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A Fukker government is going to need to appoint a lot of peers very quickly. They obviously can't all come from the ranks of the Third Positionists, petty criminals, terminally unemployed and mentally ill that form the bulk of the Fukker membership. In those circumstances I could see a Fukker peerage being attractive to Lord Johnson of Uccle and Henly. Ditto other disgusting tory relicts like Chopey, Shappsie and IDS.

Morning all. I was reflecting on this over the last few days. Not Boris going fukker (though joining a party which describes his primary hobby would be fun), the need for Reform to have capable people.

So far they seem to attract the mad, bad and dispossessed. We have seen in Reform councils how these people come a cropper when the rhetoric of "all the money is wasted on woke" splats against reality. They have no ideas other than bad ones based on fantasy, so actually turning things around becomes difficult.

Who are the people being lined up as fukker candidates for Westminster? The mad, bad and dispossessed. Should we be unlucky enough to have these fukkers in government, the only ones capable of doing anything are the ones who have already proven themselves to be unfit and incapable.

Which leaves the Lords. So far we have a former handmaid leading the party in Scotland as the highest profile. Is the intention to attract people from industry? Lets be honest, they'll be spivs won't they?

So back to Boris. Why on earth would he want to join that?

The appeal of populism, of whatever flavour, is that it claims to offer easy solutions. "Your life sucks, but there's one easy trick that to turn it round, but THEY don't want to do it."

That's fine at a campaign rally, but hardly ever works in government. There's nearly always a very good reason for not doing the one eady trick; either it doesn't work or it comes with horrible consequences. That's when it gets... "interesting".

Populism is partly right. By and large, people in power in Western democracies don’t care for, or about, the people they govern. Their empathy (assuming they have any at all), is restricted to their peers.

But, populists rarely have good solutions.

That's a fair point, but it's one of communication and empathy, not so much of policy. In terms of "how to run the economy to best deliver a good life to people", the answer has settled a while back- a moderately open, moderately mixed economy. Everything else in the parameter space ends up worse.

The much harder question is how far the state should take from those who win in the lottery of life to support the losers. And we all have grimly predictable views on that, mostly predictable on the basis of whether we see ourselves as winners or losers.

Yet it is part of policy.

The Optima's of our political tend to ideas such as "If a small business goes under because of increased taxes or regulation, it was a zombie business". And then are surprised at the lack of enthusiasm among the small business owners at the Circus Maximus on race day.

Between the dreary love of Process as a God and the psychosis of DOGE - you get a few wittering about John Lewis style service and government. But what we need is a radically *moderate* approach to reforming government so as to be a *service for people*

When Sir Johnny Ives came up with a design for a phone that didn't need a small but thick book (printed in a font too tiny to read) to operate, he sparked a revolution. And government is still stuck in the "Another 10,000 pages of rules will do it".

I do not think it is possible for a solicitors’ firm (other than the very largest, who in turn, run the risk that they are so large that employees can go rogue), not to be in breach of some the absolute cascade of regulations to which they are now subject. And, I’m sure that goes for any number of businesses.

There is a belief that society can be perfected through regulations.

It is basically impossible, in domestic small building (think loft conversion scale) to not be massively in breach of regulations. Because paying double for paperwork is simply not pssoible Mr & Mrs Miggin of No 32. Who just want to do a loft conversion so their son can have a proper room.

I had mine house done safely and to the intent of regs - insulation etc. The paperwork - no.

Two doors down, they've just had a nice cheap job done. It's will burn well, I think, when the electrics they've had bodged go.

But bad drives out good.

We are constantly told that it is not good enough to comply with the regulations. You must record and document your compliance, and establish a paper trail which can be audited.

It’s debatable whether one would have any time left to practise law, if one did so.

This, I think, is what will kill off small charities reliant on volunteer leadership.

I do that right now.

You get all the liability (bear in mind: for no money or reward) and lots of criticism by people who don't lift a finger.

