Best Of

I must confess that I am finding our politics so deeply depressing at the moment that I am finding it harder to even comment on it.

The leadership of the main parties is utterly uninspired and seems to have no idea what they want (other than to be in power). Reeves is a shockingly poor Chancellor whose initial budget has killed off growth in the UK, growth that is essential to make her numbers work. They Tories failed to address the real and substantial problems that we have in investment, excess consumption, balance of payments, debt and skills. Modest efforts such as Hunt's policy of allowing 100% write offs for investment were welcome but not even close to sufficient.

I personally find Reform repugnant. There is a deep underlying strand of racism, a determination to live on "alternative facts" and a reluctance to engage with real world problems. I will never vote for them.

The Lib Dems are teetering on the verge of total irrelevance and show no signs of any kind of breakthrough. The Greens are even worse. As for the SNP up here, words simply fail me.

I am now 63. I just missed voting in 1979. I cannot recall a time in my adult life where we had such a range of problems and no real hints of any solutions from anyone. We are not attracting people of the requisite talent into politics. Reform thrive on the None of the Above ticket. I personally put them at the top of the list for None of the Above but you can begin to understand peoples' frustration and irritation with what they are being offered. I am struggling to see how we fix this.

You are, David (if may call you that) jut a year or so older than my elder son and I have to say that agree with you about our politicians, although I'm very aware of the need NOT to look back to some long-ago Golden Age. I would not put many of Labour's current leaders in the same ability bracket as, say Robin Cook or Gordon Brown let alone Michael Foot, Denis Healey, or, going further back Harold Wilson or Aneurin Bevan. Yes they had their faults but they also had beliefs.
I wasn't a Thatcher fan, but she had a vision, mistaken though I thought it to be. And she was wise enough to have a 'critical friend' close to her. As well as able lieutenants.
As far as the LibDems are concerned, one cannot, absolutely cannot, realistically equate Ed Davey with Jo Gromond, David Steel or Paddy Ashdown. Jeremy Thorpe had massive clay feet but he was an inspirational speaker.
Reform scares me, to be honest.

I'm only 49, but I'm sceptical there was ever a golden period of competent politicians. Politics is incredibly difficult and required mastery of impossible swathes of detail. We award yesterday's politicians a gravitas they have now through experience but didn't have at the time. And previous generations didn't have to contend with social media or 24hr news.
Rachel Reeves is still the weakest chancellor of my lifetime by a country mile, mind you.

I was about to post something similar, but I don’t even agree Reeves is the poorest chancellor of my lifetime.

Recent goings on in America have made me reassess where we are politically. It’s not that bad. Very online political people like us have a tendency to catastrophise. And there’s a sort of bias in all of us that assumes things aren’t as good as the old days. We remember the great statesmen and forget the shits.

What we have in current British politics is: a Labour governing party that is a bit uninspiring, with a seemingly mediocre chancellor but some decent cabinet ministers, at least some modicum of direction in policy making and a PM who is not an embarrassment on the world stage.

A main opposition party that has gone through a decade-long psychodrama and is struggling for a voice, but still by and large avoids out and out Trumpist mendacity and has a healthy internal debate without the cultishness of its American counterpart.

A liberal party that is, yes, often hypocritical when balancing national policy with local campaigning, but has a pretty decent set of 72 MPs and is criticised mainly for that local hypocrisy and lightweight stunts by its leader. None of which are particularly new complaints.

A green party that is no worse or more out of touch than its predecessors, and a populist right party that is, well, almost cuddly and centrist compared to its putinist or neonazi European brethren, or indeed the actual administration of the USA.

Nationalist and regionalist parties that rarely go beyond bog standard blaming of Westminster and are miles away from engineering a breakup of the Union.

We still have a parliament mainly filled with people who want to do what’s best for their communities and the country, and have plenty of competent, intelligent people amongst them.

