First up, as always, vote intention. Labour are registering a NINE point lead over the Conservatives:
CON🔵33% LAB🔴42% LD🟠11% GRN🟢4% SNP🟡3% REFUK 3% PC 1% OTHER 2%
(2/n)
Is that all
Depends which polling firm. The only right way to do it is trends between polls from the same pollster.
Also how that polls comes to sit in the trend from other pollsters as time develops.
Also field work dates, was it all done the last couple of days.
Also not to belittle just how big 9 is.
And some talk about polling lag between events dear boy events and polls reflecting them of up to weeks, though personally I’m not sure that’s been properly tested.
Some answers now 🙂
All the fieldwork conducted after this weeks damaging “email” went public.
Folcatta carried out a few polls before Christmas showing much the same figures, though technically this is biggest lead yet for Labour but only by 1 point.
Personally I feel Johnson’s Non Apology was more damaging than the leaked email, so a lot of respondents to this poll hadn’t heard that yet. As the overall trend on poll of polls still showing gap narrowing between Conservatives and Labour, we are all interested to see some newer polls added soon?
@NerysHughes not sure omicron disappearing is good for Boris as it means the normal politics of tax rises and below inflation pay increases takes centre stage.
One thing that may help BJ is that Omicron seems to be disappearing fast, Spring is coming, people may feel more positive than they have for 2 years and he may benefit from that.
As a total anecdote on Christmas Day i reckon I knew 40 people who had Omicron, 15 of our employees did, now I don't know anyone who has it.
Another total anecdote on how people can make the daftest of errors. We are working on a job where there is asbestos in the ceiling, hence it can only be drilled by a Licensed company or someone with suitable training. The asbestos in the ceiling is detailed in the asbestos report and there is even a sticker on the ceiling saying asbestos present. One of our lads drilled it yesterday and got covered in dust.
Yes, Boris Johnson will love all the focus being on the tax rises and the cost of living crisis.
“World beating vaccine programme” is not going to be much comfort when faced with a huge gas bill
This site needs at least one contributor from the bona fide upper class, for balance. (It could also do with more w/c contributors, mind you).
So it's a shame that Charles has departed.
Yes this site is swarming with the kind of people who buy their own furniture. Charles lent it a touch of genuine class.
Though I recall Charlie once recommending Samuel Windsor shoes. Once I’d picked myself up from the floor, I felt a burst of gratification that the old saw about poshos being tight as fuck was confirmed.
I don't know anything about the world of posh shoes. I always get my shoes from Clarkes.
Yes, I spend my time searching for shoe laces when Clarkes’s have broken well before the shoes are worn out, too. I remember the days when you could go back to the shop and they’d pull open a drawer and sell you some more.
Me too. It's my main complaint about shoes which otherwise suit me well. The quality of the laces went down suiddenly a few years back, or the eyelts became sharper-edged.
One thing that may help BJ is that Omicron seems to be disappearing fast, Spring is coming, people may feel more positive than they have for 2 years and he may benefit from that.
As a total anecdote on Christmas Day i reckon I knew 40 people who had Omicron, 15 of our employees did, now I don't know anyone who has it.
Another total anecdote on how people can make the daftest of errors. We are working on a job where there is asbestos in the ceiling, hence it can only be drilled by a Licensed company or someone with suitable training. The asbestos in the ceiling is detailed in the asbestos report and there is even a sticker on the ceiling saying asbestos present. One of our lads drilled it yesterday and got covered in dust.
Yes, Boris Johnson will love all the focus being on the tax rises and the cost of living crisis.
“World beating vaccine programme” is not going to be much comfort when faced with a huge gas bill
Coupled with the pay rise for MPs in April which will be horrible optics.
Starmer's already got in front of that saying he will reject it.
@NerysHughes not sure omicron disappearing is good for Boris as it means the normal politics of tax rises and below inflation pay increases takes centre stage.
Maybe, although the performance of the UK economy over the last few years has not been what has been predicted so who knows what will happen. Nobody predicted full employment which is what we have now.
It is interesting that Bozo still thinks that the event on 20th May 2020 was 'work', as Princess Nut Nit was there in the picture together with her dog. What sort of 'work' involves the boss's fiancée and her pet?
@NerysHughes not sure omicron disappearing is good for Boris as it means the normal politics of tax rises and below inflation pay increases takes centre stage.
Not good news for Boris, but good news for some tories.
