could be soaked less. They might have to earn less though! The rich have been increasing their share of national income at the expense of others for a few decades now (needs a link, the info is out there). Having a low minimum wage and suppressing public sector wages does not help. You will have noticed that this is very close to arguments from the Tories (Johnson's high wage economy, levelling up. Truss's "better to let people keep their own money than give in handouts"). They do recognise the problem, its just that giving a tax cut to the rich, cutting benefits and keeping wages low seems an odd way to transition to it. Shock therapy rather than a managed process. Taxing the rich more, and transferring it less over time as incomes equalise seems a better system.
On public services, the state taking 33% tax as a share of GDP is low. Regardless of its position relative to 70 years ago! Its low relative to other European countries which have much better public services. Our population has aged massively since the 1950s, that requires the state / public services to be bigger to cover the costs. That was the explicit case for the rise in NI, earlier this year, billed as a health and social care levy, now cancelled. If more tax is required for public services then the way it is done elsewhere is via social security taxes. E.g. Germany has a top rate of income tax of 45%. Then you have a total of 19.3% in social security taxes (pensions, health, unemployment). And until very recently you also had 5.5% solidarity tax for reunification costs of East and West - a levelling up tax! Total 69.3%. In the UK we have 45% top rate + 2% NI = 47%. And top earners still want to pay less?! Most people pay 12% NI and for some it takes as much as income tax. If you take more income as dividends then as a top rate taxpayer you are subject to a 39.35% tax. That is less than if you actually worked for it. Capital gains tax of 20% top rate is much less than if you did a job. These are all taxes that could be tweaked upwards. What the gain (or loss!) would be I don't know, it might not amount to much or solve any problems, but top earners do OK (I think), and public services need the money.
Obviously the same info can be used to make a different case, if you wish...
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The top 10% of earners? This, according to the ONS means anyone with a family/household disposable income of just over £70k, right? That’s probably a fair proportion of people posting here, isn’t it? Am I rich now? Because I hadn’t fucking noticed. 🤣 Seriously, it’s a broad band and there’s a significant gap between those at the 10% margin and those at the top end.
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The top 10% of earners? This, according to the ONS means anyone with a family/household disposable income of just over £70k, right? That’s probably a fair proportion of people posting here, isn’t it? Am I rich now? Because I hadn’t fucking noticed. 🤣 Seriously, it’s a broad band and there’s a significant gap between those at the 10% margin and those at the top end.
Obviously there's a very big range in the top 10%, but.a household post-tax income of £70k is pretty well off IMO. That's a meaningfully higher number than my household and I would consider myself pretty well off (though perhaps not "rich")...
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I think we all know that the people who ought to be paying more tax are those earning more than ourselves.
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The top 10% of earners? This, according to the ONS means anyone with a family/household disposable income of just over £70k, right? That’s probably a fair proportion of people posting here, isn’t it? Am I rich now? Because I hadn’t fucking noticed. 🤣 Seriously, it’s a broad band and there’s a significant gap between those at the 10% margin and those at the top end.
To end up with disposable income of £70k I think you'd need one earner on £120k/year or two on £50k (just going on wages, not including holdings in south american lithium or whatever), which I think would be pretty well off by most standards.
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Nigel, that's a great reply thanks. Just a quickie as I don't have time for a proper response with links and data.
One thing you're not acknowledging in your thesis - maybe you aren't aware of the details yourself? - is what I said earlier about tax wrappers. You can't just 'tax the wealthiest more'... without significantly changing the system of tax wrappers that everybody, not just 'the wealthy', use to protect their money from taxes. The wealthy use the tax advantages of pension contributions and ISA's to full advantage. But the 'non wealthy' use these same advantages, just at lower numbers. You'd need to take away the tax-free wrappers from people who'd saved and invested large parts of their wealth into these instruments designed to be tax-free. I.e. reduce the annual ISA allowance, the maximum that could be held within an ISA, and seriously reduce the lifetime pension allowance from the current £1 million. But to what end? This would then change the incentives for all of us to build retirement stashes. As Sean says it's all doable, just a technical exercise. But any technical change is prone to also change the balance of incentives for all of us. The current system incentivises saving and investing, personally I think it would be very negative to dilute the current system of incentives.
Your view of dividends fails to account for the most important aspect of all - the risk premium inherent in the model. Think about how those dividends come about... They come about by person x placing their cash into a share. That cash has quite possibly already been taxed at source as income. The share has to do well and make profit, this is a risk and not guaranteed. A salary is guaranteed as long as you're employed. A dividend or capital gain is far from guaranteed and definitely not stable. This is reflected in the tax treatment of wages versus tax treatment of dividends and capital gains. If you dispute this then may I suggest next month you take all your wages and instead of paying for food and other bills, you place it all into a share of your choice as a means of earning income. Let me know how that risk feels to you, and whether you still think any gains you might end up making on your cash should be taxed the same as your 'safe' monthly wage. If you don't, then you believe in the risk premium (TLDR: everyone believes in risk premium, when it comes to them encountering the risk).
To my mind the biggest issue is the cost of everyday things which is obviously a real problem for the bottom 20%. It's the ratio of prices to wages that has become skewed in recent years - over the long term with housing and, recently, in the short term with just about everything, as a result of the inflationary rise following covid - supply chain disruption - war - follow on effects of energy input costs on manufacturing everything (massive simplification). But the current inflation is hopefully still 'relatively' short-lived (low single digit years rather than high single digit). Hard to know how to solve the VAT cost as a proportion of household income in this short time frame. If you do what you're talking about - raise wages in line with inflation without any resultant economic growth - then that'll ingrain high inflation for longer, which doesn't end well.
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The top 10% of earners? This, according to the ONS means anyone with a family/household disposable income of just over £70k, right? That’s probably a fair proportion of people posting here, isn’t it? Am I rich now? Because I hadn’t fucking noticed. 🤣 Seriously, it’s a broad band and there’s a significant gap between those at the 10% margin and those at the top end.
This reminds me of that Question Time exchange a little while ago
https://twitter.com/bbcquestiontime/status/1197651546940608514?t=EGPHtQMMiFb3y90APD-2Ew&s=19
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The top 10% of earners? This, according to the ONS means anyone with a family/household disposable income of just over £70k, right? That’s probably a fair proportion of people posting here, isn’t it? Am I rich now? Because I hadn’t fucking noticed. 🤣 Seriously, it’s a broad band and there’s a significant gap between those at the 10% margin and those at the top end.
Someone whose salary 70k before tax, let alone disposable income(!!!) is 100% rich compared to the general population, yes. Obviously some people are richer than that, but there are significantly more people significantly poorer than that.
That QT clip is an all time classic. The gradual realisation from the audience. :lol:
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The top 10% of earners? This, according to the ONS means anyone with a family/household disposable income of just over £70k, right? That’s probably a fair proportion of people posting here, isn’t it? Am I rich now? Because I hadn’t fucking noticed. 🤣 Seriously, it’s a broad band and there’s a significant gap between those at the 10% margin and those at the top end.
The first thing to point out is that wealth and income are not the same thing. One can have a high income and very low wealth (very recent graduate with a lot of debt but a great job) or low income and high wealth (pensioner with huge house bought decades ago). When people say “rich” it’s not often clear whether they are talking about income or wealth.
It’s also worth pointing out that wealth is not just a product of income but is also down to the returns on assets, and that a key part of wealth is the ownership of productive assets.
And yes, the top 10% of the income distribution is very wide, that does tend to be the nature of the outer extremes of a distribution. But… so what? The reality, as Nige said above, is what sort of public services do we want - because if we want a better public realm then we have to pay for it. For sure that responsibility will fall a lot further down the income distribution than just the top 10% but assuming that someone else should pay is part of the reason we are here.
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The top 10% of earners? This, according to the ONS means anyone with a family/household disposable income of just over £70k, right? That’s probably a fair proportion of people posting here, isn’t it? Am I rich now? Because I hadn’t fucking noticed. 🤣 Seriously, it’s a broad band and there’s a significant gap between those at the 10% margin and those at the top end.
This reminds me of that Question Time exchange a little while ago
https://twitter.com/bbcquestiontime/status/1197651546940608514?t=EGPHtQMMiFb3y90APD-2Ew&s=19
😂 yes, I actually thought the same thing after typing… It’s not that I have any disbelief in being in the “Top 10%” category, it’s the lumping in of vastly disparate income/wealth realities. Such a big difference between comfortable, affluent, well off and rich. Most people in that band are already paying 40%, on the same allowance as someone in the bottom 10%, so of course they will view it as “unfair”, especially those who only just cross into the higher band. Are we suggesting that someone earning £50k should be paying more than 40% of that (after allowance)? Or, do you really mean those on the additional rate? The over £150k group? Because that’s a pretty big difference. I can’t see any justification for anybody paying 50% of their income in tax, sorry. If you are in the Additional rate bracket, you’re quite likely to be able to simply up and shift to a more tax efficient country of residence anyway and a huge number of “those” jobs would just disappear overseas. No, the problem is where we spend our Tax pounds, the chronic waste and corruption, endemic in our system. I mean to say, it’s the proportion of what we already take, that is allocated to the services you wish to see improved or preserved that is the issue, not the taxation rate itself. That’s in reply to Sean, by the by. Simply raising taxes, doesn’t mean any more funding will find it’s way to the NHS for example. Removing the Tories from power, would save several Billion from the public purse, for instance, since they seem intent on giving their mates Billions for sweet FA and a meaningless contract…
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Stats show that people *rarely* move for tax benefits, even in America where you can just jump state boundaries. If tax goes up 5% for £150k earners, my feeling is companies generally just nudge up pay to match in the long term...
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Stats show that people *rarely* move for tax benefits, even in America where you can just jump state boundaries. If tax goes up 5% for £150k earners, my feeling is companies generally just nudge up pay to match in the long term...
I don’t know.
However, I live and work with a lot of people who have done just that, from many, many, different countries (and at every income level, too). Possibly this makes me biased.
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Most people in that band are already paying 40%, on the same allowance as someone in the bottom 10%, so of course they will view it as “unfair”, especially those who only just cross into the higher band. Are we suggesting that someone earning £50k should be paying more than 40% of that (after allowance)?
I don't know if it's just the way you've written this, but someone earning £50k wouldn't be paying anything at 40% (ish dependent on whether you have a company car or whatever taking from your allowance, up to £50k earnings would be at 20%), and someone earning £55k would only be paying the 40% rate on that last 5k right?
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Stats show that people *rarely* move for tax benefits, even in America where you can just jump state boundaries. If tax goes up 5% for £150k earners, my feeling is companies generally just nudge up pay to match in the long term...
I don’t know.
However, I live and work with a lot of people who have done just that, from many, many, different countries (and at every income level, too). Possibly this makes me biased.
I guess most people don't move for climbing, but if you asked the question in Llanberis you might get a different answer to if you asked it in London!
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I don't know if it's just the way you've written this, but someone earning £50k wouldn't be paying anything at 40% (ish dependent on whether you have a company car or whatever taking from your allowance, up to £50k earnings would be at 20%), and someone earning £55k would only be paying the 40% rate on that last 5k right?
Yes this. Tax doesn't work like that as I'm sure Matt knows. Someone on £70k is paying 40% on the last £20k (approx., depending on other benefits and allowances).
What happens in reality is people on £100k+, if they're smart and if they're at risk of slipping into the additional rate, can avoid much tax by instruments such as salary sacrifice into their pension instead of taking the wage. This can drop them back down under the additional rate band for income tax.
Also anyone on a wage much over £40k who receives a windfall can top up their pension using the annual allowance of £40k backdated for three years at 100% of the annual wage, and receive 20% tax relief. Those are just two simple and well-known methods for the highly-paid, but not 'super-rich', to not get stung for additional rate or for dealing tax-efficiently with windfalls. They encourage investing and saving for the future.
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Diversion from tax discussion; I'd wondered if the appointment of Braverman was cunning, as a lightning rod for criticism and distraction from the awful economic situation. It's starting to look like she has been so incompetent that it might have been an error anyway, even if that was true. You can't have a home secretary who's actually a security risk. Got to wonder how much longer she's going to last really. Out before Christmas? Or is the criticism going to die down?
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I suspect the appointment of Cruella Braverman was for the most part simply a measure to generate some support from the far right of the Conservative party.
However I would not be surprised if to some degree the decision was taken knowing that it's just a matter of time before she once again messes up and will be forced to resign. At which point a more competent replacement can be appointed and Sunak can say to the far right 'well I said I would make Braverman Home Sec in exchange for your support, it's not my fault she's incompetent, so the deal still stands'.
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I suspect the appointment of Cruella Braverman was for the most part simply a measure to generate some support from the far right of the Conservative party.
However I would not be surprised if to some degree the decision was taken knowing that it's just a matter of time before she once again messes up and will be forced to resign. At which point a more competent replacement can be appointed and Sunak can say to the far right 'well I said I would make Braverman Home Sec in exchange for your support, it's not my fault she's incompetent, so the deal still stands'.
Yep exactly. Starmer did the same with Rebecca Long-Bailey to appease the Corbynites. Except this tactic has a bit more risk attached when it’s THE ACTUAL HOME SECRETARY rather than just the shadow education secretary.
So much for country before party…
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It’s never country before party, as we all know. Even Charles Walker was bemonaning ‘the damage done to this party’ when it should have been ´country’ uppermost in his mind:
https://youtu.be/VM5ijPHRw88?t=63
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I don't know if it's just the way you've written this, but someone earning £50k wouldn't be paying anything at 40% (ish dependent on whether you have a company car or whatever taking from your allowance, up to £50k earnings would be at 20%), and someone earning £55k would only be paying the 40% rate on that last 5k right?
Yes this. Tax doesn't work like that as I'm sure Matt knows. Someone on £70k is paying 40% on the last £20k (approx., depending on other benefits and allowances).
What happens in reality is people on £100k+, if they're smart and if they're at risk of slipping into the additional rate, can avoid much tax by instruments such as salary sacrifice into their pension instead of taking the wage. This can drop them back down under the additional rate band for income tax.
Also anyone on a wage much over £40k who receives a windfall can top up their pension using the annual allowance of £40k backdated for three years at 100% of the annual wage, and receive 20% tax relief. Those are just two simple and well-known methods for the highly-paid, but not 'super-rich', to not get stung for additional rate or for dealing tax-efficiently with windfalls. They encourage investing and saving for the future.
Although the Annual Allowance does taper these days, but only if your threshold income is over 200k so really its 40k a year for almost everyone regardless
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It’s never country before party, as we all know. Even Charles Walker was bemonaning ‘the damage done to this party’ when it should have been ´country’ uppermost in his mind:
https://youtu.be/VM5ijPHRw88?t=63
It was definitely not just him, to be fair, I've heard interviewers on the BBC and LBC tear into Conservative MPs for the party emphasis.
Having said that, I don't know how much harm Braverman can do, unless you're unfortunate enough to be in that migrant camp in Kent. She seems to be so incompetent I can't see her getting anything past other MPs. If reports are correct, she's not popular in her own party. I'd give her a few months in post.
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It shows how far government has declined that we are celebrating incompetence now.
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This charming man represents Christchurch: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/antivaxers-applaud-tory-mp-christopher-chope-as-he-questions-safety-of-covid-vaccines-ktpsldhwm?shareToken=43c684910dcca4cb68f01aca0ad27587
Got to wonder if the residents of his constituency want to fund his frothing promotion of conspiracy theories. He also happens to be a prominent supporter of Boris Johnson. I'm not saying that the two are connected.
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He was the bloke that stopped that upskirting bill wasn't he? Prick
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He was the bloke that stopped that upskirting bill wasn't he? Prick
He was, but I don't think that was a particular belief, he routinely shouts object because he doesn't like bills not following whatever precise route he wants them to through the commons. It's a shame his attention to detail doesn't extend to any actual facts about vaccination.
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It's not UK politics, but the election of Lula in Brazil is hopefully a good thing for the Amazon, and a defeat for a deeply problematic populist.
BBC News - Brazil election: Lula makes stunning comeback
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-63451470
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It's amazing how fast the tide of populism as been pushed back though admittedly by far narrower margins than I'd like to see.
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It's not UK politics, but the election of Lula in Brazil is hopefully a good thing for the Amazon, and a defeat for a deeply problematic populist.
BBC News - Brazil election: Lula makes stunning comeback
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-63451470
He hasn't accepted the result yet but seems like his political allies are and any support for an attempt to deny the result may be ebbing away fairly quickly.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/oct/31/brazil-election-bolsonaro-concede-reaction
Brazilian democray looks like it may be in a better place than in the US?
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Meanwhile, it is election day here in Denmark, the government having finally been brought low by the great mistaken mink cull of 2020. I know the whole world is agog with anticipation.
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Meanwhile, it is election day here in Denmark, the government having finally been brought low by the great mistaken mink cull of 2020. I know the whole world is agog with anticipation.
There should be a single descriptive word for a mass extermination of mink. Mink-ocide just doesn't sound right. Perhaps Suella Braverman has missed her calling, and should be exterminating mink. She certainly doesn't seem to be able to do anything else very well.
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A Lemming of Mink?
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An exterminkation, obvs.
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An exterminkation, obvs.
Making Denmark the Extermink-nation.
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I am not too happy that the conditions in Manston have been allowed to deteriorate as they have. When a child has to write a letter asking for help for medicine and food, we are sinking below any normal standards of decency. 4k people in a facility fit for 1600? Cases of diptheria, scabies, MRSA? :no:
The way to change that is persuade the Home Office, which acts on our behalf, that this is a guaranteed vote loser.
I sent this, with my view, to my MP by email:
(https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/f07fe6d11d7811198874b29360c8b4f236c8f2f6/0_292_2333_2914/master/2333.jpg?width=300&quality=85&dpr=1&s=none)
the link is here if you want to do the same:
https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/f07fe6d11d7811198874b29360c8b4f236c8f2f6/0_292_2333_2914/master/2333.jpg?width=300&quality=85&dpr=1&s=none
Source: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/nov/02/home-office-removing-asylum-seekers-from-manston-as-fears-rise-for-their-health
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I am not too happy that the conditions in Manston have been allowed to deteriorate as they have. When a child has to write a letter asking for help for medicine and food, we are sinking below any normal standards of decency. 4k people in a facility fit for 1600? Cases of diptheria, scabies, MRSA? :no:
The way to change that is persuade the Home Office, which acts on our behalf, that this is a guaranteed vote loser.
I sent this, with my view, to my MP by email:
(https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/f07fe6d11d7811198874b29360c8b4f236c8f2f6/0_292_2333_2914/master/2333.jpg?width=300&quality=85&dpr=1&s=none)
the link is here if you want to do the same:
https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/f07fe6d11d7811198874b29360c8b4f236c8f2f6/0_292_2333_2914/master/2333.jpg?width=300&quality=85&dpr=1&s=none
Source: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/nov/02/home-office-removing-asylum-seekers-from-manston-as-fears-rise-for-their-health
I agree with you, but, sadly an awful lot of people don't and Suella Braverman etc know it. I'm usually shocked every time I visit family in South Devon how concerned many people are about immigration round there, given that there are barely any immigrants in the area.
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I'm usually shocked every time I visit family in South Devon how concerned many people are about immigration round there, given that there are barely any immigrants in the area.
I went on holiday to Devon last year with my partner and mother in law, both Asian, and we got properly gawped at literally every time we left the house. It was incredibly obvious and the worst we’ve experienced in the U.K., but to be fair, there were lots of very friendly people and we had a good time. But really, give it a rest guys!
This article on young right-wingers is a bit half-formed but nevertheless an interesting read on a group of people who might be about to emerge in public life:
https://unherd.com/2022/11/meet-britains-radical-new-right/
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I'm usually shocked every time I visit family in South Devon how concerned many people are about immigration round there, given that there are barely any immigrants in the area.
I went on holiday to Devon last year with my partner and mother in law, both Asian, and we got properly gawped at literally every time we left the house. It was incredibly obvious and the worst we’ve experienced in the U.K., but to be fair, there were lots of very friendly people and we had a good time. But really, give it a rest guys!
This article on young right-wingers is a bit half-formed but nevertheless an interesting read on a group of people who might be about to emerge in public life:
https://unherd.com/2022/11/meet-britains-radical-new-right/
I recognise that completely. Most people in Devon, like most places are friendly and pleasant, but I've heard any number of absolutely shocking attitudes and beliefs down there. I'm sure much of it is based on ignorance rather than genuine malice, but it's no excuse either way as far as I'm concerned.
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I'm usually shocked every time I visit family in South Devon how concerned many people are about immigration round there, given that there are barely any immigrants in the area.
I went on holiday to Devon last year with my partner and mother in law, both Asian, and we got properly gawped at literally every time we left the house. It was incredibly obvious and the worst we’ve experienced in the U.K., but to be fair, there were lots of very friendly people and we had a good time. But really, give it a rest guys!
This article on young right-wingers is a bit half-formed but nevertheless an interesting read on a group of people who might be about to emerge in public life:
https://unherd.com/2022/11/meet-britains-radical-new-right/
Did you delve into the comments? :blink:
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:???: They've got quite a thing about Marxism haven't they?
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Enough material there to last Dave Gorman for a year.
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From the above anecdotes we might conclude that Devon specifically is a hot bed of ignorant racists. Speaking as a resident of Devon that had worked with young people here for almost 20 years I can certainly say that I have encountered and challenged entrenched racist attitudes on a fairly regular basis. I can also state that it doesn't feel like that has exceeded anything I have encountered whilst work with young people in Warwickshire or West Yorkshire.
Your anecdotes suggest that this is a Devon specific problem, I would invite you to be a tourist in say Kent or a 'Northern' County and see if attitudes presented are generally different.
There a few things I would like to counter. Firstly, people do not develop their attitudes in a vacuum and the idea that there are no excuses seems unconstructive. Perhaps, there a reasons rather than excuses but I think the point stands.
Secondly, the prevailing culture in our society whether you like it or not is cultivated and manufactured by the strongest influential forces. Media and education. Considering the bombardment of dog whistle attitudes (that goes right to the top) within our culture and the platforming of individuals with these attitudes, it is unsurprising that racism is alive and well everywhere in this country. Eg. In the last week we have witnessed a BBC reporter in Kent talking war language with reference to asylum seekers 'invasion', 'frontline', 'crisis' and 'defence' being used to describe the situation.
Perhaps, in our metropolitan elite middle class worlds we don't encounter these attitudes as much but when we get amongst the proles on our holidays we see it more?
In conclusion, what you're experiencing is not exclusive to Devon, it's not a Devon problem, it's an everywhere problem. Racism in the UK has very much been cultivated to ensure that blame is never pointed towards the actual source of our problems/poverty.
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I’ll be sure to tell my better half that some white guy can explain exactly how racism works and where she should expect to find it, thanks.
As for this:
Perhaps, in our metropolitan elite middle class worlds we don't encounter these attitudes as much but when we get amongst the proles on our holidays we see it more?
Just do one.
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Not sure my post warranted a 'do one' SK. Thought I was being fairly measured in pointing out that Devon isn't an anomaly.
Also... you know nothing of my background or expertise and have made some big assumptions....
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To be fair Brutus, the tone of your post came across as dismissive of Sean's first hand experience, to me at least.
From your posts generally I'm sure you're not a racist! But the way i read this bit it does sound like it's on the wrong side of the line between understanding the source of racism vs sounding like an apologist:
Firstly, people do not develop their attitudes in a vacuum and the idea that there are no excuses seems unconstructive. Perhaps, there a reasons rather than excuses but I think the point stands.
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Your claim that “racism is an everywhere problem” is sort of true but it also doesn’t tally with actual lived experience of going years without any problems to then getting shitty vibes the very first day you are in a new area. Of course other places are bad, when we go to my native East Yorkshire it’s not great either, but our experience in Devon was what it was. Maybe it’s just random and we were unlucky… but some places are worse than others, that’s just how it is.
Your comment about “holidaying amongst the proles”, yeah I get it was tongue in cheek but racism has fuck all to do with class. There are millions of anti-racist working class people in the UK, and British cities have plenty of poor people in them too, even London. So… it’s just an off thing to say, why propagate the idea that working class people are inherently racist when it just isn’t true?
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Sean do you mind if I ask where in Devon this was?
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No problem, Tavistock and surrounds. I can imagine Exeter is very different. Fwiw we had a good time, it’s a beautiful part of the world.
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The rest of the world wants revolution, dwellers on the moor want evolution.
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Was definitely with tongue in cheek but I get that the voice in my head doesn't magically translate into the words on the page.
No intention to dismiss personal experience or cause upset, so apologies for any caused.
I have personally experienced/witnessed some very abhorrent attitudes and behaviour in Devon. I made a promise to a very influential person in my life a long time ago and will personally never let something go unchallenged. (I have a great story about a local pub and BNP recruiter that I may share one day).
Fair enough re: class. I was trying to point more towards rural/ urban attitudes/differences prole was the wrong word to use. ie. Definitely think you are more likely to encounter the kind of overt racism you've experienced in a Devonshire market town as opposed to an urban centre. Agree some places are worse than others and Devon is definitely one of those places.
Not an apologist for discriminatory behaviour it is inexcusable but have an interest in how people aquire their attitudes. There are reasons why someone feels OK with discriminatory behaviour and I am interested in how/why the comes to be. Not really a riddle that can be solved on an Internet forum by bunch of boulderers but nonetheless there are plenty of lines of influence within our society that are fanning the flames.
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Thanks Sean. Why am I not surprised it's a small market town. I come from one and wouldn't want to go back! FWIW my partner's Asian and we didn't have any issues in Torbay so can recommend staying there. Glad it didn't ruin the holiday!
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Was definitely with tongue in cheek but I get that the voice in my head doesn't magically translate into the words on the page.
No intention to dismiss personal experience or cause upset, so apologies for any caused.
I have personally experienced/witnessed some very abhorrent attitudes and behaviour in Devon. I made a promise to a very influential person in my life a long time ago and will personally never let something go unchallenged. (I have a great story about a local pub and BNP recruiter that I may share one day).
Fair enough re: class. I was trying to point more towards rural/ urban attitudes/differences prole was the wrong word to use. ie. Definitely think you are more likely to encounter the kind of overt racism you've experienced in a Devonshire market town as opposed to an urban centre. Agree some places are worse than others and Devon is definitely one of those places.
Not an apologist for discriminatory behaviour it is inexcusable but have an interest in how people aquire their attitudes. There are reasons why someone feels OK with discriminatory behaviour and I am interested in how/why the comes to be. Not really a riddle that can be solved on an Internet forum by bunch of boulderers but nonetheless there are plenty of lines of influence within our society that are fanning the flames.
I work in a school in South Devon, but I don't know how important that is. I've experienced some.shocking comments from students, but then I also did in weston super mare, Bristol, Sheffield, and Newcastle. So I have no idea if Devon is a "worse" place. What I do find interesting/alarming down here is that people will make sweeping statements about "the immigrants", without having every really had an encounter with a non white non devonian person. I don't know if that makes it better or worse.
I think I get where Brutus is coming from in terms of what makes people have these attitudes. We often use a phrase at school, about general behaviour rather than racist attitudes, but I think it is still relevant; "don't ask what's wrong with them, ask what happened to them".
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Your claim that “racism is an everywhere problem” is sort of true but it also doesn’t tally with actual lived experience of going years without any problems to then getting shitty vibes the very first day you are in a new area. Of course other places are bad, when we go to my native East Yorkshire it’s not great either, but our experience in Devon was what it was. Maybe it’s just random and we were unlucky… but some places are worse than others, that’s just how it is.
Your comment about “holidaying amongst the proles”, yeah I get it was tongue in cheek but racism has fuck all to do with class. There are millions of anti-racist working class people in the UK, and British cities have plenty of poor people in them too, even London. So… it’s just an off thing to say, why propagate the idea that working class people are inherently racist when it just isn’t true?
Devon, where I was born and now live (when in the UK), has a Xenophobia issue. It isn’t simply a matter of racism, which certainly appears more rife than many more urbane areas of the UK. However, you do have to view it in the light of the animosity that certain people from “x” part of the county have towards people of “y” part of the county and the collective disdain they all have for people from other counties…
My feeling is this is a fairly typical “thing” for relatively rural communities, everywhere I have travelled.
I don’t think they are much more racist than any other community (as a whole), perhaps just not as versed in hiding it as those in areas with a greater mix of races, ethnicities and nationalities.
Living in Devon with a Romanian wife, we both experienced this. Quite a lot of people, everywhere, are quite unpleasant in these matters.
Demographics play into it too. Large retirement age group, from all over the country and, frankly, there are some horrendous attitudes to all sorts of social groups, races and “bloody foreigners” amongst my parent’s generation. I often idly imagine slapping some sense into my elderly aunts, when they launch into one of their rants about this weeks demonised group.
Unfortunately, a different skin colour is an unmistakable badge of membership in one of those groups, my wife usually had to tell them where she was from before they decided to be rude.
It isn’t anything like as common amongst younger people or as bad as it was.
As a kid in Cornwall, my olive skin was enough to have me branded “Dago”, “Wop” and most commonly “Gandhi”.
Having said that.
I am, however (at least partially) with Brutus. There are reasons.
These are neglected communities in their own right, and victims of both ignorance and propaganda as well. Add in the stress that tourism, “second home” buyers destroying small communities, “benefits by the sea” migration and reduced public services etc etc bring and you get massive distrust of “outsiders” of all stripes.
I’m sorry for your experiences Sean, it really isn’t everyone.
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I would say that I hear more racist attitudes in Devon than I do in Northern cities, I went to school in Newton Abbot and in Exeter, and certainly remember a lot of it then, although that was in the 90s, maybe it's better now. Having said that, I'm sure Devon is no different from other neglected coastal areas of the country, I just don't really know the East coast much.
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Thanks for all the replies! I think it's worth saying that it's obviously not everyone, lots of people were super friendly when we visited and didn't bat an eyelid. Same as when we go back home to the east coast, the vast majority of people are great, and my friends up there are as accepting as anyone down here.
I think it's mainly proximity to big cities or to the widening of the big city effect that changes attitudes, and I guess Devon is just further away from large centres of population. Plus, as Matt says, demographics, though part of me struggles with this. My family is pretty liberal, culturally and politically - my grandad had visitors from Uganda and Kenya stay at his house in the mid 1950s as part of a Rotary visit and welcomed them with open arms - and I never really grew up with that kind of casual racism in the background at home. (School was a different matter.) What gets my goat is that I have in-laws in Sri Lanka who are elderly, don't speak much English (ie not part of the Anglophone elite) and are really traditional, and who treat me incredibly well, as one of their own even though I'm a foreigner. It makes me want to grab the English racists and go "see this little old lady who you'd think is backward, she's more bloody forward thinking that you'll ever be!"
I'm not sure I agree that people in more mixed areas are better at hiding their dislike of other groups, I'm sure some are but honestly, I live in one of the handful of boroughs in England where white people are a minority and if you got worked up over seeing black people or hearing a different language you'd go spare every time you stepped out of the front door. Like, why would you bother staying here? It'd be miserable!
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Who is the worse MP for their constituents, Matt Hancock, in Australia on reality TV for a few weeks, or Boris Johnson, who yesterday made apparently his third ever reference to his constituency since 2015 in the Commons, and is almost permanently seemingly on holiday at the moment?
I have little to no sympathy for the former whatsoever, and have better things to watch on TV, but I think he'd be justified in feeling that his former boss is, and was far worse than he, but he was the one who resigned almost immediately and has been more pilloried in the press.
On the plus side, as long as they don't do or say anything stupid, Labour look to be in a pretty good position at the moment.
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On surface impressions undoubtedly bojo is worse at representing his constituency. Various polls predict he’ll lose his seat at the next election. If he does, I’d expect him to reappear as MP for another constituency whose constituents were less discerning - Henley for e.g.
I read somewhere he employs others to do the day to day constituency work, leaving him to concentrate on being the posh buffoon figurehead for the serfs to admire. He’s a bit like the monarchy.
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On surface impressions undoubtedly bojo is worse at representing his constituency. Various polls predict he’ll lose his seat at the next election. If he does, I’d expect him to reappear as MP for another constituency whose constituents were less discerning - Henley for e.g.
I read somewhere he employs others to do the day to day constituency work, leaving him to concentrate on being the posh buffoon figurehead for the serfs to admire. He’s a bit like the monarchy.
Likely. I have read he's likely to get moved to Nadine Dorries' seat if she gets her seat in the lords.
I like the observation about the monarchy, very apt, he probably has posher wallpaper than the King, however.
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I wonder how the Matt Hancock jungle thing will play out. There's obviously a lot of people who aren't happy that he's there, but these are people who were already anti-Tory and weren't going to be convinced otherwise. A lot of social media chat I see about him is now sympathetic and I note that he isn't doing the trial tonight for the first time. One possible effect is that some people will soften on the Tories as they realise that they are in fact human beings.
Incredible to see Boy George slate Hancock as a rule breaker. Boy George has done actual jail time after he tied a male escort to a radiator and beat him with a metal chain.
Disclaimer. Of course I do not watch Sleb Jungle. However, I am present in the room when it is on, normally playing my Switch.
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My sources told me it's you wrestling the control away from your other half and forcing them to watch it. You are among friends here Will, you don't have to hide your true self :hug:
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I won't pretend I don't enjoy it a little bit.
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One possible effect is that some people will soften on the Tories as they realise that they are in fact human beings.
Let’s just continue to judge their humanity by their actions as government rather than whatever emotional pleas may be going on your reality tv shows. On that basis the evidence of humanity is sparse.
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Incredible to see Boy George slate Hancock as a rule breaker. Boy George has done actual jail time after he tied a male escort to a radiator and beat him with a metal chain.
Ah, but Boy George wasn’t telling other people not to tie male escorts to radiators and beat them with metal chains, while he did it.
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One possible effect is that some people will soften on the Tories as they realise that they are in fact human beings.
Let’s just continue to judge their humanity by their actions as government rather than whatever emotional pleas may be going on your reality tv shows. On that basis the evidence of humanity is sparse.
Perhaps, however Hancock hasn't been a part of the government for more than a year. Incredible to see Boy George slate Hancock as a rule breaker. Boy George has done actual jail time after he tied a male escort to a radiator and beat him with a metal chain.
Ah, but Boy George wasn’t telling other people not to tie male escorts to radiators and beat them with metal chains, while he did it.
True.
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Disclaimer. Of course I do not watch Sleb Jungle. However, I am present in the room when it is on, normally playing my Switch.
I believe you, I have the same experience with Judge Judy.
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Well, this sucks.
I was having a good day, until I got on the Amsterdam Metro an hour ago and pulled out my phone to discover that, technically, WW3 started two hours ago.
A lot of people will be losing sleep tonight trying to persuade Poland not to pull an article 5.
One assumes the diplomats will iron it out by dawn, but the world just got a little worse…
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Incredible to see Boy George slate Hancock as a rule breaker. Boy George has done actual jail time after he tied a male escort to a radiator and beat him with a metal chain.
Ah, but Boy George wasn’t telling other people not to tie male escorts to radiators and beat them with metal chains, while he did it.
Also, Boy George was tried and punished for his behaviour, he served his time. Hancock.... has not.
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Well, this sucks.
I was having a good day, until I got on the Amsterdam Metro an hour ago and pulled out my phone to discover that, technically, WW3 started two hours ago.
A lot of people will be losing sleep tonight trying to persuade Poland not to pull an article 5.
One assumes the diplomats will iron it out by dawn, but the world just got a little worse…
The BBC are reporting this evening that it might have been some of the bombs headed for Kiev having been knocked off course by the Ukrainian defences. A good / convenient outcome ...?
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Incredible to see Boy George slate Hancock as a rule breaker. Boy George has done actual jail time after he tied a male escort to a radiator and beat him with a metal chain.
Ah, but Boy George wasn’t telling other people not to tie male escorts to radiators and beat them with metal chains, while he did it.
Also, Boy George was tried and punished for his behaviour, he served his time. Hancock.... has not.
Why is it acceptable to abandon your paid duties and do something else, remunerated or not? my P45 would be on its way pronto.
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I'm not defending Hancock, I'm wondering whether people who watch realty TV shows will soften their view on him.
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And I'm wondering why going AWOL isn't gross misconduct, as it is in most jobs.
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Surely he would have to have asked permission? From who though? Party leader?
I'm sure there are MPs who have been more truant, just with a lower profile while doing it.
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And I'm wondering why going AWOL isn't gross misconduct, as it is in most jobs.
Because he's promoting his dyslexia cause and because that would require them to interrogate Jonson and lots of other people's behaviours?
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Don’t members of parliament have contractual obligations to their employer?
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Don’t members of parliament have contractual obligations to their employer?
No, they don't. They're answerable only to their constituents, otherwise Boris Johnson would have been fired years ago for never doing anything that wasn't about himself.
Parties can remove the whip, as has happened to Hancock but they remain MP for their constituency.
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Don’t members of parliament have contractual obligations to their employer?
No, they don't. They're answerable only to their constituents, otherwise Boris Johnson would have been fired years ago for never doing anything that wasn't about himself.
Parties can remove the whip, as has happened to Hancock but they remain MP for their constituency.
Kathryn Stone (standards commissioner) was talking about this yesterday. She has had lots of complaints about Matt Hancock going away for such a long time, but as there’s no code of conduct for that kind of thing there’s nothing to actually investigate. She was pretty frustrated by it!
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Don’t members of parliament have contractual obligations to their employer?
No, they don't. They're answerable only to their constituents, otherwise Boris Johnson would have been fired years ago for never doing anything that wasn't about himself.
Parties can remove the whip, as has happened to Hancock but they remain MP for their constituency.
Kathryn Stone (standards commissioner) was talking about this yesterday. She has had lots of complaints about Matt Hancock going away for such a long time, but as there’s no code of conduct for that kind of thing there’s nothing to actually investigate. She was pretty frustrated by it!
Long live the uncodified constitution! Let the "good chap" principle sort it out............
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Don’t members of parliament have contractual obligations to their employer?
No, they don't. They're answerable only to their constituents, otherwise Boris Johnson would have been fired years ago for never doing anything that wasn't about himself.
Parties can remove the whip, as has happened to Hancock but they remain MP for their constituency.
Kathryn Stone (standards commissioner) was talking about this yesterday. She has had lots of complaints about Matt Hancock going away for such a long time, but as there’s no code of conduct for that kind of thing there’s nothing to actually investigate. She was pretty frustrated by it!
Long live the uncodified constitution! Let the "good chap" principle sort it out............
I don't, to be honest have a big problem with Hancock doing what he's doing, his constituents can judge him on that, as I'm sure they will at the next election.
I have far more of an issue with Johnson going on holiday and paid speaking tours all the time, whilst no doubt expecting another go at being PM at some point. Hancock is humiliating himself, on his way to obscurity; Johnson is a waddling threat to democracy.
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Yeah I guess if they are actually pissed off, his local party could have a vote to deselect him before the next election
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Presumably there are other politicians standing in Hanncock's constituency? Members of the public can freely vote for them if they don't like what Hanncock stands for. It doesn't appear to require a witch hunt, just an election.
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Presumably there are other politicians standing in Hanncock's constituency? Members of the public can freely vote for them if they don't like what Hanncock stands for. It doesn't appear to require a witch hunt, just an election.
Yeh but even his constituents have to wait several years before they get the opportunity to do that. In the meantime every taxpayer across the country is jointly funding his salary while he uses the time to try and kickstart his post-politics career.
It’s like getting sacked from your job for being shit and then expecting your employer to pay for you to retrain.
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I don't, to be honest have a big problem with Hancock doing what he's doing, his constituents can judge him on that, as I'm sure they will at the next election.
It’s incredibly offensive and disrespectful behaviour on the part of both Hancock and ITV towards those of us who lost relatives in the pandemic. Hancock is discussing his actions and defending himself in front of a bunch of second rate celebs - this is a completely inappropriate place in which to be talking about the life and death decisions he made. There is no proper scrutiny, no informed questioning, and turning the mistakes which killed our loved ones into entertainment is just gross.
Saying this appalling behaviour is simply a matter for his constituents is deeply unfair on them too: what if they hate Hancock’s appearance on the show but happen to be centre right? Those people - and all the voters in his constituency - deserve a clean candidate to represent them.
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Hancock is discussing his actions and defending himself in front of a bunch of second rate celebs - this is a completely inappropriate place in which to be talking about the life and death decisions he made. There is no proper scrutiny, no informed questioning, and turning the mistakes which killed our loved ones into entertainment is just gross.
You have to wonder how much of this is him trying to get ahead of the inquiry and set the narrative (“he seemed like a decent guy on the telly and he was just trying his best” yada yada).
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Saying this appalling behaviour is simply a matter for his constituents is deeply unfair on them too: what if they hate Hancock’s appearance on the show but happen to be centre right? Those people - and all the voters in his constituency - deserve a clean candidate to represent them.
I think it’s a matter for them as they are the only ones who can change his standing if he’s not actually breaking any parliamentary rules? The local conservative party could vote to deselect him and stand another candidate
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You have to wonder how much of this is him trying to get ahead of the inquiry and set the narrative (“he seemed like a decent guy on the telly and he was just trying his best” yada yada).
That's the obvious conclusion. Distasteful as it is.
For the bit in bold - what are you suggesting? That fundamentally he *isn't* a decent but flawed human like the rest of us? And that he wanted to do his worst?
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Saying this appalling behaviour is simply a matter for his constituents is deeply unfair on them too: what if they hate Hancock’s appearance on the show but happen to be centre right? Those people - and all the voters in his constituency - deserve a clean candidate to represent them.
I think it’s a matter for them as they are the only ones who can change his standing if he’s not actually breaking any parliamentary rules? The local conservative party could vote to deselect him and stand another candidate
Well sure, we have a set of rules designed to work with one group of people and their norms, and instead we have a different group of people in power with very different norms. So the problem is the rules as they stand, in addition to talentless chancers like Hancock taking advantage of them.
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what are you suggesting? That fundamentally he *isn't* a decent but flawed human like the rest of us? And that he wanted to do his worst?
I don’t think he intentionally tried to kill people but IMO he almost certainly made decisions with other interests in mind (procurement contracts with Tory donors, links to horse racing / Cheltenham festival, dido harding appointment, optics of people dying in hospital vs hidden away in care homes, etc etc) - rather than purely in the public interest.
IF that is the case then he’s certainly not a decent human being. But all of these decisions should be scrutinised by the independent inquiry. Not chewed over on a reality TV show FFS. And the decent thing for him to do in the meantime would be to work hard as a backbench MP doing what he’s paid to do until the results of the inquiry are published.