Hey, Keir, how about if you're getting rid of useless quangoes you get rid of OFWAT?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c86pvye8850o

And while you're about it, Ofgem are just as bad.

You're being harsh. Who could possibly have foreseen that allowing a public utility to load itself up with tens of billions of debt, all paid out to the owners in dividends, with the debt burden sustained by the difference between what they could get away with charging the public and the then historically low gilt rates was a risk? Surely it was sensible to assume that debt would remain at historically low interest rates indefinitely and that when it came time to roll over that debt they would be able to borrow at the same low rate? How could it have been foreseen when the price of that debt went up the company would be desperate to squeeze its poor customers even harder?

I mean, its not like OFWAT employed teams of well paid economists or could be realistically expected to reach a judgement on all of this, is it? As long as the forms were filled and the boxes ticked and the public sector pensions accrued what was there to worry about?

Let them go bust.
This is beyond taking the piss; it's outright contempt for government, regulator (who merits it), and customers.

Why the fuck should we bail them out again ?

Thames Water begs to be spared fines and costs warning bidders will walk away

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/mar/14/thames-water-asks-ofwat-to-be-spared-fines-costs
Thames Water is asking to be spared billions of pounds of costs and fines over the next five years and heap more on to bills so it can attract new investors, the Guardian can reveal.

The struggling water company is racing to find a buyer over the next eight weeks and is trying to persuade the regulator Ofwat to grant it significant leniency on penalties and extra costs, to attract bidders. That would mean customer bills rising by far more than the 35% it has been allowed...

They really are shameless, aren't they?

I must confess that I am finding our politics so deeply depressing at the moment that I am finding it harder to even comment on it.

The leadership of the main parties is utterly uninspired and seems to have no idea what they want (other than to be in power). Reeves is a shockingly poor Chancellor whose initial budget has killed off growth in the UK, growth that is essential to make her numbers work. They Tories failed to address the real and substantial problems that we have in investment, excess consumption, balance of payments, debt and skills. Modest efforts such as Hunt's policy of allowing 100% write offs for investment were welcome but not even close to sufficient.

I personally find Reform repugnant. There is a deep underlying strand of racism, a determination to live on "alternative facts" and a reluctance to engage with real world problems. I will never vote for them.

The Lib Dems are teetering on the verge of total irrelevance and show no signs of any kind of breakthrough. The Greens are even worse. As for the SNP up here, words simply fail me.

I am now 63. I just missed voting in 1979. I cannot recall a time in my adult life where we had such a range of problems and no real hints of any solutions from anyone. We are not attracting people of the requisite talent into politics. Reform thrive on the None of the Above ticket. I personally put them at the top of the list for None of the Above but you can begin to understand peoples' frustration and irritation with what they are being offered. I am struggling to see how we fix this.

A senior civil servant tricked the Government into paying him for three full-time jobs as he used working from home to help him to go undetected for at least two years.

Cabinet Office documents reveal the man worked for both the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (Defra) and the Department for Health and Social Care (DHSC) between 2022 and 2024.

It added that the official held three jobs at the same time on two separate occasions and was only identified when a government fraud squad stepped in.

The case, first reported by the i newspaper, showed the senior civil servant, who held higher security clearances in two government departments, was able to avoid initial detection by lying about his employment history.

Disgraceful!
Only non-executive directors are allowed to have multiple jobs paying a fortune for sod all.

Weird how so many posters who don’t like/don’t miss Leon bother to take the time to post something about him.

For someone who is banned from the site he’s done well to be still spamming it.

That has been one of the benefits of his temporary absence- considerably less spamming of irrelevant shite.

I think I am the only poster who has made the comments you have suggested, so you can blame me, but no one else.

The problem with the absence of Sandpit and Leon etc is in a nation where 25% now back Reform and at least 45% the Tories or Reform this site is now dominated by left liberals and Remainers.