They want Boris gone in their time and on their agenda. Not labour's
Not just worse, but so much worse that the forlorn hope of it going away and not coming out is preferable to neutralising Cummings by disclosing it voluntarily at this stage
What on earth is Chatham House? Is this like a swingers thing?
It's a foreign policy think-tank with close links to the UK foreign policy establishment. The Chatham House rule is that you can report what was discussed at its meetings but not attribute anything to an individual participant. This rule has been adopted more broadly in reporting private discussions but is frequently a source of confusion, including over whether it is a singular or plural.
How can you operate the Chatham House rule on an internet comments board that nearly anyone in the world can read instantaneously at any time?
Because (unless you are using your real name) it is anonymous.
That’s not how the rule works.
“When a meeting, or part thereof, is held under the Chatham House Rule, participants are free to use the information received, but neither the identity nor the affiliation of the speaker(s), nor that of any other participant, may be revealed.”
On here, anyone can see the (assumed or otherwise) identity of the speaker. There may be a rule about not disclosing the real identity of pseudonymous posters, but that is not the Chatham House Rule.
I would suggest the world is seeing the results of too much haste to move to green and insufficient planning for transitional energy which is highlighted by the controversy over Cambo oil field in Scotland
This is precisely the wrong conclusion.
Consider the alternative scenarios. Suppose we had moved to renewables more slowly and were burning more coal and gas now. Would that be better? Coal prices are also up now, we would be having even higher prices for gas and electricity.
However, if we'd moved to renewables more quickly, we'd need to be burning less gas and so our electricity prices would be lower.
The point the analyst was making is that the transition did not take into account a sensible period to complete it and as a result, for the reasons he stated, gas is the transition energy and the demand for the foreseeable future is going to cause serious costs of loving crisis for government's worldwide
It may be of interest but I am looking out on 'Gwynt y Mor' wind farm and there is not a breath of wind and the turbines are barely turning
It's the same old rubbish of wanting to delay action, and if you go straight to renewables you don't need gas as a transition fuel.
We all know the wind doesn't always blow, which is why we need a diverse range of energy sources (including tidal, Moroccan solar, Norwegian hydroelectric, Icelandic geothermal, perhaps some nuclear and an excess of wind that can be stored).
The reality is that storage is going to end up much, much higher than anyone can imagine.
By 2050 I expect we'll have many TW of storage plugged into the network.
Interesting point (excuse pun). If policy makers have any sense (a big ask) they will push for localised storage or even household such as Tesla Powerwall (oh dear I will be accused of being a Tesla bore again)
Consumers and the free market should find a way to get there in the end anyway.
Especially for anyone charging their vehicle at home, the car already has a major battery for storage even without adding any extras like Powerwalls. But then Powerwalls etc too if they become cheap enough should become a wise investment for people to power their home with cheap energy.
If you can charge your car/Powerwall etc with cheap to almost free energy with plunge pricing, then run your home, heating and vehicle with that, then why not do so? And then who cares when the wind is blowing, only that it is enough.
The other odd thing about the "wind doesn't always blow" argument is that in most traditional sources of energy we build significant surplus capacity. The CCGT turbines don't always turn either, in fact most of the time most of our gas capacity lies idle, and is fired up during peak times.
The intermittency issue with wind and solar is because we still have much less capacity than we need. Total wind power is around 17gw on a very windy day, with total electricity demand around 30-35gw most of the time. If we build wind capacity up to closer to 100gw - no reason why not, once marginal cost goes low enough - then even without storage we could be generating at least 10-15gw on a very calm day, enough to power 100% of needs on an average day, and way more than enough, with some turbines idle, on windy days.
There should be a setting on electrical car chargers to switch from 'charge on demand' to 'grid-friendly charging', which you'd do overnight (or over a day when you weren't using your car) and would take power according to when the power on the grid was high. It would be cheaper as an incentive.
Ctek chargers already do this. You can set the charging schedule through the app.
I just installed a second one in our house via a highly dangerous and unlicensed splitting of the meter tails so we can have a second consumer unit dedicated to EV charging.
There is definitely more isn’t there. In fact The leak to newspapers isn’t the first MPs and Ministers get to hear about what’s been going on, they know things we, and the media don’t.
The 54th letter could happen any second even without another damaging “revelation” in public domain.
One interesting point about what makes a revelation damaging because it is newsworthy - Cummings had said there was a proper party on 20th some time ago, but it’s only with release of emails or pictures something becomes so newsworthy to bear real pressure?