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I don’t think he intentionally tried to kill people but IMO he almost certainly made decisions with other interests in mind (procurement contracts with Tory donors, links to horse racing / Cheltenham festival, dido harding appointment, optics of people dying in hospital vs hidden away in care homes, etc etc) - rather than purely in the public interest.
Let's not forget his 'protective ring' which was complete and utter horse shit. Given this was a widely held view, it's hard to imagine that he didn't know this was untrue when presenting it to parliament (18/05). Given the circumstances, it's not a nice thing to have been misleading about.
https://fullfact.org/health/matt-hancock-protective-ring-care-homes/
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You have to wonder how much of this is him trying to get ahead of the inquiry and set the narrative (“he seemed like a decent guy on the telly and he was just trying his best” yada yada).
That's the obvious conclusion. Distasteful as it is.
For the bit in bold - what are you suggesting? That fundamentally he *isn't* a decent but flawed human like the rest of us? And that he wanted to do his worst?
Decency is not an excuse for incompetence. We have a gross negligence manslaughter law when it comes to death in the course of someone's employment, this doesn't strike me as being all that different; as in a manager who causes the death of an employee through incompetence and / or negligence can be prosecuted and jailed, regardless of the decency of their intentions. If it were proven that Matt Hancock's actions were the cause of covid deaths (and an ITV reality show is clearly not the forum through which that can be judged), then he should face the same fate in my view.
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You have to wonder how much of this is him trying to get ahead of the inquiry and set the narrative (“he seemed like a decent guy on the telly and he was just trying his best” yada yada).
That's the obvious conclusion. Distasteful as it is.
For the bit in bold - what are you suggesting? That fundamentally he *isn't* a decent but flawed human like the rest of us? And that he wanted to do his worst?
I think you can be nice to your mum and old ladies and a stalwart of the Rotary Club and commit appalling acts in other contexts… but my specific bewilderment is with the idea - as it was with Dorries in the jungle and Johnson in every Sandals style shack he gets a free jolly- that people can effectively walk away from their jobs for a period, draw their wage and suffer no consequence, unless if distantly, at the ballot box, it comes round to bite them. The plebs, of course, have to work.
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this doesn't strike me as being all that different; as in a manager who causes the death of an employee through incompetence and / or negligence can be prosecuted and jailed, regardless of the decency of their intentions. If it were proven that Matt Hancock's actions were the cause of covid deaths (and an ITV reality show is clearly not the forum through which that can be judged), then he should face the same fate in my view.
For me I see it differently. It's not a case of where all harm could be avoided; the 'cure' could have been worse than the 'disease' for certain courses of action whilst simultaneously being incredibly difficult to actually put a number on. That's not to say I think Hancock and others did a good job (or didn't seriously screw up at times), I just don't see it as clear cut as I wold with H&S issues at work which cause significant harm.
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You have to wonder how much of this is him trying to get ahead of the inquiry and set the narrative (“he seemed like a decent guy on the telly and he was just trying his best” yada yada).
That's the obvious conclusion. Distasteful as it is.
For the bit in bold - what are you suggesting? That fundamentally he *isn't* a decent but flawed human like the rest of us? And that he wanted to do his worst?
Decency is not an excuse for incompetence. We have a gross negligence manslaughter law when it comes to death in the course of someone's employment, this doesn't strike me as being all that different; as in a manager who causes the death of an employee through incompetence and / or negligence can be prosecuted and jailed, regardless of the decency of their intentions. If it were proven that Matt Hancock's actions were the cause of covid deaths (and an ITV reality show is clearly not the forum through which that can be judged), then he should face the same fate in my view.
I'm doubtful that any incompetence will cross the threshold of gross negligence. We'll learn more during the inquiry, but there will have been times when the government didn't have any good options and were forced to try the least bad option. The full impact of those decisions, positive or negative, won't always have been possible to know at the time. For instance, if you look on social media you'll see lots of people complaining that Hancock enforced a lockdown or that he prevented them from seeing their dying relatives - all measures which would have saved lives but which had consequences of their own.
I'm not saying they should get a free pass but I doubt any criminal behaviour leading to deaths will be found.
Edit: what Paul said.
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Hancock is discussing his actions and defending himself in front of a bunch of second rate celebs
Bit harsh on Mike Tindall and Jill Scott
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Hancock is discussing his actions and defending himself in front of a bunch of second rate celebs
Bit harsh on Mike Tindall and Jill Scott
Had to google them both so point proved! Though to be fair I am not the person to ask.
As an aside from all this Hangcock nonsense, I do enjoy reading the odd conservative blogger to see what throughtful right wingers are into. If the two that landed in my inbox this morning are anything to go by, they have noticed that 12 years of conservative government have been (a) shit and (b) left them incredibly unpopular with the young (ie anyone under 55) and they are now worried about it:
https://edwest.substack.com/p/what-should-small-c-conservatives
https://joxleywrites.substack.com/p/turning-the-swifties-tory
The first is, in my view, weak sauce, and is perhaps downstream of being stuck in a FPTP internal coalition, but more broadly doesn't seem to want to engage with the problems being the results of what its voters really, really love (high house prices and high rentsm, dislike of environmentalism, car love etc). The second is better by virtue of being more focused, but there's nothing particularly conservative about a functioning police and making family life viable.
Anyhow, I'm enjoyed the schadenfreude.
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You have to wonder how much of this is him trying to get ahead of the inquiry and set the narrative (“he seemed like a decent guy on the telly and he was just trying his best” yada yada).
That's the obvious conclusion. Distasteful as it is.
For the bit in bold - what are you suggesting? That fundamentally he *isn't* a decent but flawed human like the rest of us? And that he wanted to do his worst?
Decency is not an excuse for incompetence. We have a gross negligence manslaughter law when it comes to death in the course of someone's employment, this doesn't strike me as being all that different; as in a manager who causes the death of an employee through incompetence and / or negligence can be prosecuted and jailed, regardless of the decency of their intentions. If it were proven that Matt Hancock's actions were the cause of covid deaths (and an ITV reality show is clearly not the forum through which that can be judged), then he should face the same fate in my view.
I'm doubtful that any incompetence will cross the threshold of gross negligence. We'll learn more during the inquiry, but there will have been times when the government didn't have any good options and were forced to try the least bad option. The full impact of those decisions, positive or negative, won't always have been possible to know at the time. For instance, if you look on social media you'll see lots of people complaining that Hancock enforced a lockdown or that he prevented them from seeing their dying relatives - all measures which would have saved lives but which had consequences of their own.
I'm not saying they should get a free pass but I doubt any criminal behaviour leading to deaths will be found.
Edit: what Paul said.
Yeah totally, I did say "if it were proven", and I'm thinking of the more clear cut decisions like discharging patients from hospital to care homes than general lockdowns etc.
Either way, "I'm a Nobody Get Me Out of Here" is not the place.
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There is no chance whatsoever of Hancock facing prosecution for his covid policies, look at what has been revealed about Arconic et al in the Grenfell inquiry, and the difficulties in securing any prosecution there. They were literally exchanging emails saying they knew how flammable the cladding was, how to conceal it, and that they weren't bothered; but linking it to specific charges is apparently pretty difficult.
I remain unbothered by Hancock, he is likely to become a non entity and occasional TV celebrity, I think Johnson is far more offensive, and he probably did make decisions with no regard for people's lives, whilst thinking only about himself. Hancock was always just not cut out for the health department, he'd probably have been alright if hed continued being DCMS secretary. He was just loyal to Johnson and rewarded with promotion.
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Surprisingly big statement from starmer about the House of Lords.
I assume they’ve done enough focus groups to feel confident about making such a huge announcement as this safely.
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Surprisingly big statement from starmer about the House of Lords.
I assume they’ve done enough focus groups to feel confident about making such a huge announcement as this safely.
You would think so, yes, however it was part of Starmers leadership campaign.
I'd certainly agree that the Lords needs reform, but the good ones are valuable in scrutinizing legislation. The Johnson appointments are terrible though; they should beef up the lords appointment body and allow them to refuse prime ministerial candidates for the house.
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It's really depressing that there are obviously members of the Sunak government who want a more sensible relationship with the EU, but the moment its even a rumour, the Daily Mail, Express and the ERG throw all their toys out of the pram.
BBC News - Newspaper headlines: 'Lions of Arabia' and 'soft Brexit warnings'
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-the-papers-63697978
It's as though they're only happy if the UK is at war with Europe, and we have a PM who talks as though Britain still has an empire. Pea brained jingoism.
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It's not progressive is it!
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It's really depressing that there are obviously members of the Sunak government who want a more sensible relationship with the EU, but the moment its even a rumour, the Daily Mail, Express and the ERG throw all their toys out of the pram.
BBC News - Newspaper headlines: 'Lions of Arabia' and 'soft Brexit warnings'
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-the-papers-63697978
It's as though they're only happy if the UK is at war with Europe, and we have a PM who talks as though Britain still has an empire. Pea brained jingoism.
This Matthew d'Ancona piece on the elephant traps of the economy and Europe facing Starmer & Labour is worth a read - https://www.tortoisemedia.com/2022/11/21/dont-walk-into-the-brexit-elephant-trap-mr-starmer/ (https://www.tortoisemedia.com/2022/11/21/dont-walk-into-the-brexit-elephant-trap-mr-starmer/)
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It's really depressing that there are obviously members of the Sunak government who want a more sensible relationship with the EU, but the moment its even a rumour, the Daily Mail, Express and the ERG throw all their toys out of the pram.
BBC News - Newspaper headlines: 'Lions of Arabia' and 'soft Brexit warnings'
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-the-papers-63697978
It's as though they're only happy if the UK is at war with Europe, and we have a PM who talks as though Britain still has an empire. Pea brained jingoism.
This Matthew d'Ancona piece on the elephant traps of the economy and Europe facing Starmer & Labour is worth a read - https://www.tortoisemedia.com/2022/11/21/dont-walk-into-the-brexit-elephant-trap-mr-starmer/ (https://www.tortoisemedia.com/2022/11/21/dont-walk-into-the-brexit-elephant-trap-mr-starmer/)
As William Hague writes in The Times today, the true Brexiteers should stop fretting about someone stealing their prize and get on with trying to make the current situation work, as something like 56% of people now think leaving was a bad idea , Vs 32% who think it was a good idea. If they're not careful by the late 2020s, the public may have changed their mind en masse and they won't have a choice.
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The problem with that argument is that Brexit is always going to be rubbish, and it’s mostly supported by older people and hated by a majority of under 50s. So what are their options?
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The problem with that argument is that Brexit is always going to be rubbish, and it’s mostly supported by older people and hated by a majority of under 50s. So what are their options?
They could start voting in elections? I know noone is talking about it at the moment, it's too volatile an issue still, but they will, and Labour is currently more likely to seek a better relationship with the EU
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I mean, what are the Brexiters' options?! Some under 50s do vote already...
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While chatting with some friends about the voting tendencies of older voters (constant drift right) and the fact that they have less invested in the longer term (probably care more about pensions, house prices, care provision and policing etc..) I proposed an inverse weighted voting system whereby the "value" of each vote is weighted by the number of years left to "average life expectancy".
Obviously, this would benefit the left and therefore will be accused of being just for age based gerrymandering, but I think it has potential.
That said, the only proponent I have seen is William MacAskill of Effective Altruism fame and hence it's maybe problematic?
What's the script with Effective Altruism anyway? I listened to a long podcast with him while driving in Canada on Lex Fridman. I liked some aspects, but felt that it was too geared to a specific outcome (optimally saving human lives) which therefore seemed to ignore that we live in an ecosystem and not alongside it, and therefore the outcome might be that lots more humans live lower quality lives?
I've heard other mutterings about AE but not with much detail. Maybe worth a whole thread?
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Some good discussions about it recently in connection with Sam Bankman Fraud's err.. massive fraud. SBF being an advocate for Effective Altruism. Seems, like most moral philosophies, like it can be taken to the extreme or practised in moderation - weak longtermism to extreme longtermism. Appears that EA's maths-centric framework appeals to wealthy silicon valley types who might not be... the most emotionally intelligent people on the spectrum.
https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/23298870/effective-altruism-longtermism-will-macaskill-future
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I mean, what are the Brexiters' options?! Some under 50s do vote already...
Sorry! I totally misunderstood
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Watch the footage of Braverman being questioned by a select committee on immigration, its astonishing just how foolish she is, in fact its embarrassing someone that incompetent can be home secretary. There must be dozens of Conservative MPs who could at least sound like they know what they are talking about.
Its the second clip down in this report:
BBC News - Suella Braverman: We have failed to control our borders
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-63730054
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Some good discussions about it recently in connection with Sam Bankman Fraud's err.. massive fraud. SBF being an advocate for Effective Altruism. Seems, like most moral philosophies, like it can be taken to the extreme or practised in moderation - weak longtermism to extreme longtermism. Appears that EA's maths-centric framework appeals to wealthy silicon valley types who might not be... the most emotionally intelligent people on the spectrum.
https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/23298870/effective-altruism-longtermism-will-macaskill-future
I rate a lot of what MacAskil has written and would say he has a very pragmatic mindset towards the collective improvement of human life. That being said I think he labours under the same weight as many great communicators who nonetheless are keen to stay as intellectually rigorous as possible, which is choosing the appropriate level of conversation to suit his audience. No matter how carefully language is chosen there will always be people who leave with a different message than desired.
In my opinion the main issue with Longtermism as a total concept is that it reaches fairly quickly into the abstract. If we look at human life quality and societal robustness as a pyramid, it becomes clear that improving the baseline allows society as a whole to build higher in a stable and sustainable way. With this in mind, it makes sense to lift more people out of poverty because this improves the baseline of life-quality and has the knock-on effect of enabling more abstract goals like keeping children in education for longer. That is then the focus of effective altruism.
Strong Longtermism however pictures future human progress as an inverse pyramid with the upper layers vastly outweighing the lower layers. This leads people into a moral conflict because regardless of how you spin things mathematically, 100 billion lives seems more 'valuable' to us than 1 million lives. The issue with this mindset is that it fails to recognise that those theoretical upper layers can only exist through us broadening and strengthing our real societal pyramid. The Longtermism inverse pyramid is simply a potential reflection of where we might go, with actual progress being grounded in the near term.
Climbers will have a good appreciation of how this works by comparing it to grades and improvement. If someone has climbed a couple of 7c+ and now wants to try an 8a, this seems realistic. Similarly if they become extremely inspired by an incredible 8b and decide to train and project that line to the exception of others, they might be viewed as missing some of the bigger picture but nonetheless still ultimately on the same page as the rest of us.
However if our climber does two 7c+ and then decides they want to go and project an unclimbed potential 10a exclusively for the rest of their climbing career, they'd be laughed out of town. As climbers we know that our ability to reach and comprehend progress is limited by the base we've built under our feet, and the same applies to theoretical human potential. There's no sense in trying to reach the 10a now, but at the same time we don't want to only climb 7c+ forever. Weak Longtermism lays the case for a realistic futuristic mindset where we do the work necessary to allow us to reach higher, generation by generation, instead of plateauing or getting permanently injured and falling off the pyramid altogether.
Obviously this is all my opinion and others may interpret it differently :)
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Watch the footage of Braverman being questioned by a select committee on immigration, its astonishing just how foolish she is, in fact its embarrassing someone that incompetent can be home secretary. There must be dozens of Conservative MPs who could at least sound like they know what they are talking about.
Its the second clip down in this report:
BBC News - Suella Braverman: We have failed to control our borders
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-63730054
I'd seen the clips from this hearing and it left me feeling pretty depressed. It's even not the ideological differences, it's the total incompetence of her that gets to me. Surely we can drum up some ministers that aren't this shit.
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Some good discussions about it recently in connection with Sam Bankman Fraud's err.. massive fraud. SBF being an advocate for Effective Altruism. Seems, like most moral philosophies, like it can be taken to the extreme or practised in moderation - weak longtermism to extreme longtermism. Appears that EA's maths-centric framework appeals to wealthy silicon valley types who might not be... the most emotionally intelligent people on the spectrum.
https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/23298870/effective-altruism-longtermism-will-macaskill-future
I rate a lot of what MacAskil has written and would say he has a very pragmatic mindset towards the collective improvement of human life. That being said I think he labours under the same weight as many great communicators who nonetheless are keen to stay as intellectually rigorous as possible, which is choosing the appropriate level of conversation to suit his audience. No matter how carefully language is chosen there will always be people who leave with a different message than desired.
In my opinion the main issue with Longtermism as a total concept is that it reaches fairly quickly into the abstract. If we look at human life quality and societal robustness as a pyramid, it becomes clear that improving the baseline allows society as a whole to build higher in a stable and sustainable way. With this in mind, it makes sense to lift more people out of poverty because this improves the baseline of life-quality and has the knock-on effect of enabling more abstract goals like keeping children in education for longer. That is then the focus of effective altruism.
Strong Longtermism however pictures future human progress as an inverse pyramid with the upper layers vastly outweighing the lower layers. This leads people into a moral conflict because regardless of how you spin things mathematically, 100 billion lives seems more 'valuable' to us than 1 million lives. The issue with this mindset is that it fails to recognise that those theoretical upper layers can only exist through us broadening and strengthing our real societal pyramid. The Longtermism inverse pyramid is simply a potential reflection of where we might go, with actual progress being grounded in the near term.
Climbers will have a good appreciation of how this works by comparing it to grades and improvement. If someone has climbed a couple of 7c+ and now wants to try an 8a, this seems realistic. Similarly if they become extremely inspired by an incredible 8b and decide to train and project that line to the exception of others, they might be viewed as missing some of the bigger picture but nonetheless still ultimately on the same page as the rest of us.
However if our climber does two 7c+ and then decides they want to go and project an unclimbed potential 10a exclusively for the rest of their climbing career, they'd be laughed out of town. As climbers we know that our ability to reach and comprehend progress is limited by the base we've built under our feet, and the same applies to theoretical human potential. There's no sense in trying to reach the 10a now, but at the same time we don't want to only climb 7c+ forever. Weak Longtermism lays the case for a realistic futuristic mindset where we do the work necessary to allow us to reach higher, generation by generation, instead of plateauing or getting permanently injured and falling off the pyramid altogether.
Obviously this is all my opinion and others may interpret it differently :)
Like you, my issue with the longer-term 'longtermism' of the effective altruism movement starts right at the beginning with their belief that a larger population has more value than a steady population. While the maths might make sense in a simplistic way - a system with one person has value therefore a system with many people has more value - the assumptions behind the numbers doesn't seem realistic: I don't see greater value in a larger jar of unhappy beans versus a same size jar of happy beans.
It seems to ignore the good case to be made for there being more value in population remaining steady but health/wealth/life satisfaction growing per head. As opposed to population growing which - if the entire history of human behaviour on this planet is any use as a guide for the future - is likely not to lead to widespread increasing levels of health/wealth/satisfaction but instead is likely to see massive inequality, suffering and overconsumption by a minority. If the looked at things in terms of future likelihoods based on the current evidence, rather than simple maths, they might see things differently.
Throw in impact of growing population on the natural world and I don't see the overall value proposition of a growing population.
The group with the greatest interest in population growing appears to be large business that relies on GDP growth for profit growth. See - 'natural world fucked' and 'minority interest'. It isn't most people on the planet imo. The typical individual doesn't find great satisfaction working in the economic system we've built, it's a means to survival. Very few would do their work for free.
I think it would be better to try to make conditions as good as realistically possible for as many people currently alive or about to be alive in the near term, *and* plan for the long term but without those calculations being predicated on some erroneous anthropocentric belief system where 1 billion extra people added to the population = 10x more value than 100 million extra people.
As Keynes said in the long run we're all dead, so to me it seems now matters more than trying to calculate behaviours today mindful of the emergence of billions of people in some very distant future that may never happen.
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Come on people, long-term-ism is a scam to get tax breaks for investments. Nothing else.
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Throw in impact of growing population on the natural world and I don't see the overall value proposition of a growing population.
This should make the whole thing a non starter. Plans for this sort of future generally seem to involve high rise mega cities, with the small issue that no one wants to live in fucking massive rabbit warrens, even if they do have a green roof and the occasional plant.
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We've seen how that plays out for Judge Dredd and Mega City One.
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Watch the footage of Braverman being questioned by a select committee on immigration, its astonishing just how foolish she is, in fact its embarrassing someone that incompetent can be home secretary. There must be dozens of Conservative MPs who could at least sound like they know what they are talking about.
Its the second clip down in this report:
BBC News - Suella Braverman: We have failed to control our borders
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-63730054
I'd seen the clips from this hearing and it left me feeling pretty depressed. It's even not the ideological differences, it's the total incompetence of her that gets to me. Surely we can drum up some ministers that aren't this shit.
I know, that's exactly what I thought. It's not the fact I disagree with many, perhaps most of her beliefs, but the fact that she's obviously shit at her job, and can't even pretend to know what she's talking about. Private Eye did a thing ages ago about her creative approach to her CV when she was attorney general, she is not as qualified a lawyer as she'd like to tell people.
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If anyone has a spare 2 hours and wants to see just how unsuited she is to the role of Home Secretary, I suggest listening to yesterday's full Home Affairs Select Committee session rather than just the 2 minute viral clips.
Time and time again, she displays a complete lack of understanding of almost every aspect of her brief. She isn't aware of even the most basic details of any of the largest issues facing her department and she proved that she hasn't done the most basic research when it comes to her flagship policies.
Once you take away the xenophobia and the blaming of anybody but her for her department's failings, there is nothing else there. She would be out of her depth in a puddle.
Perhaps more worrying is that Matthew Rycroft was similarly unprepared for almost all of the questions. Although he did manage a rather brutal takedown of Braverman when questioned about the legal advice that she had received (and ignored). It turns out there's only so many times that you can try to publicly throw your colleague under the bus before they retaliate and chuck you under instead.
Edit: link in case anyone hasn't been put off by my description:
https://youtu.be/QzRmXt8hMqY
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Watch the footage of Braverman being questioned by a select committee on immigration, its astonishing just how foolish she is, in fact its embarrassing someone that incompetent can be home secretary. There must be dozens of Conservative MPs who could at least sound like they know what they are talking about.
Its the second clip down in this report:
BBC News - Suella Braverman: We have failed to control our borders
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-63730054
I'd seen the clips from this hearing and it left me feeling pretty depressed. It's even not the ideological differences, it's the total incompetence of her that gets to me. Surely we can drum up some ministers that aren't this shit.
I know, that's exactly what I thought. It's not the fact I disagree with many, perhaps most of her beliefs, but the fact that she's obviously shit at her job, and can't even pretend to know what she's talking about. Private Eye did a thing ages ago about her creative approach to her CV when she was attorney general, she is not as qualified a lawyer as she'd like to tell people.
Sorry to split hairs but I don't think that's exactly right. I don't think there is any implication she's not a qualified lawyer with all the relevant exams etc. It's just that she isn't a particularly successful or impressive lawyer, whereas she has held herself out to be. Looks like she's claimed to be a contributor to a leading textbook when she actually just did the photocopying, and claimed to be be involved in the Guantanamo case, when she wasn't.
Quite a damning profile of her here: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/sep/12/when-even-the-attorney-general-flouts-the-law-what-hope-does-britain-have-suella-braverman (https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/sep/12/when-even-the-attorney-general-flouts-the-law-what-hope-does-britain-have-suella-braverman)
Depressing that she was elevated to QC as a courtesy when made Attorney General (a political appointment). Somewhat makes a mockery of the QC title being a badge of excellence.
"The application process to become a Queen’s Counsel barrister features a five-stage competency framework. You will need to demonstrate all five competencies in line with a standard of excellence demonstrated in your working and personal life. You will need to submit comprehensive supporting evidence of meeting these standards, which is why your application could take 3 – 5 years.
The five standards competencies are...
- Integrity"
From https://www.thelawyerportal.com/barrister/what-is-a-queens-counsel-barrister-how-to-become-one/ (https://www.thelawyerportal.com/barrister/what-is-a-queens-counsel-barrister-how-to-become-one/)
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Re Suella Braverman; I did say that she wasn't as qualified a lawyer as she makes out, so I think we completely agree. I'm absolutely sure she's done a degree and the exams etc. I've also wondered that, given that she is a Buddhist, how she squares that with her approach to immigration... I'd be genuinely interested to know if she justifies that, and how.
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The Rohingyas may disagree with your sunny view of Buddhism. As would the Japanese catholics of the 18th century...
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Re Suella Braverman; I did say that she wasn't as qualified a lawyer as she makes out, so I think we completely agree. I'm absolutely sure she's done a degree and the exams etc. I've also wondered that, given that she is a Buddhist, how she squares that with her approach to immigration... I'd be genuinely interested to know if she justifies that, and how.
If you think Buddhism vaccinates people against violence, hatred and extreme nationalism, then take a look at the modern histories of Sri Lanka and Myanmar (for a start).
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Re Suella Braverman; I did say that she wasn't as qualified a lawyer as she makes out, so I think we completely agree.
No, I agree, the word 'qualified' does not automatically imply paper documents and that was how I read your comment.
All religions preach peace. All have adherents given to violence of one sort or another.
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The Rohingyas may disagree with your sunny view of Buddhism. As would the Japanese catholics of the 18th century...
I didn't say I have a sunny view of Buddhism, I'd agree that an awful lot of terrible things have been done by people who purport to adhere to its faiths. I'd say that there are many awful things and many outstanding, admirable things that have been done in the name of practically every belief system going; but it intrigues me how anyone of faith manages to justify an act of violence.
To be fair, the home secretary is nothing like that bad, she's mostly just a bit shit at her job.
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https://news.sky.com/story/albanians-should-be-barred-from-claiming-uk-asylum-immigration-minister-says-12761299
Desperate government panicked by the polls and the number of their own MPs are leaving finds a weak, vulnerable part of society to lash out at. Charming.
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Despite being a guardian reading leftie, it's not super obvious to me that asylum necessarily 'should' be designed to cover people from 'safe' countries... Maybe it should, but it doesn't seem as obvious to me as you imply
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"Here doesn't have no jobs, no nothing... and you're going to work like 10 hours for £10, basically so it's no life here."
His isn't an isolated case - most Albanian migrants come from this region.
In one village, the head of the community told us the former population of 2,000 people has dwindled to around 400 since the fall of communism.
You're looking at one of the prime locations for the reshoring of manufacturing from SE Asia. 10 years from now... very different scenes. Toby's iPhone 26 could have 'made in Albania' on the back instead of 'made in China'.
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Despite being a guardian reading leftie, it's not super obvious to me that asylum necessarily 'should' be designed to cover people from 'safe' countries... Maybe it should, but it doesn't seem as obvious to me as you imply
Should it not be situation specific rather than a blanket designation? Take Serbia next door- there are instances of Jewish people seriously threatened by neoNazis. Would it be rational to refuse them asylum because the country were designated as safe, or to accept them, but refuse asylum to Albanians?
I think a pragmatic case by case approach is needed.
I also agree with Toby about Jenrick’s intentions here. It’s a tired strategy, but has served the Tories well- cf UK being swamped by Turks if we didn’t vote to leave the EU.
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Similarly, the multi-millionaire Chairman of the Conservative Party is against nurses striking over their real terms pay cut because it ‘is playing into Putin’s hands’.
Urging unions not to proceed with strike action, he said: “This is a time to come together and to send a very clear message to Mr Putin that we’re not going to be divided in this way … Our message to the unions is to say ‘this is not a time to strike, this is a time to try and negotiate’.”
‘To negotiate’ - but only over working conditions, pay is off the table according to Steve Barclay: Steve Barclay on Saturday continued his refusal to discuss pay (https://www.standard.co.uk/business/business-news/nurses-tell-health-secretary-it-s-pay-negotiations-or-nothing-to-avert-strikes-b1042854.html)
Midwives, neonatal nurses, ITU nurses as fifth columnists, credible?
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They can all do one. They've plunged the country into a shitstate with Brexit, their "fiscal event" and through just generally being useless wankers for years, and now when people strike they're all forlorn about the harm it'll cause? Fuck off
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You almost have to admire Zahawi’s nerve in trying to divide and conquer by accusing the RCN of being divisive. Truly, we are through the looking glass now.
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The truly nauseating thing about Zahawi's statement is that this situation is partly resultant from his ilk failing to take clear action against Putin for fear of upsetting the gravy train that was oligarchic investment and money laundering via the City.
Litvinenko poisoned in London with polonium? Steady on Vlad, there's pots of money to be made here, don't mess it up! Invasion of Georgia? Too far away, do carry on. Salisbury murder using a WMD? We're very, very cross Vladimir and will have to expel a few obvious spies! Ukraine invasion part 1? A bit more of doing fuck all and let's get rid of our main gas storage as well, what could possibly go wrong?
These corrupt, entitled pricks have no right to say another word on the matter. If they think nurses etc should freeze and starve to fix the problems they created then they will soon have problems to worry about much closer to home than those originating in Beijing or Moscow, as civil unrest cannot be far away.
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One thing that always comes up with these anti-strike/anti-union statements is how...
It is unfair for unions to "disrupt people's lives"
And framing it as an attack on working people.
But it's working people who are striking, because they don't get paid what they deserve, and need. This isn't unions shutting things down for the hell of it, it's working people shutting things down so they can earn enough to live a reasonable decent life.
Hopefully more people will continue to see this for the Tory statements for the lies that they are.
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I feel like the government's efforts to cast the strikers in a bad light are backfiring mind you, I think the public are increasingly on the side of striking workers
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Despite being a guardian reading leftie, it's not super obvious to me that asylum necessarily 'should' be designed to cover people from 'safe' countries... Maybe it should, but it doesn't seem as obvious to me as you imply
I'm absolutely sure many people arrive in the hope of finding better paid work than they can in their own country, but something like 70 or 80% get granted asylum according to the home office.
But this excuse for actual policy is obviously another dog whistle, they're suggesting moving all arrivals into hotels until they can get flown to Rwanda. It wouldn't work, it wont happen, its absolutely a way to try to signal how tough they are. In cutting the aid budget and leaving the EU, they've made the issue harder to deal with, and possibly worse.
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I'm not really sure why i'm posting this, but i'm dismayed by the state of the health service and need to vent, and I guess the reasons for its decline are political to some extent.
My 7-year old daughter has Strep A. She had a severely sore throat, fever and rash, and then began to go downhill with high fever, frequent vomitting, stomach pain, unable to drink or eat. Called the GP - no appointments, obviously. 111 - an hour to get through then 6 hours to be called back by a doctor just to tell us there were no appointments at the out-of-hours clinic and recommended we should go to A&E. Fortunately i'd already gone.
We arrived at A&E to patients queueing out of the door just to get registered. That took an hour, then we were sent to the children's emergency department, which was also queuing out the door. Another hour went by before we got into the waiting room. The waiting room was like being on a train at rush hour with people standing shoulder-to-shoulder because there weren't enough chairs. My daughter was sick all over the floor (and over herself) because there weren't any bowls out and someone was in the toilet. I tried to clean this up with tissue but it took 45 minutes before it was cleaned up properly by staff because they were so busy. All in, we were at the hospital for almost 7 hours before being discharged with antibiotics. At this stage I had to hunt down the pharmacy within the hospital because the prescription was only for pharmacies within the trust, but both the inpatient and outpatient pharmacy were closed and the main reception confirmed i'd have to wait until the next day to get it. I tried blagging it at a Boots pharmacy on the way home, but they were having none of it. Next morning I came back to the hospital on my own and the pharmacy wouldn't let me have the antibiotics because the doctor hadn't signed the prescription. Back to the children's department and a few hours later I had a signed prescription and could finally get some penicillin to my daughter. She's making a good recovery already and is feeling much better.
Of course this wasn't the worst experience anyone has ever had in a hospital. The experience of the poor families who have recently lost their children to Strep A as a result of inadequate medical intervention is unthinkable (see the news). Still, it was a clear sign to me that things are broken and it felt like a service more fitting of a developing country (i'd wish for better for them too). I'm expecting that my daughter and I will both have new ilnesses later in the week due to how busy it was, full of poorly kids crammed into a small waiting room for hours and hours. The next time I need prescription medicine for myself I would honestly just go to an online pharmacy on the dark web before trying the hospital!
And don't let me forget that we also got booted off our NHS dentist recently without warning, for not having booked an appointment in 12 months. Now a 3 year waiting list to get back in and no others taking on within a 15 mile radius (tomorrow I start making phone calls up to a 20 mile radius) :wall:
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Sorry to read this Liam. As the parent of a daughter a little older, I can imagine how that might have felt. Horrendous. I hope she makes a quick recovery.
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Fucking hell mate. Thanks for sharing. Hope she's better soon.
All of that is incredible, and no one should have to go through it, but the bit with the prescription only being valid for pharmacies within the trust blows my mind. I can guess why that'll be; so when people prescribed medicine by the trust have to pay the trust for the prescription....
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That’s awful to hear - I hope you’re daughter keeps getting better. It’s the kind of thing which is making me consider some kind of private health insurance.
A friend has a hernia in his throat which means he can’t exercise without being sick (including walking any real distance). He’s god knows how long into trying to sort it - and had a good year or so wait left in the best case scenario.
One of the worst bits is the postcode lottery attached. Whilst our local hospital didn’t know about the specific treatment he was going to get, their waiting lists were half the length. It made him consider moving to just try to accelerate things.
He can go private but that’s got a £10k price tag attached to it. I don’t know what the answer is but I wouldn’t want to rely on the NHS for anything important at the moment…
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It’s the kind of thing which is making me consider some kind of private health insurance.
Which is exactly how socialised healthcare dies!
Or at least is eroded to the absolute bare minimum.
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Thanks for the well wishes.
I also forgot to mention that back in March, neither the midwives nor the ambulance turned up to the birth of my youngest and we had to deliver her on our own. The labour ward had closed due to staff shortages and after calling 999 it took more than half an hour to be connected (imagine if this was to report a stroke, some bleeding to death etc???). Once we were connected it took an hour for the ambulance to arrive even though I live just 4 miles from the hospital. The baby was delivered safely before they arrived
It's an absolute shambles. I have limited private health care through my employer, but I'm going to increase my cover to a full ride for all my family ASAP. I'm fortunate to have the means to do this and I fear that private health care will become normalised over the coming years.
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2 horror scenarios. Unbelievable that it's as bad as this in some places, and they have the gall to portray striking health workers as the bad guys. I bet every MP has the best private health insurance available.
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It’s the kind of thing which is making me consider some kind of private health insurance.
Which is exactly how socialised healthcare dies!
Or at least is eroded to the absolute bare minimum.
Yep, you’re probably right. But there’s no way I’d go through what some friends have been through.
In their situation I’d be using my savings to go private, so I may as well get insurance.
Same for dentists. We can’t get an NHS one within any reasonable distance so my last bits cost £600 going private rather than the low NHS cost. But if you need it what other option is there?
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Absolutely wasn't criticising you there James, to be clear.
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I have had to bit the bullet (bad pun) since live in NE Scotland, as there are never any NHS dentists available. Once I got a place at one, and was relieved to come out and find the car still had 4 wheels and all windows. The dentist wasn't that hot either, clearly more specialised in extraction, rather than repair.
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The truly nauseating thing about Zahawi's statement is that this situation is partly resultant from his ilk failing to take clear action against Putin for fear of upsetting the gravy train that was oligarchic investment and money laundering via the City.
Nice rant, but complete bollocks.
Some immoral bankers making serious money by laundering oligarch stolen proceeds through London is small fry compared to the far bigger reality of where a large proportion of Europe's essential physical resources come(came) from than. Noticed any prices going up recently...? European-wide industry shutting down at risk of never re-opening...? European economy in serious trouble...? Nah, can't have been concerns about any of that can it? ::)
Europe's - not just the UK's - stance towards Russia/Belarus up to Feb 2022 had everything to do with concerns about the impact of having supplies of resources used as leverage over the European economy. But no instead lets focus our ire on pantomime villains we all love to hate, we'll look so virtuous (provided we don't pay too much attention to where our shit is made or where the resources to make it came from). Populist politics much?
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/energy-crisis-chips-away-europes-industrial-might-2022-11-02/
https://www.ft.com/content/75ed449d-e9fd-41de-96bd-c92d316651da
https://www.euractiv.com/section/politics/short_news/european-industry-eyes-china-as-aluminium-factories-shut/
https://www.euractiv.com/section/agriculture-food/news/eu-food-companies-face-closure-as-they-buckle-under-strain-of-energy-crisis/
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The truly nauseating thing about Zahawi's statement is that this situation is partly resultant from his ilk failing to take clear action against Putin for fear of upsetting the gravy train that was oligarchic investment and money laundering via the City.
Nice rant, but complete bollocks.
Some immoral bankers making serious money by laundering oligarch stolen proceeds through London is small fry compared to the far bigger reality of where a large proportion of Europe's essential physical resources come(came) from than. Noticed any prices going up recently...? European-wide industry shutting down at risk of never re-opening...? European economy in serious trouble...? Nah, can't have been concerns about any of that can it? ::)
Europe's - not just the UK's - stance towards Russia/Belarus up to Feb 2022 had everything to do with concerns about the impact of having supplies of resources used as leverage over the European economy. But no instead lets focus our ire on pantomime villains we all love to hate, we'll look so virtuous (provided we don't pay too much attention to where our shit is made or where the resources to make it came from). Populist politics much?
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/energy-crisis-chips-away-europes-industrial-might-2022-11-02/
https://www.ft.com/content/75ed449d-e9fd-41de-96bd-c92d316651da
https://www.euractiv.com/section/politics/short_news/european-industry-eyes-china-as-aluminium-factories-shut/
https://www.euractiv.com/section/agriculture-food/news/eu-food-companies-face-closure-as-they-buckle-under-strain-of-energy-crisis/
While you're clearly correct on the leverage thing Pete, is there no link between the presence of well connected political influence and money in London and the lack of criticism of UK and EU policy on resource diversification? (genuine open question, not an area of my expertise)
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Absolutely wasn't criticising you there James, to be clear.
No I got that, don’t worry. It’s a shit situation - I used my health cover when I was employed a lot (only every physio, but lots of it). And that’s transferred into my normal life now I don’t have cover - as in I’ve never even considered trying to get treatment on the NHS.
But I couldn’t imagine waiting for years to be able to walk/run/climb/do anything again. It’s such a shit situation for anyone in that position. I’d likely try the NHS route for something more serious, but then probably just pay private as I could afford it, and I’d go mad with the wait.
But it is a slippery slope and I think the days of getting good, fast, free treatment are behind us (at least for a long time…)
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But I couldn’t imagine waiting for years to be able to walk/run/climb/do anything again. It’s such a shit situation for anyone in that position. I’d likely try the NHS route for something more serious, but then probably just pay private as I could afford it, and I’d go mad with the wait.
But it is a slippery slope and I think the days of getting good, fast, free treatment are behind us (at least for a long time…)
Worth emphasising out that if you're dying, you get seen in the current NHS and once seen the care is excellent. There are obvious outliers such as the strep A news story but overall the standard is very high. The issue is that due to underfunding thats basically all it can focus on and non emergency stuff is very hit and miss, so stuff that stops people climbing takes a very very long time.
Anecdotally I've had to be checked this year for ang spond in my back and almost every part of the process has been very quick; appt was fast, getting an MRI was fast. Reviewing the MRI was extremely slow but then saw a consultant within a few weeks of that being done. Its all quite random.
Agree that Liam's experiences sound extremely bad and don't blame you for looking at other options!
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While you're clearly correct on the leverage thing Pete, is there no link between the presence of well connected political influence and money in London and the lack of criticism of UK and EU policy on resource diversification? (genuine open question, not an area of my expertise)
100% yes, but not limited to London or the UK. The UK and Europe (not all - Nordics for e.g.) could and should have spent the last few decades building out an energy system that was free as far as possible from reliance on suppliers with malicious intent. It could also have had the benefit of being lower carbon if people had thought in the medium term rather than short term/low cost. I 100% agree corruption is involved in political deal-making. But corruption and degrees of looking the other way is part of the human condition, the water in which democracies have swum since the beginning. To suggest it was down to one group of politicians in the UK for a whole continent's decades-worth of reliance on cheap resources is to me completely ridiculous and hence populist bollocks.
It's so ironic how much coal Germany is currently burning for electricity. After Merkel crowing to the US 2 years ago about their green credentials versus the US's reliance on coal - Trump might be a complete wanker, but he correctly called out Germany for its industrial base being almost totally dependent on an authoritarian state's good will. The sheer void of criticism within Europe/UK, of Europe's energy strategy is mind-blowing when you think about it*. Of course Europe's coal-burning is a temporary stop-gap which won't go on forever, and the US is a total basket case for GHG in comparison to most of the world (China excluded).
But ask yourself who's incentivised to have changed anything? We all love cheap goods, we use shit everyday that we paid bottom dollar for due to cheap resources, including the laptop I'm typing this on. All goods manufactured in Europe would be a great deal more expensive (and will be going forwards, as Europe spends the next decade 'reshoring' much processing and manufacturing) without the cheap energy and raw materials originating from authoritarian states. We're all hypocrites and guilty of sponsoring Russia, China, Belarus and other places over the horizon that we'd personally hate to live in due to their treatment of citizens, because when prices go up we cry like babies and get straight online for the cheapest supplier.
The result of the last 20-30 years of low cost goods and low interest rates/cheap money, is that we're calibrated to that economic system. A big shift in the market is happening and we're currently feeling the severe pain of a shift to less globalised/more localised supply with resultant higher prices, along with higher cost of money all happening at the same time as an energy squeeze. The UK has an additional GDP handicap of Brexit but it's a small part of a much bigger dynamic.
* Off topic but I'm almost (but not yet) willing to believe the US actually might have had a hand in destroying nordstream II. It appears from the outside to have been such a corrupt piece of deal-making between Germany's ex-chancellor Schroder and Russia, which left Germany vulnerable to leverage.
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Horrible experience Liam.
More positively, I took the lad to the local A&E a week ago after he'd twatted his thumb playing rugby. I was expecting the worst but he was seen by a nurse-practitioner, had an x-ray (small fracture), was reviewed and sent home with a splint and appropriate advice, in just over an hour. He was reviewed by the 'virtual fracture clinic' - a zoom call - three days later and has a face-to-face hand clinic appointment in a couple of weeks when the splint comes off.