It is becoming very hard to find volunteers.

So, rather not on a Saturday morning but a quick stocktake on Iran. We have a vicious, deeply ideological Islamist regime, backs to the wall, intent on causing mayhem across the Middle East. We have a pumped-up belicose Israel hellbent on the same and with all the time and weapons in the world to do it. And then - the kicker, why this is a potential shitshow of the very highest order - we have in the White House a US president of astonishing emotional and intellectual immaturity, prone to impulse and easily manipulated, who is showing clear signs of becoming addicted to 'big man military options' projection. Worrying times and I'm worried.

On the one side, a bunch of murderous dictators and sex offenders who blow up/shoot/molest their own people, threaten their neighbours to distract from problems at home, and hold power through fraud, vote rigging, intimidation and control of the courts based on theocratic fundamentalist positions and constitutions that are routinely abused or ignored.

And on the other the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Good morning

Interesting SNP offer

BBC News - Swinney pledges £10,000 deposit to support first-time buyers
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cx2jz1gvz7no

And on Boris - no

So in other words Swinney has offered more taxes from long suffering middle and higher earning Scots pockets for a deposit of less than 10% of the average Scottish house price. Building more homes for first time buyers would be a better use of his time

It is solely for first time buyers and is the kind of incentive I could see Kemi being attracted to

Kemi sensibly proposed abolishing Stamp Duty instead

Neither of them is sensible.

Both of them will see house prices rise to absorb the incentive, so the money will accrue to sellers.

Remember that, in a free market, prices are the most that the purchaser can be forced to pay.

With some element of "is allowed to borrow".

I feel JD Vance is not being as helpful to Donald Trump as he could be.

(I originally thought it was an old speech taken out of context by his opponents but it was from just yesterday)

“The reason why gas prices are where they are today is because of Donald Trump”


https://bsky.app/profile/headquartersnews.bsky.social/post/3mgxpmgzc3j2e

Well, that remark is out of context, in the sense that he goes on to claim they are lower than they were under Biden.

Which is both true, in the sense that they were a lot higher at the start of the SMO in Ukraine (although surely even Vance doesn't really think that was Biden's fault) and at the same time rather a stupid thing to say given they are currently spiking due to Not At All A Paedo Guy trying to demosntrate the size of his button mushroom.

Which is why I thoughtfully included a video that didn't cut Vance off after the words Donald Trump. We can be sure no-one else will be that thoughtful.

Vance's "thanks to Donald Trump" words only make sense (if we give him the benefit of the doubt that he's not trying to undermine his boss) if the very brief spike in oil prices in 2022 is attributed to Biden, not Putin.

Prices are heading in the same direction now and this time may not be so short lived.

Iran without 90% of its oil income is a solid negotiating chip.

It leaves Iran with nowhere to go except sink every ship they possibly can, which I am sure is exactly the outcome Donny boy was aiming for...

Something they're already doing.

Cut their oil revenue and choke their finances.

Bankruptcy is a plausible route to regime change. Grunts want to be paid.

I don't buy that at all. I don't think terrorists demand the National Living Wage. They are in it for the "love of the game", as my Gen Z colleagues say all the time.

Who said terrorists? You mock, but soldiers absolutely expect to be paid.

The regime is hated, but they have the military.

Several regime collapses have been in no small part due to the inability to pay the military properly, which undercuts their survival.

Ceaușescu ran out of money and could not pay his soldiers properly. When protests occured and soldiers decided not to shoot them, the result was regime change.

There are plenty of other authoritarian regimes that have changed because they could no longer pay the military, so the military turned against them.

If the IRGC is the kind of outfit we think it is (and I think their slaughter of tens of thousands of protestors is incontrevtible proof of that), they aren't going waiver in the face of a little financial hardship.

A revolution would be absolutely disastrous for them because ordinary Iranians will do them like the Italians did Mussolini. There is no circumstance in which they will simply give up.

