Best Of

Apart from here on PB, are there any old wise men left in the country beyond David Attenborough (Who is amazingly wise)?

Martin Lewis is the next one we produced but he is only 54. On that basis there should be an 8 year old coming through the ranks somewhere we should watch out for.

He's a decent shout.

When I was young there were a whole host of not exactly national heroes, but along those lines. Now there is one. DA.

What's happened? Maybe Dyson?

I guess the scale of things has diminished the prominence of the individual, but there still seems to be an inexplicable gap.

(Obviously it would have been me, but somehow...)

There are quite a few candidates for national treasure as well as DA.

How about:

Judi Dench
Stephen Fry
Joanna Lumley
Helen Mirren
Michael Palin
Paul McCartney
Mary Berry
Bob Mortimer

Who would make the best PM?
I vote for Bob Mortimer.

Point of order, these are National Treasures surely? Different, if overlapping, category

Point taken. Are any of them wise? I know they are not all men.

Of all of them I have often thought Stephen Fry is the natural successor in the Wide Old Men stakes. He always seems to me to have the ability to find the middle ground in most things and, even where he is most strident - such as on the subject of religion - he lacks the strident offensiveness that prevents the seeking of mutual ground. He is almost unfailingly polite even when telling you you are utterly wrong.

I've always found Fry pretty foolish. And in general, I think the closer you get to any 'treasures' the more disillusioned you'll get. I've heard Judi Dench can be absolutely vile IRL.

We shouldn't idolise humans. Not because it angers God, but because humans can't ever live up to being idolised. We're just people.

Apart from here on PB, are there any old wise men left in the country beyond David Attenborough (Who is amazingly wise)?

Several people I have heard speak in the last few years:

- Richard Dannett - gave a talk just after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, predicted a long drawn-out stalemate, pretty accurate.
- Robert Winston - general common sense on fertility and gender etc.
- Derek Jacobi - he put his success down in large part to luck - I'm sure there's more to it than that judging by the way he can still deliver some of Shakespeare's great speeches at 88.

(I don't know any of these people, have just heard them give public talks.)

Good examples. I have slight reservations about all three, but only slight. And of course in times past the average man may well have had reservations about all sorts of historical greats, and that has been mostly forgotten.

I have reservations about David Attenborough - mainly that I don't like his voice - but I keep them to myself for fear of being lynched.

Edit: Oh bugger!

Apart from here on PB, are there any old wise men left in the country beyond David Attenborough (Who is amazingly wise)?

Martin Lewis is the next one we produced but he is only 54. On that basis there should be an 8 year old coming through the ranks somewhere we should watch out for.

He's a decent shout.

When I was young there were a whole host of not exactly national heroes, but along those lines. Now there is one. DA.

What's happened? Maybe Dyson?

I guess the scale of things has diminished the prominence of the individual, but there still seems to be an inexplicable gap.

(Obviously it would have been me, but somehow...)

There are quite a few candidates for national treasure as well as DA.

How about:

Judi Dench
Stephen Fry
Joanna Lumley
Helen Mirren
Michael Palin
Paul McCartney
Mary Berry
Bob Mortimer

Who would make the best PM?
I vote for Bob Mortimer.

Point of order, these are National Treasures surely? Different, if overlapping, category

What we're looking for is a Council of the Wise- a collective of people who we could submit questions to and implicitly trust whatever answer they give us.

Obviously David Attenborough is on the list, but who else should be? I suspect that our gotcha media culture makes it hard for people to stay on the membership path for long enough to qualify. And maybe the really wise people are the ones who stay far enough under the radar to avoid ever being invited.

All of these points are copyright from my previous posts - it'll be a big bill!

The oddness is that there simply no candidates. (Very reassuring that the obvious celebrity clownshow wasn't suggested)

Apart from here on PB, are there any old wise men left in the country beyond David Attenborough (Who is amazingly wise)?

Martin Lewis is the next one we produced but he is only 54. On that basis there should be an 8 year old coming through the ranks somewhere we should watch out for.

He's a decent shout.

When I was young there were a whole host of not exactly national heroes, but along those lines. Now there is one. DA.

What's happened? Maybe Dyson?

I guess the scale of things has diminished the prominence of the individual, but there still seems to be an inexplicable gap.

(Obviously it would have been me, but somehow...)

There are quite a few candidates for national treasure as well as DA.

How about:

Judi Dench
Stephen Fry
Joanna Lumley
Helen Mirren
Michael Palin
Paul McCartney
Mary Berry
Bob Mortimer

Who would make the best PM?
I vote for Bob Mortimer.

Best PM and not even on the National Treasure List:

Brian Blessed.

(Oh, and I think Macca is a bit of a knob.)

Do we know if Restore and Reform voters are fully fungible?

I'd say no. Perhaps they are partly fungible.

Ref UK have many tribes.

I do not see all the grumpy Labour and Conservative voters currently supporting going for Rupert's concentration camps, for example, or all of Reform's ethnic minority supporters.

I'd agree.

There used to be the 'joke', that "not all Reform voters were racist, but all racists voted Reform".