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Worth emphasising out that if you're dying, you get seen in the current NHS and once seen the care is excellent. The issue is that due to underfunding thats basically all it can focus on and non emergency stuff is very hit and miss,
Yeh from my experiences recently this sums it up. Without going too much into the details I’ve got a chronic liver condition and a relatively recent checkup (back in August) showed I needed fairly urgent treatment to avoid risk of internal bleeding. As you’d expect the waiting list even for this treatment was long so I was still waiting for a date when just over 3 weeks ago one of the enlarged blood vessels in my stomach burst as predicted and I was puking up lots of blood and went into A&E. I was seen in under 30mins and the hospital treatment was excellent for the 5 days I was in getting blood transfusions, antibiotic drip etc, and also the urgent treatment I’d been on the waiting list for. But then I was discharged back into the general system and recovery hasn’t gone well. I’m not sick enough to go to A&E again but not well enough to work and can’t get a GP appt, speak to the consultant, or otherwise get seen any time soon.
So basically due to the waiting time for what should have been a fairly routine procedure it’s led to a 5 day stay in hospital and what looks likely to be well over a month off work at best. Who would have guessed underfunding your health service would be a false economy? Tory cretins.
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It's so ironic how much coal Germany is currently burning for electricity. After Merkel crowing to the US 2 years ago about their green credentials versus the US's reliance on coal - Trump might be a complete wanker, but he correctly called out Germany for its industrial base being almost totally dependent on an authoritarian state's good will. The sheer void of criticism within Europe/UK, of Europe's energy strategy is mind-blowing when you think about it
Germany’s decision to phase out nuclear following Fukushima seemed like a terrible decision at the time and an even worse one now. Not sure when the last time there was a massive earthquake and tidal wave in Germany, maybe a few hundred million years ago?
I thought part of the idea of buying stuff off Russia was to encourage them to play nice as they wouldn’t want to lose all their new customers? Obviously this has failed spectacularly 😬
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Sorry to hear that Ali; hope things pick up shortly!
All the issues seem to feed back to the destruction of social care and and the squeezing of primary care/GPs. Lansley has a lot to answer for, I'd struggle to think of a more catastrophic strategic set of decisions in domestic politics. Would agree that some form of health insurance will be normalised, if not universal in the next 20 years or so.
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I thought part of the idea of buying stuff off Russia was to encourage them to play nice as they wouldn’t want to lose all their new customers? Obviously this has failed spectacularly 😬
I think that was the underlying hope with Russia post 90s. Unfortunately they're either too dumb a population (as in misled/misinformed not inherently stupid) or too psychopathic of a government, or both. We'll find out how 'bringing China into the fold of the global market' goes, when (not if imo) they retake Taiwan as their territory.
I think if Ukraine 2022 had gone according to the supposed plan (https://rusi.org/news-and-comment/in-the-news/ukraine-war-captured-russian-documents-reveal-moscows-10-day-plan-take-over-country-and-kill-its) within the blitz timeframe as Crimea 2014 did then we in Europe would be harrumphing a bit and getting on with our comfortable lives virtue-grumbling about how 'ESG' some cause-de-jour is while absent-mindedly turning the dictator-funding-dial central heating up to 22. Instead Russia fucked up its insane invasion plan and doubled/tripled/quadrupled down on the fuck up, now exploring plans J,K and L to explore how much oil, gas, coal and metals it can sell to Asia as cheap inputs needed for industries manufacturing, among other things, goods destined for Europe.
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So basically due to the waiting time for what should have been a fairly routine procedure it’s led to a 5 day stay in hospital and what looks likely to be well over a month off work at best. Who would have guessed underfunding your health service would be a false economy? Tory cretins.
This very much mirrors my long covid experience - didn’t see a doctor from February to November. Admittedly they weren’t much use even then (in part because we’re not funding the problem in proportion to the degree of personal and social disruption it causes) but there are clearly hundreds of thousands of people unable to work due to lack of appropriate care. There are simple things GPs can do to help us but - and this is a generous interpretation - they seem so stretched they can’t update themselves on new research, or even old but repurpose research. I got myself a referral to a cardiologist based on blood pressure readings I did myself. The implications for widening health inequalities are obvious, and another long term disaster in the making.
It is worth pointing out that the programme of dramatically cutting spending which was started in the 2010 Parliament was pretty popular with many voters.
Sympathies to Ali, Liam and whoever else is having to deal with this awful situation atm.
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I've been living in Germany since late 2016 and honestly feel like I'm sitting here watching home go to shit. We've contemplated coming back 3-4 times over the last few years because UK is a brilliant place in many ways especially for outdoor community but each time we've been stumped by the sad reality that it would represent a significant real-terms downgrade on many fronts.
For example my wife applied for a markets management role looking for a fluent German/English speaker with B2B/B2C experience and prior teamlead experience etc. Over here you'd be looking at ~48k€/£41k for that kind of role. She told them she'd need minimum £30k to even consider it. They offered £25k and said they really wanted her but that was the absolute best they could do. She earned more than this already doing a much less demanding job with more holiday and a vastly more supportive social system. I've been doing the online equivalent of working in a climbing gear shop and still earned more than that. We're at the low end of middle class here in terms of income.
A few weeks ago I walked into the doctors having forgotten to make an appointment and was seen within ten minutes. Every time I've been to the hospital it's been a fast and high quality experience. If we had a child now she'd be paid her full wage for something like 6 months and can take up to a year off with a reduced income.
Serious question: why is it working here but not back home? (aside from Brexit which is obviously a shit show but clearly not wholy responsible for the situation).
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I would have thought it was obvious (although some on here would argue). Tories have driven the NHS into the ground, letting it be run by bureaucrats, cutting funding and not incentivising anyone to want to work there.
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Re: The NHS, as others have alluded to - in an emergency, life-or-death / crisis situation, they're very good.
But they're so underfunded and overworked, the routine and non-life-threatening things are all on crazy backlogs. My Mrs works in youth mental health; their waiting lists for things like autism assessments are 2-years - and that's just for the assessment. Once you get (or don't) get a diagnosis, there's another wait for services. Same for eating disorders and indeed pretty much ALL mental health issues.
Which is made worse given these are kids in their formative years in education - having to wait 2 years to find out yes, you did need extra assistance to help with your a-levels is always coming too late.
If however you're suicidal, you'll get seen immediately - so the entirely of many CAMH services is crisis management and waitlists.
Financially this also makes no sense - prevention/managment is MUCH cheaper (long term) than emergency treatment, but these things take time, and they're years behind in investment. And now recruitment is hard as the reputation of working in CAMHS is horrendous.
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My Mrs works in youth mental health; their waiting lists for things like autism assessments are 2-years - and that's just for the assessment.
This is precisely my 4th anecdote. We've been waiting 2 years for an autism assessment for one of my kids that was originally referred through nursery. We considered going private, but it then wouldn't be well joined up with the school, for them to get additional funding, etc. (at least that was my understanding). Currently, the school can't give the right support without a diagnosis but are doing what they can to help.
It's not just healthcare that's fucked; the school system, transport, etc. it seems like everything is falling apart. If I didn't have a family, I'd probably have left this country long ago. Most of my mates have.
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This is precisely my 4th anecdote. We've been waiting 2 years for an autism assessment for one of my kids that was originally referred through nursery. We considered going private, but it then wouldn't be well joined up with the school, for them to get additional funding, etc. (at least that was my understanding). Currently, the school can't give the right support without a diagnosis but are doing what they can to help.
I'm not 100% on this (and the better half is at work), but I thought they'd moved away from diagnostic criteria and all provisions were now needs-based. Certainly with regards to access to support services, not sure on the funding side of things. e.g. you can get access to eating disorder clinics, ASD support groups etc without a formal diagnosis.
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You do need an assessment, and confirmation before additional support is provided. The process involved an assessment by at least 2 (it many have been 3) qualified child psychology doctors before we got the confirmation.
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I used to work in the world of healthcare and health & social care feedback. So we'd get a lot of people's stories about people's experiences with the NHS.
I've not been working there for six months but I can tell you that people's experiences had markedly declined in a lot of places and many of the stories I read were truly shocking. Health and social care in Sheffield for example, the Trust who provides mental health services... I would say that the situation was truly dire in terms of feedback.
If you have mental health problems here then I wouldn't even bother going to the NHS. I'd go private. If you can't, well, you probably won't get any help at all.
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I used to work in the world of healthcare and health & social care feedback. So we'd get a lot of people's stories about people's experiences with the NHS.
I've not been working there for six months but I can tell you that people's experiences had markedly declined in a lot of places and many of the stories I read were truly shocking. Health and social care in Sheffield for example, the Trust who provides mental health services... I would say that the situation was truly dire in terms of feedback.
If you have mental health problems here then I wouldn't even bother going to the NHS. I'd go private. If you can't, well, you probably won't get any help at all.
That is certainly my experience. If you go to a GP with mh problems, you get access to an app, unless you're unwell enough to be admitted.
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I have spent most of the last 12 months overseas. I came back for Xmas three weeks ago and have been shocked by how awful everything feels.
This is a bit airy-fairy and decidedly unscientific but I (we, in the household) had been growing increasingly uncomfortable for a few years and having so many friends and relatives living in Europe and beyond, we felt it was a very UK specific “thing”.
I think we all want out.
I feel incredibly lucky to now have our principle income from outside the UK, selfish though that is.
I’ve watched Polly struggle with her role in school, as behaviour and social problems (truly horrendous stuff, sometimes) have just gone off the scale. Within the last 12 months in particular. Many staff just crumbling and most not getting through a week without serious bouts of helpless tears, trying to deal with heart rending issues with the children in their care (I think they find “behaviour” easier to deal with, anger doesn’t seem to hurt as much).
I can’t really explain what I mean, not clearly. If I said “the place is fucked and getting more fucked by the day”, it doesn’t convey how sad I feel; it sounds a bit Gammon.
If this government persists much longer, we will lose a couple of generations to hopeless despair.
I wish I could see a way out, but it all looks so broken.
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Working in the NHS from 1986 to 2019. I was party to a service that embraced innovation and valued staff which gradually became target focused and cutting corners to achieve this.
It was known that there was going to be a mass exodus of staff retiring around 2010 onwards ( lots of doctors recruited from India and similar, mental health nurses and other specialist nurses able to retire after 30 years service under the old pension scheme) and there hadn’t been anything done to deal with this. This was known from early 2000.
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I've been living in Germany since late 2016 and honestly feel like I'm sitting here watching home go to shit. We've contemplated coming back 3-4 times over the last few years because UK is a brilliant place in many ways especially for outdoor community but each time we've been stumped by the sad reality that it would represent a significant real-terms downgrade on many fronts.
For example my wife applied for a markets management role looking for a fluent German/English speaker with B2B/B2C experience and prior teamlead experience etc. Over here you'd be looking at ~48k€/£41k for that kind of role. She told them she'd need minimum £30k to even consider it. They offered £25k and said they really wanted her but that was the absolute best they could do. She earned more than this already doing a much less demanding job with more holiday and a vastly more supportive social system. I've been doing the online equivalent of working in a climbing gear shop and still earned more than that. We're at the low end of middle class here in terms of income.
A few weeks ago I walked into the doctors having forgotten to make an appointment and was seen within ten minutes. Every time I've been to the hospital it's been a fast and high quality experience. If we had a child now she'd be paid her full wage for something like 6 months and can take up to a year off with a reduced income.
Serious question: why is it working here but not back home? (aside from Brexit which is obviously a shit show but clearly not wholy responsible for the situation).
What’s gone wrong? This is a huge question… which probably no one person is capable of answering. But I can think of a couple of perhaps pertinent facts.
We don’t spend much on the NHS. According to this book review on the Astral Star Codex blog, the U.K. spends 9.6% of GDP on the health service, against 11.5% in Germany (which is richer to begin with) and the same in France.
“The only truly socialist health system here, that of the UK, looks maybe a little worse than average. It has the third-lowest satisfaction, the third-longest wait times, and the fourth-lowest life expectancy. Emanuel’s more thorough look agrees that the UK underperforms. But it’s also very cheap - the cheapest western health system on the list. Emanuel thinks the UK is probably close to the cost-quality Pareto frontier and not making any stupid mistakes, but has made the political decision to not fund its health system very much.”
https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/book-review-which-country-has-the
About the job thing. You’re in SW Germany, right? And I’m guessing the UK job was anywhere but London and the SE. If that’s the case, then the problem is that these two areas aren’t really comparable in terms of productivity. One is a core part of the strongest European economy, whereas the U.K. is basically the Netherlands in one corner and Puglia in the rest. This is absolutely not a jibe at the workforce in the not-SE parts of the U.K., productivity is much more about broader economic structures than individual abilities (a tech guy moving from Mumbai to the Bay Area becomes way more productive the minute he starts his new job). But yeah, it’s not a fair comparison because much of Germany and much of the U.K. are in different leagues economically speaking.
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Repeat post, ignore!
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I agree that nothing seems to work in the UK at the moment. This is what happens when you have a government which doesn't seem to have done anything much in 12 years in power other than argue about the EU, leave the EU and now argue about migration.
The Conservative party doesn't seem to have a clue what its for now, the bleat about being a tax cutting party is BS, historically its not really true, and definitely not at the moment either. Johnson in particular just seemed to want power for the sake of it, without any political conviction.
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Last thing from me around mental health in the NHS - they've only just, this year I believe, enforced that once you complete your DClinPsy course (i.e. trained to be a Clinical Psychologist), which is a funded course, paid for by the NHS - you have to actually work in the NHS for a period.
Up until last year, the NHS was literally funding people who were training up to become private Mental Health professionals. And they wondered why they were struggling to recruit...
Agree on the general sentiment around the UK being a bit gloomy at the moment. I'd like to think it's a case of the grass is always greener, but I think in this instance it actually is. So many friends now living in Europe, or further afield, just looking in despair at what's going on.
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This is precisely my 4th anecdote. We've been waiting 2 years for an autism assessment for one of my kids that was originally referred through nursery. We considered going private, but it then wouldn't be well joined up with the school, for them to get additional funding, etc. (at least that was my understanding). Currently, the school can't give the right support without a diagnosis but are doing what they can to help.
We got a private assesment and diagnosis and it has been very helpful in terms of talking with school about extra support etc. I don't think anything would be different if we had waited and done an NHS one, oh, except we wouldn't have had it yet..
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This is precisely my 4th anecdote. We've been waiting 2 years for an autism assessment for one of my kids that was originally referred through nursery. We considered going private, but it then wouldn't be well joined up with the school, for them to get additional funding, etc. (at least that was my understanding). Currently, the school can't give the right support without a diagnosis but are doing what they can to help.
We got a private assesment and diagnosis and it has been very helpful in terms of talking with school about extra support etc. I don't think anything would be different if we had waited and done an NHS one, oh, except we wouldn't have had it yet..
I don't know anything about how schools deal with autism diagnoses, etc, but my experience with getting an ADHD assessment - initially trying via my GP and then privately - has been very much along the lines of: this should not be so difficult, complicated and frustrating a process on the NHS, but it is, and (reluctantly) if you're in a position to be able to speed up the process, it probably makes sense to take it. It was for me (the cost of 1x in person assessment, and a couple of phone / video follow-ups) vs waiting for 2-3 years. I can imagine that for a child at a particularly formative stage of development, anything to speed things up would be very valuable.
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This is precisely my 4th anecdote. We've been waiting 2 years for an autism assessment for one of my kids that was originally referred through nursery. We considered going private, but it then wouldn't be well joined up with the school, for them to get additional funding, etc. (at least that was my understanding). Currently, the school can't give the right support without a diagnosis but are doing what they can to help.
We got a private assessment and diagnosis and it has been very helpful in terms of talking with school about extra support etc. I don't think anything would be different if we had waited and done an NHS one, oh, except we wouldn't have had it yet..
Realise that this is hijacking a thread about politics a little with specific stuff around Autism diagnosis etc. However, I run a Communication and Interaction 'Resource Base' within a secondary mainstream school and as a part of the role I advise other schools, so feel I may be able to give you some useful information/ advice. I guess it all relates back to a political root cause though.
Where a diagnosis originates from is of little significance in terms of things being 'joined up' with school. The diagnostic team is just that, (certainly in Devon anyway may be a different model in other Counties?), they diagnose ASD. A diagnosis is a means of accessing other services and affirming/explaining differences. The diagnosis may come with some specific information and/or advice, suggestions of support teams to access and signposting to services but the diagnostic team won't provide any on-going support or service. Diagnostic teams, (like the majority of our essential services), are hugely underfunded, under resourced and understaffed. Going private will speed things considerably.
This makes me very sad because we are all being forced into using private (usually profit driven) services because the one's our taxes should be paying for are being run down (IMO deliberately so). There's your politics folks.
Once the diagnosis is in place, you can approach the school with the diagnosis to ensure that support is put in place and that school is making reasonable adjustments for the child. In Devon schools can approach the Communication and Interaction advisory team to seek further advice and support for the young person. I would assume there is a similar service or team of advisory teachers in place in your area that school can seek support from. You should also be able access free parental workshops/ courses regardless of where the diagnosis came from. If you and the school feel that the 'universal' provision in the school is not enough to meet your child's needs you can request an EHC assessment.
There's is loads of info. advice on tinterweb, National Autistic Society's website is a useful resource and the parent forum may a good place to get advice and experiential knowledge from a parental perspective.
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https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/dec/07/right-and-important-that-michelle-mone-is-investigated-says-minister-steve-barclay
Hopefully this is just the start of it. Will the money ever be seen again though?
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https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/dec/07/right-and-important-that-michelle-mone-is-investigated-says-minister-steve-barclay
Hopefully this is just the start of it. Will the money ever be seen again though?
If the allegations are correct, she deserves to be in prison. But the money? No chance, it'll be in some offshore account in the BVI or similar.
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This is precisely my 4th anecdote. We've been waiting 2 years for an autism assessment for one of my kids that was originally referred through nursery. We considered going private, but it then wouldn't be well joined up with the school, for them to get additional funding, etc. (at least that was my understanding). Currently, the school can't give the right support without a diagnosis but are doing what they can to help.
We got a private assessment and diagnosis and it has been very helpful in terms of talking with school about extra support etc. I don't think anything would be different if we had waited and done an NHS one, oh, except we wouldn't have had it yet..
Realise that this is hijacking a thread about politics a little with specific stuff around Autism diagnosis etc. However, I run a Communication and Interaction 'Resource Base' within a secondary mainstream school and as a part of the role I advise other schools, so feel I may be able to give you some useful information/ advice. I guess it all relates back to a political root cause though.
Where a diagnosis originates from is of little significance in terms of things being 'joined up' with school. The diagnostic team is just that, (certainly in Devon anyway may be a different model in other Counties?), they diagnose ASD. A diagnosis is a means of accessing other services and affirming/explaining differences. The diagnosis may come with some specific information and/or advice, suggestions of support teams to access and signposting to services but the diagnostic team won't provide any on-going support or service. Diagnostic teams, (like the majority of our essential services), are hugely underfunded, under resourced and understaffed. Going private will speed things considerably.
This makes me very sad because we are all being forced into using private (usually profit driven) services because the one's our taxes should be paying for are being run down (IMO deliberately so). There's your politics folks.
Once the diagnosis is in place, you can approach the school with the diagnosis to ensure that support is put in place and that school is making reasonable adjustments for the child. In Devon schools can approach the Communication and Interaction advisory team to seek further advice and support for the young person. I would assume there is a similar service or team of advisory teachers in place in your area that school can seek support from. You should also be able access free parental workshops/ courses regardless of where the diagnosis came from. If you and the school feel that the 'universal' provision in the school is not enough to meet your child's needs you can request an EHC assessment.
There's is loads of info. advice on tinterweb, National Autistic Society's website is a useful resource and the parent forum may a good place to get advice and experiential knowledge from a parental perspective.
This is all really helpful, thank you. We are at the very beginning of exploring what, if any, ongoing support our eldest might need and it feels like such a minefield that I am really struggling with in more ways than one. I've resisted googling as I don't want to preempt anything or get incorrect info but a forum with other parents might prove helpful.
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My son has Aspergers / ASD, and is nearly 13 now. Feel free to contact me directly any time. I think the process is not the same across the UK though, and seems to change all the time.
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The UK may be in a terrible state where nothing works, but at least this doesn't happen if you criticise the government: https://news.sky.com/story/russian-opposition-politician-ilya-yashin-jailed-for-eight-years-for-spreading-fake-news-on-ukraine-war-12764863
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This is precisely my 4th anecdote. We've been waiting 2 years for an autism assessment for one of my kids that was originally referred through nursery. We considered going private, but it then wouldn't be well joined up with the school, for them to get additional funding, etc. (at least that was my understanding). Currently, the school can't give the right support without a diagnosis but are doing what they can to help.
We got a private assessment and diagnosis and it has been very helpful in terms of talking with school about extra support etc. I don't think anything would be different if we had waited and done an NHS one, oh, except we wouldn't have had it yet..
Realise that this is hijacking a thread about politics a little with specific stuff around Autism diagnosis etc. However, I run a Communication and Interaction 'Resource Base' within a secondary mainstream school and as a part of the role I advise other schools, so feel I may be able to give you some useful information/ advice. I guess it all relates back to a political root cause though.
Where a diagnosis originates from is of little significance in terms of things being 'joined up' with school. The diagnostic team is just that, (certainly in Devon anyway may be a different model in other Counties?), they diagnose ASD. A diagnosis is a means of accessing other services and affirming/explaining differences. The diagnosis may come with some specific information and/or advice, suggestions of support teams to access and signposting to services but the diagnostic team won't provide any on-going support or service. Diagnostic teams, (like the majority of our essential services), are hugely underfunded, under resourced and understaffed. Going private will speed things considerably.
This makes me very sad because we are all being forced into using private (usually profit driven) services because the one's our taxes should be paying for are being run down (IMO deliberately so). There's your politics folks.
Once the diagnosis is in place, you can approach the school with the diagnosis to ensure that support is put in place and that school is making reasonable adjustments for the child. In Devon schools can approach the Communication and Interaction advisory team to seek further advice and support for the young person. I would assume there is a similar service or team of advisory teachers in place in your area that school can seek support from. You should also be able access free parental workshops/ courses regardless of where the diagnosis came from. If you and the school feel that the 'universal' provision in the school is not enough to meet your child's needs you can request an EHC assessment.
There's is loads of info. advice on tinterweb, National Autistic Society's website is a useful resource and the parent forum may a good place to get advice and experiential knowledge from a parental perspective.
This is all really helpful, thank you. We are at the very beginning of exploring what, if any, ongoing support our eldest might need and it feels like such a minefield that I am really struggling with in more ways than one. I've resisted googling as I don't want to preempt anything or get incorrect info but a forum with other parents might prove helpful.
:wave:
Hello, autistic spectrum adult here (and I'd bet I'm not the only one -- I think there are disproportionately high numbers of neurodivergent people in the climbing community).
I can second the rec for the National Autistic Society as a starting point; they tend to be pretty solid as a source of info.
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If you’re a public sector employee facing a Christmas of explaining to bloated uncles why you deserve a pay rise, then this latest missive from the Boss Class paper may help:
https://archive.vn/2022.12.11-124437/https://www.ft.com/content/ca81509b-e929-487f-8975-49d75dc4f78d
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Bloody hell, the Trussites were right all along - the FT are part of the far left anti-growth coalition!
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Found this Kings Fund report, covered in the Guardian, pretty worrying:
“A “decade of neglect” by successive Conservative administrations has weakened the NHS to the point that it will not be able to tackle the 7 million-strong backlog of care, a government-commissioned report has concluded.
“The paper by the King’s Fund health thinktank says years of denying funding to the health service and failing to address its growing workforce crisis have left it with too few staff, too little equipment and too many outdated buildings to perform the amount of surgery needed…
“The report pinpoints Cameron’s decision to reduce the NHS’s annual budget increases from Labour’s 3.6% to an average of just 1.5% as the key reason for the service’s loss of capacity.”
And we keep coming back to that man, Cameron, probably the most destructive PM in recent history. Still, he was popular at the time wasn’t he? Somehow we have to wean ourselves off fantasies of low taxes and acceptable public services being peddled by smooth faced posh boys.
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2022/dec/12/decade-of-neglect-means-nhs-unable-to-tackle-care-backlog-report-says?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
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I’m always slightly baffled when I see conservative politicians touting various other “low tax” nations/states as models for UK economic growth. They’re always vastly smaller populations or high migrant workforce states, often not much more than “City states”. Along with the whole “Reduced regulation” garbage.
Having been out of Dubai for 15 years, returning has been eye opening.
It was never as low in regulation as people outside assumed and, really, it was more a case that the place grew faster than it’s legal and regulatory systems could cope with. Even in the early 00’s it was often incredibly bureaucratic etc.
Now, we get weekly site inspections by their HSE. Labour accommodation is inspected monthly. Anonymous reporting facilities are everywhere and easy to access for all. Residence and employment visas take months to finalise, instead of days and involve deep background checks and full biometric recording/checking etc and strict enforcement of “categories” of your trade licenses. If you get caught adjusting scaffolding without the approved supervisors on site, you get shut down, for instance. In Maritime City, the patrolling HSE guys will pounce if they see anything major being undertaken and want to see all the paper work etc. We have to have full time “compliance” managers, on our payroll, to sign off permits to work etc, on everything.
Even salaries are strictly regulated. They are not that much lower (for labourers) than they would be in the UK.
For instance, our lowest paid staff member is earning 2000aed/mnth.(before overtime) All found food and accommodation, health and dental insurance, 30 days annual leave with flights. His role is to sweep the work areas and tidy up. All the guys work from 8am to 6pm. Any work after 6pm and the inspectors will visit to ensure overtime and break requirements are met. There is a strictly enforced 1/2hr break at 10am and another at 3pm. They get a 2hr lunch break from 12-2pm. We have to provide air conditioned rest areas for their breaks etc.
Shit, I had to give the bank full biometrics, just to open a Current account.
When I was running the wall in the UK, HSE visited the week before we opened and not even once more in the 10 years we were open.
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I’m always slightly baffled when I see conservative politicians touting various other “low tax” nations/states as models for UK economic growth.
...
I agree. Singapore has famously restrictive laws and they pay their politicians a huge salary, there's no way British people actually want anything like that. Similar for the parts of the Middle East you mention. I'm always a bit baffled by the enthusiasm of usually the same conservative politicians for trade in commodities, most of which, given that we left the single market, is slightly irrelevant. The primary goal, I believe, of an India trade deal would be to reduce the tariff on whiskey. That is not going to solve the recession, or anything else.
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Along with the whole “Reduced regulation” garbage.
I think this will vary by industry. I've worked in financial services regulation for the last 6/7 years and I could point you to all sorts of pieces that are utterly pointless and deeply unhelpful to anyone.
To give just one example, in the recently published Edinburgh Reforms is the abolition of the PRIIPs Regulation. Since its introduction in 2018 this will have cost the industry (and therefore its customers) billions of pounds to implement and manage, and yet now it's being revoked as, per the new consultation it "created unnecessarily prescriptive measures that led to information being presented to investors in unhelpful or, worse, misleading ways".
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Jonathan Pie on the strikes: https://twitter.com/JonathanPieNews/status/1603307158128529408?t=vlvKY823cgiVZotj3lu7fg&s=09
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This is the food bank, down a private corridor in my wife's hospital, set up for the Anaesthetics and Surgical Department staff who cannot afford food.
(https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/52577451750_de60786737_b.jpg)
The bunting is a nice touch. Someone's tried to take the edge off the shame.
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There shouldn't be any shame for anyone having to use a food bank.
The shame should be reserved for those responsible for food banks being necessary.
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Of course. But I've no doubt that many users feel shame nonetheless.
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I see Braverman is advocating the use of ships to house asylum seekers. Maybe we should go the full Dickens and use rotting hulks on Thames estuary.
Fuck me can it get any worse.
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The rule of Braverman: it can always get worse.
At least she doesn't have the power or the competence to see most of her ideas implemented.
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I see Braverman is advocating the use of ships to house asylum seekers. Maybe we should go the full Dickens and use rotting hulks on Thames estuary.
Fuck me can it get any worse.
I'm curious what your view is of the Scottish Executive following the same policy for Ukranian refugees, whether you made the same criticisms of Nicola Sturgeon at the time?
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I don’t follow the policies of Scottish executive but having been enlightened I’m equally appalled.
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I haven't seen any details of this story so apologies if this is miles off but is the objection coming from an assumption that the conditions will be filthy, tiny and unfit for human habitation? Because detention centres, approved premises, prisons, hostels and statutory run housing can and is a shit hole - if a small child can end up dying of breathing difficulties caused by the mold growing in their housing association house, you can imagine the care, attention and investment that our increasingly right wing government give to housing so called 'undesireables'.
So, if the ships are clean and have services then I don't see an issue in practical terms. Obviously in moral terms there's something repugnant about putting people somewhere else to truly 'other' then but is that any worse than putting people behind a 10 foot fence with razor wire on top?
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Just an historical footnote: yesterday was the 50th anniversary of the UK joining the then EEC.
Jan 1st 1973 was also the day Denmark joined, not least so it could maintain free access to UK markets, especially for its agricultural products. Of course, today, the UK's departure is hardly likely to spur another similar move here in Denmark.
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Just an historical footnote: yesterday was the 50th anniversary of the UK joining the then EEC.
Jan 1st 1973 was also the day Denmark joined, not least so it could maintain free access to UK markets, especially for its agricultural products. Of course, today, the UK's departure is hardly likely to spur another similar move here in Denmark.
Interesting. I cannot understand the degree of cognitive dissonance in people with very strong political convictions. The Euro sceptics still insist it was a good thing to do to leave despite available evidence on the economy, how easy it is to repeal and replace legislation, available labour market etc. That said, they'd probably say people like me are the same in the other direction.
Predictions for the year ahead? The return of Boris Johnson? Will someone finally sack Suella Braverman? Will Farage make his umpteenth comeback?
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For a British person above a certain age - or one into the recent history of the UK’s political economy - the 1970s appear to be the decade everything changed. A period of strife and crisis which saw the end or at least the muting of the post war consensus of capitalism with a strong state, and by its end the emergence of the current system of decreased state spending, increased inequality, larger financial sector, etc. The Seventies as one long period of “agghhhh what the fuck do we do?”
But looking at the figures from say the Resolution Foundation or the IFS, it’s clear that the post-2008 period is also quite a big change from before. Adam Tooze makes a strong case that the U.K. is undergoing a profound crisis that dwarfs the structural change we saw in the 70s and 80s, and that we may see “Britain’s decoupling from the economic development of other rich countries.”
https://adamtooze.substack.com/p/chartbook-184-nostalgia-for-decline
There’s a bit at the start about Perry Anderson which can be safely ignored if left-wing political beefs aren’t your thing. The juicy graphs are at the end.
This tied in well for me with this piece on generational political differences:
https://benansell.substack.com/p/generation-games?utm_medium=reader2
I’m not sure many of the over 60s fully appreciate the country we are turning into. (Apologies to those who do…)
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From an opinion piece in today's Times:
Nobody just f***s off any more. Have you noticed this? No matter how badly they do, no matter how incompetent they prove, nobody just f***s off.
Consider the Conservative Growth Group, the nation’s most ironically named political pressure organisation. Formed to promote the dogma of the failed, short-lived prime minister Liz Truss, whose foolishness and misplaced confidence quite literally made the country poorer overnight. They’re still around, it seems, Team Truss. Not just around but flexing their muscles and threatening to cause more havoc unless her ruinous dogma is adopted. They’re plotting, we’re told. Good grief — seriously? Why don’t they just go away? What monstrous entitlement is it that Trussites still demand influence and an audience, having proved so inadequate when given responsibility? Isn’t there a dry cleaners in Nuneaton that needs running into the ground instead? A sub-post office in the depths of Aberdeenshire that’s on its uppers and is probably closing anyway? Why should anyone indulge them, ever again?
The same with Jacob Rees-Mogg, formerly the minister for Brexit opportunities. Had a look, couldn’t find any. He’s still about, inexplicably. Still clinging to political existence like a brilliantined stick insect when the time has long come to go.
There used to be a sense of shame in public life. If you tanked the economy, if your policies proved harmful, the definition of duty included an acknowledgement the game was up. No more. Here they come again, the living dead of Trussonomics. The Conservative Growth Group? Oh please. Do us all a favour. Just f*** off.
Rather indelicately put, but I really wonder why many people seem to retain enthusiasm for leaders who have completely failed to do an even half competent job.
Why on earth do they still love about them? How does one man go to the Carribbean at every opportunity, do no work whatsoever and still be reasonably popular? It's truly baffling.
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I liked the bit about the ‘brilliantined stick insect’. Excellent caricature, captures something of the man. Vain, oily, etiolated indolence made flesh.
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Didn't know Jonathan Pye did OPs in the Times now.
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Didn't know Jonathan Pye did OPs in the Times now.
It is a bit like that isn't it. Remarkable how often comment pieces in the Times are like this though. Just because a newspaper is broadly supportive of the government, doesn't mean that the journalists are. This was a diary piece though. Can't remember the author's name.
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The amazing tale of how the Zahawi tax issue was uncovered around the time he was Chancellor... can't see how he can possibly survive this... multiple lies, legal threats and a fine for what looks like it must be illegal evasion. The days of duck ponds on MP expenses seem like nostalgic trivia compared to this.
https://www.theneweuropean.co.uk/how-i-cost-nadhim-zahawi-3-7million/
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The days of duck ponds on MP expenses seem like nostalgic trivia compared to this.
https://www.theneweuropean.co.uk/how-i-cost-nadhim-zahawi-3-7million/
Well in Zahawi’s case, maybe not duck ponds, but stables.
He trotted out the same excuse of ‘carelessness’ that time, too:
https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/nadhim-zahawi-says-using-taxpayer-cash-to-heat-horse-stables-was-genuine-mistake_uk_62cbd961e4b0359fa47d9746
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Zahawi's tax situation may have been totally inappropriate, but I'm not sure it was illegal, exactly.
I'm not saying he shouldn't be sacked or anything but I don't think it makes him a criminal.
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If he was evading tax (not paying tax clearly due on taxable income) it's illegal.
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Wikipedia puts it this way:
Tax evasion is an illegal attempt to defeat the imposition of taxes by individuals, corporations, trusts, and others. Tax evasion often entails the deliberate misrepresentation of the taxpayer's affairs to the tax authorities to reduce the taxpayer's tax liability, and it includes dishonest tax reporting, declaring less income, profits or gains than the amounts actually earned, overstating deductions, using bribes against authorities in countries with high corruption rates and hiding money in secret locations.
It seems unlikely HMRC customarily apply 7 figure penalties for simple miscalculations.
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I'm not a tax lawyer, but I believe the money in the form of shares was held in Gibraltar in a shell company. So it's not quite that simple.
Johnson is worse.
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To clarify, I think that Zahawi is guilty of tax avoidance which is wrong but not illegal, not tax evasion, which is illegal.
The Johnson/ Sharp situation seems to be an obvious conflict of interest. You just shouldn't be talking nearly a million pound loans out if you're PM, still less giving your donor a high public office straight afterwards.
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In other news, if you haven't seen the front page of the Mail today. "SHOCKING RISE OF 'SOMETHING FOR NOTHING BRITAIN' ". Apparently the fact that over 50% of households now get more from welfare than they pay in tax, and the top 10% of earners pay half of all income tax is proof that Covid has turned the nation into a bunch of scroungers. Definitely nothing to do with a rise in inequality.
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Most people’s knowledge of wealth and income distributions is very very poor.
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In other news, if you haven't seen the front page of the Mail today. "SHOCKING RISE OF 'SOMETHING FOR NOTHING BRITAIN' ". Apparently the fact that over 50% of households now get more from welfare than they pay in tax, and the top 10% of earners pay half of all income tax is proof that Covid has turned the nation into a bunch of scroungers. Definitely nothing to do with a rise in inequality.
As well as Sean's point, the "now" is actually data from 2020/21 (I think there was something happening at that point that don't make for a great data point?), "welfare" includes a lot of stuff inc. accessing NHS services so it's not just "benefits", and it neglects to note now many of the 50% of the households are pensioners.
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We have a massive productivity problem, an aging and sick population, and huge regional inequality, but of course its FREELOADERS who are the cause of this, not 12 years of utterly dogs dogshit government
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Trying to persuade pensioners that their state pensions are a benefit is utterly pointless. But still true!
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To clarify, I think that Zahawi is guilty of tax avoidance which is wrong but not illegal, not tax evasion, which is illegal.
Agreeing a penalty is standard for HMRC: quicker payment plus a fine and it saves on legal bills and risks of losing a prosecution of illegal evasion. The history is summarised in the link below, including a section on possible evasion at the bottom, from which I've quoted below...
https://www.theguardian.com/global/2023/jan/23/nadhim-zahawi-taxes-explainer-former-chancellor
"One important point arising from Zahawi’s statement that unpaid tax on a benefit apparently worth more than £20m was viewed by HMRC as “careless and not deliberate” is what exactly that phrase means.
While a plain English reading might suggest that it means he simply made an error, Dan Neidle told the BBC that the meaning in tax law is more complicated, and may be a designation settled on by HMRC if it concludes it cannot prove deliberate tax evasion.
“‘Careless’ has a very specific meaning,” he said. “‘Careless’ means that you weren’t just wrong, you’re allowed to get your tax wrong … it works like this: You or I, as long as we instruct a proper adviser, we give that adviser the right information, we follow that adviser’s advice, and we check that final tax return to the best that we’re able to, so long as we do that, even if it was completely wrong … we won’t pay penalties. To pay a 30% penalty, you didn’t do one or more of those things.” "
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To clarify, I think that Zahawi is guilty of tax avoidance which is wrong but not illegal, not tax evasion, which is illegal.
Intriguing that you’d be in a position to know.
Maybe Zahawi’s lawyers’ libel threats to Dan Neidle were ‘careless not deliberate’. Here’are the tweets between Dan Neidle and Osborne Clarke (Zahawi’s lawyers)where he attempts to get clarification.
https://twitter.com/DanNeidle/status/1617205525359239180?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1617205525359239180%7Ctwgr%5Eeee5be65b38ee98eaa914986f6576fe45e19fbed%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.telegraph.co.uk%2Fpolitics%2F2023%2F01%2F23%2Fdan-neidle-investigating-nadhim-zahawis-tax-affairs%2F
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Sumak has requested an ethics probe:
https://twitter.com/PippaCrerar/status/1617476517583372289?t=ITP6P_eCxUx_JMOJ058Kkw&s=19
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Tomorrow marks the first quarter of Sunak’s premiership. He made some clear pledges when he accepted the office:
This government will have integrity, professionalism and accountability at every level. (https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/prime-minister-rishi-sunaks-statement-25-october-2022?utm_source=POLITICO.EU&utm_campaign=4836e20a8f-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2023_01_22_01_06&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_10959edeb5-4836e20a8f-%5BLIST_EMAIL_ID%5D)
Do people feel they are being honoured?
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Tomorrow marks the first quarter of Sunak’s premiership. He made some clear pledges when he accepted the office:
This government will have integrity, professionalism and accountability at every level. (https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/prime-minister-rishi-sunaks-statement-25-october-2022?utm_source=POLITICO.EU&utm_campaign=4836e20a8f-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2023_01_22_01_06&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_10959edeb5-4836e20a8f-%5BLIST_EMAIL_ID%5D)
Do people feel they are being honoured?
Frankly, I'd far rather have Rishi Sunak as a PM until the next election. If he's pushed out, they'll almost certainly bring back Boris Johnson. There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that he'd be worse. You'd get a much less competent cabinet and the return of policy like privatising channel 4.
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Sumak has requested an ethics probe:
https://twitter.com/PippaCrerar/status/1617476517583372289?t=ITP6P_eCxUx_JMOJ058Kkw&s=19
Like that, assuming it’s not a typo…
And I assume you mean this variety:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxicodendron_vernix (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxicodendron_vernix)
Rather than the tasty kind…
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Frankly, I'd far rather have Rishi Sunak as a PM until the next election. If he's pushed out, they'll almost certainly bring back Boris Johnson. There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that he'd be worse. You'd get a much less competent cabinet and the return of policy like privatising channel 4.
I find your insistence that Johnson is uniquely awful fascinating. Every time there is a political scandal you reference back to him and conclude that it would be worse with him in charge (see above re Zahawi's blatant tax evasion: "Johnson is worse." I think this view represents a not insignficant minority of British politics observers but I'm not sure its based on anything other than image and the appearance of respectability. This Sunak government is the same level of incompetent as the ones that have gone before. There has been no improvement in the polls or the management of the country. Where does it come from? What do you like about Sunak you didn't about Johnson? It can't just be the sharper suit, neater hair and slightly better disguised factionalism?! There is still no plan, still nothing they want to achieve, still no big flagship policy they're working towards. Nothing works still; there is just a posher man at the helm which seems to return many political observers to their safe space!
Thats not meant to sound accusatory at all, even though I disagree!
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Frankly, I'd far rather have Rishi Sunak as a PM until the next election. If he's pushed out, they'll almost certainly bring back Boris Johnson. There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that he'd be worse. You'd get a much less competent cabinet and the return of policy like privatising channel 4.
I find your insistence that Johnson is uniquely awful fascinating. Every time there is a political scandal you reference back to him and conclude that it would be worse with him in charge (see above re Zahawi's blatant tax evasion: "Johnson is worse." I think this view represents a not insignficant minority of British politics observers but I'm not sure its based on anything other than image and the appearance of respectability. This Sunak government is the same level of incompetent as the ones that have gone before. There has been no improvement in the polls or the management of the country. Where does it come from? What do you like about Sunak you didn't about Johnson? It can't just be the sharper suit, neater hair and slightly better disguised factionalism?! There is still no plan, still nothing they want to achieve, still no big flagship policy they're working towards. Nothing works still; there is just a posher man at the helm which seems to return many political observers to their safe space!
Thats not meant to sound accusatory at all, even though I disagree!
The lesser of two Weevils…
Not a typo.
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Yes, I think lots of people do see him as a 'lesser evil/weevil' - but the question is, why? What makes him better than Johnson in this construction, other than the aesthetics?
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I think it is the fact Rishi is seen as rich enough to not make decisions solely for personal gain.
Johnson's decisions always seemed to be traced back to a donor, someone paying for a holiday, his wallpaper, securing a loan, he could be "bought" quite easily as he desires a lavish lifestyle he can ill afford and has zero morals so will do the donor's bidding.
Rishi is different, he may have horrible politics but they bare his politics, his decisions, not those forced upon him by donors with a juicy bribe.
In reality, Rishi is still weak, beholden to the bonkers fringes of the conservative party and still has the corrupt/incompetent MPs in cabinet so plus ca change.
As I've posted before, the corruption is too much even for my mum, who has never put a cross next to Labour before but would (currently) vote for Kier. Not even on polices, just he seems like the only "honest" option.
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I think it is the fact Rishi is seen as rich enough to not make decisions solely for personal gain.