I rather think too many hopes are being pinned on the Sue Grey investigation report.
She may be a tough cookie but -
1. She is not independent. 2. The scope is limited. She is being asked to establish facts in the light of applicable guidelines. 3. Guidelines are not and were not then the law. Non-compliance with a guideline did not mean that an offence had been committed. 4. If there is any suggestion of a criminal offence this would be reported to the police. So she will not be saying that the PM comitted a criminal offence or anything like it. 5. She is not reporting on whether he has misled the Commons or whether his apology is acceptable or not. 6. It is likely to show that a large number of civil servants, some of them pretty senior had poor judgment and/or gave poor advice and/or misunderstood what the rules / guidelines were.
Frankly Tory MPs have all the evidence they need now about the PM. Waiting for the report is an avoidance technique.
I will repost what I posted last night.
Tory MPs need to realise that this is not about whether he broke this or that rule. This is about a PM who has, in this and many other things, given the impression that the elite at the top are not subject to the same rules as the rest of us. Quite apart from the corrosion this does to the solidarity necessary in a society, especially during a crisis such as Covid, it completely undermines the Tories Brexit USP i.e. that they were on the side of the people against the unaccountable arrogant elite - a USP which Boris seemed to embody and which seemed to motivate the "levelling up" agenda. If that is undermined what do they have left?
And what USP do any of the rivals for the crown have?
I am no Boris supporter. But I do think the levelling up agenda - if properly thought and pushed through - had great promise and was necessary. It will be a shame if it gets forgotten. Sunak has already harmed it with the cuts to the rail improvements. And, frankly, I think Labour has nothing to say on this. They still take the same complacent and arrogant view that the North somehow "belongs" to them. So if the Tories lose those seats Labour will just behave as if nothing has changed and nothing will change.
Tories should be thinking about these issues when deciding the PM's future not fretting about parties. And, by the way, they need to be asking all the potential leaders these 2 questions, if they want to avoid jumping out of a frying pan into a fire -
1. During lockdowns did they ever attend any social events or "work parties" or meetings at which alcoholic drinks were served at all at No 10 and, if so, how many and when? 2. During lockdowns did they ever have any social events or "work parties" or meetings at which alcoholic drinks were served at their own departments and, if so, how many and when?
Why do you say “not independent”? Surely as a civil servant independent from the politics of this, and can provide what is needed, a list of the facts?
She is a civil servant reporting up to the Cabinet Secretary reporting on the activities of fellow civil servants. Sure - she can establish facts, assuming she has the power to pull emails/chats etc etc. But there is a potential conflict of interest and, possibly, an actual one. And it it is not really an independent investigation. Nor is she a lawyer who can determine with any real authority the legal position of any actions.
First up, as always, vote intention. Labour are registering a NINE point lead over the Conservatives:
CON🔵33% LAB🔴42% LD🟠11% GRN🟢4% SNP🟡3% REFUK 3% PC 1% OTHER 2%
(2/n)
Is that all
Depends which polling firm. The only right way to do it is trends between polls from the same pollster.
Also how that polls comes to sit in the trend from other pollsters as time develops.
Also field work dates, was it all done the last couple of days.
Also not to belittle just how big 9 is.
And some talk about polling lag between events dear boy events and polls reflecting them of up to weeks, though personally I’m not sure that’s been properly tested.
Some answers now 🙂
All the fieldwork conducted after this weeks damaging “email” went public.
Folcatta carried out a few polls before Christmas showing much the same figures, though technically this is biggest lead yet for Labour but only by 1 point.
Personally I feel Johnson’s Non Apology was more damaging than the leaked email, so a lot of respondents to this poll hadn’t heard that yet. As the overall trend on poll of polls still showing gap narrowing between Conservatives and Labour, we are all interested to see some newer polls added soon?
Wrong
"Last night, we launched a poll at 8pm to get a snap reaction from the public after what was a remarkable day in British politics.
This is the first poll conducted entirely after yesterday's events.
Full thread below - all charts taken from our data collection platform.
@NerysHughes not sure omicron disappearing is good for Boris as it means the normal politics of tax rises and below inflation pay increases takes centre stage.
I think it's terrible news for the government. Because the reckoning begins.