Clearly Farage has been very, very good at making people feel like they're not racist, despite spending his political life stoking fear of "others". However, all that hard word has helped create an environment where a lot more people don't care if they're seen as racists - and Restore have capitalised.

Exhibit A:

Rupert Lowe has posted leaflet showing how Restore define Reform to voters
- Scale of deportations: "millions must go" inc legal migrants
- Death Penalty
- Disagrees with Farage warning on "alienating the whole of Islam" [to tackle extremism] saying "Islamification" must end
- Jenrick + Zahawi

https://bsky.app/profile/sundersays.bsky.social/post/3mo64dqe6hc2s

Horrible, but very effectively done.

'millions must go' is a clear sign of how far politics has come along in the last 10 years, or even 5 years - even if is a position only held by Restore voters, that it is on the table signals what a different environment we are in.

David Cameron promised to reduce immigration to the tens of thousands and people repeatedly voted for restrictions on immigration, but instead the government invited millions more into the country. It seems hard to argue that wanting to reverse that shouldn't be a democratically legitimate opinion.

Should the trend of the last 2 years continue much longer, Cameron's target of reducing net immigration to the tens of thousands will be met by the end of 2026.

And we may well find it was a very silly idea in the first place.

Nearly evening all

Gorgeous afternoon here in downtown East London.

I see Restore had 1000 activists in Makerfield today - I'm not quite sure what having 1000 activists achieves, the videos I've seen show most of them standing round chatting in a park.

Labour have worked this seat properly and will, I suspect, get the needed result and Reform will learn some lessons how to campaign in seats when facing determined opponents.

As for Restore, you only have to look at the Yarmouth results on Norfolk County Council in May to see the potential for such a party - they annihilated Labour and the Conservatives completely and utterly.

There is clearly a constituency for the nonsense Rupert Lowe is peddling - Nigel Farage may be anti-immigrant but he's no ethno-nationalist. The economic and social consequences of the implementation of Lowe's ethno-nationalism would be catastrophic - in my part of the world, I imagine half to two thirds of the population would be deported.

Unfortunately, I fear there is a significant minority in the population who, while they wouldn't say it openly, would support wholesale mass deportation of the non-white population.

IF we tried to implement such a policy, we would be the Gilead de nos jours but the mood currently is so set against "immigrants", the debate has moved on from boats via remigration to mass deportation of British citizens - presumably once a Restore Government has passed its own version of the Nuremburg Laws and redefined what being "British" means - there seems no ability or willingness to defend or support even a limited points-based immigration system which was where I thought we were going after we voted to leave the EU.

The debate has moved to mass deporatation for a tiny, vocal minority who would otherwise be voting BNP. I am no fan of Farage but if the balance of opinion on the Right is anywhere it is somewhere between he and Badenoch. Lowe is an outlier and one that is, in the end, going to garner very little support.

I really hope you are right, my friend. The Yarmouth results do make me wonder how strong the message might be and how much it might resonate.

I do agree on "the Right", the line seems to be more about dealing with those here illegally and preventing further unauthorised arrivals while tightening the rules on who can come in and for how long. Such a broad view is probably sensible enough though I'm still to be convinced how getting rid of for example via over-stayers is going to be accomplished without considerable cost and bureaucracy.

It remains to be seen how much "the boats" will dominate the summer political discourse - scenes of dinghies coming ashore at Eastbourne, Brighton and elsewhere don't look good.

The Devil is, as ever, in the detail and I do think both the Conservatives and Reform have plenty of thinking to do to come up with an effective cost-beneficial solution.

Do we know if Restore and Reform voters are fully fungible?

I'd say no. Perhaps they are partly fungible.

Ref UK have many tribes.

I do not see all the grumpy Labour and Conservative voters currently supporting going for Rupert's concentration camps, for example, or all of Reform's ethnic minority supporters.

I'd agree.

There used to be the 'joke', that "not all Reform voters were racist, but all racists voted Reform".

Clearly Farage has been very, very good at making people feel like they're not racist, despite spending his political life stoking fear of "others". However, all that hard word has helped create an environment where a lot more people don't care if they're seen as racists - and Restore have capitalised.

Exhibit A:

Rupert Lowe has posted leaflet showing how Restore define Reform to voters
- Scale of deportations: "millions must go" inc legal migrants
- Death Penalty
- Disagrees with Farage warning on "alienating the whole of Islam" [to tackle extremism] saying "Islamification" must end
- Jenrick + Zahawi

https://bsky.app/profile/sundersays.bsky.social/post/3mo64dqe6hc2s

Horrible, but very effectively done.

'millions must go' is a clear sign of how far politics has come along in the last 10 years, or even 5 years - even if is a position only held by Restore voters, that it is on the table signals what a different environment we are in.

David Cameron promised to reduce immigration to the tens of thousands and people repeatedly voted for restrictions on immigration, but instead the government invited millions more into the country. It seems hard to argue that wanting to reverse that shouldn't be a democratically legitimate opinion.

Should the trend of the last 2 years continue much longer, Cameron's target of reducing net immigration to the tens of thousands will be met by the end of 2026.