Johnson's decisions always seemed to be traced back to a donor, someone paying for a holiday, his wallpaper, securing a loan, he could be "bought" quite easily as he desires a lavish lifestyle he can ill afford and has zero morals so will do the donor's bidding.
Rishi is different, he may have horrible politics but they bare his politics, his decisions, not those forced upon him by donors with a juicy bribe.
In reality, Rishi is still weak, beholden to the bonkers fringes of the conservative party and still has the corrupt/incompetent MPs in cabinet so plus ca change.
As I've posted before, the corruption is too much even for my mum, who has never put a cross next to Labour before but would (currently) vote for Kier. Not even on polices, just he seems like the only "honest" option.
This.
Sorry, driving.
I view Boris as utterly despicable (for exactly the reasons above), as opposed to Sumac’s bland, anodyne, despicability, born of insulation and the ignorance that engenders.
Boris would be objectively evil, knowingly so; if he stood to profit from such evil. Sumac, I feel, might stray into that territory, through a lack of understanding of the world outside his bubble; however, he would be less likely to double down and advance a damaging agenda, more likely to reverse and adapt.
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Thanks galpinos, thats interesting. I hadn't considered that Sunak's extreme wealth might be a plus point in the eyes of voters. In a way though, that same wealth sort of removes one of the 'excuses' Johnson had; people would roll their eyes at his antics, his need for money to support an unknown number of children and ex wives but that was kind of part of his jack the lad image for some. Sunak also risks slipping very easily into 'out of touch' headlines.
I presume thats an amusing autocorrect of Sunak to Sumac OMM!
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Whilst Johnson provokes a strong gag reflex in me on a personal level. I wonder if he was largely impotent in terms of policy as he spent so much time setting himself on fire.
Biden seems to have achieved more than might have been expected for a doddering old fool, perhaps by disarming through decency. I am not sure this will be the case for Sunak. His 'decency' seems to be a thin veneer, and I get the feeling, the more we get to know him, the less we want to.
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Thanks galpinos, thats interesting. I hadn't considered that Sunak's extreme wealth might be a plus point in the eyes of voters. In a way though, that same wealth sort of removes one of the 'excuses' Johnson had; people would roll their eyes at his antics, his need for money to support an unknown number of children and ex wives but that was kind of part of his jack the lad image for some.
Re Johnson I think that was definitely true at the start but that veneer wore very thin very quickly and the stench of corruption turned people off in the end.
Sunak also risks slipping very easily into 'out of touch' headlines.
Totally agree, I think he's already there due to his total inability to manage his political image. He seems absurdly bad at it. He's as rich as Creosote, one would have assumed he would have prepared answers to simple questions like, "Do you use a private GP" and "Why did you fly to Leeds" in order to "own" his wealth, instead of looking blank and avoiding the question and driving the "out of touch" narrative.
(Apologies for the Discworld reference)
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I presume thats an amusing autocorrect of Sunak to Sumac OMM!
Not even a little bit.
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Frankly, I'd far rather have Rishi Sunak as a PM until the next election. If he's pushed out, they'll almost certainly bring back Boris Johnson. There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that he'd be worse. You'd get a much less competent cabinet and the return of policy like privatising channel 4.
I find your insistence that Johnson is uniquely awful fascinating. Every time there is a political scandal you reference back to him and conclude that it would be worse with him in charge (see above re Zahawi's blatant tax evasion: "Johnson is worse." I think this view represents a not insignficant minority of British politics observers but I'm not sure its based on anything other than image and the appearance of respectability. This Sunak government is the same level of incompetent as the ones that have gone before. There has been no improvement in the polls or the management of the country. Where does it come from? What do you like about Sunak you didn't about Johnson? It can't just be the sharper suit, neater hair and slightly better disguised factionalism?! There is still no plan, still nothing they want to achieve, still no big flagship policy they're working towards. Nothing works still; there is just a posher man at the helm which seems to return many political observers to their safe space!
Thats not meant to sound accusatory at all, even though I disagree!
Interesting question.
For me Johnson is the more despicable - just a pure cynical populist, he doesn't seem to care what he does or what he says, doesn't care if it's true or false, doesn't care if it's good or bad for the country if it leads to more power and position for him. He is a man of words and no substance; his whole career is of a specious liar.
The policies bit is secondary - that comes from the party more than the prime minister I think? Johnson just lacks all integrity as a person and I think was quite dangerous for our democracy (suborning Parliament, lying to the Queen etc).
Sunak obviously comes from a background of enormous privilege and has married into even greater wealth. As such he is at a complete remove from the problems of ordinary people. In this he is not dissimilar from many of our previous 'best' Prime Ministers (Churchill grew up in Blenheim Palace!) It's whether or not he cares to understand, to try to do a good job that makes a difference for me.
He is a Fulbright Scholar which at least suggests a level of academic ability and has worked in a number of actual jobs where he would have had to work vs write polemic like Johnson.
His politics are of the current Conservative era which encompass the crazy fringe of the right and seem to me to be misguided and also seem to have damaged the country enormously. He also seems to be a poor politician. However, he doesn't give off that vibe of utter contempt for the role of politician, for the populace, for the pillars of democracy that is evident from Johnson. He seems to at least try to have integrity? It's more that he is bemused about what ordinary people might care about. Or that is my impression of him.
My feeling echoes TobyD's that started this little divergent thread - I'd rather have him at the helm than any of the other loons at the top of the blue team.
But the sooner we get a new party in government the better!
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For me Johnson is the more despicable - just a pure cynical populist, he doesn't seem to care what he does or what he says, doesn't care if it's true or false, doesn't care if it's good or bad for the country if it leads to more power and position for him. He is a man of words and no substance; his whole career is of a specious liar.
I think the recent seatbelt saga is a good indication of the differences. Could you imagine Johnson holding up his hands and saying he got it wrong (for what is a fairly minor issue given the backdrop of the country currently) or would you see endless non-denials and other attempts to obfuscate? Some of Johnson's more brazen attempts at this were quite staggering yet he seemed to survive them, repeatedly. Why is the blonde buffoon in Ukraine getting photographed at the negotiating table with Zelensky? It's self-interested posturing for his future career.
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However, he doesn't give off that vibe of utter contempt for the role of politician, for the populace, for the pillars of democracy that is evident from Johnson. He seems to at least try to have integrity? It's more that he is bemused about what ordinary people might care about. Or that is my impression of him.
Interesting response, thanks! Ithink this cuts to the nub of it and I don't entirely disagree. Sunak's potential for cynical positioning and realpolitik is limited by the fact that as several have pointed out, he is a dreadful politician. Whereas Johnson was a brilliant politician and bad at everything else. Sunak's mishandling of his wife's nondom status, his use of private healthcare, the private jet are all such own goals its a bit embarrassing. As you say, its like he hadn't even clocked people might object to those decisions. To me he exemplifies the 'born to rule' strain of the Tories which I personally find far more offensive than some of Johnson's antics, demeaning as they were/are (i agree his posturing in Kyiv is a disgrace). Johnson isn't even really a Conservative politician; he has no affinity with any ideology at all beyond himself. I can understand people liking Sunak if they like the Tories, good luck to them even if I don't agree politically. What I struggle to wrap my head around is people who don't like the Tories, liking Sunak more than Johnson even though Sunak exemplifies Tory policy and ideology far more strongly than Johnson ever did, with all the social harm that entails (if thats what you believe politically). That to me suggests people prefer, to some extent at least, someone who 'looks the part' and fits a professionalised, managerial aesthetic- even if they are still incompetent. there is nothing visibly competent about the government currently compared to Johnson's I don't think. Both were better than truss but that is a very low bar!
I see Sunak's 'integrity' as a pretty thin veneer; I reckon his tax return might make for some pretty interesting reading as well.
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Interesting responses. I think that Sunak, however much the above replies think otherwise, is a basically decent, honest person. He is weak as a leader and beholden to be grimmer sides of the Conservative party. But he hasn't crashed the economy, and might do something moderately sane about N Ireland.
Johnson, on the other hand is a liar, treats women like shit, is a racist either intentionally or incidentally. He'd do anything in policy terms that he thought might play well for himself, and is therefore more dangerous.
I'm not wild about Rishi Sunak either, but he's better than either Truss or Johnson.
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Anyone who willingly served in cabinet under Johnson is, by default, neither decent nor honest.
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I think that Sunak…is a basically decent, honest person.
Not sure how you can say this with a straight face Toby. He was chancellor of the UK, responsible for collecting taxes for the UK, at a time when his wife was claiming non-dom status to reduce her UK tax liability. And he somehow thought that was fine.
Not to mention taking that job after Javid resigned in protest at the strings being attached to No11. And then as Will says, staying on til the bitter end and repeating lie after lie to defend Johnson.
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In his way he’s a trailblazer. No PM has ever had received two criminal convictions in office. Even Johnson only managed one.
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Even Johnson only managed one.
Not for want of trying.
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Not sure how you can say this with a straight face Toby. He was chancellor of the UK, responsible for collecting taxes for the UK, at a time when his wife was claiming non-dom status to reduce her UK tax liability. And he somehow thought that was fine.
Not to mention taking that job after Javid resigned in protest at the strings being attached to No11. And then as Will says, staying on til the bitter end and repeating lie after lie to defend Johnson.
This. Sunak owes his entire political career to Johnson. How has he managed to emerge smelling of roses?!
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This. Sunak owes his entire political career to Johnson. How has he managed to emerge smelling of roses?!
It's like going to the loo after someone's left a real stinker in there, you can get away with a lot and still smell good in comparison. For me there's also a healthy dose of "at least he's not Truss", and a feeling that having another leadership challenge (or a general election) would be a shitshow, even if I would much prefer someone else in government.
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Doesn't this analogy only work if we accept Sunak was in the cubicle with BJ?!
Also interested in why you think an election would be a shit show ; destabilising? But that's another q!
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I think that Sunak…is a basically decent, honest person.
Not sure how you can say this with a straight face Toby. He was chancellor of the UK, responsible for collecting taxes for the UK, at a time when his wife was claiming non-dom status to reduce her UK tax liability. And he somehow thought that was fine.
Not to mention taking that job after Javid resigned in protest at the strings being attached to No11. And then as Will says, staying on til the bitter end and repeating lie after lie to defend Johnson.
This sounds a bit like getting at someone because you don't like them to me, I'm really not saying that I think hes wonderful, because I really don't. But, I'm sure Johnson lied to all his MPs who went out to defend him, and it was only when Lord Macdonald contradicted him that they were presented with irrefutable evidence that he was lying.
Re the tax thing, whatever one's view on whether she should have used it, when it was revealed she started paying UK taxes on her earnings, which strictly, she isn't obliged to by law.
There was an earlier comment that Sunak was from an extremely privileged background, that's really not true, his father was a GP, and his mother a pharmacist, and they lived somewhere pretty normal in Southampton. I'd say that was comfortable upper middle class more than anything.
For balance, I'd say Sunaks biggest mistake was the failure to keep a better hold on the finances during Covid and prevent the widespread abuse of the furlough system. He is politically naive and his judgment suffers as a result. He's a committed eurosceptic as well, unlike Truss and Johnson who just got in on it for personal gain, and I think that's the biggest foreign policy error the UK has made for an extremely long time.
At the moment, I think that any administration would struggle to get any significant policy change enacted due to the pressure on the national finances, strikes, war, need to try to sort out Brexit etc etc, though.
In summary I'm really not a fan of Rishi Sunak, but I'd much rather he just stay there until the next election. More instability will inevitably affect our currency, business confidence etc. He's seriously mediocre, but I think that's as good as you'll get right now.
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This is all well and good in terms of overall political analysis Toby. But you said Sunak was “decent and honest”. That’s the bit I can’t ever agree with. No decent person would consider that tax situation to be justifiable, however legal it may be. At least not in my book. It was done to reduce her overall tax liability because UK tax rates are higher. That’s despite her husband being chancellor of the country she’s avoiding paying tax in, and both of them living here full time.
Consider the counter-factual; if UK tax rates were lower, and giving up her non-dom status meant she would pay less in overall tax, do you honestly believe she wouldn’t have done that immediately?
And as for the stuff about him lying to defend Johnson only because he’d been deceived - pull the other one.
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But, I'm sure Johnson lied to all his MPs who went out to defend him, and it was only when Lord Macdonald contradicted him that they were presented with irrefutable evidence that he was lying.
Eh?! :lol: The idea they didn't all know he was lying is absolutely risible. You and I knew it; the idea the cabinet didn't is absurd.
Anyway, no need to keep going over old ground as we aren't going to agree, but theres not a lot here convincing me that the preference for Sunak isn't largely based on aesthetics rather than substance. Which is a bit sad but nothing we didn't know already.
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But, I'm sure Johnson lied to all his MPs who went out to defend him, and it was only when Lord Macdonald contradicted him that they were presented with irrefutable evidence that he was lying.
Eh?! :lol: The idea they didn't all know he was lying is absolutely risible. You and I knew it; the idea the cabinet didn't is absurd.
Anyway, no need to keep going over old ground as we aren't going to agree, but theres not a lot here convincing me that the preference for Sunak isn't largely based on aesthetics rather than substance. Which is a bit sad but nothing we didn't know already.
Unfortunately, like it or not, aesthetics matter.
A deplorable number of people base all sorts of major, life changing, decisions on such things; rather than put any effort in to trying to understand complex issues.
It’s not even simply the vulnerable elderly, that gladly hand their life savings over to the charming young man for that unmissable investment opportunity.
Blair sold snow to Inuits, on little more than his smile.
Brown was competent, clever and…
Looked wrong.
Potential Labour leaders cannot eat sandwiches until they’ve been safely installed in office.
Biden could end global conflict, house the homeless, feed the words hungry, but if he stumbles on the way to the podium to announce the end of Cancer, he’s done for.
Whole nations form their opinions of entire, multifaceted, complex cultured, neighbouring nations, on the way that nation’s leader stands in a group photo for the G780 climate conference/cheese and wine party.
I do not believe this to be “right”, merely that it is.
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This is all well and good in terms of overall political analysis Toby. But you said Sunak was “decent and honest”. That’s the bit I can’t ever agree with. No decent person would consider that tax situation to be justifiable, however legal it may be. At least not in my book. It was done to reduce her overall tax liability because UK tax rates are higher. That’s despite her husband being chancellor of the country she’s avoiding paying tax in, and both of them living here full time.
Consider the counter-factual; if UK tax rates were lower, and giving up her non-dom status meant she would pay less in overall tax, do you honestly believe she wouldn’t have done that immediately?
And as for the stuff about him lying to defend Johnson only because he’d been deceived - pull the other one.
Picking out the single point that essentially no decent and honest person would utilize legal tricks to reduce their tax contributions, well if that's true then I don't know many decent and honest people!
I've never replied to an email so quickly as the one that offered me a switch to a salary sacrifice pension, saving me over 100 quid a month from my tax contribution. All my mates in trades are fiddling their books, putting allsorts down to expenses. The builder currently working on my house asked if I could pay him partly cash. These are all decent people. I get that Sunak is in a different position to us plebs and should be held to a different standard, but you said 'no decent person...'
Interesting topic though. I tend to ignore politics as much as possible (he says in a politics thread...) but I subconsciously dislike Sunak slightly less than Johnson. This discussion has made me consider why I've had this impression and it probably has been due to aesthetics, which is odd as I'm not usually one for authority or convention!
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"Fiddling the books" and avoiding tax using cash are, surely, not legal, not particularly decent, and by definition very dishonest? I assume you and they all vote Tory? At least that would be internally consistent. I'm endlessly amazed by the number of people who vote for pro-redistribution parties (e.g. Labour) but try quite aggressively to minimize tax and don't recognize the irony. I find this especially true for inheritance tax - surely the most equitable of them all. For some reason I don't view pension tax relief (on the way in, at least) in quite the same way, though I'm not sure why. Presumably because I can see the logic in the incentivization there (unlike some of the inheritance tax minimization schemes I've stumbled across); though this isn't true for pensioners not paying NI - that I don't understand.
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Liam's builder mates aren't the chancellor of the exchequer though. Its one thing doing a bit of work for cash, quite another using a questionable nondom status to safeguard family wealth when your day job is to be responsible for everyone else paying their taxes. Its rank hypocrisy.
I see where you're coming from Barrows but there are obviously degrees to it; cash goes back into the economy immediately and so the 'damage' is fairly minimal. The incentives of being self employed and therefore being able to pay yourself by dividend, without NC contributions are to incentivise entrepreneurship (i guess?). am sure there are numerous examples of these which others will know far better.
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I assume you and they all vote Tory? At least that would be internally consistent.
You think I should vote conservative because I chose to enter a salary sacrifice pension to reduce my tax contribution? Weird. I don't think my mates vote.
For some reason I don't view pension tax relief (on the way in, at least) in quite the same way
internally consistent.
:wall:
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I wrote that to point out the flaw/irony in my thinking - I suspect most "left leaning" people are the same to some extent, despite it requiring either burying your head in the sand or some mental gymnastics. Maybe it's similar to how we're all concerned about climate change but still fly away on holiday.
I've been struck in a few conversations recently about Labour/Green voters putting high level of effort into minimizing inheritance tax, which seems to my mind hard to justify. I guess as spidermonkey points out most tax minimization has some kind of incentivization behind it, though with the schemes I've stumbled across it just seems more like exploiting loopholes than a coherent incentive.
if you were dodging tax by getting paid in cash then yes, I would think you should vote Conservative. Otherwise it's just "I want high public spending but don't want to pay for it". I also think that's neither decent nor honest.
And yeah, obvs it's fair to hold the chancellor to a higher standard.
P.S. surely pension contributions are tax free by default, since it either comes our pre tax or the provider claims it back as standard? Oh, I guess unless you're in a higher rate tax band in which case maybe it's extra effort to claim back the extra?
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But, I'm sure Johnson lied to all his MPs who went out to defend him, and it was only when Lord Macdonald contradicted him that they were presented with irrefutable evidence that he was lying.
Eh?! :lol: The idea they didn't all know he was lying is absolutely risible. You and I knew it; the idea the cabinet didn't is absurd.
Anyway, no need to keep going over old ground as we aren't going to agree, but theres not a lot here convincing me that the preference for Sunak isn't largely based on aesthetics rather than substance. Which is a bit sad but nothing we didn't know already.
Unfortunately, like it or not, aesthetics matter.
...
The science agrees with you - https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/caveman-politics/202003/schoolyard-politics-the-role-height-in-elections
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Liam's builder mates aren't the chancellor of the exchequer though. Its one thing doing a bit of work for cash, quite another using a questionable nondom status to safeguard family wealth when your day job is to be responsible for everyone else paying their taxes. Its rank hypocrisy.
I see where you're coming from Barrows but there are obviously degrees to it; cash goes back into the economy immediately and so the 'damage' is fairly minimal.
This is a luxury belief based on living in a modern, advanced state in which most people live and work within the formal economy. States which struggle to collect tax also struggle to provide services for their citizens, and at the extreme suffer very high levels of debt and default. Look at the current mess Sri Lanka is in to see what happens when lots of people don’t pay tax but still demand a degree of state capacity. The damage is far from minimal.
As for Liam’s dodgy mates, I suspect they use public services far more often than Sunak has ever used them. And yet they don’t want to pay for them. At very best that’s freeloading.
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So far the only evidence I am seeing that sunak is a competent and decent person is that he isn't Johnson. The inheritance tax point is interesting and I wonder what age the people you have had discussions with. Without planning my partner and young kids would be in a pretty shitty position if anything happened to me. I'm still a labour voting leftie and hope the whole tax is reformed to make it fairer. It won't be under the Tories as it's their supporters/funders who benefit from the current loopholes. Tax planning is not the same as tax avoidance. The difference between tax avoidance and evasion seems to often come down to just whether you have paid an expensive tax expert to come up with the scam. Both cost the country a fortune both in lost tax and the cost of defending the dodgy schemes. To have the chair of the party as an active tax avoider is just awful.
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I wrote that to point out the flaw/irony in my thinking - I suspect most "left leaning" people are the same to some extent, despite it requiring either burying your head in the sand or some mental gymnastics. Maybe it's similar to how we're all concerned about climate change but still fly away on holiday.
I've been struck in a few conversations recently about Labour/Green voters putting high level of effort into minimizing inheritance tax, which seems to my mind hard to justify. I guess as spidermonkey points out most tax minimization has some kind of incentivization behind it, though with the schemes I've stumbled across it just seems more like exploiting loopholes than a coherent incentive.
if you were dodging tax by getting paid in cash then yes, I would think you should vote Conservative. Otherwise it's just "I want high public spending but don't want to pay for it". I also think that's neither decent nor honest.
And yeah, obvs it's fair to hold the chancellor to a higher standard.
P.S. surely pension contributions are tax free by default, since it either comes our pre tax or the provider claims it back as standard?
I get where you are coming from with the bit in bold, it just doesn't apply to myself or any of the people I spoke about (as your first response assumed).
As stated before, I'm not really a man of politics. I've only voted once in my life but it wasn't conservative - I was born in Doncaster, my dad was a miner, and I was a steelworker (before going to university to study physics). I do wish for a 'fairer society' and will likely vote for Labour at the next election. Simultaneously, I also grumble about how much tax I'm paying and jumped at the chance to reduce it by entering a salary sacrifice pension scheme. I put as much money as I can into a stocks and shares ISA to legally avoid paying tax on the capital gains. Recently, I purchased an item from abroad and I did not get charged VAT. I don't think any of those examples of tax avoidance make me a bad person but you might disagree. It's highly likely that my views on politics are inconsistent, often contradictory, and unintellectual, but I expect I'm not in the minority; most people I know only have a superficial understanding of politics at best.
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I've been struck in a few conversations recently about Labour/Green voters putting high level of effort into minimizing inheritance tax, which seems to my mind hard to justify.
Sounds a bit like the perspective of someone with no skin in the game? I vote Green. My Dad did quite well in life and although he seems very keen on spending it all - 'No pockets in a shroud Adam' - we have had some conversations about it. His perspective is he didn't inherit a penny, and everything he might leave has already either been taxed at higher rates (income - ~40%) or twice (profits - corp tax then div tax, currently ~20% each). I think for a lot of people paying 40% tax on money that has already been taxed at 40% will stick in their craw. OTOH you could argue it's a different person being taxed, but he feels very strongly the tax has already been paid. He was also a more decent employer than most so his hard work also provided jobs.
My impression is that anyone with serious inter-generational cash generally has it squirrelled away from the tax man - a lot of my peers at school had their fees paid by 'trusts'. Such millions tend to justify the not inconsiderable expense of managing them, whereas those of people who have simply worked hard (my Dad was a grafter by any standards) are not likely to. So there is the 'squeezed middle' element there too.
My own view is as long as the Royal family and farmers are exempt no one should be paying any. Inheritance tax should focus on unearned wealth of exactly their sort - have a read of 'Who Owns England for more. A land tax is almost certainly needed as part of the solution. There would be some knock on effects to sort but just look at the government for the really rich's attitude to tax. The growing inequality in the country is not reflected in the thresholds which would have you believe the successful grafters running small businesses are all 'the rich', just the same as the landed gentry and multi-millionaires. This is classic Tory divide and rule tactics, intentionally focusing the working classes on cutting down their tall poppies while the super-rich make their own rules.
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I'm endlessly amazed by the number of people who vote for pro-redistribution parties (e.g. Labour) but try quite aggressively to minimize tax and don't recognize the irony. I find this especially true for inheritance tax - surely the most equitable of them all.
Personally I don't think it is particularly ironic. When it comes to how tax is collected, I think government should aim for clarity around what is taxed and people should aim to reduce the amount of tax they owe within the law. Otherwise, how else should people arrange their tax affairs? Via some vague moral obligation to pay "a decent amount of tax"?
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This is a luxury belief based on living in a modern, advanced state in which most people live and work within the formal economy. States which struggle to collect tax also struggle to provide services for their citizens, and at the extreme suffer very high levels of debt and default. Look at the current mess Sri Lanka is in to see what happens when lots of people don’t pay tax but still demand a degree of state capacity. The damage is far from minimal.
As for Liam’s dodgy mates, I suspect they use public services far more often than Sunak has ever used them. And yet they don’t want to pay for them. At very best that’s freeloading.
This is fair enough. I agree it is hard to justify wanting better public services but minimising your tax contribution.
It's highly likely that my views on politics are inconsistent, often contradictory, and unintellectual, but I expect I'm not in the minority; most people I know only have a superficial understanding of politics at best.
I guess its not unreasonable to point out the contradictions though? Just as it isn't when people don't like immigration but also complain that theres a staff shortage.
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As stated before, I'm not really a man of politics. I've only voted once in my life but it wasn't conservative - I was born in Doncaster, my dad was a miner, and I was a steelworker (before going to university to study physics). I do wish for a 'fairer society' and will likely vote for Labour at the next election.
:great:
Simultaneously, I also grumble about how much tax I'm paying and jumped at the chance to reduce it by entering a salary sacrifice pension scheme. I put as much money as I can into a stocks and shares ISA to legally avoid paying tax on the capital gains. Recently, I purchased an item from abroad and I did not get charged VAT. I don't think any of those examples of tax avoidance make me a bad person but you might disagree. It's highly likely that my views on politics are inconsistent, often contradictory, and unintellectual, but I expect I'm not in the minority; most people I know only have a superficial understanding of politics at best.
What's wrong with engaging in legal tax reduction schemes? Absolutely nothing, no one expects anything else, and anyhow they can well have a broader purpose than just making you better off, eg encouraging investment. All good! But this is absolutely not the same as working cash in hand which is definitely illegal and hypocritical.
As for "paying too much tax", generally the overall amount we in the UK are taxed is just under the average for the OECD countries (ie the rich ones). So that's 33.5% of the UK's GDP in 2021. But it's less than some other European countries: Netherlands at 39.7% or Sweden at 42.6%. So we can moan about tax, or we can moan about the NHS or schools or whatever. But moaning about both is refusing to accept that trade offs exist in life and we have to deal with them.
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The inheritance tax point is interesting and I wonder what age the people you have had discussions with.
Pensioners (i.e. old enough for this to be relevant)
I get where you are coming from with the bit in bold, it just doesn't apply to myself or any of the people I spoke about (as your first response assumed).
Ah, sorry, I read your first post as one of your mates asking to be paid in cash, not the builder you're using - my bad!
. It's highly likely that my views on politics are inconsistent, often contradictory, and unintellectual, but I expect I'm not in the minority
Oh yeah, my thoughts are definitely half-baked
Sounds a bit like the perspective of someone with no skin in the game?
What counts as skin in the game? If all my elderly relatives died tomorrow (fingers crossed they don't!) then I'd be paying a bill, but it would be minor compared to what some would pay no doubt. Actually it astounds me how high the threshold is once you include passing on a house - if I were a benevolent dictator that would probably be far lower! (Though I take your point that the big difference would be to go after the big inheritances not the ones just over the threshold)
Has your dad really paid high tax on most wealth or is a lot in a house? Most of my elderly relatives have most wealth in properties - wealth that hasn't really been "earned", and AFAIK hasn't really been taxed at high levels.
I think I broadly agree with what you've said about the super-rich, royalty etc.
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Switching to a Salary Sacrifice scheme or using an ISA or whatever is not against the wishes of the government, they give tax breaks on those things because they want to promote them. That's the point. You aren't pulling a fast one over HMRC by using as much of your Annual Allowance as you can, it's good for society for you to have invest in your pension!
Builders not paying tax on their income isn't the same as that, they should do, and I bloody well hope they get caught, but it isn't the same as using perfectly legitimate tax breaks.
Now there are of course tax breaks that are legal but not socially helpful or desirable and essentially wealth owning class cronyism. Those should be dealt with, I think it definitely is very much a strike against these wealthy politicians that they're avoiding tax in ways which are not socially desirable.
I can see the argument about inheritance tax but if I had my way it'd be even higher. Think of how much good we could do if we managed to use that money for the public benefit? Much more useful than its current purpose.
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I've been struck in a few conversations recently about Labour/Green voters putting high level of effort into minimizing inheritance tax, which seems to my mind hard to justify.
A good proportion of people whose estate might owe IHT are in that position because of rising house prices. If your family had to sell their home to pay HMRC if you died, would you still hold that view just the same? Or would you start wondering why they should be required to sell the home that had been bought with taxed income so that it could be taxed again?
Our crazy housing market distorts the IHT issue in the majority of cases I expect.
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Picking out the single point that essentially no decent and honest person would utilize legal tricks to reduce their tax contributions, well if that's true then I don't know many decent and honest people!
All my mates in trades are fiddling their books, putting allsorts down to expenses. The builder currently working on my house asked if I could pay him partly cash. These are all decent people. I get that Sunak is in a different position to us plebs and should be held to a different standard, but you said 'no decent person...'
Just to be clear, when I said “that tax situation” isn’t justifiable I was referring to the specific case of the chancellor’s wife using tricks to reduce her UK tax liability, and Sunak defending that position. In that role as ‘chief tax collector’ for the UK he was setting an example to the rest of the country, which seems to be to use whatever dubious means you can to avoid paying tax.
Beyond that, I can’t be arsed to get into the justifications or morality of every single tax reduction scheme. Clearly it’s a sliding scale. It shouldn’t be, but that’s how it is.
‘Fiddling books’ and being paid in cash to avoid tax are illegal and indefensible though, so I wouldn’t consider those decent people. They’re freeloading off other taxpayers. But unfortunately, if the example being set from the top is to avoid tax by whatever means then I can kind of see why they feel justified in doing it, hence why Sunak (and his wife’s) position is/was repugnant to me.
IMO the wealthiest in society using tax loopholes and dubious practices involving specialist tax lawyers to avoid paying tax is equivalent in moral terms to tradesmen doing cash in hand work. Both are damaging to society and the public services we all want to improve.
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The issue of IHT and being taxed twice is a bit of a distraction. Inheritance is a very good way of increasing inequality - I've seen a paper suggesting that the massive reduction in estate taxes in the US is a key driver in the increasing wealth gap there (though it doesn't seem to have an effect on consumption and income inequality). The question is, do we want wealthy households to have wealthy descendents? Given that in the UK we hold our wealth in property this has a lot of knock on effects in terms of overall economic performance as well as individual life chances (it gets hard to move to where the good jobs are as the wealthy households bid up property prices there). Or do we want a more equal society? In which case IHT has a role to play. Only 1 in 20 estates pay it anyhow at the moment.
The "what if you had to sell your home to the tax man if you died" argument also ignores that we can create equity release schemes...
I should note that the Green Party want to abolish IHT - clearly more money in knitting yoghurt than I thought.
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A good proportion of people whose estate might owe IHT are in that position because of rising house prices. If your family had to sell their home to pay HMRC if you died, would you still hold that view just the same?
If I had kids and I left them a house with a current value of >£1m I think it would be fair for them to have to pay some inheritance tax! Or at least I think I would think that, who really knows until you're in that situation. I guess the issue is pertinent for couples that aren't married/civil partnership but not really otherwise, unless I've missed something?
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The £1m figure applies for a married couple leaving a home to direct descendants. For a single person, that figure is £500k and if not left directly to a descendant becomes £325k.The average uk house is currently worth around £295k (https://landregistry.data.gov.uk/app/ukhpi#:~:text=As%20of%20November%202022%2C%20the%20average%20house%20price,the%20previous%20year.%20About%20the%20House%20Price%20Index).
A lot of areas in the country will have higher values, by definition. There'll be a lot more people faced with that scenario than just the very rich.
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A lot of people will also run through their capital as they spend the ends of their lives in care homes, which are eye-wateringly expensive and will reduce their estate considerably.
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https://amp.theguardian.com/money/2016/aug/11/inheritance-tax-why-the-new-duke-of-westminster-will-not-pay-billions (https://amp.theguardian.com/money/2016/aug/11/inheritance-tax-why-the-new-duke-of-westminster-will-not-pay-billions)
The more money someone has, the greater the chances are that their accountants organised an inheritance strategy decades before any IHT might be due…
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If your family had to sell their home to pay HMRC if you died, would you still hold that view just the same?
There'll be a lot more people faced with that scenario than just the very rich.
Surely the number of single people (but not through death) whose family (but not child or grandchild or step/adopted/foster child/grandchild) lives with them, in a house worth >325k, and considers that property their "home" is quite small? Or am I forgetting a big batch of people somehow? In any case, I think I would still think that if you're going to inherit a 300k+ house simply through someone dying it would be fair enough to pay some tax, even if that means you have to sell! It seems far fairer than, say, NI.
Stuff like that Guardian article is, presumably, something that we can all agree is bullshit that benefits no-one but the super rich!
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I'm single in the not married sense and in the position I think your describing Alex. I'd be more inclined to agree it's fair my partner has to sell family home to pay the tax bill if the loop holes were closed that enable the wealthy to avoid the tax. I'm surprised the green party want to abolish it - do they want a wealth tax instead that includes lifetime gifts of wealth? If so I can see the reasoning.
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Surely the number of single people (but not through death) whose family (but not child or grandchild or step/adopted/foster child/grandchild) lives with them,
Not quite- you'd need to leave it to the child, an unmarried partner could not receive the estate.
all agree is bullshit that benefits no-one but the super rich!
Absolutely, yes, we can all see what this means for the distribution of UK assets.
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Phew that's a lot of discussion about tax morality.
Re Zahawi, I hadn't been fully aware of his use of SLAPPs against journalists especially Dan Neidle when I partially defended him earlier. That's just as bad as the taxes in my book, particularly as the journalists were correct.
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Re Zahawi, I hadn't been fully aware of his use of SLAPPs against journalists especially Dan Neidle. That's just as bad as the taxes in my book, particularly as the journalists were correct.
Yep, which is why Sunak deferring to an ethics adviser to tell him if this is bad enough to resign/get sacked over is pathetic. The letters from Zahawi's legal team are in the public domain - 2 minutes spent reading these would tell Sunak all he needs to know.
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"Inheritance is a very good way of increasing inequality - I've seen a paper suggesting that the massive reduction in estate taxes in the US is a key driver in the increasing wealth gap there (though it doesn't seem to have an effect on consumption and income inequality). The question is, do we want wealthy households to have wealthy descendents? Given that in the UK we hold our wealth in property this has a lot of knock on effects in terms of overall economic performance as well as individual life chances (it gets hard to move to where the good jobs are as the wealthy households bid up property prices there). Or do we want a more equal society? In which case IHT has a role to play." - seankenny
Agreed.
Only I'd go much, much further and say that the left should IMO be making the case for 100% inheritance tax (above a pretty small threshold) and enforcing it rigorously to stop people using trusts etc to get around it. I'd even say that the right should make the same case if they genuinely believe in the meritocracy that so many of them bang on about. 100% inheritance tax is what a meritocracy looks like. (Of course the right don't actually want that, they just talk about meritocracy without having any real intent to create one).
Kids of rich parents will still have a massive advantage. In general, they'll have better education, more contacts, have seen more of the world on holidays, and no doubt have more money when they are young etc etc. They don't need to also be handed multi million pound homes, or millions in shares when their parents die. In particular, with housing, what has happened to house prices since the mid 90s is utterly, utterly appalling and has been actively promoted (disgracefully) by governments from both main parties for the last 25 years. This country has essentially gone back hundreds of years in the last 25 in terms of opportunities - if you're young and your parents don't own a house, then your chances of ever having a decent life are extremely poor (unless you emigrate, which is increasingly the best option for young people in the UK).
For either party this should have been an utter tragedy that they should have been fighting against. Sadly, both parties simply care more about getting elected than having decent policies. As a result, both parties realised that young people don't tend to vote, and so to keep the people that do vote (the older, property owning folks) happy, they needed to just let house prices keep increasing. Both parties knew perfectly well that in the end this would be disastrous, both did precisely nothing about it (and often fanned the flames). The Tory party increasing the inheritance tax threshold as soon as they were in government was the final ridiculous straw. We've gone back centuries to effectively being an aristocracy again, just with a larger number of property owners.
Massively increasing inheritance tax would be a great start to resolving this. Obviously, building more houses pretty much everywhere would also help (the fact that the Lib Dems are currently blocking this, and frightening the Tories into blocking this pretty much everywhere is also a disgrace). And so would adjusting various other taxes so that owning second homes and rental income (particularly of the short term airbnb type) was taxed far more. But inheritance tax could and should be a crucial factor in starting to undo the tragedy of UK housing policy for the last 25 years.
That being said, JB is right that if you want the above policy to actually be intellectually coherent, then you need to obviously abolish the monarchy, and turn over a lot of land owned by massive estates to National Parks etc. All of which is fine by me. Although if that was politically a problem, you could just massively increase inheritance tax anyway. Would hardly be the first government policy that wasn't exactly coherent.
Certainly if the left want to spend more on various things, that is how I'd raise revenue, rather than by raising income tax or doing what Corbyn, Truss and Johnson wanted to do and just borrow loads more, which was always a terrible idea, even if the bond markets allowed it without destroying the economy. Lots of people earning 50K are not wealthy. In various parts of the country people earning 50K may never be able to buy a decent home, if their parents aren't well off. Raising income tax for people already getting less than half of any increase in their salary (after pension, tax at 40% and NI are taken out) significantly reduces the incentives for people to progress in their careers which just isn't a good idea.
Of course, any party coming out and saying they'd make inheritance tax 100% overnight wouldn't get elected, as most people that vote own property and want to give it to their kids. But IMO the left should be making the case for raising that tax (as opposed to income tax), perhaps modestly to start with and then keep increasing it over time.
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I'm surprised the green party want to abolish it - do they want a wealth tax instead that includes lifetime gifts of wealth?
Green party policy is to replace the tax on the (dead) donor with tax on the recipient. So if it was split between poor siblings they'd pay less. If it went to the already wealthy heir he'd get hammered. This is of course as part of a broad swathe of reforms including UBI. I'll continue to vote for them, it all makes sense to me, though I doubt we'll see it all get tried out any with any more conviction than Corbyn or Truss's ideas were.
the left should IMO be making the case for 100% inheritance tax (above a pretty small threshold)
This has been tried before. In the sixties and seventies estate duty hit 80/85%. The National Trust was very nearly bankrupted by the number of unsaleable decrepit stately homes they were gifted by families who unsurprisingly didn't have 80% of the value in cash. I have no beef with this, but I doubt the electorate as a while would stand for it (as they didn't then), given the popularity of Downton and the 'King etc. Such estates are a big part of England's landscape and it would be great to see a landscape-scale rewilding open access approach to their future, although my local estate growing up was gifted to the NT then passed to the council, is now a park with free public access (good) but an overgrazed eco wasteland (bad) as grazing rights are presumably a key source of income. The NT have quite a good track record of balancing the eco with the Jane Austen theme park but it's not to everyone's taste.
It can also be instructive to examine edge cases when formulating this sort of policy. You'd presumably want some sort of age limit? Or is the 12 year old whose parents die in a car crash left destitute? I think the Greens approach is more sensible.
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Would significant increases on inheritance tax affect behavior? I can picture a lot of pensioners trying to get rid of their wealth before they die, and I imagine there would be semi-legal ways in which it can effectively be passed to their families without it ending up back in the economy in a helpful way? Legal or illegal, I doubt many people near the end would care if it meant avoiding further taxes after death! (I'm not saying that's right but it's probably how a lot of people would think)
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I think the reason the IHT issue sticks in people's craw is that it seems so unfair (I've been taxed on this money once already), we set a lot of store in property ownership and not being able hand that property down to children makes us feel cheated and it's all topped off by the fact we know it isn't an issue for the rich/super rich.
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Re: tax in general. One thing I’ve often wondered is whether there’s something in the name that could be changed to alter the framing / psychology of how taxes are thought of. Clearly it’s never gonna happen, but I always feel there’s a disconnect in a lot of minds between paying into a societal fund and then that fund paying out to society (redistributed by govt).
Too often they’re talked about in isolation. Nasty tax man stealing all my money, and benevolent govt paying for things. Would it be different if tax had a cuddly sounding name that linked the two and made it clearer govt just redistributed the money? Public Welfare Payment?? I’m sure you could focus group some punchy name for it. Then people might not feel so bad about paying into the fund, or leaving money to it through IHT when they die instead of giving away to cat charities or whatever. Might be more of a stigma attached to cash in hand tax dodgers too? Like I say, never gonna happen but I do wonder.
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Thanks JB - the greens policy seems much fairer to me to. Sadly nothing will change as it's electoral suicide to discuss even though the majority of the people frothing at the mouth with anger at the 'death tax' will never have to pay any. It's the same with council tax - it makes no sense to base it on what your house was worth in 1991 but current politicians of both parties don't want to look at it. It's difficult to see any Tory as decent and competent when there are so many things they could have been doing to make things better rather than pissing around with Brexit and culture wars.
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I think the reason the IHT issue sticks in people's craw is that it seems so unfair (I've been taxed on this money once already), we set a lot of store in property ownership and not being able hand that property down to children makes us feel cheated and it's all topped off by the fact we know it isn't an issue for the rich/super rich.
Judging by a lot of the views on here it seems like lots of people have a very visceral reaction to inheritance tax - if a forum as generally leftish leaning as this feels like this how does the average Daily Telepgraph or Mail reader feel!?
My feelings on this lean much more those expressed by the likes of Alex - IHT is only levied at a pretty high level (approx £1,000,000 for average house owning couple, £500,000 for a single person assuming passing majority on to direct descendants), a lot of the value of an estate hasn't been previously taxed (significant (majority?) of most estates is housing and increase in value of main residence isn't taxed) and inheritance in general can be strong driver of inequality so taxing it to some extent seems to make sense to me.
Examples here regarding how much might be paid:
https://www.drewberryinsurance.co.uk/inheritance-tax-advice
Example 2 , a £1.300,000 estate from a married couple would owe £120,000 IHT - doesn't feel like the the state is gouging all peoples hard earned money to me.
I do think the mechanisms and level of IHT (including controlling avoidance of it) could probably benefit from change but given how emotive it seems it's probably very unlikely to happen.
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Too often they’re talked about in isolation. Nasty tax man stealing all my money, and benevolent govt paying for things. Would it be different if tax had a cuddly sounding name that linked the two and made it clearer govt just redistributed the money? Public Welfare Payment?? I’m sure you could focus group some punchy name for it.
Like National Insurance? Not sure people care that much when they're moaning about the deduction. Making the employer pay the tax direct on top of pay rather than framing it as a deduction on the payslip might help.
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Yep, which is why Sunak deferring to an ethics adviser to tell him if this is bad enough to resign/get sacked over is pathetic. The letters from Zahawi's legal team are in the public domain - 2 minutes spent reading these would tell Sunak all he needs to know.