The number of Tory voters on here now is in single digits and I can't think of a Reform voter except maybe Lucky guy who would be Tory if Jenrick was their leader

We should run a poll. I think you’d be surprised on the Tory count.

When you’re at one end of the political spectrum it’s no surprise everyone else seems to be at the other. BJO would doubtless tell us the whole forum is full of Tories.

At a guess, I’d say Lib Dems and Tories are over represented here vs polls, Reform and Green are underrepresented, and Labour is in line.

Reform are vastly underrepresented on here, there are probably more Green than Reform voters on PB

You're implicitly assuming PB is a random sample of the UK voter. Which it certainly is not. Income, education, age, IT cluedupness, all score differently from the average voter. For all I know the proportion of RefUK on here is actually correct when those factors are considered, together with their interaction.

To be fair to HYUFD, I think that is his point - that this board isn't representative - implicitly (?) for the reasons you set out.

Not only is this site something of a middle class bubble (though I certainly wouldn't say a left-leaning middle class bubble - we have the full range of middle class opinions on here) - for many of us we all exist pretty much in middle class bubbles. So (and I think this was HYUFD's point) it is at the very least interesting when we get someone on here with views from outside that bubble.

And to Mexicanpete's point - I quite like the random shite that some people post. I mean, I like politics, or I wouldn't be here - but it's nice to broaden our range beyond politics.

We, inevitably, are overrepresented by people who are either (a) retired, or (b) work in jobs where we have our own computer and are trusted to manage our own time.

This rules out large segments of the population.

a

Off Topic
Anyone seen our resident narcissist recently? It's very quiet atm.

{Looks at long list}

Which one?

@Sandpit isn't a narcissist but he did flounce-ish. Has he come back?

Talking of PB events, somebody's mum died recently but my swiss cheese memory misfiled the name. Can somebody remind me plz?

I suspect events post 1/10/2025 have overtaken @Sandpit . I don't share his politics but he was interesting, holding the absurdly contradictory view of being both very much pro-Ukraine and pro-Trump. His post Trump inauguration analysis would be very welcome.

Yeah, I miss sandpit too. I disagreed with him about almost everything, but he was generally kind and gracious, and also interesting. I felt quite sorry for how conflicted he must be feeling re Ukraine.

The first poll in Runcorn and Helsby ahead of the upcoming by-election has Reform UK winning the constituency

https://x.com/PolitlcsUK/status/1900457587335643348

Anyone surprised?

How can anyone look at what has happened to America and still want British Trump with more MPs?

What they want is stuff to happen and things to work. They want GP appointments and an NHS waiting list of less than 6 months. They want the criminals warehoused. Some improvements on the high street would be nice.

Round here, the council is "consulting" about moving bin collections from once every two weeks, to once a month. The well off make extra arrangements. The poor people on the estates have a pile of stinking garbage. But they are all Deplorables or something. So that's all good then.

Telling people that nothing can be done and no one can do it, is a simple recipe for "Well, we will try this lot, then"

This is why Starmer is trying to do stuff.

And when people do try the other lot, as they will with Reform they merely get abused for their choice. But why not when other parties have lied to them and let them down time and time again. Nothing to lose really and those abusing them for their choice were never really on the side of these communities anyway.

The really big issue where I am is a group of youths in the town centre on a Friday and Saturday evening causing problems and the police know about it, have ‘spoke to them’ but it never improves and people and businesses and the town suffers as a consequence. It’s not about ‘being back the birch’ it’s just about making a visit to town enjoyable. It’s been going on a few years. Little happens.

I’ve been impressed with Starmer this year. Not just on Ukraine but on growth and a few other things. There are signs he gets it and is growing into the role.

So many things in the UK are like that. Lots of things have been allowed to slip, lots of people in power just shrug and totality it gives the impression nothing works.

And of course on the flip side of the coin, highest tax for 50+ years.

Too many politicians have in recent past thought give a speech or two and that is that issue sorted.