Soldiers’ grievances drive pretty much, almost every successful revolution. Any authoritarian regime which can’t pay its soldiers is in a lot of trouble. That’s when people start wondering whether it’s safer to defect from the regime than to stick with it.

Yes. Every revolution is at root a money crisis. The ideology that is prevalent then gives it form and direction.

I enjoyed watching a podcast, recently, by Sean Gabb, in which he explained, pretty convincingly, that Nero’s downfall was caused, not by his excesses, but by a financial crisis. The cost of the Boudicca revolt, the war in Armenia, and the Judaean revolt simply put his government under intolerable strain.

Pete Hegseth's Pastor on the country he wants to see, on the Jesse Dollemore podcast. If I have him right, Dollemore is a Republican secularist where the state is concerned, who is not a Trump fan:

Deep link: https://youtu.be/icUK_P5GWj8?t=171

Hegseth is even being called out by one of the main Newsmax hosts who served in Iraq - he has made the point that all the shit-talking and taunting Iran by Hegseth is fine until you are a pilot who gets shot down and captured and so Negseth needs to stop that stupid behaviour.

If they are losing Newsmax people then they are really in a mess.

That comes back to Trump saying international law is meaningless, which means that if they follow Trump's values Iran can abuse and torture prisoners as much as they like.

I'm not sure if I have quoted it here, but my image of Hegseth is of an 11 year old trying convince a 13 year old that his balls have dropped, and he is a big boy now, by shooting a sparrow with an air pistol.

There's a takedown of Hegseth's press conference from a religious viewpoint by a retired Pastor who was on the Christian Right for 3 decades here. He calls Hegseth a "pornographer of war", in that his rhetoric and presentation aims only to arouse, not to justify or reflect or consider:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fG46pYZw7tA

'The new Archbishop of Canterbury will embark on a six-day pilgrimage to prepare for her installation service.

Dame Sarah Mullally, along with her husband Eamonn, will walk the 140km (87 mile) route from St Paul's Cathedral in London to Canterbury Cathedral before the service on 25 March.

It is the first time in modern history that an Archbishop of Canterbury has undertaken a pilgrimage of this nature in the lead-up to their installation.

While walking the Becket Way, her group will join prayer services at churches, cathedrals and abbeys, as well as meeting with other pilgrims and visiting schools.

The Archbishop will walk along stretches of the Thames Path, the Via Britannica and the Augustine Camino, which is the pilgrimage route celebrating the conversion of English-speaking people to Christianity.

Stops will include Southwark Cathedral, Aylesford Priory, the Shrine of St Jude in Faversham, Lesnes Abbey and Rochester Cathedral, Lambeth Palace says.'

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c5yjm9zdn8no

Give me my scallop shell of quiet,
My staff of faith to walk upon,
My scrip of joy, immortal diet,
My bottle of salvation,
My gown of glory, hope’s true gage,
And thus I’ll take my pilgrimage.

Blood must be my body’s balmer,
No other balm will there be given,
Whilst my soul, like a white palmer,
Travels to the land of heaven;
Over the silver mountains,
Where spring the nectar fountains;
And there I’ll kiss
The bowl of bliss,
And drink my eternal fill
On every milken hill.
My soul will be a-dry before,
But after it will ne’er thirst more;
And by the happy blissful way
More peaceful pilgrims I shall see,
That have shook off their gowns of clay,
And go apparelled fresh like me.
I’ll bring them first
To slake their thirst,
And then to taste those nectar suckets,
At the clear wells
Where sweetness dwells,
Drawn up by saints in crystal buckets.

'The new Archbishop of Canterbury will embark on a six-day pilgrimage to prepare for her installation service.

Dame Sarah Mullally, along with her husband Eamonn, will walk the 140km (87 mile) route from St Paul's Cathedral in London to Canterbury Cathedral before the service on 25 March.

It is the first time in modern history that an Archbishop of Canterbury has undertaken a pilgrimage of this nature in the lead-up to their installation.