Latest news on "innocent mistakes" from the head of HMRC:
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/jan/26/hmrc-boss-tells-mps-innocent-errors-dont-attract-penalties-after-nadhim-zahawi-tax-row
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Re: tax in general. One thing I’ve often wondered is whether there’s something in the name that could be changed to alter the framing / psychology of how taxes are thought of. Clearly it’s never gonna happen, but I always feel there’s a disconnect in a lot of minds between paying into a societal fund and then that fund paying out to society (redistributed by govt).
Too often they’re talked about in isolation. Nasty tax man stealing all my money, and benevolent govt paying for things. Would it be different if tax had a cuddly sounding name that linked the two and made it clearer govt just redistributed the money? Public Welfare Payment?? I’m sure you could focus group some punchy name for it. Then people might not feel so bad about paying into the fund, or leaving money to it through IHT when they die instead of giving away to cat charities or whatever. Might be more of a stigma attached to cash in hand tax dodgers too? Like I say, never gonna happen but I do wonder.
I think you're quite right that there's a psychological element. Intellectually, I understand that tax is a positive thing that I agree with, but unfortunately this isn't often the first reaction to deductions on my pay slip, and I think that social/environmental conditioning has played a large role.
As stated earlier, I grew up in Doncaster, in an ex-mining village. Fortunately, I had a relatively good upbringing as my dad was one of the lucky few who managed to get a factory job after the pits closed. Most families weren't so lucky, and the area has declined significantly alongside generations of unemployment. People who live here are often brought up hating the government - there were literally street parties and burning effigies when Thatcher died! They have the impression that the government doesn't care about them and their home towns will never see adequate support/investment. Considering that those who do work are predominantly in manual jobs, amazon warehouses or call centres, possibly struggling to make ends meet, there's no wonder that the thought of having more taken away to be squandered doesn't sit well. It's likely my upbringing still affects my psychology, despite now being an educated, middle-class (*shudder*) engineer living in a city.
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Green party policy is to replace the tax on the (dead) donor with tax on the recipient. So if it was split between poor siblings they'd pay less. If it went to the already wealthy heir he'd get hammered. This is of course as part of a broad swathe of reforms including UBI. I'll continue to vote for them, it all makes sense to me, though I doubt we'll see it all get tried out any with any more conviction than Corbyn or Truss's ideas were.
The problem with including an estate as part of the annual income is that the typical estate is much larger than the typical annual salary, eg if someone dies still in their home and has a couple of kids, the estate could easily be worth £150k or more to each child, which is roughly five times an average salary. Combine that with a reduction in personal allowances (due to the Green's universal basic income policy) and a progressive taxation system means that realistically much of nearly all estates are going to be taxed at 40% or whatever the higher rates of tax are. It then incentivises minimising income if you think your parents are about to die, or generally having a distortionary effect on behaviour which could have unintended negative consequences. Given that income does change year-on-year, it makes what you'd actually receive in inheritance really opaque, hard to plan for and hard to collect.
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The man who accused police of "spaffing money up the wall" by investigating child sex abuse is now spending well over £200,000 of taxpayer cash on legal fees to defend his lockdown parties. When the fee from just one of his speeches in the US could've easily covered this. There are no words to describe what a vile human being he is.
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https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-64410490
Reading between the lines, it appears the head of HMRC is saying "I can't comment on individual cases, but he's definitely guilty as sin".
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Re Zahawi, I hadn't been fully aware of his use of SLAPPs against journalists especially Dan Neidle. That's just as bad as the taxes in my book, particularly as the journalists were correct.
Yep, which is why Sunak deferring to an ethics adviser to tell him if this is bad enough to resign/get sacked over is pathetic. The letters from Zahawi's legal team are in the public domain - 2 minutes spent reading these would tell Sunak all he needs to know.
I think your point of view is entirely reasonable, but another way to look at it would be that Sunak has a flimsy base of support in his party, so he can't purge out all the people he would really rather weren't there (reliably reported by several sources that he hated the fact that he had to give Braverman a top job). Therefore getting a needless justification for sacking Zahawi from an ethics advisor is useful for him as he can say that there was no choice.
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I think you are both right. I expect Sunak wants a way to deflect heat within the party for removing Zahawi. Equally, the situation is so cut and dried that he looks impossibly weak for not firing him pronto. He says he’s waiting on the report, yet could ask him for clarification on any detail he wants. He is Zaharwi’s boss, just summon him to the office.
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The problem with including an estate as part of the annual income is that the typical estate is much larger than the typical annual salary
Good point, although I'm not sure they're necessarily saying that it must be treated simply as income. I suppose the answer would be a separate tax rate on inheritance to income, ramping up from say 10% at £100,000 to 80% at >£2 million. But it still seems fairer to me to tax the recipients not the estate.
Reading between the lines, it appears the head of HMRC is saying "I can't comment on individual cases, but he's definitely guilty as sin".
Indeed. Presumably the decision not to prosecute was influenced by his coming forward and agreeing to pay the fine, rather than political pressure. But it does make you wonder how many similar cases are missed due to them not being in the public eye.
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Presumably the decision not to prosecute was influenced by his coming forward and agreeing to pay the fine, rather than political pressure. But it does make you wonder how many similar cases are missed due to them not being in the public eye.
Estimates from HMRC for 2020-2021 were that 'Failure to take reasonable care', 'Avoidance', and 'Legal interpretation' account for £11bn of lost revenue.
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/measuring-tax-gaps/7-tax-gaps-illustrative-tax-gap-by-behaviour
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Presumably the decision not to prosecute was influenced by his coming forward and agreeing to pay the fine, rather than political pressure. But it does make you wonder how many similar cases are missed due to them not being in the public eye.
Estimates from HMRC for 2020-2021 were that 'Failure to take reasonable care', 'Avoidance', and 'Legal interpretation' account for £11bn of lost revenue.
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/measuring-tax-gaps/7-tax-gaps-illustrative-tax-gap-by-behaviour
Crikey, that's horrendous. Still not quite as much as the government wasted on completely useless PPE during the same period.
Here's a cheerful piece of news though: BBC News - Andrew Bridgen threatens to sue Matt Hancock in Covid vaccine row
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-64414637
Insane MP threatening to sue disgraced MP; Andrew Bridgen is absolutely crazy, nearly weird enough to be a Republican party congressman.
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The problem with including an estate as part of the annual income is that the typical estate is much larger than the typical annual salary
Good point, although I'm not sure they're necessarily saying that it must be treated simply as income. I suppose the answer would be a separate tax rate on inheritance to income, ramping up from say 10% at £100,000 to 80% at >£2 million. But it still seems fairer to me to tax the recipients not the estate.
I also think property sellers should be paying tax, not the buyers. For every other asset you pay tax on gains - why is there a different regime for property? This also benefits the 'haves' higher up the housing ladder more than anyone else. This would also inhibit property being seen as the best way of making money in this country, which must contribute to loads of other societal/economic ills lack of innovation, lack of productivity, continuing lifeline for a 'landowning' class who sit over the top of the rest of society etc.
We need much stricter regulation and taxing of landlords too.
I read this earlier and thought it was quite good: https://www.vice.com/en/article/dy8qav/how-to-fix-the-uk-housing-crisis (https://www.vice.com/en/article/dy8qav/how-to-fix-the-uk-housing-crisis)
Vienna apparently has a good housing market with about 25 percent owner occupancy, 25 percent social housing and cooperatives, 25 percent council housing and 25 percent private renting - which is strictly regulated.
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I don't disagree from a fairness point of view although if the seller pays it is a disincentive to sell and I'd say the biggest problem with housing is the shortage of supply. On stamp duty if you want a good example of the nonsense rich people will argue to avoid paying the tax we all pay Google Gu and getting just desserts. It's a classic case of having to defend against tax avoidance from greedy rich people and their tax advisors!
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https://twitter.com/ianbremmer/status/1620949369561419777?t=l_1ofIvr2D5Y4tV8YS658g&s=19
An interesting look at inequality across Europe which isn't necessarily what you might expect.
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Actually quite surprising. For me, less the big black bogies and more the anaemic pinks. Coupled with a mild surprise at how the UK stacks up, um, so well(?)
Ireland too. I would have expected it to be better than the UK. Obviously my un examined impressions of Irish egalitarianism are skewed.
I am, but should not be, surprised by the flat nature of Dutch society. I’ve been getting a crash course in Dutch business practices and culture, over the last six months. Partly (not least) because my co-director (and in fact former (still?) mentor (74 now and GM to my Engineering manager during my first Shipyard employment, some 23 years ago)) is Dutch and partly because the vast majority of my current suppliers, consultants and designers, are Dutch (even the two based in Taiwan).
I think they’re a bunch of Pirates.
Not Disney caricatures. Much more the democratic, equal opportunity, societies in microcosm I’ve read about.
They’ll rob you blind, and yet I can’t help but admire them…
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I don't disagree from a fairness point of view although if the seller pays it is a disincentive to sell and I'd say the biggest problem with housing is the shortage of supply. On stamp duty if you want a good example of the nonsense rich people will argue to avoid paying the tax we all pay Google Gu and getting just desserts. It's a classic case of having to defend against tax avoidance from greedy rich people and their tax advisors!
Tax dodging isn't a trait particular to 'the rich' (whatever that nebulous category includes - presumably 'them', not 'us'). I lost count of the number of people I know in construction determinedly evading tax. (yeah but they're 'poor' so it doesn't count etc.). I think it just grates with people more when a millionaire is a scrooge or a tax-dodger. When it's a climbing bum doing it, the trait is more cuddly.
I posted years ago on IHT should be somewhere around 90%, with loopholes closed. And to counter the disincentive, income tax should be super-low for wealth creators during life. The system is full of perverse incentive and plain inequality. Property don't get me started, it's an area of capitalism I think needs strong protection from profiteering. It's the commodification of property into a speculative asset that has imo led to the creation of such a skewed market. Welsh gov are actually hitting it hard - watch what starts to happen to the market from April this year as they've brought in new planning laws, closed loopholes and made it extremely difficult to run a second home as an airbnb profitably (or even get planning permission in the first place).
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I don't disagree from a fairness point of view although if the seller pays it is a disincentive to sell and I'd say the biggest problem with housing is the shortage of supply. On stamp duty if you want a good example of the nonsense rich people will argue to avoid paying the tax we all pay Google Gu and getting just desserts. It's a classic case of having to defend against tax avoidance from greedy rich people and their tax advisors!
Tax dodging isn't a trait particular to 'the rich' (whatever that nebulous category includes - presumably 'them', not 'us'). I lost count of the number of people I know in construction determinedly evading tax. (yeah but they're 'poor' so it doesn't count etc.). I think it just grates with people more when a millionaire is a scrooge or a tax-dodger. When it's a climbing bum doing it, the trait is more cuddly.
I posted years ago on IHT should be somewhere around 90%, with loopholes closed. And to counter the disincentive, income tax should be super-low for wealth creators during life. The system is full of perverse incentive and plain inequality. Property don't get me started, it's an area of capitalism I think needs strong protection from profiteering. It's the commodification of property into a speculative asset that has imo led to the creation of such a skewed market. Welsh gov are actually hitting it hard - watch what starts to happen to the market from April this year as they've brought in new planning laws, closed loopholes and made it extremely difficult to run a second home as an airbnb profitably (or even get planning permission in the first place).
I think we are getting 'tax efficient' confused with determined tax avoidance and evasion arent we? one is perfectly legal and wouldn't result in you getting pulled up by the revenue, the other will and has in the case of Zahawi.
You will know more than me Pete, but aren't many people in construction often paying themselves by dividend to avoid NI contributions; a system set up to encourage people setting up on their own? Do you have a moral objection to this or am I misreading? To me thats not avoidance, thats analogous to using a tax free ISA.
Property don't get me started, it's an area of capitalism I think needs strong protection from profiteering. It's the commodification of property into a speculative asset that has imo led to the creation of such a skewed market. Welsh gov are actually hitting it hard - watch what starts to happen to the market from April this year as they've brought in new planning laws, closed loopholes and made it extremely difficult to run a second home as an airbnb profitably (or even get planning permission in the first place).
This I fully agree with. I can't blame anyone for investing in property as its simply so obviously a good investment. It needs much better regulation.
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You misreading, am out so will reply later. I’m talking about full on evasion and fraud. Not divi’s. Yep
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I didn't say it was Pete. But the way the tax dodging of the wealthy is treated is very different to the tax dodging of the less wealthy. HMRC define wealthy as £2m plus in assets or £200k pa income. If you are wealthy you get a 'relationship manager' with HMRC. If wealthy you are also far more likely to be dodging stuff with the excuse that 'its what my tax advisor said I should do'. Which is the standard get out for saying you were acting carelessly rather than illegally. If you are a construction worker and you actually get caught you are far more likely to be done for tax evasion.
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You misreading, am out so will reply later. I’m talking about full on evasion and fraud. Not divi’s. Yep
If you’re talking about full on tax evasion or hidden economy work (cash in hand) then I wouldn’t see that as less morally deficient or any ‘cuddlier’ than wealthy people dodging tax. Not sure who would, apart from people involved in doing the same? :shrug:
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Actually quite surprising. For me, less the big black bogies and more the anaemic pinks. Coupled with a mild surprise at how the UK stacks up, um, so well(?)
Ireland too. I would have expected it to be better than the UK. Obviously my un examined impressions of Irish egalitarianism are skewed.
I guess the issue with *only* looking at wealth accumulation of the rich doesn't actually tell you about living standards of the poor. While in principle I'm not too keen on the rich accumulating too much of the total pie, I care a LOT less if the same country treats it's working classes fairly with good services, education wages etc...
Netherlands as a great example doesn't look too rosy in that plot, but the standard of living for most is better than here. The Gini Coefficient maybe shows this better, with NL being 29% and UK 34% (higher = worser). If I were poor I'd sooner live in Amsterdam than London, by a long, long way.
As always, the lens you look through skews the image.
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https://twitter.com/ianbremmer/status/1620949369561419777?t=l_1ofIvr2D5Y4tV8YS658g&s=19
An interesting look at inequality across Europe which isn't necessarily what you might expect.
This looks unlike what you’d expect as it’s basically a function of state pension provision. It’s a map of wealth inequality, not income, and lots of wealth is held in pensions. Generally in a state with good state pensions people at the lower ends of the income distribution accumulate far smaller pension pots, or none at all. Whereas high income people accumulate wealth in pensions as they do here, hence they have a bigger share of overall wealth. The flips side of this is obviously higher taxes required to pay for the good pensions.
Obviously Russia is the massive outlier as it’s a very different political economy.
What’s remarkable about the Netherlands is that (going from memory) they have avoided the uptick in income inequality that most western countries experienced in the 1980s/90s.
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w.r.t Fultonius' point about the living standards of the poor, look at this chart from the FT's Burns-Murdoch.
https://twitter.com/jburnmurdoch/status/1570832839318605824?lang=en
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FcynnTnXkAE_9VW?format=jpg&name=4096x4096)
Looking at that data, the UK is not insanely unequal, but it is more unequal than the average developed country. That inequality is not really seen in the top few %, who haven't done that well in the last 20 years.
It's just that living standards are so poor for the bottom 50% of the income distribution, whilst the top 10% are doing OK
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What really surprised me about the graphic I posted was that France and Portugal are more unequal (using the particular metric on the graph, obviously) than the UK, and that Turkey is really bad. Erdogan is a pretty nasty piece of work though.
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Interesting substack post about a possible election outcome that is rather under-priced atm, or at least under-discussed: the Tories entering the next Parliament with under 100 MPs.
https://arieh.substack.com/p/what-if-the-tories-are-wiped-out
Whilst not unprecedented, it would certainly throw up all sorts of issues that the British political system would struggle to deal with.
My own gut feeling is that a Labour majority this big is very unlikely (I remember large polling leads between elections in the 1990s), but then again, it’s clear bad things are happening in the U.K. economy and at some point this will have political repercussions.
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What really surprised me about the graphic I posted was that France and Portugal are more unequal (using the particular metric on the graph, obviously) than the UK, and that Turkey is really bad. Erdogan is a pretty nasty piece of work though.
I’m not sure why you’d expect Portugal to be more equal than the U.K., it’s a poor (for Western Europe) country with a not particularly vibrant economy and high unemployment, hardly the environment in which lots of people are going to save considerable amounts of money (especially if extended family structures are still intact, takes the pressure of pension saving if granny lives with her kids).
If you wanted to devise a good set up for a small elite to hoard all the wealth gains in a society then a dictatorship or a military junta are ideal. Limited property rights, the very small ruling class get involved in all and any productive activities, huge opportunity for economic rent seeking. Portugal was a dictatorship until the early 70s and Turkey‘s democracy has been patchy.
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Interesting substack post about a possible election outcome that is rather under-priced atm, or at least under-discussed: the Tories entering the next Parliament with under 100 MPs.
https://arieh.substack.com/p/what-if-the-tories-are-wiped-out
Whilst not unprecedented, it would certainly throw up all sorts of issues that the British political system would struggle to deal with.
My own gut feeling is that a Labour majority this big is very unlikely (I remember large polling leads between elections in the 1990s), but then again, it’s clear bad things are happening in the U.K. economy and at some point this will have political repercussions.
Possible, but I can't see Labour winning that big a majority, there have also been a number of commentators suggesting that it might be a 1992 type scenario, with the Conservative party struggling in government but scraping through an election with a small majority. I doubt that too, personally. A number of things make Starmer's job harder than Blair's in 1997, such as the dominance of the SNP in Scotland, constituency boundary changes, Brexit etc; although the conservatives were economically strong in 1997 before losing anyway, and that ain't going to happen by the next election.
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What really surprised me about the graphic I posted was that France and Portugal are more unequal (using the particular metric on the graph, obviously) than the UK, and that Turkey is really bad. Erdogan is a pretty nasty piece of work though.
I’m not sure why you’d expect Portugal to be more equal than the U.K., it’s a poor (for Western Europe) country with a not particularly vibrant economy and high unemployment, hardly the environment in which lots of people are going to save considerable amounts of money (especially if extended family structures are still intact, takes the pressure of pension saving if granny lives with her kids).
If you wanted to devise a good set up for a small elite to hoard all the wealth gains in a society then a dictatorship or a military junta are ideal. Limited property rights, the very small ruling class get involved in all and any productive activities, huge opportunity for economic rent seeking. Portugal was a dictatorship until the early 70s and Turkey‘s democracy has been patchy.
I just said it surprised me, that's all. Turkey is a pretty repressive state in many ways, they execute a shocking number of journalists for a start. I know little about Portugal personally, never having been there.
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What really surprised me about the graphic I posted was that France and Portugal are more unequal (using the particular metric on the graph, obviously) than the UK, and that Turkey is really bad. Erdogan is a pretty nasty piece of work though.
I’m not sure why you’d expect Portugal to be more equal than the U.K., it’s a poor (for Western Europe) country with a not particularly vibrant economy and high unemployment, hardly the environment in which lots of people are going to save considerable amounts of money (especially if extended family structures are still intact, takes the pressure of pension saving if granny lives with her kids).
If you wanted to devise a good set up for a small elite to hoard all the wealth gains in a society then a dictatorship or a military junta are ideal. Limited property rights, the very small ruling class get involved in all and any productive activities, huge opportunity for economic rent seeking. Portugal was a dictatorship until the early 70s and Turkey‘s democracy has been patchy.
I just said it surprised me, that's all. Turkey is a pretty repressive state in many ways, they execute a shocking number of journalists for a start. I know little about Portugal personally, never having been there.
And yet, it has still “advanced” socially, by Western standards, hugely over the last century (largely as the legacy of an alcoholic, PTSD riddled, capricious, dictator; who despite some truly horrendous acts, seems to have averaged as benevolent and is still greatly revered).
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What really surprised me about the graphic I posted was that France and Portugal are more unequal (using the particular metric on the graph, obviously) than the UK, and that Turkey is really bad. Erdogan is a pretty nasty piece of work though.
I’m not sure why you’d expect Portugal to be more equal than the U.K., it’s a poor (for Western Europe) country with a not particularly vibrant economy and high unemployment, hardly the environment in which lots of people are going to save considerable amounts of money (especially if extended family structures are still intact, takes the pressure of pension saving if granny lives with her kids).
If you wanted to devise a good set up for a small elite to hoard all the wealth gains in a society then a dictatorship or a military junta are ideal. Limited property rights, the very small ruling class get involved in all and any productive activities, huge opportunity for economic rent seeking. Portugal was a dictatorship until the early 70s and Turkey‘s democracy has been patchy.
I just said it surprised me, that's all. Turkey is a pretty repressive state in many ways, they execute a shocking number of journalists for a start. I know little about Portugal personally, never having been there.
And yet, it has still “advanced” socially, by Western standards, hugely over the last century (largely as the legacy of an alcoholic, PTSD riddled, capricious, dictator; who despite some truly horrendous acts, seems to have averaged as benevolent and is still greatly revered).
Hmm I'm not entirely sure about that; Erdogan certainly isn't revered by the Kurdish population for a start. He's also imprisoned people who have disagree with him. I believe he's a significant problem to NATO and the EU, but due to strategic importance and influence on migration, they need to keep him in the fold.
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Is OMM talking about Atatürk?
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OMM will speak for himself but I expect so. Whatever your opinion of Erdogan he doesn't count as a dictator, otherwise he will find himself blindsided by the upcoming elections in May!
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https://twitter.com/ianbremmer/status/1620949369561419777?t=l_1ofIvr2D5Y4tV8YS658g&s=19
An interesting look at inequality across Europe which isn't necessarily what you might expect.
Rewinding to this graphic, the tweeter asks "hmmm wonder why one country stands out" (?). Honestly my first thought as the most obvious odd one out was the non-key coloured grey one with no percentage i.e. Belarus. I expect he meant to highlight Russia.
The other comment I would make is that to me the relative amounts are not the story. In absolute terms I guesstimate the average to be about mid 20s % of wealth held by 1% of the population. Throughout all of Europe. That seems too much to me but its just an opinion. If you go to the source page https://wid.world/world/#sptinc_p90p100_z/US;FR;DE;CN;ZA;GB;WO/last/eu/k/p/yearly/s/false/25.928500000000003/80/curve/false/country then you can find all sorts of equally eye opening stats on both wealth (e.g. 4% of UK wealth held by bottom 50%) and income. You can also zoom out to a global level and see that Russia is far from uniquely bad. You can also scroll back to see changes over time.
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https://twitter.com/ianbremmer/status/1620949369561419777?t=l_1ofIvr2D5Y4tV8YS658g&s=19
An interesting look at inequality across Europe which isn't necessarily what you might expect.
Rewinding to this graphic, the tweeter asks "hmmm wonder why one country stands out" (?). Honestly my first thought as the most obvious odd one out was the non-key coloured grey one with no percentage i.e. Belarus. I expect he meant to highlight Russia.
The other comment I would make is that to me the relative amounts are not the story. In absolute terms I guesstimate the average to be about mid 20s % of wealth held by 1% of the population. Throughout all of Europe. That seems too much to me but its just an opinion. If you go to the source page https://wid.world/world/#sptinc_p90p100_z/US;FR;DE;CN;ZA;GB;WO/last/eu/k/p/yearly/s/false/25.928500000000003/80/curve/false/country then you can find all sorts of equally eye opening stats on both wealth (e.g. 4% of UK wealth held by bottom 50%) and income. You can also zoom out to a global level and see that Russia is far from uniquely bad. You can also scroll back to see changes over time.
Yes I realised completely that the graphic represents a single and very narrow view of an extremely complicated issue. It may not really be a terribly good way of measuring inequality if you want to find out how most of the people in a given country feel about how well off they are.
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The other comment I would make is that to me the relative amounts are not the story. In absolute terms I guesstimate the average to be about mid 20s % of wealth held by 1% of the population. Throughout all of Europe. That seems too much to me but its just an opinion. If you go to the source page https://wid.world/world/#sptinc_p90p100_z/US;FR;DE;CN;ZA;GB;WO/last/eu/k/p/yearly/s/false/25.928500000000003/80/curve/false/country then you can find all sorts of equally eye opening stats on both wealth (e.g. 4% of UK wealth held by bottom 50%) and income. You can also zoom out to a global level and see that Russia is far from uniquely bad. You can also scroll back to see changes over time.
It’s worth pointing out that although wealth inequality was a bit less in the late 1970s, nevertheless where we are at today represents the result of 120 years of erosion of the amount of wealth held by the richest in society. That doesn’t show up on this graph as it shows income rather than wealth, and the two work rather differently, but the decline in the top 1% wealth share is absolutely massive. That took a total change in the nature of the British state to achieve, and the same elsewhere in Western Europe. Plus two world wars and the threat of communist revolution.
The slight increase in recent wealth inequality is also at least part a result of changes in the labour market since the 1970s which have affected nearly all developed countries and which it’s hard to counter with taxation. Well paid people can easily accumulate a lot of money and low paid people can’t and don’t.
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Is OMM talking about Atatürk?
Yes, sorry, should have mentioned. Erdogan would like to consider himself a modern, Islamic (Mustafa Kemal wasn’t, um, very observant, religion wise). The country is really very different from Western Europe. Essentially modern and quite liberal for an Islamic country, but only for a 50-100 km strip along the coastline. Travel inland and you quickly lose a century or two. The interior is probably more “traditional” now, than rural Romania was when I first visited it in ~2000. It’s also vast. Point being, it’s not really comparable to most of the of the EU. Greece, I guess, being the closest (in more ways than geographically)?
Anyway, a digression.
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In tomorrow's Sunday Telegraph, Liz Truss claims, in a 4000 word essay, that she was completely right, and was brought down by the left wing establishment.
hubris
[ hyoo-bris, hoo- ]
noun
excessive pride or self-confidence; arrogance.
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I presume it's this:
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/money/other/liz-truss-exclusive-i-assumed-upon-entering-downing-street-my-mandate-would-be-respected-how-wrong-i-was/ar-AA1778Eg
What a load of :shit:
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To bring it back to that Times opinion Toby posted a while back...why can't people these days just fuck off?!
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It's hard to imagine how anyone could have any more compelling proof that they were wrong.
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I presume it's this:
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/money/other/liz-truss-exclusive-i-assumed-upon-entering-downing-street-my-mandate-would-be-respected-how-wrong-i-was/ar-AA1778Eg
What a load of :shit:
It's not my fault I didn't understand how the economy works:
"However, brewing in the background there was an issue relating to pension funds, which neither of us had been made aware of – a problem that would ultimately bring my premiership to an abrupt and premature end because of the panic it induced.
At no point during any of the preparations for the mini-Budget had any concerns about liability-driven investments (LDIs) and the risk they posed to bond markets been mentioned at all to me, the chancellor or any of our teams by officials at the Treasury."
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In tomorrow's Sunday Telegraph, Liz Truss claims, in a 4000 word essay, that she was completely right, and was brought down by the left wing establishment.
...
Are global bond-markets a part of the left-wing establishment? That does not scan. ‘Left-wing establishment’ must be a shibboleth, the meaning of I am not aware.
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‘Left-wing establishment’ must be a shibboleth, the meaning of I am not aware.
It’s more famously known as the ‘anti-growth coalition’ if that helps.
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To bring it back to that Times opinion Toby posted a while back...why can't people these days just fuck off?!
I thought exactly the same thing! Ditto for Johnson.
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‘Left-wing establishment’ must be a shibboleth, the meaning of I am not aware.
It’s more famously known as the ‘anti-growth coalition’ if that helps.
Also known as the bond markets, most of the MPs in parliament, anyone who has a mortgage, or eats tofu etc
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"However, brewing in the background there was an issue relating to pension funds, which neither of us had been made aware of – a problem that would ultimately bring my premiership to an abrupt and premature end because of the panic it induced.
At no point during any of the preparations for the mini-Budget had any concerns about liability-driven investments (LDIs) and the risk they posed to bond markets been mentioned at all to me, the chancellor or any of our teams by officials at the Treasury."
I'm not defending Truss on that but the UK mechanism that values Defined Benefit (DB) pensions is broken and this leads to all sorts of market distortions that encourage bad financial actions. If you look at money-in versus money-out, DB pensions are mostly in much better 'nick' than valuations indicate. The classic example was the closure of the Miners' DB pension scheme and the UK government taking over the pot (with a deal to take 50% of any profiits). Valuations indicated the pension was in trouble and the Telegraph campaigned it would cost the UK taxpayer a fortune. Yet because the valuation piles caution upon caution, the scheme has been making half a billion annual profit for the government for nearly two decades.
I'd add that I've been watching DB pensions way more than most and had missed that the contradictory factors of derisking towards bonds and the need to meet fund growth targets had led to pension managers leveraging bonds. This was supposedly increasing the proportion of investment in low risk products (bonds) and yet making the way investment in those bonds happened way more risky. The Truss 'idiot experiment' exposed that market poor practice and came close to crashing many pension funds.
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Are global bond-markets a part of the left-wing establishment? That does not scan. ‘Left-wing establishment’ must be a shibboleth, the meaning of I am not aware.
''Left wing establishment'' : oxymoron, synonymous with 'bogeyman' and 'it's everybody else's fault, not mine'.
Handily reminding the public that these people are as unrepentant, reckless and as dangerous as ever.
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Are global bond-markets a part of the left-wing establishment? That does not scan. ‘Left-wing establishment’ must be a shibboleth, the meaning of I am not aware.
''Left wing establishment'' : oxymoron, synonymous with 'bogeyman' and 'it's everybody else's fault, not mine'.
Handily reminding the public that these people are as unrepentant, reckless and as dangerous as ever.
The left wing wokey establishment that according to Truss and much of the right of centre media, run the country, despite 13 years of Conservative government.
There is a good interview with Michel Barnier on The Rest is Politics podcast at the moment in which they discuss the shocking amateurism of the British government during Brexit negotiation.
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(https://static.independent.co.uk/s3fs-public/thumbnails/image/2017/07/17/16/david-davis.jpg?width=982&height=726)
These people?
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I presume it's this:
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/money/other/liz-truss-exclusive-i-assumed-upon-entering-downing-street-my-mandate-would-be-respected-how-wrong-i-was/ar-AA1778Eg
What a load of :shit:
It's not my fault I didn't understand how the economy works:
"However, brewing in the background there was an issue relating to pension funds, which neither of us had been made aware of – a problem that would ultimately bring my premiership to an abrupt and premature end because of the panic it induced.
At no point during any of the preparations for the mini-Budget had any concerns about liability-driven investments (LDIs) and the risk they posed to bond markets been mentioned at all to me, the chancellor or any of our teams by officials at the Treasury."
My understanding was that they very deliberately dressed it up as a "mini budget" to avoid the usual checks and balances which would be carried out by BofE or whoever on a regular budget.
So saying 'no-one warned us this would happen' when you've misrepresented the truth to avoid anyone sensible being able to sign it off as economically sane, seems more than a bit rich.
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(https://static.independent.co.uk/s3fs-public/thumbnails/image/2017/07/17/16/david-davis.jpg?width=982&height=726)
These people?
Strangely enough he does specifically mention David Davis, who thought EU institutions would stay in London after Brexit; although with less disdain than Raab and his lack of knowledge about the importance of the Dover Calais crossing.
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I presume it's this:
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/money/other/liz-truss-exclusive-i-assumed-upon-entering-downing-street-my-mandate-would-be-respected-how-wrong-i-was/ar-AA1778Eg
What a load of :shit:
It's not my fault I didn't understand how the economy works:
"However, brewing in the background there was an issue relating to pension funds, which neither of us had been made aware of – a problem that would ultimately bring my premiership to an abrupt and premature end because of the panic it induced.
At no point during any of the preparations for the mini-Budget had any concerns about liability-driven investments (LDIs) and the risk they posed to bond markets been mentioned at all to me, the chancellor or any of our teams by officials at the Treasury."
My understanding was that they very deliberately dressed it up as a "mini budget" to avoid the usual checks and balances which would be carried out by BofE or whoever on a regular budget.
So saying 'no-one warned us this would happen' when you've misrepresented the truth to avoid anyone sensible being able to sign it off as economically sane, seems more than a bit rich.
Not to mention that Sunak specifically told her what would happen in a nationally broadcast debate with complete accuracy.
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Sunak specifically told her what would happen in a nationally broadcast debate with complete accuracy.
Ah, that’s who she means by the left wing establishment
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There is a good interview with Michel Barnier on The Rest is Politics podcast at the moment in which they discuss the shocking amateurism of the British government during Brexit negotiation.
[Pedant Alert]
It’s on the ‘Leading’ podcast, a separate spin off from their standard TRIP one. Just in case anyone goes looking for it. Highly recommended for the reasons Toby mentions - utter stupidity of the ministers involved, their lack of any detail on the subject, and amateurish attempts to get the better of Barnier.
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There is a good interview with Michel Barnier on The Rest is Politics podcast at the moment in which they discuss the shocking amateurism of the British government during Brexit negotiation.
[Pedant Alert]
It’s on the ‘Leading’ podcast, a separate spin off from their standard TRIP one. Just in case anyone goes looking for it. Highly recommended for the reasons Toby mentions - utter stupidity of the ministers involved, their lack of any detail on the subject, and amateurish attempts to get the better of Barnier.
Cheers, here's the link:
https://open.spotify.com/episode/7pNbKekOWrGlsXTdJxbIln?si=BTLAxfWCSv-wQGDE632F7Q
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I love that the Spitting Image re-boot is struggling to pick who to caricature because of the high turnover in cabinet members…
https://news.sky.com/story/spitting-image-stages-revival-and-one-politician-who-makes-the-cut-is-the-surprise-hit-of-the-show-12805658 (https://news.sky.com/story/spitting-image-stages-revival-and-one-politician-who-makes-the-cut-is-the-surprise-hit-of-the-show-12805658)
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It's depressingly inevitable, Sunak does something mildly sensible (on NI) and the mad conservative right wing do their best to scupper it and they all f_ up the country a bit more while they have a big argument about Europe. Nothing works in the UK anymore and the government just don't seem to be bothered. A change of government can't come soon enough.
There's an article on the Guardian by Simon Jenkins saying that Sunak should remove the whip from Johnson if he votes against his deal. Maybe he should do that anyway.
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The europhobic loons can whinge all they want. Same with Johnson. It won’t make a difference this time.
The real question is why wasn’t this deal done years ago? And it’s beyond irony that Sunak is spending all his time now talking about how good it is for NI to have access to the single market and also trashing the protocol which he was so proud of just a couple of years ago.
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Well, yesterday's "Stop the Boats" announcement (lectern and all) really plumbed new depths of cruelty and stupidity. Shameful.
Particularly abhorrent is the removal of the protection of the modern slavery system. Find yourself trafficked and enslaved? Sorry, you've just rendered yourself ineligible for the protections we offer to people who find themselves trafficked and enslaved.
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Horrific.
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The worst thing about this is that Sunak et al know perfectly well it isn’t workable, will be challenged at every stage, and there’s zero chance it would be up and running before 2025. So it’s just cynical electioneering at the expense of the UK’s international reputation. They’re setting up a fight with ‘lefty lawyers’, Strasbourg, ‘the blob’, and Labour in the run up to the election and will blame them all when the policy fails.
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Well, yesterday's "Stop the Boats" announcement (lectern and all) really plumbed new depths of cruelty and stupidity. Shameful.
Particularly abhorrent is the removal of the protection of the modern slavery system. Find yourself trafficked and enslaved? Sorry, you've just rendered yourself ineligible for the protections we offer to people who find themselves trafficked and enslaved.
Shameful indeed. Simple abdication of our responsibility to people in dire need.
Braverman's attack on the justice system in her speech to parliament was particularly disgusting: "Our ability to control our borders cannot be held back by an opaque process conducted late at night with no chance to make our case or even appeal decisions." Is she seriously saying that the government should not have to be accountable to the courts because it can't get it's shit together to put together an argument in court? The problem there is not with the courts...
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Imagine being the daughter of immigrants and still being this bone-headed about immigration and refugees.
I'm starting to wonder if there is a psychosocial response to experiencing racial/social predjudice which leads to aligning with ultra right-wing nationalistic views as some kind of self-defense mechanism. Braverman isn't the only one.
Probably absolute toss but it does seem really weird. Am I missing something?
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I'm old enough to remember The Tories getting pilloried in opposition when Michael Howard was in charge for running a "dog whistle" campaign.
I think it's fair to say that we're well through the looking glass now.
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I'm old enough to remember The Tories getting pilloried in opposition when Michael Howard was in charge for running a "dog whistle" campaign.
I think it's fair to say that we're well through the looking glass now.
Hmmm…
Yes, we’re at about the “Five tone, air raid siren, dog whistle”, stage.
We’re soon going to see jobbing law firms spamming our social media feeds with ads along the lines of “have you incurred hearing loss due to Tory party dog whistling? You might be entitled to compensation…”
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I'm old enough to remember The Tories getting pilloried in opposition when Michael Howard was in charge for running a "dog whistle" campaign.
He's a member of my synagogue.
If I'm on the door when he turns up, I promise to not let him in.
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Imagine being the daughter of immigrants and still being this bone-headed about immigration and refugees.
I'm starting to wonder if there is a psychosocial response to experiencing racial/social predjudice which leads to aligning with ultra right-wing nationalistic views as some kind of self-defense mechanism. Braverman isn't the only one.
Probably absolute toss but it does seem really weird. Am I missing something?
Well they're not coming straight from the Garden of Eden. Worth noting that both Patel and Braverman came from Indian families that emigrated first to Africa - Uganda and Kenya respectively - before the UK. Within the British Empire Indians were typically used (gross generalisation obvs) in bookkeeping type roles enjoying a privileged position over the native people. Plus you have the caste system before they'd even started.
Not that any of that is any kind of excuse, but assuming oppression is perhaps a simplistic take.
Braverman has described herself as a "child of the British Empire". Her parents, who were from Mauritius and Kenya, came to the UK "with an admiration and gratitude for what Britain did for Mauritius and Kenya, and India". She believes that on the whole, "the British Empire was a force for good"
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I’m not entirely sure where the idea that brown people can’t be far right xenophobes comes from. Modi and the Rajapaksas were all voted into power and are/were very popular - including amongst diaspora in Europe and N America.
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I’m not entirely sure where the idea that brown people can’t be far right xenophobes comes from. Modi and the Rajapaksas were all voted into power and are/were very popular - including amongst diaspora in Europe and N America.
Mm this wasn't so much my angle as much as simple surprise that the child of immigrants would be so diametrically opposed to immigration - but I suspect JB is on the money in that it's mixed with a class/social ranking aspect. The lack of empathy makes more sense in that context.
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The policy-seeking voter: evaluations of government performance beyond the economy (https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s43545-020-00030-4) might be of relevance.
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The likes of Braverman are totally xenophobes who like to shit on outsiders or the socially acceptable out-group, and this happens as often - or more - back in the old country as it does here. They’re fitting into a tradition that has roots both in the U.K. and the subcontinent, and it’s easy for white British people to miss the later. BJP dignitaries draw big crowds at Wembley, for instance, and in both the U.K. and US Dalits (very low caste Indians) have campaigned to make caste discrimination illegal. I don’t think they are against immigration as such - they aren’t complaining about Akshata Murty - but rather they like control and power more.
As for oppression leading to ultra right wing views, in the U.K. ethnic minorities vote more left than one would expect from their socioeconomic status, with the exception of Hindus.
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Off topic, but Sean (or anyone else), did you watch the BBC doc on Modi? I thought it was interesting and shed quite a lot of light on eg, the Leicester riots last year, but it was received very poorly in India to the extent that the BBC in India are having their tax affairs investigated and the Indian government demanded that YouTube take clips of it down.
Think understanding the darker aspects of Hindu nationalism is very relevant to some UK politicians attitudes towards migrants.
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I haven’t seen it yet but I’m meaning to at some point. I thought I had an okay sense of how bad things were becoming in India but I had a bit of a shock talking to a friend of mine (secular, but Muslim background) a few months ago. He and his family moved from Delhi to Europe in part because he was worried about Hindu mobs attacking his very genteel Muslim neighbourhood. They live about twenty minutes drive from the parliament building - it’s the equivalent of someone leaving Hampstead because it’s too dangerous. My friend is level headed and not prone to exaggeration, and he really didn’t want to leave.
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I'd be interested in your thoughts if/when you watch it. Thats pretty terrifying. I don't think its an exaggeration to say India is at risk of slipping into a form of fascism, if it isn't already in some ways. I'm going for a research trip in November which will be fascinating but am also very aware that if I was Muslim I'd probably think very differently about going (and probably wouldn't be able to get a visa anyway).
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I’m not entirely sure where the idea that brown people can’t be far right xenophobes comes from. Modi and the Rajapaksas were all voted into power and are/were very popular - including amongst diaspora in Europe and N America.
Mm this wasn't so much my angle as much as simple surprise that the child of immigrants would be so diametrically opposed to immigration - but I suspect JB is on the money in that it's mixed with a class/social ranking aspect. The lack of empathy makes more sense in that context.
I have and do encounter more (and often violent ) overt racism and conflict between ethnic groups; here in Dubai, than I have seen anywhere outside of Israel (including the time that I lived in Sri Lanka during the troubles (has that actually subsided, have to check)). Despite a large number of (quite unpleasant) white South Africans here and Russians who are equally shocking; “brown on brown” is really more awfully bad and agressive. Lets just say, Muslims and Hindus are not best mates and the latter usually the instigators. Seems more common amongst recent arrivals. Most of us settle down to a, almost peculiar, sepia toned, colourblindness after a while. Wandering around the yard each morning involves a litany of various versions of “hello” and gestures of salutation, for instance.
Edit.
We’re all immigrants. There isn’t a single “local” or even a GCC national in the company (just under a thousand staff).
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I have and do encounter more (and often violent ) overt racism and conflict between ethnic groups; here in Dubai, than I have seen anywhere outside of Israel (including the time that I lived in Sri Lanka during the troubles (has that actually subsided, have to check)).
Basically yes - but then they got some new ones to replace the old! :wall:
The war ended, the govt killed all the Tamil Tigers, put lots of ordinary Tamils in internment camps and flooded the Tamil regions with Sinhala people, all with the aim of effectively neutering any even slightly separatist or even federal Tamil political movements. They then tried to bolster their popularity by instigating violent anti-Muslim sentiment (perhaps inspired by Myanmar; the two countries have a close religious tradition). It is absolutely to the credit of many young Sri Lankans that they rejected this call to violence outright. All the while the Rajapaksas (govt was their family business) looted the state and overvalued the currency, in the end causing an economic crisis which has wrecked the living standards of most Sri Lankans, including some of my in-laws. Protests led to a new government, who have promptly started murdering their opponents.