Heard from some Brexiteers on here today that essentially Johnson needs to be hung onto because him leaving office would be a "threat to Brexit getting done". Jesus, when will Brexit be Brexity enough for them to accept Brexit is done? https://twitter.com/NicholasTyrone/status/1481310793366913032
More from Graun feed: Libby Brooks in re Ms Sturgeon at FMQ:
'Despite her obvious political differences with Ross, she said, “even I’m not as derogatory about him as his own Tory colleagues are being”.
Quoting back to Ross Jacob Rees-Mogg’s comment about him being a “lightweight”, she went on:
"These might be personal insults directly to the leader of the Scottish Conservatives. But actually this says something much deeper about the Westminster establishment’s utter contempt for Scotland. If they can’t even show basic respect for their own colleagues, what chance do the rest of us have?
Westminster thinks Scotland doesn’t need to be listened to, can be ignored and now we’ve been told we have to thole [a Scots word meaning put up with] a prime minister that his own colleagues think is not fit for office."
Sturgeon concluded that independence would give Scotland the “added benefit no longer [having] to put up with being treated like something on the sole of Westminster’s shoe and I suspect even Douglas Ross finds that a really attractive proposition”.
An hour before the Holyrood session came an upbeat press release from the UK government, announcing a “landmark agreement” (pdf) setting out how the UK and devolved governments will work together “based upon on the existing values of mutual respect, maintaining trust and positive working”.
This post-Brexit upgrade of the joint ministerial committee set up by Tony Blair’s Labour government in 1999 has been spear-headed by Michael Gove, who said today it would build on “the incredible amount of collaboration already taking place between the UK Government and the devolved administrations”.'
She inadvertently reveals quite a bit about the real motivation behind the independence movement there - the emotion of feeling like second-class citizens/powerless/ignored. What she fails to realise is that Jacob Rees-Mogg doesn't have the ability to make anyone feel like that who doesn't feel like it already.
First up, as always, vote intention. Labour are registering a NINE point lead over the Conservatives:
CON🔵33% LAB🔴42% LD🟠11% GRN🟢4% SNP🟡3% REFUK 3% PC 1% OTHER 2%
(2/n)
Bang goes the "Labour aren't even at 40%" line of yesterday.
Tories now up 5% to 33% from 28% in last night's Yougov however and Labour lead cut from 10% last night to 9% already after Boris' apology.
Clearly he should apologise more often. Another ten apologies and the Tories will be back in the lead.
I think what's needed is a big umbrella one from the Conservative Party and in particular their MPs. I've sent them a draft for their approval and sign off.
30 months ago, with malice aforethought, thinking only of our electoral skin, we chose a person to lead our party and country who wasn’t fit to run a whelk stall and we’d like to apologize to every single member of the public for this. We won’t insult you with weasel talk of ‘hindsight’, pretending his plethora of inadequacies have come as a surprise to us, neither will we be appointing Sue Gray to look into it. Redemption starts with facing the truth and showing genuine remorse. What we did was wrong and we knew it was wrong. We are truly truly sorry. It won’t happen again until the next time.
Don't know why I should help but I felt compelled to.
Of course we could write a similar mea culpa from the Labour party for giving us Corbyn as LOTO. One of the main reasons we have Johnson as PM (and Brexit) is because the Labour Party in it's infinite wisdom thought that a very thick, shabby little man who is possibly anti-Semitic had done nothing with his life except be a backbench MP and drone on about Palestine was suitable as a candidate for PM of this country
Gosh I didn't expect anybody to reply with "but Corbyn". But ok, not 100% unfair, but neither 100% fair. Labour MPs, who knew Corbyn, didn't choose him. It was the members who did and their reasons were not shabby. This isn't an equivalent to Tory MPs, knowing Johnson would be a dreadful PM, nevertheless putting him there, thinking only of their seats.
I would suggest the world is seeing the results of too much haste to move to green and insufficient planning for transitional energy which is highlighted by the controversy over Cambo oil field in Scotland
This is precisely the wrong conclusion.
Consider the alternative scenarios. Suppose we had moved to renewables more slowly and were burning more coal and gas now. Would that be better? Coal prices are also up now, we would be having even higher prices for gas and electricity.
However, if we'd moved to renewables more quickly, we'd need to be burning less gas and so our electricity prices would be lower.