While walking the Becket Way, her group will join prayer services at churches, cathedrals and abbeys, as well as meeting with other pilgrims and visiting schools.

The Archbishop will walk along stretches of the Thames Path, the Via Britannica and the Augustine Camino, which is the pilgrimage route celebrating the conversion of English-speaking people to Christianity.

Stops will include Southwark Cathedral, Aylesford Priory, the Shrine of St Jude in Faversham, Lesnes Abbey and Rochester Cathedral, Lambeth Palace says.'

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c5yjm9zdn8no

A Fukker government is going to need to appoint a lot of peers very quickly. They obviously can't all come from the ranks of the Third Positionists, petty criminals, terminally unemployed and mentally ill that form the bulk of the Fukker membership. In those circumstances I could see a Fukker peerage being attractive to Lord Johnson of Uccle and Henly. Ditto other disgusting tory relicts like Chopey, Shappsie and IDS.

Morning all. I was reflecting on this over the last few days. Not Boris going fukker (though joining a party which describes his primary hobby would be fun), the need for Reform to have capable people.

So far they seem to attract the mad, bad and dispossessed. We have seen in Reform councils how these people come a cropper when the rhetoric of "all the money is wasted on woke" splats against reality. They have no ideas other than bad ones based on fantasy, so actually turning things around becomes difficult.

Who are the people being lined up as fukker candidates for Westminster? The mad, bad and dispossessed. Should we be unlucky enough to have these fukkers in government, the only ones capable of doing anything are the ones who have already proven themselves to be unfit and incapable.

Which leaves the Lords. So far we have a former handmaid leading the party in Scotland as the highest profile. Is the intention to attract people from industry? Lets be honest, they'll be spivs won't they?

So back to Boris. Why on earth would he want to join that?

The appeal of populism, of whatever flavour, is that it claims to offer easy solutions. "Your life sucks, but there's one easy trick that to turn it round, but THEY don't want to do it."

That's fine at a campaign rally, but hardly ever works in government. There's nearly always a very good reason for not doing the one eady trick; either it doesn't work or it comes with horrible consequences. That's when it gets... "interesting".

Reforms policy is just deport loads of people and that will solve everything. A section of the public who swallow this seem to be the same ones who decided Brexit was the answer to all of the UKs problems .

And still the penny doesn't drop that it would be a good idea for 'decent' parties to take the concerns of those voters seriously.

But even when you give them what they want they demand more.

They got Brexit and all the Eastern Europeans went home with considerable economic damage to our country. Hurrah! Now they worry about immigration numbers, and as they drop down towards net zero, they are complaining that too many Isabel Oakeshotts leaving for Dubai is not a fair balance with the arrival of too many nurses from India.

So this ridiculous government panders to them again at great economic harm to our country. A failing health serve and social care, Universities bereft of the foreign student dollar. Hurrah. Next it will be their small boats win and then they will train their eye on people of the "wrong" cut who have been here for generations. Yet the Daily Mail reading squeezed middle flag wavers are having life with jam on it.

The poor who can't get a leg up have been gas lit for years. "It's the fault of the EU and foreigners, and that is why we need to be austere and cut all your services. It's them over there, not us who own newspapers and billion dollar hedge funds". It goes back to that Alexei Sayle joke that the World banking crisis was caused by too many libraries in Wolverhampton. And those who claim not to be listened to, believe the narrative..

And the Sayle comment is just a different kind of populism.

The reality was something closer to "It turns out that the libraries in Wolverhampton were being paid for by the taxes on bankers doing stupid stuff. When the bubble burst, you lose your libraries, because the hospitals come first. Maybe do things different next time?"

No, austerity was predicated on the notion that Conservatism understands the cost of everything and the value of nothing. Binning the Surestart programme has cost far more, both socially and financially than Osborne saved.