If it wasn’t an incredibly beautiful country whose inhabitants are mostly charming and lovely it would be completely depressing.
The imported hatred you’re seeing in Dubai is miserable but unsurprising.
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I'm starting to wonder if there is a psychosocial response to experiencing racial/social predjudice which leads to aligning with ultra right-wing nationalistic views as some kind of self-defense mechanism.
See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internalized_racism (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internalized_racism) and the section on Intra/Interracial discrimination.
It is Wikipedia so check references. There’s lots of good evidence based research out there if you’re interested.
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Now I’m officially Old I have licence to find young people increasingly weird, but this nugget from Nick Cohen’s substack really shocked me:
“The anti-fascist group Hope Not Hate found in October 2020 that 30 percent of 25–34-year-olds, and 27 percent of 18–24-year-olds, agreed that ‘ Jews have disproportionate control of powerful institutions, and use that power for their own benefit and against the good of the general population’. Just 6 percent of 65–74-year-olds and 7 percent of 55–64-year-olds followed suit.”
This is blatant antisemitism, is this 30% the followers of Jordan Petersen, bigoted progressives or some unsightly mix of the two? I find it quite troubling especially considering this is a cohort that are notably more left wing/liberal than others.
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Just in case anybody's watching the news and wondering what all this childcare chat is about...
The government's plan is to extend the support that is there for 3 and 4yr olds to younger children, hoping to get 60k parents back into work.
The support is called 30 Hours Of Free Childcare - it's not that simple. The free hours are only claimable during certain times of day and during term time; it doesn't include food etc. Our 3yr old goes to nursery for 34 hours per week. So we'll only pick up the bill for 4 hours a week, right? Not quite. The bill prior to him turning 3 was £982/month; now it is £601/month.
The hourly rate that the government pays nurseries for those free hours is widely recognised to be insufficient to cover the cost of actually providing the care. To stay solvent, nurseries have made up the shortfall by charging a higher hourly rate to parents. This disproportionately affects the parents of the under-3s because they're paying for all the hours that the child attends (over-3s are still paying an hourly rate but the government is picking up some of the hours).
The government has promised to "substantially increase" the hourly rate that it pays nurseries, but this has been in real-terms decline since 2017 and we all know that the government isn't going to actually pay the nurseries enough to cover the costs of providing care. Nurseries operate on profit margins that are absolutely razor thin. Now that they are faced with being short-changed by the government for the 1 and 2-year-olds' fees they have some choices to make up the loss.
They can reduce the quality of care they give (the government is going to allow them to do this by increasing the number of children that can be looked after by one member of staff), they can charge a greater hourly rate to parents for the hours that they pay, or they can go bust.
The government's plan to get 60k parents back to work means that you need at least 60k additional nursery places. This in a sector that already has a huge labour problem where providers won't be able to offer significant pay rises to staff (because they're already making microscopic profits).
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Are you entitled to any new help as the parent of a 3 year old?
I'm not a parent so I didn't follow the childcare changes too closely, but I thought the changes for 2+ year olds don't come in to effect until September 2025 (so current 3 year olds will already be in school by then)?
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Are you entitled to any new help as the parent of a 3 year old?
I'm not a parent so I didn't follow the childcare changes too closely, but I thought the changes for 2+ year olds don't come in to effect until September 2025 (so current 3 year olds will already be in school by then)?
No new support for over-3s. I haven't looked at when the measures are being phased in for different age groups but, yes, if your kid is past a certain age now then there's no change to the status quo.
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Don't think there is any new help for 3yr olds although believe the funding rates are being increased a bit. The help for 2yrs olds is being phased in with 15 free hrs from April 24. It's 15 free hrs I wouldn't have had before so although will is right it's at least some progress. the current system of getting no help until they are 3 is just bonkers. Shame about the rest of the budget.
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Now I’m officially Old I have licence to find young people increasingly weird, but this nugget from Nick Cohen’s substack really shocked me:
“The anti-fascist group Hope Not Hate found in October 2020 that 30 percent of 25–34-year-olds, and 27 percent of 18–24-year-olds, agreed that ‘ Jews have disproportionate control of powerful institutions, and use that power for their own benefit and against the good of the general population’. Just 6 percent of 65–74-year-olds and 7 percent of 55–64-year-olds followed suit.”
This is blatant antisemitism, is this 30% the followers of Jordan Petersen, bigoted progressives or some unsightly mix of the two? I find it quite troubling especially considering this is a cohort that are notably more left wing/liberal than others.
I saw those statistics, I think that this is exactly what David Baddiel is driving at in his recent book; ie that there is a certain section of broadly left of centre people who have a blind eye to antisemitism, though they may reject all other racism. I'm not sure if I entirely agree but he does have an interesting argument.
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...
Shame about the rest of the budget.
You're too picky, at least it hasn't crashed the economy yet.
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Just in case anybody's watching the news and wondering what all this childcare chat is about...
The government's plan is to extend the support that is there for 3 and 4yr olds to younger children, hoping to get 60k parents back into work.
The support is called 30 Hours Of Free Childcare - it's not that simple. The free hours are only claimable during certain times of day and during term time; it doesn't include food etc. Our 3yr old goes to nursery for 34 hours per week. So we'll only pick up the bill for 4 hours a week, right? Not quite. The bill prior to him turning 3 was £982/month; now it is £601/month.
The hourly rate that the government pays nurseries for those free hours is widely recognised to be insufficient to cover the cost of actually providing the care. To stay solvent, nurseries have made up the shortfall by charging a higher hourly rate to parents. This disproportionately affects the parents of the under-3s because they're paying for all the hours that the child attends (over-3s are still paying an hourly rate but the government is picking up some of the hours).
The government has promised to "substantially increase" the hourly rate that it pays nurseries, but this has been in real-terms decline since 2017 and we all know that the government isn't going to actually pay the nurseries enough to cover the costs of providing care. Nurseries operate on profit margins that are absolutely razor thin. Now that they are faced with being short-changed by the government for the 1 and 2-year-olds' fees they have some choices to make up the loss.
They can reduce the quality of care they give (the government is going to allow them to do this by increasing the number of children that can be looked after by one member of staff), they can charge a greater hourly rate to parents for the hours that they pay, or they can go bust.
The government's plan to get 60k parents back to work means that you need at least 60k additional nursery places. This in a sector that already has a huge labour problem where providers won't be able to offer significant pay rises to staff (because they're already making microscopic profits).
I (literally) don't have any skin in this game.. but the picture you paint doesn't seem to tally with the facts that popped into my inbox last time this subject breached its oversized head. For example, is there a special reason British children need to have the tightest ratio of childminders per child compared to our neighbors? Are British kids more delicate and in need of this 4:1 ratio compared with Irish, French or German or other European children?
From fullfact:
The ratio for two-year-olds in England is 4:1, whereas it is 6:1 in Ireland, 6:1 in Germany and 8:1 in France, while in Denmark and Sweden—countries that the shadow Secretary of State has explicitly advocated—there are no national staff ratios at all."
And is there a pollical reason attributable only to the tories that childcare costs in the UK have outstripped inflation since 2003? Don't let facts get in the way of the narrative though. Could there be, shock horror, a more nuanced and complex reason than simple 'current tory government to blame'? For example could there be some inefficiencies going on, or some sub-optimal thinking being allowed to prevail behind the 'tight ratios needed for British kids'? And is there any evidence for 'some' profiteering going on? As well no doubt as the usual government incompetence?
https://fullfact.org/education/childcare-uk-tightest-and-most-expensive/#:~:text=Child%2Fstaff%20ratios&text=%22The%20ratio%20for%20two%2Dyear,national%20staff%20ratios%20at%20all.%22
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the picture you paint...Don't let facts get in the way of the narrative though. Could there be, shock horror, a more nuanced and complex reason than simple 'current tory government to blame'?
I'm confused, Pete. I suggest you read my post again without prejudice because you seem to be reading into it an argument that I'm not making. I'm just trying to add detail for anybody reading about this who doesn't have any experience of dealing with the childcare system. What the government is trying to do is a step in the right direction but some of their efforts are likely to fall short because of the detail.
I don't necessarily think a 1:5 ratio is a terrible thing, but from my point of view as an individual I'll be paying more money (because the hourly rate will go up) for lower quality care - not necessarily bad care but certainly lower quality. That will feed into the level that children are at when they reach school because at 3+ nurseries start to transition the kids towards school. Numbers, phonics, and writing education begins at nursery and children are expected to be able to do things such as write their own name, know the alphabet etc before arriving at school.
Btw don't call them childminders because they're not. Qualified nursery staff are doing more than just entertaining the kids. They're an important part of the early years learning the feeds into progression through school. You might sniff at their chosen profession but the good ones are actually doing quite skilled labour. The reason we have govt support from 3 years old is not just about returning parents to the workforce, it's because children do demonstrably better in school when they receive nursery education. The reason that the "30 free hours" is only claimable at certain times of the day is because studies have shown that the optimum nursery day is shorter than an a adult's working day. The provision was originally centered around child outcomes, not necessarily parental economic productivity.
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Fair enough. But by your logic you're saying any ratio higher than 4:1 is lower quality. I find it hard, as in impossible, to believe that's true, considering the wider context of most other neighboring countries not having disastrous experiences...
bte I'm not sniffing at anything (that's your prejudice rearing its head). I called them childminders because I'm not a qualified parent like you and haven't a clue what their actual job title is.
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Just in case anybody's watching the news and wondering what all this childcare chat is about...
The government's plan is to extend the support that is there for 3 and 4yr olds to younger children, hoping to get 60k parents back into work.
The support is called 30 Hours Of Free Childcare - it's not that simple. The free hours are only claimable during certain times of day and during term time; it doesn't include food etc. Our 3yr old goes to nursery for 34 hours per week. So we'll only pick up the bill for 4 hours a week, right? Not quite. The bill prior to him turning 3 was £982/month; now it is £601/month.
The hourly rate that the government pays nurseries for those free hours is widely recognised to be insufficient to cover the cost of actually providing the care. To stay solvent, nurseries have made up the shortfall by charging a higher hourly rate to parents. This disproportionately affects the parents of the under-3s because they're paying for all the hours that the child attends (over-3s are still paying an hourly rate but the government is picking up some of the hours).
The government has promised to "substantially increase" the hourly rate that it pays nurseries, but this has been in real-terms decline since 2017 and we all know that the government isn't going to actually pay the nurseries enough to cover the costs of providing care. Nurseries operate on profit margins that are absolutely razor thin. Now that they are faced with being short-changed by the government for the 1 and 2-year-olds' fees they have some choices to make up the loss.
They can reduce the quality of care they give (the government is going to allow them to do this by increasing the number of children that can be looked after by one member of staff), they can charge a greater hourly rate to parents for the hours that they pay, or they can go bust.
The government's plan to get 60k parents back to work means that you need at least 60k additional nursery places. This in a sector that already has a huge labour problem where providers won't be able to offer significant pay rises to staff (because they're already making microscopic profits).
I (literally) don't have any skin in this game.. but the picture you paint doesn't seem to tally with the facts that popped into my inbox last time this subject breached its oversized head. For example, is there a special reason British children need to have the tightest ratio of childminders per child compared to our neighbors? Are British kids more delicate and in need of this 4:1 ratio compared with Irish, French or German or other European children?
From fullfact:
The ratio for two-year-olds in England is 4:1, whereas it is 6:1 in Ireland, 6:1 in Germany and 8:1 in France, while in Denmark and Sweden—countries that the shadow Secretary of State has explicitly advocated—there are no national staff ratios at all."
And is there a pollical reason attributable only to the tories that childcare costs in the UK have outstripped inflation since 2003? Don't let facts get in the way of the narrative though. Could there be, shock horror, a more nuanced and complex reason than simple 'current tory government to blame'? For example could there be some inefficiencies going on, or some sub-optimal thinking being allowed to prevail behind the 'tight ratios needed for British kids'? And is there any evidence for 'some' profiteering going on? As well no doubt as the usual government incompetence?
https://fullfact.org/education/childcare-uk-tightest-and-most-expensive/#:~:text=Child%2Fstaff%20ratios&text=%22The%20ratio%20for%20two%2Dyear,national%20staff%20ratios%20at%20all.%22
I don't know about ratios elsewhere or why they are different, though anecdotally I suspect the high level of form filling and bureaucracy has an impact. For example, needing to create a paper record every time a child has a nappy change, eats, drinks etc. must reduce capacity of staff to actually look after children, and I don't know if that's the same elsewhere, though of course I can see why recording that sort of data is beneficial.
It seemed a pretty useless budget announcement to me as it will only really affect people who don't already have kids (or just babies), as others have noted the funding for nurseries makes the viability questionable, and in any case - good luck to the extra under-3s trying to get a place at a nursery! You may well be entitled to it in theory but that doesn't mean any nurseries will have capacity to take on those children. Where I live (Bristol) my experience and that of friends is needing to book a nursery place before the baby has even been born.
It also seems a cynical move by the tories who know they likely won't be in power when it actually comes to implementing this, so it's just a headline and bit of election fodder for now, then it'll be a good one to blame on labour when it inevitably fails.
If the tories were serious about sorting this chronic issue they could have done so at any point in the last 14 years.
Lastly I'd add the conflating issue of tax cuts for childcare costs steadily reducing in real terms. For those who don't know, you can set up a government account, pay in money and it'll be topped up by an additional 25% (essentially reversing tax already paid on that money) and you can then use this account to pay for childcare. There is a cap of £500 top up per quarter, after which you receive no benefit. This has been fixed at the same level since at least 2018 when I first started using it. At the time I could pay most of my childcare costs using this, but now I use almost the whole quarter's allowance on a single monthly bill, so the next 2 months are extra expensive.
Childcare has always seemed a mad one for the government not to target - incentivise more people to go back to work (esp at a time of low unemployment) and you cut spending on benefits, earn more on income tax, generate more jobs in childcare and have a host of other indirect benefits.
Obviously the core demographic of old rich people have been well looked after in this budget, as usual.
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Fair enough. But by your logic you're saying any ratio higher than 4:1 is lower quality. I find it hard, as in impossible, to believe that's true, considering the wider context of most other neighboring countries not having disastrous experiences...
Pete, have you been lobotomised this evening? I suggest you take yourself down to your local nursery and see if they can take you in, because you seem to be struggling to read. I didn't say it would be disastrous, I said the quality of the care would be lower. If you were to ask me to quantify that I couldn't, but it is obvious that the care quality will be lower (and I will pay more for it for the reasons I've explained).
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Why would it be lower? What's your evidence? The rest of Europe doesn't have that low a ratio.
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Obviously the core demographic of old rich people have been well looked after in this budget, as usual.
Yeah those fucking health care staff hey, what have they ever done for us.
generate more jobs in childcare and have a host of other indirect benefits.
Well they're not exactly scrimping on staff as it is with the highest ratio of staff to kids in Europe! :lol:
It seemed a pretty useless budget announcement to me as it will only really affect people who don't already have kids (or just babies)
Aka 'people in the near future', as per most policy announcements.
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Why would it be lower? What's your evidence? The rest of Europe doesn't have that low a ratio.
It's got nothing to do with the rest of Europe. It's a comparison of the future care against the current provision. The fact that care quality will be lowered when moving from a 1:4 to a 1:5 ratio is so intuitively obvious to me that I'm struggling to find words to explain it. I must also need to go back to school.
Teachers with fewer students would tend to get better outcomes than teachers with more students, yes?
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Teachers with fewer students would tend to get better outcomes than teachers with more students, yes?
Well clearly no. Do some reading up and get back to me - there's a critical number. But it's not more = bad / less = good. Same with childcare, obviously.
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Teachers with fewer students would tend to get better outcomes than teachers with more students, yes?
Well clearly no. Do some reading up and get back to me - there's a critical number. But it's not more = bad / less = good. Same with childcare, obviously.
You sound very certain so I assume you've done the reading yourself. What did you find? (Remember that we're talking about 1-3 year olds here so studies looking at older children won't be comparable).
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Obviously the core demographic of old rich people have been well looked after in this budget, as usual.
Yeah those fucking health care staff hey, what have they ever done for us.
generate more jobs in childcare and have a host of other indirect benefits.
Well they're not exactly scrimping on staff as it is with the highest ratio of staff to kids in Europe! :lol:
It seemed a pretty useless budget announcement to me as it will only really affect people who don't already have kids (or just babies)
Aka 'people in the near future', as per most policy announcements.
Some very selective and snarky cherry picking there Pete.
Have you missed that huge amounts of NHS staff have been on strike at historic levels, due to pay and awful working conditions? It's a very big stretch to claim this government is looking after them.
More jobs is still more jobs.
Understand that policies don't always happen straight away, but as I say they've had over a decade to do this, and other policies that suit their demographic don't have this sort of delay in being implemented.
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Teachers with fewer students would tend to get better outcomes than teachers with more students, yes?
Well clearly no. Do some reading up and get back to me - there's a critical number. But it's not more = bad / less = good. Same with childcare, obviously.
I really hate to do the whole "as a parent" thing, but this is something someone could only ever say when they're not a parent.
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Also, I get the point you're making Pete around the ratio and why British kids shouldn't be any different to others, but it's highly reductionist to look at it on just those numbers and say it should be matched.
Yes in Germany it's higher, but are their staff better educated, better trained, better paid? Is staff retention better? Do they have better facilities that makes management of a higher number of children per staff member safer? Etc. Etc.
To be clear I don't know the answers to any of those questions but it's important not to focus on a single figure out of context I think.
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Teachers with fewer students would tend to get better outcomes than teachers with more students, yes?
Well clearly no. Do some reading up and get back to me - there's a critical number. But it's not more = bad / less = good. Same with childcare, obviously.
Holy crap Pete, did you actually think that one through?
Of course there will be teachers, who are not very good regardless of the number of students, just as there will be some who can hold a class of 40 enthralled; they’re rare outliers.
Plus “do some reading”?
Nah, post some links.
Even without further reading, based on prior knowledge from similar training in staffing for a variety of roles and purposes; the “perfect” ratio doesn’t exist, but the range of those ratios that produce the better outcomes are well established.
Even putting aside any formal training, decades as a Scout leader, Cadet instructor, Sailing instructor, Climbing instructor (the last decade running a climbing wall taking groups from pre-school age to year 13 etc), make me wince at that comment. I think my former insurance providers, at the wall, would just collapse laughing.
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it's highly reductionist to look at it on just those numbers and say it should be matched.
Yes in Germany it's higher, but are their staff better educated, better trained, better paid? Is staff retention better? Do they have better facilities that makes management of a higher number of children per staff member safer? Etc. Etc.
I seem to remember listening to an episode of Analysis on this subject and this was the argument made about the disparity in child ratios in England - staff training/qualifications/pay etc being higher in other comparable European countries (and Scotland which has 1:5).
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Yes in Germany it's higher, but are their staff better educated, better trained, better paid?
I just went and did a quest around about this and I would say broadly speaking it should be similar. Entry timeframe is 3-4 years on both sides, average wage ~33-35k (pre-tax), high end wage ~40-45k. If anything the UK side should be earning more because taxation is lower.
I get the impression that the germans have simply got more tax money to sling around due to industrial export and manufacturing amongst other things which makes it somewhat tricky to compare because the government picks up a greater portion of the bill. That being said I have a very poor understanding of these things so am happy to be called out on that.
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while in Denmark and Sweden—countries that the shadow Secretary of State has explicitly advocated—there are no national staff ratios at all.
Denmark also doesn't have a statutory minimum wage. Doesn't mean people earn less.
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Yes in Germany it's higher, but are their staff better educated, better trained, better paid?
average wage ~33-35k (pre-tax), high end wage ~40-45k.
Bit confused about this. If you’re saying the average person working in childcare in Germany earns €33-35k that’s way more than in UK!
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and other policies that suit their demographic don't have this sort of delay in being implemented.
This is where I think you, along with most posters on this car crash of a site when it comes to politics, are utterly misunderstood. Essentially what you're doing is framing a complex issue - in this case the tax treatment of the trinity of: pensions lifetime allowance, pension lump sum, pension contributions, in terms of 'tory and labour', left/right, socialist/capitalist.
It's a total bullshit way of understanding the issue. But it's quite understandable because it's how politicians work to use rhetoric to convince people of their simplistic narratives.
The real world effects of changing the pension lifetime allowance and annual contribution allowance, on taxation and on enterprise, are not what Labour portray nor are they even what the tories portray and they're not what you read in the guardian or telegraph.
There are short term tax and spending effects that can be understood through either a conservative lens or a progressive lens. And there are long-term tax and spending effects that can be understood through either a progressive lens or a conservative lens.
Here's a concrete example:
The pension lifetime allowance has been abolished, yes. Nasty tories pandering to rich bankers (oh and doctors, yeah we like doctors they're the goodies) boohoo pantomime villain tories etc. etc.
But... the tax-free lump sum of 25% of total pension pot that you're allowed to withdraw from your pension has been frozen for the last decade and is to remain frozen until at least 2028. With not even any increase for inflation. The long term effect of that is that high earners can massively boost their pension pots, but the real-terms value of the 25% tax-free lump sum they can withdraw is massively eroded by inflation. Even at 3% per year inflation, never mind the current 10%. Do the maths and you see that middle earners who will also be boosting their pensions, are most likely not impacted or less impacted by this tax-take. While high earners will, overall, end up paying more tax on their pensions because there'll be a much bigger pot of money remaining to be taxed.
Remember that after the 25% lump sum is withdrawn, all pension income is taxable. Therefore the net effect of this policy is, longer term, higher taxes for high earners, deferred from today into their future. Quite rightly many will say, looking on enviously at these big pensions that the young of today will find impossible to build due to the high cost of living - you'll get no argument from me on that point, life is far more expensive for the young of today then it was for the boomers. But many people would argue that the sensible solution to that inequality is to try to scrape back some from the boomers in a way that doesn't destroy current and future enterprise or penalise risk and hard work. Tough problem to solve with no right answer.
Labour supporters are currently complaining it isn't fair because we're all too stupid to understand the nuances of a combination of 1/ increased contribution 2/ frozen tax allowance and 3/ inflation.
Fuck me people are dumb.
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and other policies that suit their demographic don't have this sort of delay in being implemented.
This is where I think you, along with most posters on this car crash of a site when it comes to politics, are utterly misunderstood. Essentially what you're doing is framing a complex issue - in this case the tax treatment of the trinity of: pensions lifetime allowance, pension lump sum, pension contributions, in terms of 'tory and labour', left/right, socialist/capitalist.
It's a total bullshit way of understanding the issue. But it's quite understandable because it's how politicians work to use rhetoric to convince people of their simplistic narratives.
The real world effects of changing the pension lifetime allowance and annual contribution allowance, on taxation and on enterprise, are not what Labour portray nor are they even what the tories portray and they're not what you read in the guardian or telegraph.
There are short term tax and spending effects that can be understood through either a conservative lens or a progressive lens. And there are long-term tax and spending effects that can be understood through either a progressive lens or a conservative lens.
Here's a concrete example:
The pension lifetime allowance has been abolished, yes. Nasty tories pandering to rich bankers (oh and doctors, yeah we like doctors they're the goodies) boohoo pantomime villain tories etc. etc.
But... the tax-free lump sum of 25% of total pension pot that you're allowed to withdraw from your pension has been frozen for the last decade and is to remain frozen until at least 2028. With not even any increase for inflation. The long term effect of that is that high earners can massively boost their pension pots, but the real-terms value of the 25% tax-free lump sum they can withdraw is massively eroded by inflation. Even at 3% per year inflation, never mind the current 10%. Do the maths and you see that middle earners who will also be boosting their pensions, are most likely not impacted or less impacted by this tax-take. While high earners will end up paying more tax on their pensions. Quite rightly many will say.
Remember that after the 25% lump sum is withdrawn, all pension income is taxable. Therefore the net effect of this policy is, longer term, higher taxes for high earners, deferred from today into their future.
Labour supporters are currently complaining it isn't fair because we're all too stupid to understand the nuances of a combination of 1/ increased contribution 2/ frozen tax allowance and 3/ inflation.
Fuck me people are dumb.
You've really undone it with your sign off. I have better things to do than engage with this sort of vicious and aggressive discussion, I was just here to openly discuss the pros and cons, not to throw insults. Count me out.
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It's not meant to be vicious or aggressive, more exasperated at peoples' seeming inability to view issues without resorting to tribalism - a failure of rational thinking imo. I apologise if it comes across that way.
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:thumbsdown:
and other policies that suit their demographic don't have this sort of delay in being implemented.
This is where I think you, along with most posters on this car crash of a site when it comes to politics, are utterly misunderstood. Essentially what you're doing is framing a complex issue - in this case the tax treatment of the trinity of: pensions lifetime allowance, pension lump sum, pension contributions, in terms of 'tory and labour', left/right, socialist/capitalist.
It's a total bullshit way of understanding the issue. But it's quite understandable because it's how politicians work to use rhetoric to convince people of their simplistic narratives.
The real world effects of changing the pension lifetime allowance and annual contribution allowance, on taxation and on enterprise, are not what Labour portray nor are they even what the tories portray and they're not what you read in the guardian or telegraph.
There are short term tax and spending effects that can be understood through either a conservative lens or a progressive lens. And there are long-term tax and spending effects that can be understood through either a progressive lens or a conservative lens.
Here's a concrete example:
The pension lifetime allowance has been abolished, yes. Nasty tories pandering to rich bankers (oh and doctors, yeah we like doctors they're the goodies) boohoo pantomime villain tories etc. etc.
But... the tax-free lump sum of 25% of total pension pot that you're allowed to withdraw from your pension has been frozen for the last decade and is to remain frozen until at least 2028. With not even any increase for inflation. The long term effect of that is that high earners can massively boost their pension pots, but the real-terms value of the 25% tax-free lump sum they can withdraw is massively eroded by inflation. Even at 3% per year inflation, never mind the current 10%. Do the maths and you see that middle earners who will also be boosting their pensions, are most likely not impacted or less impacted by this tax-take. While high earners will, overall, end up paying more tax on their pensions because there'll be a much bigger pot of money remaining to be taxed.
Remember that after the 25% lump sum is withdrawn, all pension income is taxable. Therefore the net effect of this policy is, longer term, higher taxes for high earners, deferred from today into their future. Quite rightly many will say, looking on enviously at these big pensions that the young of today will find impossible to build due to the high cost of living - you'll get no argument from me on that point, life is far more expensive for the young of today then it was for the boomers. But many people would argue that the sensible solution to that inequality is to try to scrape back some from the boomers in a way that doesn't destroy current and future enterprise or penalise risk and hard work. Tough problem to solve with no right answer.
Labour supporters are currently complaining it isn't fair because we're all too stupid to understand the nuances of a combination of 1/ increased contribution 2/ frozen tax allowance and 3/ inflation.
Fuck me people are dumb.
It's been frozen as 25% of the lifetime allowance which means currently, at its lowest ever, its been frozen at £268,275. So if you had 100% of the lifetime allowance you could have a pension of £40,241.25 (which you'd pay income tax on) and that tax free lump sum of 268k which is tax free before you encountered any additional tax concerns.
I think it's pretty stupid of a government to pretend that this policy incentives saving or is cost effective in getting people back to work since roughly 1% of the pop would ever be concerned by the LTA and the tax cost of getting people back to work as a result of abolishing it is roughly 70k per person.
Overall your assessment is pretty empty and your depiction of the criticism as foolish socialist rhetoric is silly. In a time of squeezed public finances this is explicitly a tax break for the top 1% of pensions. That is inarguable.
If you're curious I'm a pensions tech and I calculated and settled several people's lifetime allowance charges last week. Your assessment is wrong and you calling people stupid is uncalled for. Why don't you listen for once and you might learn something, either that or go back to fiddling with your investment portfolio, whatever
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and other policies that suit their demographic don't have this sort of delay in being implemented.
This is where I think you, along with most posters on this car crash of a site when it comes to politics, are utterly misunderstood. Essentially what you're doing is framing a complex issue - in this case the tax treatment of the trinity of: pensions lifetime allowance, pension lump sum, pension contributions, in terms of 'tory and labour', left/right, socialist/capitalist.
It's a total bullshit way of understanding the issue. But it's quite understandable because it's how politicians work to use rhetoric to convince people of their simplistic narratives.
The real world effects of changing the pension lifetime allowance and annual contribution allowance, on taxation and on enterprise, are not what Labour portray nor are they even what the tories portray and they're not what you read in the guardian or telegraph.
There are short term tax and spending effects that can be understood through either a conservative lens or a progressive lens. And there are long-term tax and spending effects that can be understood through either a progressive lens or a conservative lens.
Here's a concrete example:
The pension lifetime allowance has been abolished, yes. Nasty tories pandering to rich bankers (oh and doctors, yeah we like doctors they're the goodies) boohoo pantomime villain tories etc. etc.
But... the tax-free lump sum of 25% of total pension pot that you're allowed to withdraw from your pension has been frozen for the last decade and is to remain frozen until at least 2028. With not even any increase for inflation. The long term effect of that is that high earners can massively boost their pension pots, but the real-terms value of the 25% tax-free lump sum they can withdraw is massively eroded by inflation. Even at 3% per year inflation, never mind the current 10%. Do the maths and you see that middle earners who will also be boosting their pensions, are most likely not impacted or less impacted by this tax-take. While high earners will, overall, end up paying more tax on their pensions because there'll be a much bigger pot of money remaining to be taxed.
Remember that after the 25% lump sum is withdrawn, all pension income is taxable. Therefore the net effect of this policy is, longer term, higher taxes for high earners, deferred from today into their future. Quite rightly many will say, looking on enviously at these big pensions that the young of today will find impossible to build due to the high cost of living - you'll get no argument from me on that point, life is far more expensive for the young of today then it was for the boomers. But many people would argue that the sensible solution to that inequality is to try to scrape back some from the boomers in a way that doesn't destroy current and future enterprise or penalise risk and hard work. Tough problem to solve with no right answer.
Labour supporters are currently complaining it isn't fair because we're all too stupid to understand the nuances of a combination of 1/ increased contribution 2/ frozen tax allowance and 3/ inflation.
Fuck me people are dumb.
Possibly me being dumb here, but taxation isn't my field. Isn't the lifetime allowance charge significantly higher than marginal tax rate that any income would be taxed at? So yes, you "redirect" funds from tax-free cash to income by freezing the maximum tax free cash, but I'd expect the removal of the lifetime allowance to be dominant and total tax bill for higher earners to go down.
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55% for a LTA excess lump sum, 25% for a LTA excess pension (but that's a charge, you'd pay that, then income tax).
It's a tax cut. The result of this is you'll pay less tax if you have a pension worth 1.5 million or whatever. If you have a pension worth a paltry say, 950k, it won't make a single difference to your income.
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peoples' seeming inability to view issues without resorting to tribalism
At least some of this exists only in your head. When I posted up about nurseries it was just to try and offer some explanation of the complexities and knock-on effects of the policy because I know there are lots of people on here who are interested in politics but don't have any knowledge of the childcare system. You seemed to think this was a rant against the Tories. As it happens I think the government's policy is an improvement but not a complete solution.
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55% for a LTA excess lump sum, 25% for a LTA excess pension (but that's a charge, you'd pay that, then income tax).
It's a tax cut. The result of this is you'll pay less tax if you have a pension worth 1.5 million or whatever. If you have a pension worth a paltry say, 950k, it won't make a single difference to your income.
Thought so, but Pete's certainty almost had me fooled.
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It's not meant to be vicious or aggressive, more exasperated at peoples' seeming inability to view issues without resorting to tribalism - a failure of rational thinking imo. I apologise if it comes across that way.
Pete, some time ago I posted a link to a paper estimating the impact on inflation of The Thing You Don't Like To Talk About. You immediately found what you thought was a mistake, cue can’t trust those Remain voting academics who don’t understand the will of the people stuff (in subtext if not explicitly written, I can’t remember now). Anyhow the paper could certainly have been clearer but the basis of your error was not understanding that the overall impact of various regional effects was proportional to the population size of that region. Not a difficult point to grasp for a smart guy like yourself.
The thing is, everyone gets the wrong end of the stick sometimes. Human beings are tribal, it colours all their judgements. Didn’t Kanneman - who got a Nobel for his work on implicit biases - say he still fell for them after decades of studying? Of course the person most at risk from being coloured by their own biases and tribalism is the one who projects all that stuff onto others.
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55% for a LTA excess lump sum, 25% for a LTA excess pension (but that's a charge, you'd pay that, then income tax).
It's a tax cut. The result of this is you'll pay less tax if you have a pension worth 1.5 million or whatever. If you have a pension worth a paltry say, 950k, it won't make a single difference to your income.
It isn’t that simple though, is it. Which if people take off the political blinkers they would see.
Just saying ‘it’s a tax cut’ ignores, firstly, the fact that pension tax benefit received is tax deferred to pension age. Secondly, the real world effect of inflation on a ‘frozen’ 25% tax free lump sum. And ignores the changes in tax-free lump sum as a proportion of total pension pot that the increase in annual allowance will, as inflation works through the system, enable middle to high earners to accumulate.
Thirdly, and possibly most importantly for Labour when they likely win the next election - is that the increased wealth in pensions that this policy will encourage - and which is currently sheltered from IHT - will be there for Labour to change the IHT policy on, which they’ve signalled they will. One of their policies that I agree with - be free to make good money while alive but don’t perpetuate inequality by unfairly benefitting your kids when you snuff it.
I think, long term, this simplification of the tax system for pensions makes a lot of sense, and sets it up for Labour to go on and make the unpopular decisions around IHT that the tories won’t.
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It's not meant to be vicious or aggressive, more exasperated at peoples' seeming inability to view issues without resorting to tribalism - a failure of rational thinking imo. I apologise if it comes across that way.
He says, almost as if that isn’t exactly the primary determinant in our selection of government, decision makers and their subsequent policies and therefore a rather pertinent aspect to consider…
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Sean, what on earth are you talking about.
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You don't know what you're on about, this is my day job, it's a tax cut (in immediate and absolute lifetime terms) you are wrong and that is that.
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Sean, what on earth are you talking about.
I’m talking about the time you did exactly the thing that makes you so cross when other people do it. You’re as rational as everyone else, which is to say, occasionally but not so much.
Anyhow, on the pensions thing, I don’t understand it so I shall just quote the non-partisan IFS’s response:
“However, the fact that employer pension contributions escape National Insurance contributions entirely, along with the complete exemption of pension pots from inheritance tax, will still see this policy provide further substantial tax breaks to those with very high levels of pension wealth.”
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But... the tax-free lump sum of 25% of total pension pot that you're allowed to withdraw from your pension has been frozen for the last decade
That is not correct. The lump sum tax free allowance has always been 25%, with no monetary limit; I.e. it was unaffected by inflation given it's a proportion rather than an amount.
The monetary limit is a new restriction implemented only in this budget.
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Don't let facts get in the way of the narrative though.
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But... the tax-free lump sum of 25% of total pension pot that you're allowed to withdraw from your pension has been frozen for the last decade
That is not correct. The lump sum tax free allowance has always been 25%, with no monetary limit; I.e. it was unaffected by inflation given it's a proportion rather than an amount.
The monetary limit is a new restriction implemented only in this budget.
I meant the 25% lump sum as a proportion of the (previously) fixed lifetime allowance has been frozen for the last decade. So there is/was a monetary limit in effect - because nobody would contribute above the lifetime allowance. Meaning the real-terms value of the 25% has been frozen and will continue to be frozen, until at least 2028. The value of that 25% tax free lump sum has been eroding over time due to inflation, not much until now because inflation has been relatively low, but it's still a freeze in real terms.
Now that the 25% has been capped at £268k, the tax-free element will erode further year-on-year with inflation, to the point that the 'tax-free' benefit as a proportion of a pension pot will be much lower for the wealthiest than when it was introduced in 2006(?). This is obviously not a major consideration for the average person with an average pension. It will impact those with the largest pension pots the most, in terms of taxed money versus tax-free money. I'm not saying this is not a very nice issue to have to consider, just pointing out the oversimplification of some misses the nuances.
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It's still a tax cut
How many times do you have to be told? In real terms. Its still a tax cut. The LTA was a tax, its now gone. If you really want I can show you how you'll pay less tax on a pension of 1.5 million post lta change compared to pre. For the biggest pensions it's literally hundreds of thousands less tax that's being paid.
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I'm not saying this is not a very nice issue to have to consider, just pointing out the oversimplification of some misses the nuances.
So what was your point in all this again? What nuances are you explaining? That people with pensions worth millions have to worry about that pot getting eroded a little bit by inflation?
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Wellsey, it's not 'just' a tax cut for the wealthy though is it - which is one of the points I'm trying to make here and which started with me remarking about a comment you posted about this pensions shake-up 'pandering to their usual demographic' or something along those lines.
There seems to be a lot of angst about wealthy people benefitting from this policy, which they will, but it appears to be blinding people to the facts that this a really beneficial policy overall for anyone who earns middle income upwards and who wants to contribute to their pension for retirement - that isn't just the tory demographic. Proportionally, those earning a middle to high income will benefit the most from the tax changes - not the very wealthiest who will end up paying more in tax, proportionally. I'm curious to know from those people who think this is a 'bad thing' what they want people on middle incomes to do with their income - pay more in tax?
Is it the best policy I can imagine for all sections of society, no of course it isn't. The world wasn't perfect or fair the last time I looked - a higher tax benefit for low-earners making pension contributions would be a good thing. But it's a beneficial change for a large section of working people, which also simplifies an unnecessarily complicated previous system. A step in the right direction and Labour can change it more again and probably will if they appear credible enough to get into that position next year.
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It's only beneficial if you stand likely to have pension benefits outside of the state pension worth over a million quid. Literally about 1% of the population. The idea that it is beneficial for "a large section of working people" is frankly utter bollocks. Bloomberg estimates there are 8,000 people with pension benefits above the LTA, that seems low to me, but even if it was ten times as many that's a v small part of the working pop.
And that's not what you originally said, you said that the wealthy will pay more in tax on their pensions than they otherwise would, which is not true.
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Seems like you are trying to argue for the sake of it here Pete. Maybe we can all in theory benefit but the reality is that only those at the very top will. The average UK pension pot is £61k. So yes there is a big problem with people not paying enough into pensions and facing retirement poverty. This change won't help this issue at all but it will help those who are the most comfortable be even more comfortable.
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Ali - for example the nuances of how to incentivise high-earners in crucial roles to continue working, via attractive pension systems, while trying to make this beneficial for other levels of earners as well, while trying to make all this seem 'fair' (whatever that is) for as many people in work as possible. I'm intrigued how you'd square this circle.
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It's only beneficial if you stand likely to have pension benefits outside of the state pension worth over a million quid. Literally about 1% of the population. The idea that it is beneficial for "a large section of working people" is frankly utter bollocks. Bloomberg estimates there are 8,000 people with pension benefits above the LTA, that seems low to me, but even if it was ten times as many that's a v small part of the working pop.
And that's not what you originally said, you said that the wealthy will pay more in tax on their pensions than they otherwise would, which is not true.
That's simply untrue though isn't it. Just look at the change in the annual pension contributions - by 50% - from £40k to £60k per year. That allows anyone on a decent middle-to-high income to contribute more to their pension. That isn't the top 1% of holders of wealth in the UK. And the direction of wages is clearly upward. Train drivers are on nearly £60k! (although they're also massively overpaid imo).
And that's not what you originally said, you said that the wealthy will pay more in tax on their pensions than they otherwise would, which is not true.
I think you're incorrect on this too - I said more tax overall, because this is what has to happen when you have an open-ended pot of money, a fixed tax-free element (the 25%), with the fixed tax-free element eroded in value by inflation year-on-year. Look at it again and explain how that cannot be. For someone with £500,000 in their pension they'll pay deferred tax on the remainder of 75% of £500k - i.e. £375k at their marginal rate. For someone who can, since the abolishment of the LTA, now put £10m into their pension they'd in theory now only receive, tax-free, £268k of that - way less than the 25% tax-free element that the person with a smaller pension would receive - and pay tax on that at their marginal rate. Before, they couldn't put more than £1-and-a-bit million into a pension without hitting the LTA, and so would find other contrived investment avenues to avoid the LTA charge. How, all else being equal, is that not paying more (deferred) tax overall?
And it's deferred tax as you know, not tax never paid so it isn't a true tax cut for any of us (except in the current system pensions are sheltered from IHT as you know, so in effect some tax remains never paid, which I expect Labour can and will change to the horror of many).
edit: for clarity on the 25% change.
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That's simply untrue though isn't it. Just look at the change in the annual pension contributions - by 50% - from £40k to £60k per year. That allows anyone on a decent middle-to-high income to contribute more to their pension. That isn't the top 1% of holders of wealth in the UK. And the direction of wages is clearly upward. Train drivers are on nearly £60k! (although they're also massively overpaid imo).
What do you class as middle to high income Pete? A brief bit of googling suggests the 95th percentile for salary in the 2021 Census was c.£80k per annum. I'd call the 95th gentile a high earner, not middle income. Do you seriously think that someone earning £80k per year can afford to pay £40k per year into their pension? The increase from £40k to £60k in pension contributions is going to make fuck all difference to the majority of the population.
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It will make big difference to anyone who sells a house and downsizes, receives a windfall, gets a good bonus one year, maybe does well from investing..., there are countless edge cases where it will be beneficial for tens of thousands of people who aren't 'the 1%'. Also the direction of wages is clearly upward which will take more and more people into this zone of being able to benefit. But more than that, why is it not a good thing?
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The Annual Allowance doesn't work that way. That's a tax on (for DC) the value of your contributions or (for DB) the increase in the value of your benefits within a specific calculation.
So if you have a DC pot and you whacked in 60k to it, you'd pay tax on 20k of that, now you won't. Its not based on your salary, its based on your pension contributions/value.
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I think we're talking at cross purposes here - is that a response to my previous post? I'm aware of how the DC pension annual allowance works (and worked).
What do you make of my point that these policy changes mean a pension pot of £10m (which probably would never occured previously because of the LTA charge above £1m) would now pay deferred tax on £10million minus the new 'frozen' £268k tax-free allowance (which will reduce in value with inflation) versus a pension pot of £500k would now pay deferred tax on 25% of £500k?
i.e. a tax-free element of 2.68% for the super wealthy, versus a tax-free element of 25% for the person with the £500k pot. That's my point about this potentially being proportionally more taxing for the super rich pensioner.
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It will make big difference to anyone who sells a house and downsizes, receives a windfall, gets a good bonus one year, maybe does well from investing..., there are countless edge cases where it will be beneficial for tens of thousands of people who aren't 'the 1%'. Also the direction of wages is clearly upward which will take more and more people into this zone of being able to benefit. But more than that, why is it not a good thing?