The point the analyst was making is that the transition did not take into account a sensible period to complete it and as a result, for the reasons he stated, gas is the transition energy and the demand for the foreseeable future is going to cause serious costs of loving crisis for government's worldwide
It may be of interest but I am looking out on 'Gwynt y Mor' wind farm and there is not a breath of wind and the turbines are barely turning
It's the same old rubbish of wanting to delay action, and if you go straight to renewables you don't need gas as a transition fuel.
We all know the wind doesn't always blow, which is why we need a diverse range of energy sources (including tidal, Moroccan solar, Norwegian hydroelectric, Icelandic geothermal, perhaps some nuclear and an excess of wind that can be stored).
The reality is that storage is going to end up much, much higher than anyone can imagine.
By 2050 I expect we'll have many TW of storage plugged into the network.
Interesting point (excuse pun). If policy makers have any sense (a big ask) they will push for localised storage or even household such as Tesla Powerwall (oh dear I will be accused of being a Tesla bore again)
Consumers and the free market should find a way to get there in the end anyway.
Especially for anyone charging their vehicle at home, the car already has a major battery for storage even without adding any extras like Powerwalls. But then Powerwalls etc too if they become cheap enough should become a wise investment for people to power their home with cheap energy.
If you can charge your car/Powerwall etc with cheap to almost free energy with plunge pricing, then run your home, heating and vehicle with that, then why not do so? And then who cares when the wind is blowing, only that it is enough.
The other odd thing about the "wind doesn't always blow" argument is that in most traditional sources of energy we build significant surplus capacity. The CCGT turbines don't always turn either, in fact most of the time most of our gas capacity lies idle, and is fired up during peak times.
The intermittency issue with wind and solar is because we still have much less capacity than we need. Total wind power is around 17gw on a very windy day, with total electricity demand around 30-35gw most of the time. If we build wind capacity up to closer to 100gw - no reason why not, once marginal cost goes low enough - then even without storage we could be generating at least 10-15gw on a very calm day, enough to power 100% of needs on an average day, and way more than enough, with some turbines idle, on windy days.
There should be a setting on electrical car chargers to switch from 'charge on demand' to 'grid-friendly charging', which you'd do overnight (or over a day when you weren't using your car) and would take power according to when the power on the grid was high. It would be cheaper as an incentive.
Ctek chargers already do this. You can set the charging schedule through the app.
I just installed a second one in our house via a highly dangerous and unlicensed splitting of the meter tails so we can have a second consumer unit dedicated to EV charging.
First up, as always, vote intention. Labour are registering a NINE point lead over the Conservatives:
CON🔵33% LAB🔴42% LD🟠11% GRN🟢4% SNP🟡3% REFUK 3% PC 1% OTHER 2%
(2/n)
Bang goes the "Labour aren't even at 40%" line of yesterday.
Tories now up 5% to 33% from 28% in last night's Yougov however and Labour lead cut from 10% last night to 9% already after Boris' apology.
Clearly he should apologise more often. Another ten apologies and the Tories will be back in the lead.
I think what's needed is a big umbrella one from the Conservative Party and in particular their MPs. I've sent them a draft for their approval and sign off.
30 months ago, with malice aforethought, thinking only of our electoral skin, we chose a person to lead our party and country who wasn’t fit to run a whelk stall and we’d like to apologize to every single member of the public for this. We won’t insult you with weasel talk of ‘hindsight’, pretending his plethora of inadequacies have come as a surprise to us, neither will we be appointing Sue Gray to look into it. Redemption starts with facing the truth and showing genuine remorse. What we did was wrong and we knew it was wrong. We are truly truly sorry. It won’t happen again until the next time.
Don't know why I should help but I felt compelled to.
Of course we could write a similar mea culpa from the Labour party for giving us Corbyn as LOTO. One of the main reasons we have Johnson as PM (and Brexit) is because the Labour Party in it's infinite wisdom thought that a very thick, shabby little man who is possibly anti-Semitic had done nothing with his life except be a backbench MP and drone on about Palestine was suitable as a candidate for PM of this country
Gosh I didn't expect anybody to reply with "but Corbyn". But ok, not 100% unfair, but neither 100% fair. Labour MPs, who knew Corbyn, didn't choose him. It was the members who did and their reasons were not shabby. This isn't an equivalent to Tory MPs, knowing Johnson would be a dreadful PM, nevertheless putting him there, thinking only of their seats.
I voted Johnson because Corbyn. Saying so, feels a bit like a wifebeater saying that I only do it because she makes me.