A Fukker government is going to need to appoint a lot of peers very quickly. They obviously can't all come from the ranks of the Third Positionists, petty criminals, terminally unemployed and mentally ill that form the bulk of the Fukker membership. In those circumstances I could see a Fukker peerage being attractive to Lord Johnson of Uccle and Henly. Ditto other disgusting tory relicts like Chopey, Shappsie and IDS.

Morning all. I was reflecting on this over the last few days. Not Boris going fukker (though joining a party which describes his primary hobby would be fun), the need for Reform to have capable people.

So far they seem to attract the mad, bad and dispossessed. We have seen in Reform councils how these people come a cropper when the rhetoric of "all the money is wasted on woke" splats against reality. They have no ideas other than bad ones based on fantasy, so actually turning things around becomes difficult.

Who are the people being lined up as fukker candidates for Westminster? The mad, bad and dispossessed. Should we be unlucky enough to have these fukkers in government, the only ones capable of doing anything are the ones who have already proven themselves to be unfit and incapable.

Which leaves the Lords. So far we have a former handmaid leading the party in Scotland as the highest profile. Is the intention to attract people from industry? Lets be honest, they'll be spivs won't they?

So back to Boris. Why on earth would he want to join that?

The appeal of populism, of whatever flavour, is that it claims to offer easy solutions. "Your life sucks, but there's one easy trick that to turn it round, but THEY don't want to do it."

That's fine at a campaign rally, but hardly ever works in government. There's nearly always a very good reason for not doing the one eady trick; either it doesn't work or it comes with horrible consequences. That's when it gets... "interesting".

Reforms policy is just deport loads of people and that will solve everything. A section of the public who swallow this seem to be the same ones who decided Brexit was the answer to all of the UKs problems .

And still the penny doesn't drop that it would be a good idea for 'decent' parties to take the concerns of those voters seriously.

But even when you give them what they want they demand more.

They got Brexit and all the Eastern Europeans went home with considerable economic damage to our country. Hurrah! Now they worry about immigration numbers, and as they drop down towards net zero, they are complaining that too many Isabel Oakeshotts leaving for Dubai is not a fair balance with the arrival of too many nurses from India.

So this ridiculous government panders to them again at great economic harm to our country. A failing health serve and social care, Universities bereft of the foreign student dollar. Hurrah. Next it will be their small boats win and then they will train their eye on people of the "wrong" cut who have been here for generations. Yet the Daily Mail reading squeezed middle flag wavers are having life with jam on it.

The poor who can't get a leg up have been gas lit for years. "It's the fault of the EU and foreigners, and that is why we need to be austere and cut all your services. It's them over there, not us who own newspapers and billion dollar hedge funds". It goes back to that Alexei Sayle joke that the World banking crisis was caused by too many libraries in Wolverhampton. And those who claim not to be listened to, believe the narrative..

And the Sayle comment is just a different kind of populism.

The reality was something closer to "It turns out that the libraries in Wolverhampton were being paid for by the taxes on bankers doing stupid stuff. When the bubble burst, you lose your libraries, because the hospitals come first. Maybe do things different next time?"

No, austerity was predicated on the notion that Conservatism understands the cost of everything and the value of nothing. Binning the Surestart programme has cost far more, both socially and financially than Osborne saved.

So ignore the bond markets while trying to borrow from them? It’s not very novel.

Austerity wasn't the only option on the table. If we feel they are worthy and we want services like libraries in Wolverhampton taxation is another option.

It comes back to my point about saving some cash by jettisoning Surestart has cost more over the medium term both financially and socially.

Taxing your way out of a recession isn’t a novel idea, either. It doesn’t work.

When they left office in 2024 the Conservatives at that point had the highest tax burden for British voters in history and they decimated public served. So they had their cake and they ate it.

No Tory who accepts Brexit has any right to lecture others on balancing government spending and taxation policy. Perhaps economic growth could have helped keep taxes low and services high if we had not voted to impose economic sanctions on ourselves.