Summary of impacts of the pension changes from the IFS:
Impact on work decisions could go either way:
People might work more to take advantage of pension tax breaks May be able to reach savings goal quicker and so work less
OBR thinks former will be bigger, increasing workforce by 15,000
Benefits those rich enough to save >£1.07 million in a pension or more than £40k in a single year
Although annual allowance still reduced above £260k of income Giving people the freedom to save more in a pension is good
Giving rich people subsidies to save even more in a pension is not
Tax-free 25% still limited to first £1.07 million of pension saving
But no NICs on employer contributions and exemption from inheritance tax remain
At a time of really tight public finances with any number of extremely serious challenges facing the country, I simply fail to see how subsidising the pensions of the very well off is something we should be doing. The jobs impact of the policy looks really minimal to me and even if it is as estimated (which it might not be) it’s not going to make any serious headway in dealing with a tight labour market, skills shortage, etc. If the government were at least partially elected on a manifesto of levelling up then it’s clear this policy is not advancing their own stated aims.
There really are lots of reasons why this is a terrible idea.
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Ali - for example the nuances of how to incentivise high-earners in crucial roles to continue working, via attractive pension systems, while trying to make this beneficial for other levels of earners as well, while trying to make all this seem 'fair' (whatever that is) for as many people in work as possible. I'm intrigued how you'd square this circle.
Well good job I'm not a policy maker, but I'd say this is a pretty expensive way to try and get a small number of GPs and hospital consultants to work on a few extra years, which has been the stated aim.
Re: making it 'fair' for as many working people as possible. You do realise the average salary is £33k/yr? So that person is likely to be able to afford to put, say £0 to £10k(?) annually into their pension at most. Increasing the tax-free pension allowance to £60k, almost double the entire average salary, seems to fail on the fairness point if you want to target middle incomes.
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I simply fail to see how subsidising the pensions of the very well off is something we should be doing.
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There really are lots of reasons why this is a terrible idea.
Why is it a terrible idea to incentivise some of the people we need to remain in work - if those people happen to be high-earners?
And how do you propose to incentivise those people differently Sean - if not by trying to make it financially worthwhile to remain working versus retiring?
And Ali - I distinctly remember replying in context of a point about this - supposedly - only benefitting 'the 1%'. You're now talking about the average wage. The truth clearly is somewhere inbetween. I reckon a good proportion of the silent lurkers on here will benefit.
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I think that your assessment of how much money people have to throw into pension pots is madly out of touch. This isn't incentivising savings its a tax break for the highest earners
Your exact comment re. The AA was "That allows anyone on a decent middle-to-high income to contribute more to their pension" which is only true if you assume someone on a decent middle to high salary earning enough to pay more than 40K into their pension a year. "Oh but windfalls!" Well you get a 3 year unused allowance carry forward and did before so you were already protected there.
You've jumped around massively on this one. First it was a stealth tax increase that's trying to get doctors back to work, now its because people with ten million quid will put their money in pensions rather than other tax avoiding strategies that they couof use before but now apparently can't. Firstly good I should bloody well hope people with pensions worth ten million play plenty of tax! Secondly it's still a tax cut because if they had that before the LTA got taken away they'd pay more than their tax bracket because on almost all of that they'd pay that bracket plus an additional LTA charge.
You're just defending tax breaks for the wealthy in a time of squeezed public finances and decrying criticism as tribal rhetoric, well how about this, you're factually wrong, completely out of touch on what constitutes and ordinary financial situation, and your suggestions are less about incentivising ordinary people to work hard and save and more about carefully checking to see if the poor old millionaires are able to take their massive pensions without getting a big bill. Boo fucking hoo.
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My point being the same as Stabbsy's upthread - how much would you realistically need to be earning to be able to afford to put £60k/yr into your pension? And where does that put you in terms of income distribution? To say that this is anything like 'fair' or benefits anyone but the highest earners seems delusional to me. It's in the same league as that guy off Question Time refusing to admit £80k/yr put him in the top 5% of earners.
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+1 to those arguing that the ability to dump >£40k per year into your pension is not a common trait amongst those who I would consider "middle income"! If I downsize, inherit, or get a big bonus the hardship of loading it into my pension over the course of a few years is unlikely to be significant!
For the docs: couldn't they just introduce an exemption for NHS pension schemes, or modify the NHS pension contribution system slightly (e.g. allow you to stop contributing once you hit 1m) without having to give a tax break to the bankers. Though what really baffles me is why anyone with a £1m pension pot wouldn't have already retired long ago!
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To be fair to that guy on question time he's probably miles away from being rich enough to benefit from this change. I can't quite work out if Pete is trolling, doesn't understand the changes or is just completely out of touch.
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For the docs: couldn't they just introduce an exemption for NHS pension schemes, or modify the NHS pension contribution system slightly (e.g. allow you to stop contributing once you hit 1m) without having to give a tax break to the bankers.
Apparently it’s so complicated it takes more than 13 years to come up with this kind of targeted scheme, which is why they’re having to rush through the blanket tax break. #paraphrasinghunt
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For the docs: couldn't they just introduce an exemption for NHS pension schemes, or modify the NHS pension contribution system slightly (e.g. allow you to stop contributing once you hit 1m) without having to give a tax break to the bankers. Though what really baffles me is why anyone with a £1m pension pot wouldn't have already retired long ago!
Yes, they could. Something similar already exists for judges. Hunt said it would take too long and this way would be quicker. Described as 'a sledgehammer to crack a tiny nut' by the Institute for Fiscal Studies. https://twitter.com/PJTheEconomist
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Though what really baffles me is why anyone with a £1m pension pot wouldn't have already retired long ago!
I mean yes I entirely agree with this point. But plenty of people are addicted to chasing the coin, and/or end up in relationships with partners who have developed a taste for expensive lifestyles - careful how well you end up doing as it may become self-fulfilling. So it's hard to judge. The financial incentive is pretty obviously the most strong incentive for most people doing most work. Plenty of other incentives - saving the world, ego, charity, pure love of the task, etc. As per my question to Sean, can you come up with a better way to incentivise these people?
As for the slight straw man of how much people can or can't contribute contribute - I haven't made the point that this is fair, in fact I've made the point that it isn't. And I noted that a fairer system would provide a greater (say 30%) pensions tax-break to lower earners and those on benefits (up to a point). I have argued that the benefits of this aren't restricted to the fabled '1%' as some claim - I'd counter this potentially benefits much more of society than that and this number will only grow over time with wage inflation - Alex get back to us in 10 years and let us know how you're doing.
My point remains, why is people having more flexibility to contribute more into their pensions because they have more spare money than you, even if you personally can't, necessarily a bad thing in principle? Especially when as pointed out it's a tax deferral scheme not an absolute tax break, and the tax advantage is proportionally much less for the '1%' than for the 'high-earner done well', as I pointed out above to Wellsey who hasn't come up with a reply.
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I simply fail to see how subsidising the pensions of the very well off is something we should be doing.
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There really are lots of reasons why this is a terrible idea.
Why is it a terrible idea to incentivise some of the people we need to remain in work - if those people happen to be high-earners?
And how do you propose to incentivise those people differently Sean - if not by trying to make it financially worthwhile to remain working versus retiring?
I don’t think incentivising a very small group of workers to stay in the labour market is a priority for the state at the moment. It’s basically a straight up transfer to the wealthy or their descendants, whereas I believe a progressive tax system that is used to fund things the market can’t or won’t provide is the purpose of the modern state. This is straight up pork barrel politics to a client group that frankly doesn’t need the money. This won’t help us do any of the things we need to do, it’s a waste of money at a time when we have far bigger challenges.
We do have a problem with public sector retention and that can be easily targeted via the pension system if we wish, as other posters have pointed out. We could even spend that money making the NHS or CJS nicer places to work, perish the thought.
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As per my question to Sean, can you come up with a better way to incentivise these people?
For doctors this is fine. I'm happy for the turnover rate in the banking industry to remain high if it currently is, and for others to be promoted in the place of those retiring. As I understand it, places like legal firms with partnership models like a good bit of turnover as it makes it seem more achievable to make partner, thereby incentivizing the suckers who are earning all the fees.
I have argued that the benefits of this aren't restricted to the fabled '1%' as some claim
Yeah, but it sounds like maybe 2% or 3%. That's obviously a big increase vs 1% in some ways, but still a very small minority of the country
My point remains, why is people having more flexibility to contribute more into their pensions because they have more spare money than you, even if you personally can't, necessarily a bad thing in principle? Especially when as pointed out it's a tax deferral scheme not an absolute tax break
This isn't something I've spent much time pondering, but presumably because it is partly an absolute break, given
- that 25% is tax free
- the fact that for the upper (but not super rich) earners it's a way to defer your income to a point when it's likely to be in a lower tax bracket
- stuff about inheritance tax that I've not really looked into but may be relevant
I.e. basically probably 3 of the 4 core reasons why someone earning 100k might want to shuffle 60k into their pot instead of 40k! (the 4th being getting more money in earlier to take advantage of any growth, but I think that one doesn't disadvantage the tax man, at least not in a way that leaps out to me)
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Yep there are good arguments against increasing pension pots precisely because of the fact that they’re used as shelters from IHT. Which I entirely agree with - my approach is make good money and don’t be too heavily penalised for it (by Sean’s wished-for even higher taxes) while you’re alive, but expect most of it to be taken when you die - I’d vote for 90% IHT with super tight laws on loopholes and dodges, but lowish income taxes.
However we don’t live in that world. Labour are free to adjust the IHT laws if/when they come to power, if they have the guts/honesty/political naïvety to face the fallout from a public who want good services, low taxes and the biological hardwiring to want to look after their offspring. With this policy they’ll potentially have more of a wealth pot to tax via IHT should they want to.
The fact that the policy changed to a 25%tax-free break up to a cap of £268k, while the total pot was allowed to become unlimited, makes it a progressive tax if as I’ve tried to show to Wellsey, you look at the difference in tax/free allowance between the doctor or airline pilot with a £1m pot - getting a 25% tax break, and the super-rich hedge fund manager with a £10m pot -getting a approx 2.86% tax break. Also bearing in mind the marginal tax rates paid are higher. It might only be progressive once you’re above a certain level, but it is progressive above that level.
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I'm very confused about how
"My point remains, why is people having more flexibility to contribute more into their pensions because they have more spare money than you, even if you personally can't, necessarily a bad thing in principle? Especially when as pointed out it's a tax deferral scheme not an absolute tax break"
fits with
"there are good arguments against increasing pension pots precisely because of the fact that they’re used as shelters from IHT. Which I entirely agree with"
in a self-consistent way, but hey ho! I'm sure plenty of my stuff in internally inconsistent too.
I’d vote for 90% IHT with super tight laws on loopholes and dodges, but lowish income taxes.
Definitely agree with this
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Because I believe in both ideas - freedom to create, earn, save and invest tax-efficiently in life, and high death duties when you’re gone so as not to perpetuate inequality. Most people only believe in the first but not the second, or neither and just high taxes during life to really crush the spirit (only semi joking).
And whilst we don’t yet have the IHT system I’d prefer, you have to start somewhere if you’re going to change a deeply rooted complex system that’s resistant to change.
And this is a step in the correct direction in my opinion.
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I’d vote for 90% IHT with super tight laws on loopholes and dodges, but lowish income taxes.
As it stands, IHT currently accounts for 0.25% of GDP. Income tax, capital gains and NI together are 16.8% of GDP. Given the deep inequality in household wealth I simply can’t see how even extensive changes to IHT would make any meaningful difference to income tax.
In terms of how estates get passed down, for most people the issue of care and how it’s paid for is a bigger determinant of how much you get from parents than IHT.
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Haven't really got time to engage too much in this debate as need to be on a flight in the morning. But briefly:
"As it stands, IHT currently accounts for 0.25% of GDP. Income tax, capital gains and NI together are 16.8% of GDP" - SeanKenny
As it stands that sounds about right. Let's face it, IHT is currently a bit of a joke.
Doesn't mean it couldn't fundamentally change.
As was previously discussed, there's an awful lot of details about the implmentation that would be needed to get it right.
But it's doable, and a realistic (and IMO sensible) way of fundamentally changing the inequality in the country.
Rather than Labour party policy, which seems to amount to slightly raising income tax and slightly increasing spending.
Or in other words, not really changing much of anything.
(To be clear, I've never voted Tory in my life and I'm not about to start. Doesn't mean I'm going to parrot every silly thing the Labour party come out with).
If the Labour party actually want to do something, rather than just get into power, they need to:
- Rejoin the Single Market and Customs Union. That should be entirely doable without any referendums. They could and should have always have made the case that that was exactly what was voted for. ie: the 52% to 48% was a vote for the softest possible Brexit imaginable. Not gone along with the wet dreams of the lunatics on the right of the Tory party.
- Decide what they actually want to spend / cut money on.
- If that requires more taxation, then getting it via some form of IHT (and I don't really care if it's taxed from the estate, or the recipient) is a very good way of doing it. But yes, the scale of change that it requires to really make a difference is huge, and would completely change the UK housing market. But that's a good thing. The fact that young people today, if their parents don't currently own property, are basically consigned to a shite life regardless of how hard they work, is completely appalling. Whilst a lot of the older generation, basically got to Covid and realised they could retire on the income from the housing wealth they've acquired by virtue of doing not very much of anything other than being lucky enough to own a house prior to the mid 90s (and smart enough to jump on the remortgaging / buy to let bandwagon early on). Changing that requires fundamental changes. And it's what the Labour party should be advocating for if they actually care about changing stuff, rather than just getting into power. Not letting that wealth just get passed down to the lucky subset of the kids in the country with the right parents.
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Because I believe in both ideas - freedom to create, earn, save and invest tax-efficiently in life, and high death duties when you’re gone so as not to perpetuate inequality.
You say you want to reduce inequality, but would prefer to do that by increasing death duties. Fair enough - I don’t necessarily disagree. But to make a fundamental difference this would have to be close to a 100% wealth tax with no loopholes whatsoever. Something which is never realistically going to happen in this country short of a revolution. And you must know that.
But in the absence of that you think pushing more wealth into the hands of the top few % is a step in the right direction?! This is bonkers.
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I can definitely agree on IHT being good for society
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Not getting involved in the discussion about pensions as I've not had chance yet to read what they're actually proposing.
On IHT,
But to make a fundamental difference this would have to be close to a 100% wealth tax with no loopholes whatsoever. Something which is never realistically going to happen in this country short of a revolution.
I know I somewhat tongue in cheek said 100% when I first mentioned this in a late night rant, and yes that's clearly not going to happen any time soon. I do think it could be done in stages, and as was previously pointed out on here, IHT used to be way way higher in the 70s and didn't cause a revolution (was essentially scrapped by the Tories in the 80s).
Admittedly it wasn't terribly effective then, so that's not anything to try and replicate. But if done sensibly in a staged way, even the indication that that was the direction of travel, would stop some of the investment strategies around property which would be a step in the right direction. The details of how it might actually work, would require an essay I ain't got time to write, but as a general direction of travel politicians making noises around taxing wealth, particularly inherited wealth, rather than income would be what I want to hear.
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You say you want to reduce inequality, but would prefer to do that by increasing death duties. Fair enough - I don’t necessarily disagree. But to make a fundamental difference this would have to be close to a 100% wealth tax with no loopholes whatsoever. Something which is never realistically going to happen in this country short of a revolution. And you must know that.
But in the absence of that you think pushing more wealth into the hands of the top few % is a step in the right direction?! This is bonkers.
It isn't a zero-sum game, I don't understand why you appear to think it is? For someone to be doing well it doesn't depend on you doing badly.
If you don't want a high earner to be able to save more of their income into their pension - which is what you seem to be implying - where do you propose it should go instead? Yet more tax? How do you propose convincing the high earner to continue earning in that case? Forced labour?
The issue of low-earners not getting an advantageous tax treatment for savings purposes is something I think should be dealt with. But it's an independent issue, not a result of a doctor, pilot etc. earning a high wage. If you think the high-earner is going to allow being made to fund it through their wage, then that's probably as realistic as 100% IHT.
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It isn't a zero-sum game, I don't understand why you appear to think it is? For someone to be doing well it doesn't depend on you doing badly.
I didn’t say it was a zero sum game. But I do believe in redistribution of wealth, and so do you by the sound of it. But you seem to think the only ‘fair’ way to do this is through massively increased unavoidable IHT on death. And as I said, I’d probably agree if that was vaguely realistic. But as it is, the current method of redistributing wealth is overwhelmingly through taxation in life, via various methods. Pensions being one. It’s not a zero sum game to say that if you can afford to put £40-60k/yr into your pension and accumulate millions in the pot then that money should be taxed. You’d still be doing pretty fucking well in life. And you’ve still got the freedom to put as much as you want into your pension - no one’s stopping you. Those people just shouldn’t expect pity if they get taxed on it.
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I understand that view, of course I do. But it isn't realistic just as 100% IHT isn't - which isn't what I think it should be btw.. 80-90% of any wealth above a relatively high cap - say £400k, inflation linked, would do a great deal of good for society imo. It would leave the less wealthy to pass on their stash and level the field back against all the rich entitled kids every few generations.
Redistribution from wages beyond a certain point, which we're virtually at imo, is also unrealistic. Who'd vote for it, who'd bother working beyond a certain wage, there's no incentives. So you'd need to go full communist and force people. It'd be completely shit way to live, and the services would still be crap!
I think we found the limits of communism, it's horrific. And are currently - as in this weekend and next week possibly - finding out the limits of the current debt based capitalism model based on ultra cheap money. Something new is required - we haven't tried the 'earn good money while you're alive pay it nearly all back once you're dead' model. It gets my vote for the next thing.
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Redistribution from wages beyond a certain point, which we're virtually at imo, is also unrealistic. Who'd vote for it, who'd bother working beyond a certain wage, there's no incentives. So you'd need to go full communist and force people. It'd be completely shit way to live, and the services would still be crap!
I disagree that it’s unrealistic. [Hypothetically speaking for a minute] If you took away the strong influence of the likes of the Daily Mail, Telegraph, right-wing think tanks/lobby groups churning out its anti-redistribution agenda. Plus you removed all culture war distraction bollocks from the debate. And had a more representative voting system, possibly coupled with mandatory voting. Then I think you could have a proper debate about this stuff, and I’m confident you’d find most voters would support a fairer system of redistribution in life through taxation.
As for people not being incentivised to work beyond a certain wage. You don’t need to jump to communism to force people to work. Even taking out of the equation the top few % of earners there’s still a pretty fucking enormous difference in living standards between, say, a headteacher earning £100k/yr vs a classroom assistant earning £14k/yr. So there absolutely is an incentive for people to work their way up. And the reason very high earners in their 50s have left the job market is because they can afford to retire very comfortably at that age, and the only incentive to carry on would be if they want to leave even more money to their offspring. That’s at the same time as huge numbers of workers have to carry on until 67 and either retire with fuck all or just keep trudging on until they die. So if the highest earners were taxed more they might have to work on a bit longer before retirement (good thing for keeping skills in the labour force?) and low earners would get a few extra pounds in their pension pot.
We’ve seemingly never been that concerned about very high earners retiring early in the past, or given them tax breaks to tempt them back. It’s only when it includes people who turn out to be quite useful that the chancellor springs into action! But there’s been chronic shortages in critical NHS staff for a while. These pension changes simply look like classic pork barrel politics using GP and consultant shortages as cover.
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Taxing people who have pensions worth well over a million pounds is the slippery slope to Stalinism now, guess I must have missed that lesson.
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Redistribution from wages beyond a certain point, which we're virtually at imo, is also unrealistic. Who'd vote for it, who'd bother working beyond a certain wage, there's no incentives. So you'd need to go full communist and force people. It'd be completely shit way to live, and the services would still be crap!
I disagree that it’s unrealistic. [Hypothetically speaking for a minute] If you took away the strong influence of the likes of the Daily Mail, Telegraph, right-wing think tanks/lobby groups churning out its anti-redistribution agenda. Plus you removed all culture war distraction bollocks from the debate. And had a more representative voting system, possibly coupled with mandatory voting. Then I think you could have a proper debate about this stuff, and I’m confident you’d find most voters would support a fairer system of redistribution in life through taxation.
So you don't think it's unrealistic. But then go on to describe how it could work if only we removed the free representation of the views of all the people who don't agree with it.
Consider for a moment what you just suggested, and what it says about how you view people who disagree with your worldview.
At best, it's quite a naïve position because there'll always be fringe nut-jobs with extreme views at both ends. It's also potentially quite an arrogant position. At worst it's an incredibly sinister position - to want to shut down opposing views from people who don't believe the same things as you, using claims of righteousness as the justification - joining a long and nasty list of religions, worldviews and cults. It's a disease of many socialists at heart who appear to believe in their own unquestionable righteousness but not that of others who disagree.
I say that being a reader of both the telegraph, guardian, economist, FT etc. It doesn't mean I agree with every word I read in any of them, obviously.
I believe in socialist redistribution - because I believe humans are inherently predisposed to tribalism, bullying and exploiting any perceived strength/weakness disparity. This trend grows over generations and needs controlling. Perhaps that's 10 years in the military and seeing some examples of what underlies civilisation when the veneer is removed.
But ideally redistribute not during your lifetime but after you've gone, after having lived a good life - because you know now is the time you're alive and not any other time. This is a win-win - it encourages creation, enterprise and freedom in life while encouraging socialism after life. The good life imo involves freedom to create, freedom to live how you want without too much economic interference, and various other freedoms in life that the heavier socialist ideologies just can't abide because it destroys their idea.
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There’s just not enough money to raised via inheritance tax for it to have a central role in funding the state - so that last paragraph is just a fantasy.
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Read my post again. I said if you removed undue third-party influence on voters opinions together with distraction from or conflation with other completely separate issues like culture war bollocks and had a debate purely on the merits of redistribution of wealth and nothing else then I’m confident most voters would agree with the principle of more progressive redistribution. You can then start to argue whether that’s better done during life or after death.
It’s nothing to do with shutting down opposing views or any of the other bollocks you wrote.
I just think it’s more likely given where we are that fairer taxation on the wealthiest will happen during life than after death.
And remember - to get to your preferred position of everyone passing virtually all of their wealth over to the state on death then you’d face the same opposition from vested interests, only much stronger.
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the free representation of the views of all the people who don't agree with it.
Pretty poor take; 'all the people who don't agree with it' being the ultra-rich media barons who own the press?
I think it'd be pretty hard to argue against the role that the right-wing media and associated sketchy think tanks and their insidious rhetoric has on influencing public opinion. It's hardly totalitarian to suggest that if media discourses weren't straight-up abhorrent and actually promoted compassion, understanding and critical thinking - and god forbid trying to 'hold power to account' - rather than directing hate and vitriol to the most vulnerable in society then maybe we wouldn't be in such a horrible mess.
Obviously people are always going to have different opinions but maybe wealth redistribution wouldn't seem so bad if people weren't encouraged to believe that poor people are inherently lazy and undeserving of compassion.
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There’s just not enough money to raised via inheritance tax for it to have a central role in funding the state - so that last paragraph is just a fantasy.
There's something not mathematically logical in what you wrote - if you think about the money/wealth gained over a person's lifetime.
Money can either be taxed in a person's lifetime via various mechanisms - purchase taxes, income taxes, fuel taxes, alcohol duty, capital gains tax, NI, dividend tax etc.; or after life via a death wealth tax. But it's the same money (or wealth accrued), just tax deferred to after death, or tax taken during a life. Isn't it?
So it would be incorrect to just blanket state that there isn't enough money, because it's the same money.
But it's even more incorrect then that (you stating there can't be a central role). Because a tax after death 'could' be at a much higher rate than a tax during life - because there's that thing of you not being here anymore to care about paying it. Versus the tax rate during life will always hit lower boundaries by virtue of us wanting to enjoy the fruits of our labour in the here and now and not be taxed to the hilt.
So for the same amount of money you could pay more tax in death than you would accept paying in life. Alternatively, for less money you could pay the same amount of tax as the 'taxed during life' system.
Of course you have to get over that slight issue of the large driving motivation for our existence being to want to propagate our genes and protect our offspring...
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the free representation of the views of all the people who don't agree with it.
Pretty poor take; 'all the people who don't agree with it' being the ultra-rich media barons who own the press?
I think it'd be pretty hard to argue against the role that the right-wing media and associated sketchy think tanks and their insidious rhetoric has on influencing public opinion.
I agree with Pete on this. As much as you may not like it, the right wing press is a representation of people's views as much as it is an influence on them. The Daily Mail doesn't sell newspapers to people who don't agree with what they say.
The vast majority of people are compassionate and kind to those they know and care about. A lot of people, enough to significantly influence national politics (most or nearly most?), don't care very much at all about people who they don't know or who they feel are "other" to them. I think you have to understand and accept that if you want to understand people's political views without leaning on conspiracy theories about how a few individuals mind-control millions of people via the free press.
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Income tax is a tax on earning. IHT is a tax on savings. Earnings and savings are two different things.
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Of course.. that doesn’t tell you a lot about the potential for different ways of going about taxation in a society though, and isn’t very imaginative. It also doesn’t look at money in terms of it being one thing.
For example, savings come from earnings. Other sources being windfalls, gifts, investment gains, property sales, (and inheritance…).
IHT can be whatever you set it up to be. Call it XYZ if you want, it could tax based on whatever we chose it to tax - number of windows in your house extension on date of death, number of pigs owned, weight of second vehicle in a two/car household. The point is the major difference between IHT and income tax is it taxes you once you’ve departed this world not during life. Meaning theoretically it can tax more and/or could tax at a higher rate than an earnings tax can.
It doesn’t do away with the need for earnings taxes. It just theoretically makes it possible to encourage both individual enterprise and redistribution.
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the free representation of the views of all the people who don't agree with it.
Pretty poor take; 'all the people who don't agree with it' being the ultra-rich media barons who own the press?
I think it'd be pretty hard to argue against the role that the right-wing media and associated sketchy think tanks and their insidious rhetoric has on influencing public opinion.
I agree with Pete on this. As much as you may not like it, the right wing press is a representation of people's views as much as it is an influence on them. The Daily Mail doesn't sell newspapers to people who don't agree with what they say.
The vast majority of people are compassionate and kind to those they know and care about. A lot of people, enough to significantly influence national politics (most or nearly most?), don't care very much at all about people who they don't know or who they feel are "other" to them. I think you have to understand and accept that if you want to understand people's political views without leaning on conspiracy theories about how a few individuals mind-control millions of people via the free press.
It's a very valid point however the 'leaning on conspiracy theories about how a few individuals mind-control millions of people via the free press' comment is a bit reductive, surely recent events would indicate that the 'free press' isn't as free as you'd like to think - and it's not really got anything to do with 'conspiracy theories' or 'mind-control' but very real structural limitations.
Regardless, Ali put it best: 'if you removed undue third-party influence on voters opinions together with distraction from or conflation with other completely separate issues like culture war bollocks and had a debate purely on the merits of redistribution of wealth and nothing else then I’m confident most voters would agree with the principle of more progressive redistribution.'
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Pete, the amounts that could possibly be raised by IHT are small compared to income tax, so small that much of what you write about being (partially) freed from the indignity of paying taxes whilst you are alive is just a fantasy. Of course IHT could be higher, but it will never play a huge role in taxation; for scale, alcohol duty brings the state about twice as much revenue.
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I think in abstract theory you’re definitely not correct - because £1 owned is worth the same £1 whatever its source, whether a pound in savings or a pound in earnings, or a pound in valuation of illiquid assets. It’s the ‘mutability of money’ as you know.
And the effects of lowering tax take at one point in the cycle (income) would have the effect of raising the money available to be taxed at another point (savings, illiquid assets and all other wealth owned at time of death).
Whether it’s realistic to raise a lot from IHT is more doubtful. In part because of attitudes. Attitudes can always change though.
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It doesn’t do away with the need for earnings taxes. It just theoretically makes it possible to encourage both individual enterprise and redistribution.
A good sounding idea in theory but in practice how do you stop the less economically beneficial mechanisms the very rich use to keep money in the family and away from tax (trusts, offshored, or worst case just leave the UK for tax purposes); mechanisms that mean money often isn't doing much useful work for the UK? I know some very rich folk and get to hear their views: leaving wealth for their family is often incredibly important.
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Read the last thousand words on death tax.
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I think in abstract theory you’re definitely not correct - because £1 owned is worth the same £1 whatever its source, whether a pound in savings or a pound in earnings, or a pound in valuation of illiquid assets. It’s the ‘mutability of money’ as you know.
And the effects of lowering tax take at one point in the cycle (income) would have the effect of raising the money available to be taxed at another point (savings, illiquid assets and all other wealth owned at time of death).
Whether it’s realistic to raise a lot from IHT is more doubtful. In part because of attitudes. Attitudes can always change though.
I’m not saying £1 is worth a different amount depending on its source. I’m saying there are fewer pounds to tax in estates at death than there are from earnings in the labour market. People consume more than they save, and run down some of their savings in retirement.
I’m struggling to see how a tax that currently raises 0.25% of GDP can substantially replace one that raises nearly 17% of GDP, but clearly I am lacking in imagination. The paucity of tax to be raised here combined with its high political salience is why politicians tend not to fiddle with it, it’s just not worth the hassle.
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the free representation of the views of all the people who don't agree with it.
Pretty poor take; 'all the people who don't agree with it' being the ultra-rich media barons who own the press?
I think it'd be pretty hard to argue against the role that the right-wing media and associated sketchy think tanks and their insidious rhetoric has on influencing public opinion.
I agree with Pete on this. As much as you may not like it, the right wing press is a representation of people's views as much as it is an influence on them. The Daily Mail doesn't sell newspapers to people who don't agree with what they say.
The vast majority of people are compassionate and kind to those they know and care about. A lot of people, enough to significantly influence national politics (most or nearly most?), don't care very much at all about people who they don't know or who they feel are "other" to them. I think you have to understand and accept that if you want to understand people's political views without leaning on conspiracy theories about how a few individuals mind-control millions of people via the free press.
I think you underestimate the importance of the media in shaping people's views and in othering the others in the first place.
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Sean, it’s not that difficult to understand surely?
You seem to be failing to understand, or failing to acknowledge this:
£1 not taxed at the point of income is £1 available to be used elsewhere by its owner. But it remains in ‘the system’, because it’s immutable.
Therefore that £1 remains available to be taxed at various points in its life cycle.
It can only be used a certain number of ways:
It can be used on consumption (at this point it can be taxed), on accumulating non-cash assets to be held; or saved in cash. Ignore buying black market drugs/assets which are untaxed.
So in theory you can adjust the tax take to be applied at different points along the cycle of the £1. And if you take less tax from it early in its cycle, then there’s more a available to be taxed at other points in its cycle - either at the point of consumption, or at the point of asset sales, or at the point of the death of its owner.
Ignoring inflation obvs - where £1 erodes in purchase power over time so there’s also a time value of money as well as imutability.
A lot of this ultimately comes down to the unanswerable philosophical question of who you want to allow to have the power to make the decision on how the £1 that you own ends up being spent - do you want more say on how it’s used or do you want the government to have more say on how your money gets used. Clearly some needs to go to the state for services. The proportions, and when in your lifetime, isn’t in theory as dogmatically fixed as you’re portraying.
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the free representation of the views of all the people who don't agree with it.
Pretty poor take; 'all the people who don't agree with it' being the ultra-rich media barons who own the press?
I think it'd be pretty hard to argue against the role that the right-wing media and associated sketchy think tanks and their insidious rhetoric has on influencing public opinion.
I agree with Pete on this. As much as you may not like it, the right wing press is a representation of people's views as much as it is an influence on them. The Daily Mail doesn't sell newspapers to people who don't agree with what they say.
The vast majority of people are compassionate and kind to those they know and care about. A lot of people, enough to significantly influence national politics (most or nearly most?), don't care very much at all about people who they don't know or who they feel are "other" to them. I think you have to understand and accept that if you want to understand people's political views without leaning on conspiracy theories about how a few individuals mind-control millions of people via the free press.
I think you underestimate the importance of the media in shaping people's views and in othering the others in the first place.
It's a two-way street. There are lots of examples from history where mass media has been used to whip up hate. The seeds of those ideas have to land in fertile soil to take root. Lots and lots of people just do not like those who are different to them. This is, in part, because people struggle to comprehend the world beyond their own experience.
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Think of tax as the state’s claim on productive activity. You’re arguing that an individual will save a proportion of their income (their individual claim on output) and then after many years, the government will tax this, and that this could produce similar revenue as taxing the output as it’s produced all along. It can’t, because people save a small proportion of their income, and many people save almost nothing. Value is also destroyed, at least in part by depreciation, which means a further claim on current output just to stand still. The overall output is much bigger than the amount saved, which is what you’re taxing with IHT.
I clearly don’t have a problem with higher inheritance tax, just the idea that it could possibly replace income taxes to a large extent. This may be dogmatic or whatever, but there are good reasons why all advanced states rely on income taxation to fund their activities. It’s accessible, regular and less damaging to further growth than, say, import taxes.
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I can see the flaws that you describe and I agree you can’t totally replace income tax nor was I saying you could.
But one of the flaws wouldn’t be ‘have to wait many years for the tax revenue’. Unless people stopped dying in the usual huge numbers every day? Wouldn’t the time lag be non-existent? Because in a system where a changeover was underway to increased IHT, you’d start taking >IHT at day n and for a short time, an unfortunate cohort of dead folk would in effect suffer double taxation (legacy income tax, plus increased IHT). From then on, the revenue stream would be constant.
Also, the whole pension tax system works on the basic principle of long-term deferred tax take, as discussed earlier up thread. You pay £100 into your pension, get £20 or £40 tax benefit. Then 50 years later you pay the £20/£40 tax back when you start withdrawing my the pension money.
So deferral clearly isn’t a reason a large-scale taxation system can’t work.
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Also, the whole pension tax system works on the basic principle of long-term deferred tax take, as discussed earlier up thread. You pay £100 into your pension, get £20 or £40 tax benefit. Then 50 years later you pay the £20/£40 tax back when you start withdrawing my the pension money.
Except it doesn’t work like this. I’m currently getting £40 tax benefit per £100, but I’m not going to pay 40% tax on all/any of my pension, so yes there’s deferral but there’s also a tax benefit to higher rate payers.
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I’m not arguing that the deferral is a problem, merely saying that’s how it would work. The problem is that lots of people don’t accumulate many assets, and that their marginal propensity to consume is pretty high, so they would be unlikely to save the extra money from reducing income tax.
My basic scepticism that one can do a great deal with IHT stems from the fact it currently represents 1/156th of overall taxation. Double it, triple it, times it by ten, whatever. I struggle to see how it would replace much of anything.
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I think you missed the point of my post Stabbsy. Which was to give an example of a large scale tax system that uses deferred payment.
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Pete, it wouldn’t work because you can’t spend income tax. They take it before you get it. Everyone expecting 100% IHT would spend like mad in an attempt to leave nothing. Not only would this require taxing the spending instead, maybe via a massive hike in VAT, this would be much harder to approach progressively as taxing ‘luxury’ spending equitably is a lot harder than taxing luxury income. So your already small take would now be limited to those who die earlier than they expected, plus you’d also have state costs for those who live longer than they expect but run out of cash. And, as I mentioned last time, not only old people die. Are you making orphans homeless too, or the single daughter turned carer who gave up her own life to look after a disabled parent?
It’s no surprise that all those above calling for massive inheritance tax increases are not parents. And the guy who had a good year playing with stocks wishes he didn’t get taxed at all. The one thing you can rely on in a tax debate is that everyone thinks someone else should be paying them.
I think a better approach would have been to make a pension contribution exception for the types of workers who we would prefer to keep working, i.e. senior medics etc. People whose income is high but based on actual direct contribution to society, not scaled by running a business or unearned income from investing. Increase taxes on those instead.
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Plenty of things in there I agree with, and plenty I don’t
The guy having a good year on stocks should be using ISA’s btw to avoid any CGT (or rather any double taxation - tax at the usual rates having already been paid on income used for investing).
The sideswipe of ‘unearned income’ is noted.
The idea of doctors getting the pension tax breaks while other professions don’t is hellish and bonkers imo, and leads to profession judgement.
And the idea of ‘productive contribution for society’ sounds wonderful, until you get into the weeds of it in a capitalist world - withdraw all investment money from the public markets tomorrow, then get back to me about how unproductive it all was now the worlds on fire and you’re broke, hungry and there’s no energy or services except for ‘the state’.
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I didn’t state ‘doctors’. There is a staff issue that needs to be addressed, and there must be way of doing it that doesn’t involve handing out tax breaks to any and all high earners. If it is unfair to other professionals then that hopefully will make NHS careers more attractive too.
I don’t doubt you worked hard for your windfall but what did society gain? There’s a slight gain in the style of liquidity over a bank or fund perhaps? And how is it double taxation, the clue is in the name - Capital GAINS? I don’t begrudge anyone doing well but the sudden pivot towards never paying tax again isn’t a great look.
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JB there isn't any 'pivot towards paying no tax. I think you're reading far too much between the lines of a ukb exchange.
There are well-established tax rules around ISA's, general trading accounts, SIPPs and other investment accounts, which those professionals you want to give beneficial pension treatment to will also undoubtedly be using along with half the rest of the country. I can assure you I've paid an awful lot of tax both over the course of 31 years of virtually full time employment (well the last 12 years were at 4-days per week giving me time to slack off and invest/climb etc, but still.. :) On any investment gains outside of an ISA or pension I continue to - last CGT bill was Jan 31st, next one is bigger and due next Jan.
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I didn’t state ‘doctors’. There is a staff issue that needs to be addressed, and there must be way of doing it that doesn’t involve handing out tax breaks to any and all high earners.
I think this is what they did for judges as someone mentioned upthread, a quick google found an article from a couple of years ago with the BMA suggesting the same could be done for doctors https://www.gponline.com/pension-tax-solution-judges-shows-government-doctors-says-bma/article/1708515
BMA pensions committee chair Dr Vishal Sharma said the approach to changing judicial pensions - implemented with the express purpose of tackling concerns over recruitment and retention - showed that the government could do more to stop doctors being forced to limit their working hours or retire early to avoid pensions tax charges.
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having paid more in capital gains tax in one year last year then I paid in cumulative income tax over the last 10 years of full-time paid work in a relatively high-paying job. I feel like I've paid more than my share of tax for one lifetime, much more than a typical citizen.
Not sure I’m reading between the lines. You think you’ve already paid more than your fair share and you think a better system would be to not pay any until you’re dead?
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That's a surprisingly for you wankerish take, and comes across as a pretty shitty thing to post. You're normally reliably sensible and able to not jump to knee-jerk conclusions. But I'll give it a reply.
Here's the full text of what I wrote - which I note you didn't link to (https://ukbouldering.com/board/index.php/topic,30397.msg668141.html#msg668141), for what I said in context. Please show me where I state that, in your words, 'I think a better system would be to not pay any [more tax] until I'm dead'.
I think that you should find the energy and you should continue, and let us know the data for high earners proportional tax take versus comparator nations. Because the data for the high earners is absolutely central to your (your being 'the left wing') views on redistribution.
That isn't an attack of your viewpoint btw and I genuinely don't know the data. Just pointing out that it's always the high earners that the left targets. So it would be good if you posted with the same energy and level of research the same data for the higher tax bands that you just posted for the lower tax bands.
For instance, I've often heard the top 1% to 20% of earners in the UK pay a huge proportion of the total tax take, but also the wealthiest tend to take 'income' from various sources outside of paid work - capital gains and dividends for e.g. which makes it harder to calculate. I have personal experience of this having paid more in capital gains tax in one year last year then I paid in cumulative income tax over the last 10 years of full-time paid work in a relatively high-paying job. I feel like I've paid more than my share of tax for one lifetime, much more than a typical citizen. And as a typical low-maintenance climber I have an extremely low footprint on society in terms of services used.
I also didn't say 'fair share' I said share. Very minor difference though admittedly - 'I feel like I've paid more than my share for one lifetime'.
Fairly sure we've all 'felt' like we've walked a thousand miles, 'felt' like we've eaten enough for ten people, or 'felt' like we were falling off that route 'for ever'. And said or written same. It's a turn of phrase JB, not a literal interpretation to mean 'That's it, I'm done with paying tax! I am never going to pay tax again in my life.'. For you to take what I wrote and interpret that to mean: 'a sudden pivot towards never paying tax again' is a massive jump.
I'd hope someone being reasonable and neutral would be able to see how unreasonable your interpretation is. I'm fairly sure I wouldn't be happy with myself on reflection, if I'd trawled back through a forum to find that sentence and used it against someone in the way you have, and claimed to know their thoughts and intentions.
edit: that's enough politics for a lifetime. :)
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I think it's a bit unfortunate the IHT debate has ended up getting mixed up with a whole pile of other often unrelated stuff, a lot of which I don't agree with at all (yeah I know, it's an internet forum, that's what happens.)
In particular, having now read what the Tories have recently done with pensions, I'm with pretty much everyone else other than Pete on that one - it's a tax reduction for the extremely wealthy, something I don't support at all (as was the Tories previously raising the IHT threshold).
Also, when I've been referring to IHT, I have really meant it as a shorthand for a set of taxes that could prevent wealth being passed down generations, both during life and on death. If it is just on death, then rather obviously, everyone will just pass nearly everything down before that point.
So, unlike Pete, I'm emphatically in favour of wealth taxes as well as IHT (read a range of taxes that prevent significant wealth being inherited), although you certainly have to be careful to avoid putting off investment in the UK (Brexit has so successfully done that though for the time being, that I'm not sure twiddling with taxes is going to make much difference to UK investment at this point).
Where I agree with Pete, along with at least the basic ideas on IHT, is that I don't think increasing income tax past where it is is a good idea. (I certainly am not suggesting IHT is in any way going to replace it though). There's plenty of young people without rich parents on upwards of 50K, who are emphatically not wealthy and are likely to still struggle to ever buy a decent home (after pension, tax, rent and bills in certain areas of the country, a 50K salary often doesn't leave a lot left). To me, they shouldn't be the target of increasing taxes. Whereas people with pension pots over a million pounds (pretty much all of whom no doubt own significant property too and so are likely multi millionaires) - most definitely should be.
"It’s no surprise that all those above calling for massive inheritance tax increases are not parents." - JB
That may be factually true, but the implication is a million miles away from why I'm talking about this.
Indeed, what I'm suggesting would harm my own interests massively - I own a house, and I'm advocating a massive reduction in house prices relative to wages. More than that, I'm one of the lucky ones who still has an EU passport, and so I'll likely be selling up and leaving the UK at some point, at which point any reduction in UK house prices will actually matter to me. I ain't saying this stuff because I think it will benefit me in any way whatsoever.
I'm saying it because I genuinely think that in the last couple of decades we've effectively reverted to an aristocracy. And that young people who aren't part of it are completely and utterly in despair.
As it happens, I read that Green party article on all this that you linked to recently. And I pretty much agreed with all of the analysis in terms of the problems.
Not convinced that taxing the recipient is the best solution, but it could play a part.
"how do you stop the less economically beneficial mechanisms the very rich use to keep money in the family and away from tax (trusts, offshored, or worst case just leave the UK for tax purposes)" - Offwidth
That is certainly the key to the entire discussion, and why IHT has never been terribly successful before (and presumably why Sean thinks it will never have any chance of raising significant revenue). And it's also one of the reasons why lots of not so wealthy people get grumpy with the thought of any kind of IHT, if they think that the rich will get away without paying it.
With cash, shares, companies and a whole pile of other things, it will certainly be extremely difficult (although I suspect not completely impossible given sufficient willing). With property in the UK, I think it could be a lot more straightforward (although still involving significant changes in law).
The practical problem with getting any traction with any of this though, is that for the most part the people who vote are the people who own stuff. And so when the Labour party do their focus groups, no doubt they are right that it would be massive vote loser. At least with those who traditionally vote.
The longer time goes on though, the more young people without any chance of every owning a home increases, and the more I think there's a significant subset of the population that could become enthusiastic about voting if there was a political party willing to genuinely try to change the distribution of wealth in the country.
Combine an element of the above (perhaps increasing over time, tweaking details as you go, and compensating those worst affected using some of the revenue generated), with a complete overhall of the planning system and a massive house building programme. And maybe the changes in IHT wouldn't end up needing to be that extreme. The aim to me at least, was never for IHT to replace income tax. Perhaps to stop further income tax rises. But primarily as one of a number of tools to try and ensure that all the property in the country doesn't forever stay in the hands of the subset of the countries families who currently have it.
Random aside, but to me at least, the Labour party currently seems terrified of saying pretty much anything. They (probably rightly) have come to the conclusion that they can win the next election by largely keeping their mouths shut. And that the last time they really opened their mouths (under Corbyn), what they said was as ridiculous as what Liz Truss was saying (ie: borrow shit loads of money and spend more on pretty much everything, vs borrow shit loads of money and reduce taxes on pretty much everything.)
So on the plus side, at least the current Labour leadership seem to have realised that being economically credible is a good starting point.
But I can't gather any kind of real enthusiasm for a Labour government (aside from being rid of the likes of Jacob Rees Mogg), unless they start setting out how they are actually going to change stuff.
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Please show me where I state that, in your words, 'I think a better system would be to not pay any [more tax] until I'm dead'.
He won’t be able to because that’s not what he said. There were two separate clauses in JB’s sentence, and you’ve added [more] in order to link them together.
It might be a turn of phrase to say you ‘feel’ like you’ve paid more than your share of tax for a lifetime. Especially when you consider yourself someone who doesn’t use public services that much and isn’t planning for kids. But however you interpret it that still means on some level you personally think paying more tax in this lifetime would be unreasonable, despite being in the position to retire at 50. And you came on here to defend a tax break for the wealthiest few % in our society.
Your defence of this position seems to be that instead you’d prefer a system where you (and everyone else) give away most of our wealth when we die as a means to level opportunities at birth. But haven’t explained how you think this could ever be achieved in practice or how you’d muster the political will to make it happen.
And in the absence of your preferred system, you think in the meantime taxes should be lowered for the highest earners, thereby pushing more money into the hands of the people you think should ultimately be giving it away?!
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Nemo has said it a million times more eloquently than me, but he's nailed pretty much exactly what I think about how the tax system could be far better. I wasn't intending to make a case that IHT should 'only' be fixed to apply after death, obviously whatever works best is the best method of doing it which was why I said call it whatever you like and think about it in flexible terms.
The general point I was trying to make was a tax on wealth near or after end of life which prevents passing on excessive levels of wealth into families over generations to the detriment of everyone else. But Nemo did a far better job than me of keeping it coherent.
The ability for people to buy their own property is a big part of it for me and it's a market that's clearly been negatively impacted by unearned generational wealth pouring in to buy property as a safe asset. I noticed it when I came back from Canada after 4 years away from the UK, and prices accelerated thereafter when ultra low-interest rates came in following the GFC 2008. Housing is one of the most important basic needs, and the housing market is a classic example to me of a market in need of strong protections against the forces of capitalism. Especially in a market as tight as the UK's. I don't think it should ever have been allowed to become turned into an investor's paradise the way it has - I've long made the case on here against buy-to-let landlords and people planning their wealth management around the principle of buying multiple properties.
Go and invest in run-down deserted villages in deprived areas and reinvigorate them, if you claim to so strongly believe in the good to society of property investment. Or take the much bigger risk of investing in companies that produce useful stuff that we all need... :) (and then expect to be pilloried by the mob for making any money on any of them).
Sad as it may be to many, people are incentivised by financial gain. They generally aren't incentivised to take economic risks by the idea of high taxes and societal redistribution, even if this essential for a good society. The potential benefit of adjusting where tax is taken from, and when, is that it has the potential to boost growth - which everyone acknowledges creates its own virtuous circle of higher tax take. But I never claimed it would be simple.
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Apologies Pete, clearly I struck a nerve a little harder than I intended. However please don't confuse it as a personal attack, that wasn't my intention at all, just robust debate. And you're right, you've never proposed no income tax, just less.
You statement on paying 'your share' did strike me as remarkable at the time, and I meant to pick up on it at the time but here we are. The 'trawl' took about 30 seconds. I don't think the context of the post adds much to it, but folk can decide that for themselves and agree I should have linked but its a pita on the ipad. I do think it adds context to your position on the last few pages of thread.
I can't see any sense in the idea of there being a fair share of tax that one can exceed paying (other than accidental over-payment). Perhaps you don't either, still it seems a weird thing to articulate. The more you make, the more you pay, the only way a cap would make sense would be if there was also a hard cap on total wealth and income. As it is inequality is rising and that is driven as much by increases at the top end as stagnation at the bottom. I absolutely don't see that the current rates are injurious to ambition.
Perhaps the feel of it being excessive was because you got to realise the full gains before having to pay the tax? I have to pay 5 figure sums most months (not personal obvs) so am perhaps not as sensitive. I think I've already dismantled the argument for less income tax vs more IHT but this illustrates it too - the longer people get to keep the money the more they will perceive it as theirs, the harder they will fight to keep it/ spend it and the more time they will have to do it. As Sean states tax is a share of production and the closer the take is to the point of production the better it functions imo. Corporation tax seems like the obvious thing to increase but perhaps it's the last carrot in the bag post-Brexit, both it and the high rate of income tax are low by European standards.
I do think there should be some sort of tax breaks for people who spend their free time benefiting society. Only some people are motivated financially (less than is typically recognised imho) and such charitable acts are the free oil that keeps society working and mostly go unrecognised. I guess it would be too open to abuse but ideally this would include things like bolting and writing loss-making guidebooks etc. Likewise I've done a lot of free consultancy work over the years for conservation projects and you would think the tax system might encourage such somehow.
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Ali's post pretty much sums up my feelings. But I do pretty agree with what you have said there Pete. IHT needs reform just as CGT does, business rates and council tax. Wealth needs taxing more and work less. All political parties are too gutless/pragmatic to discuss the issues. With pensions surely there comes a point when it is not preparing for your retirement and it becomes wealth management and part of the iht avoidance game. I'd love to think the change is part of plan bringing pensions into the iht thresholds but under the Tories it won't be so it is just going to make it even easier to avoid IHT.
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I understand that view, of course I do. But it isn't realistic just as 100% IHT isn't - which isn't what I think it should be btw.. 80-90% of any wealth above a relatively high cap - say £400k, inflation linked, would do a great deal of good for society imo. It would leave the less wealthy to pass on their stash and level the field back against all the rich entitled kids every few generations.
Redistribution from wages beyond a certain point, which we're virtually at imo, is also unrealistic. Who'd vote for it, who'd bother working beyond a certain wage, there's no incentives. So you'd need to go full communist and force people. It'd be completely shit way to live, and the services would still be crap!
I think we found the limits of communism, it's horrific. And are currently - as in this weekend and next week possibly - finding out the limits of the current debt based capitalism model based on ultra cheap money. Something new is required - we haven't tried the 'earn good money while you're alive pay it nearly all back once you're dead' model. It gets my vote for the next thing.
Looking at UK Gov figures for 21/22 (https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/inheritance-tax-statistics-commentary/inheritance-tax-statistics-commentary) it seems like, at the current level of £325k, only 23,000 deaths in the UK resulted in a IHT charge resulting in £6.1bn of tax receipts.
Assuming this is at the 40% IHT level that would mean a 100% tax would result in £15.25bn of IHT.
Obviously I’m sure there is a lot which wasn’t taxed due to loopholes etc. And if income tax was lowered then folk would have more money to save, so receipts may be higher.
In the same year the Income tax and NIC contributions were £312bn (https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/hmrc-tax-and-nics-receipts-for-the-uk/hmrc-tax-receipts-and-national-insurance-contributions-for-the-uk-new-monthly-bulletin).
Surely you would never get close to getting enough in from IHT? Or would you just reduce it a bit to counter the IHT changes?
And yes, whilst it might reduce some inequalities wouldn't the higher personal income and, maybe, a rush to spend money before death just lead to inflation, which then exasperates inequality?
I don’t t know where i stand on this at all, and obviously any idea would have flaws, but im struggling to see how this one would work in practice. Especially if the rest of the world didn’t follow suit. What would stop people just moving abroad with their wealth?
As an aside we’re already the 4th highest in the OECD countries for IHT (https://taxfoundation.org/estate-and-inheritance-taxes-around-world/) and somewhere in the middle for Income tax.
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Pete - I can’t imagine you’ll find anyone on this forum that doesn’t think the principle of what you and Nemo are suggesting isn’t a good idea (i.e. stopping vast wealth being handed down generations in perpetuity). Unless there’s a lurking aristocrat?
But pointing out a problem that realistically can’t be solved isn’t that helpful. Even after the country was bankrupted when virtually the whole planet went to war we didn’t solve it. There was some effort given to redistributing wealth more evenly, but it hasn’t exactly lasted long. Are we waiting for civilisations to collapse due to global warming as the stimulus to make it happen?
And don’t forget - you specifically came on here to defend a tax cut for the extremely wealthy.
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JB the 'my share' was as I've already said a turn of phrase, perhaps clumsily on a public forum where anyone can dissect words and interpret meaning to their heart's content. Not a literal utterance supposed to mean 'I don't believe anyone should have to pay more than a certain amount per person'. What I do find interesting is the discussion with Nigel on that thread about who actually contributes most of the tax take, which is often forgotten by the mob when discussing high-earners.
I should give up posting really as I'm ill suited to having the patience or skill for choosing words so carefully that they can't be misinterpreted to mean something else. I don't agree that you've dismantled anything, your argument certainly doesn't come across as a dismantlement to me just a set of perfectly valid points for why something might not work, there is an equally valid set of points for why it could work.
And Ali you aged me by 3 years, I'm 47.
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And don’t forget - you specifically came on here to defend a tax cut for the extremely wealthy.
No he didn't. He came on to point out that 'Fuck me people are dumb' for falling for the popular narrative that it is a tax cut at all. Despite being repeatedly corrected by a professional he offered no acknowledgement or apology for this misinformation. But I'm the wanker for using his own words against him.
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On housing policy we are definitely agreed, the way that people have been squeezed off being able to access the ladder is terrible and the access to huge amounts of cheap borrowing has seemingly benefited the landlord class much more than ordinary people.
We need to make buying to let a much more difficult and less profitable investment. But once again good policy runs afoul of powerful interests and frankly ignorant and selfish voting blocks.
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Also if you're curious if you have a pension worth 1.5 million then you'll pay more tax as a hard sum without the LTA than with it (if you minimise the LTA charge rather than taking the LTAXSLS) somewhere between 40 and 50 years of retirement (although you'll still pay less tax as a proportion of your income). That doesn't take into account inflation or changes in tax brackets because I'm not an economist and can't be arsed but I'm going to throw in an assumption that these would on some level cancel each other out, especially as I'd need to calc PIs then and its a Sunday and I already do that all week.
I think one thing that should be mentioned here is the prevalence of UURBs "schemes" which essentially meant many wealthy people ignored the LTA anyway as long as they could persuade the company to give em a free not-pension. There aren't any figures on how many people that is mind cos running pension schemes that aren't schemes is legal but tends to arouse unpleasant attention from HMRC etc. So really when it comes to the pension tax arrangements of the wealthy it's more complex than it seems. I do certainly feel like this is a tax cut on the wealthy in a time of squeezed public finances which is pretty inexcusable. If they want consultants to come back to work change the NHS scheme rules to work like how they already do for Judges etc.
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No he didn't. He came on to point out that 'Fuck me people are dumb' for falling for the popular narrative that it is a tax cut at all. Despite being repeatedly corrected by a professional he offered no acknowledgement or apology for this misinformation. But I'm the wanker for using his own words against him.
I came on to point out this, (why don't you have a go crunching the numbers and at least acknowledge there are more nuanced ways of looking at it JB?) -
What do you make of my point that these policy changes mean a pension pot of £10m (which probably would never occurred previously because of the LTA charge above £1m) would now pay deferred tax on £10million minus the new 'frozen' £268k tax-free allowance (which will reduce in value with inflation) versus a pension pot of £500k would now pay deferred tax on 25% of £500k?
i.e. a tax-free element of 2.68% for the super wealthy, versus a tax-free element of 25% for the person with the £500k pot. That's my point about this potentially being proportionally more taxing for the super rich pensioner.
look at the difference in tax/free allowance between the doctor or airline pilot with a £1m pot - getting a 25% tax break, and the super-rich hedge fund manager with a £10m pot -getting a approx 2.86% tax break. Also bearing in mind the marginal tax rates paid are higher. It might only be progressive once you’re above a certain level, but it is progressive above that level.
the net effect of this policy is, longer term, higher taxes for high earners, deferred from today into their future. Quite rightly many will say, looking on enviously at these big pensions that the young of today will find impossible to build due to the high cost of living - you'll get no argument from me on that point, life is far more expensive for the young of today then it was for the boomers. But many people would argue that the sensible solution to that inequality is to try to scrape back some from the boomers in a way that doesn't destroy current and future enterprise or penalise risk and hard work. Tough problem to solve with no right answer.
Is it the best policy I can imagine for all sections of society, no of course it isn't. The world wasn't perfect or fair the last time I looked - a higher tax benefit for low-earners making pension contributions would be a good thing.
Also the direction of wages is clearly upward which will take more and more people into this zone of being able to benefit.
The last point is important to consider. Most people on this forum would argue that we should be paying higher wages to people currently on low and middle-incomes. While this year's pay rises aren't keeping up with inflation for most people, they are still chunky in nominal terms. That might not be much comfort against 10% inflation but it's important in this context because even now more people than last year will have been raised into being able to make use of this annual allowance, a few more years of low single % rises will see a lot more of the population benefitting from the annual pension allowance threshold which you're all currently pissed at. Following this year and next year's rises, even normal inflation is going to bring a lot more of the population into being able to benefit from this increase. Could the gov have delayed raising the allowance until more people had floated up toward needing it due to inflation over time? Of course they could. Politics hey. Labour would have had to do it in a few years anyway.
That's it, I've made my points. Nothing further to add. It isn't as one-sided as portrayed by the headlines but I do acknowledge the other side of the argument and think it's completely valid to feel pissed.
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The idea that anyone on an average or even above average wage is going to benefit from the changes is frankly absurd. If you earned double the national average and paid a massive 25% of your wage into your pension they wouldn't affect you. If you earned TRIPLE the average it wouldn't affect you.
This idea that it's disincentivising hard work is fucking mental. How many people are earning well over a 100k? How many people have the chance to? The entire premise of the criticism of the criticism of the gov's policy is based on a fucking mental idea of how much money people have.
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Whatever you think about the budget, it would probably help the average person if Johnson is found to have knowingly mislead parliament and suspended. It would be even better if Trump is in prison for a few years at least. Sadly, I suspect that both are just a bit too much to hope for.
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a few more years of low single % rises will see a lot more of the population benefitting from the annual pension allowance threshold which you're all currently pissed at. Following this year and next year's rises, even normal inflation is going to bring a lot more of the population into being able to benefit from this increase.
Really? As I understand it there are two parts to these pension changes: 1) increase of annual pension contribution allowance from £40,000 to £60,000, and 2) scrapping lifetime limit of £1.073 million - now unlimited.
You are referencing part 1) here, so on a fag packet and making assumptions which I suspect are very generous to your argument.... if we assume someone who contributes 50% of their annual income to their pension then they would only feel a benefit now if their income was over £80K. That would put them in the 95% percentile of income at least - https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/personalandhouseholdfinances/incomeandwealth/datasets/adminbasedincomestatisticsdataforindividualsenglandandwales
If you are on £50K now (85% percentile) then if we again generously assume a 10% rise this year, then 3% every year after (your "low single figures") then you will be on £80K in 12 years time. All you have to do then is contribute >50% of your income to your pension to benefit. So even for the top 15% this change is a distant dream!
For this to benefit you "in a couple of years" due to inflation then under my assumptions you would need to be on about £70K already. 93% percentile.
For reference the median (50% percentile) UK salary from that same dataset is £26,300. If we use the same assumptions on inflation then it would take them 36 years to hit £80K.
I suspect the lifetime limit thing may include more "normal" people as it includes pension pot growth. But I agree with Wellsy, the annual limit change is for rich people only, no two ways about it. It will only get more so if Wellsy has a ballpark figure for usual pension contributions, which I suspect are a lot less than 50%?
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Auto enrolment is 3% employee and 5% employer. The standard guidance is half your age as a percentage plus that employee 5% will result in a "decent" income at 65 although that's questionable imo. Realistically if you're putting in 25% including employee contributions you're a very rare outlier and you probably have a very generous employer. If you put in that, and say a third comes from the employer (so they put in 9, and you put in 16 let's say), you wouldn't be contributing 40k a year until you earned like, 140k. So if you earn that and put in that much... you don't benefit from this change cos you're right up against what it was.
There is a pensions crisis in this country, absolutely. Many people in their 20s and 30s at this rate won't retire. Not retire late, not retire but be poor, they won't retire. They'll die in work. But these changes don't touch those people, they don't touch over 95% of people, probably more like 9y-98% of people. They're just a joke. People seem to want to defend them cos... I dunno? I'm not sure why. It seems very contrarian.
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I'd hazard a guess that the % contribution doesn't stay static as incomes rise though.. If I was on 20k I would be putting in that 8%; at my current salary I put in about 15%; if I were given a big pay rise to say 80-100k I imagine I'd be putting in everything I was earning above the 40% tax threshold up to the annual limit.
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I'd been writing something similar to Nige when he made his post and that pretty much sums it up. 99th gentile salary is approx. £168k per annum and those folks would have to contribute 25% of salary to see any benefit. To give you the benefit of the doubt, maybe some people in their 50s/60s who've paid off mortgages and aren't supporting kids could afford higher contributions, but to use current high inflation to support your argument that this is going to be beneficial to anyone other than the already very wealthy comes across as ridiculous.
Also to pick up on one of your previous points :-
What do you make of my point that these policy changes mean a pension pot of £10m (which probably would never occurred previously because of the LTA charge above £1m) would now pay deferred tax on £10million minus the new 'frozen' £268k tax-free allowance (which will reduce in value with inflation) versus a pension pot of £500k would now pay deferred tax on 25% of £500k?
i.e. a tax-free element of 2.68% for the super wealthy, versus a tax-free element of 25% for the person with the £500k pot. That's my point about this potentially being proportionally more taxing for the super rich pensioner.
Pointing out that the new pensions tax regime is progressive doesn't really tell the full story - the point should be is it more or less progressive than it was previously when the LTA was in place? Pretty sure the answer to that is that it's significantly less progressive, but haven't had time to actually calculate - Wellsy made a similar point a few posts back.
Also if you're curious if you have a pension worth 1.5 million then you'll pay more tax as a hard sum without the LTA than with it (if you minimise the LTA charge rather than taking the LTAXSLS) somewhere between 40 and 50 years of retirement (although you'll still pay less tax as a proportion of your income). That doesn't take into account inflation or changes in tax brackets because I'm not an economist and can't be arsed but I'm going to throw in an assumption that these would on some level cancel each other out, especially as I'd need to calc PIs then and its a Sunday and I already do that all week.
The holder of the £10m pot would have been paying 55% LTA charge on any lump sum over the LTA or 25% on any pension in addition to income tax (I think, Wellsy would need to confirm!) which works out at the same 55% if you're taxed at higher rate. What happens now is they pay income tax so, as everyone has been trying to point out, it's a tax cut for the wealthy.
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No, they wouldn't. That's one of your errors.
The person 'over the LTA' likely either wouldn't be working, or if they were still earning they wouldn't be contributing anything to their pension - they put their money elsewhere in other more tax-efficient investment/saving vehicles. They opt out because nobody works to be taxed 55% in a pension on top of their normal marginal rate of income tax. This is why folk just calling this a tax cut from 55% for the rich are wrong (or at least technically it's a cut, but a cut of something that virtually nobody uses and is a barrier to paying into a pension is a good thing) - virtually nobody works for that incentive.
I will reply to your point Nige.
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"Technically its a cut" Jesus fucking Christ pete
You've gone from "it isn't a cut, god people are SO STUPID" to "okay it is technically a cut but nobody actually pays LTA charges anyway" which is also wrong, and also if there are these alternate provisions everyone was using (which yes there was) then getting rid of the LTA is pointless because its not actually affecting anything (other than the people who are paying LTA charges... who do exist and I know because I calculate them).
Just admit you came unto the thread to throw your weight around and call people stupid despite not knowing what you're talking about and then rowing back and changing the goalposts later.
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Going back to the tax discussion which was much more interesting, there are lots of iniquities that need to be resolved to mitigate the hoarding of wealth by the top few percent. IHT is one avenue. Wealth taxes another. There is another area which hasn't been mentioned yet - taxes on property / land. Currently we tax property in 3 specific ways - council tax, business rates, stamp duty, and 2 secondary ways (CGT on non-primary residence, IHT on estates). All have issues. For example (not exhaustive!):
Council tax bands were calculated based on house prices 30 years ago and are regressive. We now have a situation whereby you could have someone in Morecambe (near where I grew up, not affluent) paying the same council tax on a modest house as someone in London in a multi-million pound gaff. Once again the rich are getting a proportional benefit (as with NI dropping to 2% for them). This is low hanging fruit for "Levelling Up" but then again you don't hear much about that now...
Business rates are not payable on land on which the buildings have been demolished, which incentivises degeneration on urban brownfield sites.
Stamp duty is a tax on moving home, as such it is a barrier to the efficient allocation of housing. There is a theory that there would be plenty of housing stock in the UK already if we were all billeted efficiently. If like most people on here you are middle class with boomer parents you probably feel this as you or quite a few people you know will have parents rattling about in the house you and your siblings grew up in, instead of downsizing, while you and your contemporaries, often with kids, are squeezed into a terrace.
Proposals exist to replace all of the above property taxes with a land value tax. If implementable it would theoretically solve a lot of the iniquities with the current system. To my mind the most egregious is land banking speculation, where big developers sit on land. With an LVT there would be an incentive to either develop or sell it otherwise it is a liability. As it is they sit on land drip-feeding houses onto the market to keep prices elevated - cartel stuff. The worst insult is if they buy land speculatively pre-planning, then planning is granted. Here they receive the ultimate in unearned profits - effectively being handed a huge windfall at the stroke of the pen. The pen is held by the state (us) and we just hand this act of fiat windfall over wholesale to the private sector no questions asked. They also accrue unearned profit from any state developments e.g. local transport infrastructure development, local schools, doctor's surgeries etc. This is seen in London where the owners of houses near Crossrail have paid nothing specific towards its development, yet have got a nice quick train and seen their property values skyrocket (+100%). Our modest homeowner in Morecambe also paid for Crossrail and gets nothing. LVT reclaims these private windfalls for the public.
If there was a way to restrict this LVT only to *new* development and landlords of rentals then you wouldn't have to then deal with the politically impossible fact that existing homeowners would also be liable, which of course would fall into the "that affects me = not happening" category. If applied universally it would affect everyone who owns a home, and of course the Daily Mail will always find the edge case of a poor old penniless London pensioner still in their family home which now has a market value of millions. But long term it needs some honest thinking from people. Think about it - if you bought a house 5 years ago and did nothing except maybe repainting inside, the asset on the land - the house - is basically unchanged. Arguably its actually worth less (older structure, boiler, electrics etc). Yet if you sold up now and pocketed the money you would have made a 27%ish profit (UK average). You know yourself you didn't earn that, no amount of new paint is worth that. That is the increase in land value which has been bid up by out of control credit creation by banks over the past decades of artificially low interest rates. Notwithstanding that no-one does actually pocket it as they usually buy another house so all of this is just paper gains which only serve to pull the ladder further out of reach of the bottom. There has been no brake on that until the last year of rocketing interest rates, but unless there is a house price crash all that does is increase buying costs. LVT may potentially be a more long term solution to reducing house price speculation. It also has the potential to encourage mobility, and incentivise development of idle sites. It may also provide a more progressive alternative to the existing property taxes - some estimates are that 80% of council tax payers would get reduced bills, while the current upper bands in the SE would see a 15% increase (waah). Obviously there are practical problems...nothing's ideal but we are where we are, which is a situation in which a lot of younger people can't afford to buy a house, and on current trajectory never will.
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Going back to the tax discussion which was much more interesting, there are lots of iniquities that need to be resolved to mitigate the hoarding of wealth by the top few percent. IHT is one avenue. Wealth taxes another. There is another area which hasn't been mentioned yet - taxes on property / land. Currently we tax property in 3 specific ways - council tax, business rates, stamp duty, and 2 secondary ways (CGT on non-primary residence, IHT on estates). All have issues. For example (not exhaustive!):
Council tax bands were calculated based on house prices 30 years ago and are regressive. We now have a situation whereby you could have someone in Morecambe (near where I grew up, not affluent) paying the same council tax on a modest house as someone in London in a multi-million pound gaff. Once again the rich are getting a proportional benefit (as with NI dropping to 2% for them). This is low hanging fruit for "Levelling Up" but then again you don't hear much about that now...
Business rates are not payable on land on which the buildings have been demolished, which incentivises degeneration on urban brownfield sites.
Stamp duty is a tax on moving home, as such it is a barrier to the efficient allocation of housing. There is a theory that there would be plenty of housing stock in the UK already if we were all billeted efficiently. If like most people on here you are middle class with boomer parents you probably feel this as you or quite a few people you know will have parents rattling about in the house you and your siblings grew up in, instead of downsizing, while you and your contemporaries, often with kids, are squeezed into a terrace.
Proposals exist to replace all of the above property taxes with a land value tax. If implementable it would theoretically solve a lot of the iniquities with the current system. To my mind the most egregious is land banking speculation, where big developers sit on land. With an LVT there would be an incentive to either develop or sell it otherwise it is a liability. As it is they sit on land drip-feeding houses onto the market to keep prices elevated - cartel stuff. The worst insult is if they buy land speculatively pre-planning, then planning is granted. Here they receive the ultimate in unearned profits - effectively being handed a huge windfall at the stroke of the pen. The pen is held by the state (us) and we just hand this act of fiat windfall over wholesale to the private sector no questions asked. They also accrue unearned profit from any state developments e.g. local transport infrastructure development, local schools, doctor's surgeries etc. This is seen in London where the owners of houses near Crossrail have paid nothing specific towards its development, yet have got a nice quick train and seen their property values skyrocket (+100%). Our modest homeowner in Morecambe also paid for Crossrail and gets nothing. LVT reclaims these private windfalls for the public.
If there was a way to restrict this LVT only to *new* development and landlords of rentals then you wouldn't have to then deal with the politically impossible fact that existing homeowners would also be liable, which of course would fall into the "that affects me = not happening" category. If applied universally it would affect everyone who owns a home, and of course the Daily Mail will always find the edge case of a poor old penniless London pensioner still in their family home which now has a market value of millions. But long term it needs some honest thinking from people. Think about it - if you bought a house 5 years ago and did nothing except maybe repainting inside, the asset on the land - the house - is basically unchanged. Arguably its actually worth less (older structure, boiler, electrics etc). Yet if you sold up now and pocketed the money you would have made a 27%ish profit (UK average). You know yourself you didn't earn that, no amount of new paint is worth that. That is the increase in land value which has been bid up by out of control credit creation by banks over the past decades of artificially low interest rates. Notwithstanding that no-one does actually pocket it as they usually buy another house so all of this is just paper gains which only serve to pull the ladder further out of reach of the bottom. There has been no brake on that until the last year of rocketing interest rates, but unless there is a house price crash all that does is increase buying costs. LVT may potentially be a more long term solution to reducing house price speculation. It also has the potential to encourage mobility, and incentivise development of idle sites. It may also provide a more progressive alternative to the existing property taxes - some estimates are that 80% of council tax payers would get reduced bills, while the current upper bands in the SE would see a 15% increase (waah). Obviously there are practical problems...nothing's ideal but we are where we are, which is a situation in which a lot of younger people can't afford to buy a house, and on current trajectory never will.
I like the idea of land value tax. I said somewhere else I think stamp duty is crazy, you basically pay more tax based on the seller's capital gain. Very strange and doesn't work like this on other assets. You should pay tax based on the benefits you receive.
They have implemented land value tax in some states of Australia, must be some analysis on it out there somewhere.
It's hard to assess the relative benefits of different taxes, but I believe that we have been misdirected by papers etc to focus on high incomes vs wealth. High incomes can be (theoretically at least) achieved by people from any background; but only a tiny percentage of very privileged people have massive wealth that passes across generation (the sort of wealth that enables you to own a media empire). I remember a stat from work that 13% of wealth crosses more than 2 generations. If I was in charge it would be that wealth that I'd be going after vs penalising people who have worked hard and contributed to businesses, entertainment and economy and managed to earn high incomes. Practically don't know how - but to get a fairer society you have to have your principles right first I think.
(Edited in brackets to clarify my thoughts)
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Stamp duty is a tax on moving home, as such it is a barrier to the efficient allocation of housing.
It's worth remembering* that during the pandemic there was a stamp duty holiday and that benefit didn't seem to be realised as lower house prices.
*having completed a fortnight or so before this happened I remember it bitterly.
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I personally don’t think taxation has much to do with house price increase. Cheap credit has facilitated the rise, but I think the main driver of house price inflation is because the desirability of owning a home has massively increased. And that is because the alternatives to owning a home are as bad as they probably have been for a hundred years. No council housing to speak of, the stigmatisation of council housing and a rental market that’s like the wild west.
In my view the best option to deflate the housing market gradually would be to massively increase the stock of council houses and regulate the private rental sector so tenants have security like they do in many parts of Europe.
If it was up to me, i’d tax BTL to make it basically unprofitable for landlords, but then offer to buy their equity at above market value and give the houses to local authorities. I’m not sure what the recent rate rises have meant for this, but in 2019 it would have been possible for the government to borrow to buy every single rental property in the uk, and the interest on it would still have been less than the housing benefit bill.
Also, to counter Nemo’s moan about Labour’s borrowing last election, a large proportion of that was to go towards capital spending. So yes, there’s interest payments on the loan which is paid for by taxation, but then you get for your money offshore wind farms, council housing, utility companies, rail companies, mail etc which would pay for them selves. All of which currently send huge amounts of taxpayers money offshore in the form of subsidies towards profits. Definitely not in the same bracket as borrowing for tax cuts imo.
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This is a fun watch:
https://twitter.com/thehistoryguy/status/1638620251502804992?s=20
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But I agree with Wellsy, the annual limit change is for rich people only, no two ways about it. It will only get more so if Wellsy has a ballpark figure for usual pension contributions, which I suspect are a lot less than 50%?
Was going to reply to this earlier Nige then got a stomach bug. In response, your typical earnings calcs seem about right - I accept that point. You and Wellsey the pension professional aren’t considering the whole picture though - if you were correct that only our pantomime villains ‘the rich’ are the ones who benefit from the increased annual allowance, then I’d be inclined to agree that these weren’t positive changes. But you aren’t correct, because there ‘are’ more than 2 ways about it, I'll show some examples. I think if you analyse this you’ll come to the same conclusion I have that it's beneficial to have increased headroom because it provides more flexibility for flexible life circumstances. I’m guessing Labour came to the same conclusion too - perhaps why Labour haven’t said they’d reverse the increased Annual Allowance - as far as I can see they've only said that they’d reverse the LTA… (which is also dumb imo because it's progressive and provides low-hanging tax fruit for reducing further in future).
Before looking at who does benefit from the Annual Allowance let’s be clear about who doesn’t. A short list covering a lot of people:
1. Everyone earning under £40k per year AND who doesn't foresee in their lifetime ever earning over £40k.
These people can sit back safe in the knowledge that no, the annual allowance increasing doesn't change anything for them. I acknowledged this and think something much better could be done for lower earners. More than that, I think the pension system shouldn't be allowed to be changed by any one political party of any stripe. It should be a cross-party issue. The whole point about pensions is by definition they use a very long-term outlook because they're supposed to be an aid for people to plan their retirement savings. When long-term planning you want some certainty that the tax treatment you plan for will look something like what you actually get. It's the same in business investment or with buying long-term bonds - you don't invest with a 20-50 years view based on the assumption of a volatile landscape. Turning pensions into another political toy as Labour and the Tories have done benefits nobody, and risks turning people off saving into pensions if they think the other side are going change it again at will in a populist pantomime. Obviously some changes do need to be made sometimes.
A better and fairer system all-round might be a flat rate of 30% tax relief on everyone’s pension contributions, whether they’re a 20% taxpayer or 45% tax-payer. With an Annual Allowance set to say around £60k, with no lifetime limit. With the same progressive taper on the tax-free lump sum that’s currently in place of £268 – or say knock it down to £200k (which is what’s going to happen over time imo, writing’s on the wall). That’s a system that would benefit more people at the lower end of earnings than at the higher end and would be redistributive – high-tax-payers would be paying to subsidise pensions of low-tax-payers.
That isn’t 10 million miles from where we are - the unfair element in my view is no tax-relief % rate boost for low-earners, and a boost on tax-relief rate for 40/45% earners (but bear in mind most of that's going to be paid back by a lot of high earners with savings over £1m, and progressively more and more of it will end up being paid back).
Are Labour campaigning for something like this as the alternative? That’s a genuine question - I don't actually follow politics closely enough to know for certain. From what I know I don’t think Labour are, probably because it would generate too much outcry from a great many of the supposedly ‘good’ types of rich people such as doctors and civil servants not to mention the supposedly ‘wrong sort‘ of rich people such as bankers, businesspeople, investors and assorted asset-owning layabouts. If Labour aren’t actually campaigning for a better alternative policy, where’s good about them playing populist class warfare politics over this set of changes by saying they'd reverse the LTA? The LTA which the current lot have just made progressive, by freezing and separating the 25% tax-free sum frozen. From here (https://www.lcp.uk.com/our-viewpoint/2023/03/government-takes-the-sting-out-of-pensions-tax-but-some-changes-could-be-short-lived/):
The intention seems to be to hardcode this limit so that over time the scope for drawing tax-free cash will reduce in real terms.
A narrative that focusses only on 'the unfairness of group x benefiting', but excludes considering who else benefits isn't a useful frame to understand an issue; secondly in this case it's logically incoherent - because Labour are actually arguing that they want some already rich people - senior medics - to benefit more than everyone else, by singling them out for a system that would be even more unequal than the system that they're complaining isn't fair!
The perceived problem can't be that it's unfair that 'the rich benefit out of this'. Your/Labour's issue is partly to do with the rich doing well as usual but also partly, in your opinion 'the wrong sort of rich' are doing well in addition to the 'good' sort of rich. But that road leads quickly to a world of horrible profession/class warfare.. something we're very good at doing in Britain.
By my calcs the below 3 groups benefit from the increased Annual Allowance. They aren’t ‘the rich’ that you and Wellsey are claiming are the only ones to benefit:
Group 1. Anyone who receives lumpy annual income from periods of work fluctuating between high annual pay and no or low annual pay. This group benefit from the 3-years of unused allowance/100% of wages rule.
Group 2. Anyone who finds themselves at any time in the future after April 6th, in both of the following circumstances:
Earning over £40k.
AND
Receive any lump sum of money that if contributed to a pension would take their annual contribution over the old annual allowance of £40k.
This group benefit from the 3-years of unused allowance/100% of wages rule.
Group 3. Anyone returning to work after they’ve started to draw a private pension. This one’s simple – these people now have a £6k better annual allowance over the old £4k maximum allowance. They’ll benefit at lower overall amounts of money.
Examples,
Group 1 is an increasing trend in the workforce as work becomes more flexible. an uncommon type to find in the climbing scene – the ‘smart young’, well-educated climbing/surfing/lifestyle bum of the 21st century. It comprises people doing highly-paid contracting work between periods of low earnings, e.g. say a 20 or 30-something tech contractor, earning say £5k one year, £81k the next, £5k the next, £81k the year after. Low outgoings. That’s an average wage over 4 years of £43k – not ‘the rich’. Or try the calcs with £10k, 10k, £10k, £100k – an average wage over 4 years of £32.5k. You could call them the time rich maybe, taking time off between high-paying projects. High numbers in the Labour demographic.
Group 2. Many people reading ukb will be in group 2. This situation is going be increasingly common as the boomer generation are in the late stage of their lives and this generation own an infamously outsized pool of asset wealth. So significant lump-sums of money from proceeds of the sale of this asset pool are going to be passed down to offspring over the next 30 years. Slowly at first, but increasingly so. Lets say you ended up receiving for e.g. an £85,000 lump-sum inheritance from sale of a family house. With the new allowance a person on a £43k wage can max out their pension by £3k more per year than they could under the old allowance of £40k. They could do this each year @ a maximum of 100% of their wage (up to a wage of £60k) until any lump-sum of money had been put into their pension. All contributions received tax relief so using 20% each £3,000 increased allowance requires £2,500 from you and £500 comes from the taxman.
Obviously someone could still do the same as the above under the £40k annual allowance - and/or do so on a lower wage than £40k - but depending on the specific amounts involved and on the specific wage, it could take more years to pay in the full amount under the old system then it would under the new higher annual allowance.
This cohort is the middle class, 30-something to late-middle aged. Many are Labour’s typical demographic, perhaps a 60/40 split Labour/Tory?
Group 3 has also become increasingly common recently - all those 50-something middle-classes who’ve retired from full-time work but keep on doing a bit of work. A cohort I’d a guess are broadly evenly Labour and Tory, maybe skew 60/40 to Tory?
None of the people in the above 3 groups necessarily fit into the category of ‘the rich’.
It’s beyond doubt the rich - say millionaires with high levels of asset wealth or regular earners on £80+k year-in year out - will benefit from the increased annual allowance. That’s almost inevitable when some people have more surplus money than others to allocate. If it isn't pension contributions then it's put into something else, you can't stop people spending their money unless you take it all off them. And if you look closely you can see this is actually a stealthy increase of deferred income tax on the very highly paid.
As I say I don’t see Labour advocating for any serious tweaking of the pension system? If I were a political party that was claiming to want a better system for low-earners I'd be arguing for something along the lines of the 30% all-round system as per above.
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If you earned 5k then 81k then 5k then 81k then 1) that's very unusual but whatever and 2) you can carry forward your annual allowance from year to year so under current rules they could put in £0 then 80k then 0k then 80k (in the mad scenario where you took home 2k in four years to pay for your entire life but whatever)
without exceeding the annual allowance before it goes up and see no additional tax charge, ergo, this is not a tax cut for such people
Again, anyone who can afford to put 40k into their pension on average across three years is a high earner OR is inheriting lots of money. It is essentially only a benefit for people in a very small minority that most of us will never be in.
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If you earned 5k then 81k then 5k then 81k then 1) that's very unusual but whatever and 2) you can carry forward your annual allowance from year to year so under current rules they could put in £0 then 80k then 0k then 80k (in the mad scenario where you took home 2k in four years to pay for your entire life but whatever)
without exceeding the annual allowance before it goes up and see no additional tax charge, ergo, this is not a tax cut for such people
Again, anyone who can afford to put 40k into their pension on average across three years is a high earner OR is inheriting lots of money. It is essentially only a benefit for people in a very small minority that most of us will never be in.
You’ve never been a consultant/contractor have you? :tease:
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Thanks for explaining that Pete. So basically I need to work every other year but twice as hard or get an inheritance and it's a great change. Doesn't seem particularly likely I'm going to benefit.
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Heres what is the case
If across 3 years, between you and your employer, you have 120 grand spare to whack into your pension, then you are not quite well off enough to be at the point where the change benefits you.
I dunno about anyone else but I feel like if having 120 gees going spare is just below the point where a tax adjustment is beneficial to you, then that's an adjustment that only benefits people earning a lot of money.
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Edit. Forget it. There are still situations where it's a benefit!
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Pete - you seem to be going to extraordinary lengths to try and defend this policy.
Yes some people on UKB might benefit from it through inheritance (me included). Same with other tech surf bums you know or know about with very high earning potential choosing to work part time, so aren’t what you define as ‘the rich’. Is that representative of the workforce as a whole? Is it fuck. So is it the right policy to introduce given the state of most people’s finances currently? No.
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Incredible interview with Michelle Mone on the PPE Medpro scandal.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001v97h/michelle-mone-admits-she-lied-but-says-shes-a-scapegoat
Choice quote:
I don't honestly see there is a case to answer. I can't see what we've done wrong. Doug and the consortium have simply delivered a contract.
Interviewer: [but you've admitted today that you lied to the press]
That's not a crime. Saying to the press that Im not involved, to protect my family, it's not a crime. The press have got nothing to do with my family. I was protecting my family.
She's completely delusional!
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Incredible interview with Michelle Mone on the PPE Medpro scandal.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001v97h/michelle-mone-admits-she-lied-but-says-shes-a-scapegoat
Choice quote:
I don't honestly see there is a case to answer. I can't see what we've done wrong. Doug and the consortium have simply delivered a contract.
Interviewer: [but you've admitted today that you lied to the press]
That's not a crime. Saying to the press that Im not involved, to protect my family, it's not a crime. The press have got nothing to do with my family. I was protecting my family.
She's completely delusional!
Yes, but that’s not a crime. Apparently.