First up, as always, vote intention. Labour are registering a NINE point lead over the Conservatives:
CON🔵33% LAB🔴42% LD🟠11% GRN🟢4% SNP🟡3% REFUK 3% PC 1% OTHER 2%
(2/n)
Bang goes the "Labour aren't even at 40%" line of yesterday.
Tories now up 5% to 33% from 28% in last night's Yougov however and Labour lead cut from 10% last night to 9% already after Boris' apology.
Clearly he should apologise more often. Another ten apologies and the Tories will be back in the lead.
I think what's needed is a big umbrella one from the Conservative Party and in particular their MPs. I've sent them a draft for their approval and sign off.
30 months ago, with malice aforethought, thinking only of our electoral skin, we chose a person to lead our party and country who wasn’t fit to run a whelk stall and we’d like to apologize to every single member of the public for this. We won’t insult you with weasel talk of ‘hindsight’, pretending his plethora of inadequacies have come as a surprise to us, neither will we be appointing Sue Gray to look into it. Redemption starts with facing the truth and showing genuine remorse. What we did was wrong and we knew it was wrong. We are truly truly sorry. It won’t happen again until the next time.
Don't know why I should help but I felt compelled to.
Of course we could write a similar mea culpa from the Labour party for giving us Corbyn as LOTO. One of the main reasons we have Johnson as PM (and Brexit) is because the Labour Party in it's infinite wisdom thought that a very thick, shabby little man who is possibly anti-Semitic had done nothing with his life except be a backbench MP and drone on about Palestine was suitable as a candidate for PM of this country
Gosh I didn't expect anybody to reply with "but Corbyn". But ok, not 100% unfair, but neither 100% fair. Labour MPs, who knew Corbyn, didn't choose him. It was the members who did and their reasons were not shabby. This isn't an equivalent to Tory MPs, knowing Johnson would be a dreadful PM, nevertheless putting him there, thinking only of their seats.
Except Johnson hasn't been a dreadful PM. He's been a very good PM.
He needs to go because what he's done is wrong, but that doesn't mean he's been dreadful.
First up, as always, vote intention. Labour are registering a NINE point lead over the Conservatives:
CON🔵33% LAB🔴42% LD🟠11% GRN🟢4% SNP🟡3% REFUK 3% PC 1% OTHER 2%
(2/n)
Bang goes the "Labour aren't even at 40%" line of yesterday.
Tories now up 5% to 33% from 28% in last night's Yougov however and Labour lead cut from 10% last night to 9% already after Boris' apology.
Clearly he should apologise more often. Another ten apologies and the Tories will be back in the lead.
I think what's needed is a big umbrella one from the Conservative Party and in particular their MPs. I've sent them a draft for their approval and sign off.
30 months ago, with malice aforethought, thinking only of our electoral skin, we chose a person to lead our party and country who wasn’t fit to run a whelk stall and we’d like to apologize to every single member of the public for this. We won’t insult you with weasel talk of ‘hindsight’, pretending his plethora of inadequacies have come as a surprise to us, neither will we be appointing Sue Gray to look into it. Redemption starts with facing the truth and showing genuine remorse. What we did was wrong and we knew it was wrong. We are truly truly sorry. It won’t happen again until the next time.
Don't know why I should help but I felt compelled to.
Of course we could write a similar mea culpa from the Labour party for giving us Corbyn as LOTO. One of the main reasons we have Johnson as PM (and Brexit) is because the Labour Party in it's infinite wisdom thought that a very thick, shabby little man who is possibly anti-Semitic had done nothing with his life except be a backbench MP and drone on about Palestine was suitable as a candidate for PM of this country
Gosh I didn't expect anybody to reply with "but Corbyn". But ok, not 100% unfair, but neither 100% fair. Labour MPs, who knew Corbyn, didn't choose him. It was the members who did and their reasons were not shabby. This isn't an equivalent to Tory MPs, knowing Johnson would be a dreadful PM, nevertheless putting him there, thinking only of their seats.
Well, as you know, I am no fan of the decision to put Johnson in, but the Corbyn decision is absolutely symmetrical in every way. The Labour members put in Corbyn in pretty much the same way as the Tories, following his selection by Labour MPs. If anything Corbyn is significantly worse than Johnson; he had no ministerial experience and was a known extremist with a history of quasi-anti-Semitism. He is absolutely responsible for the chain of events that caused Brexit and resulted in The Clown becoming PM. Labour has to own the state of our politics as much as the Tories. Pretending otherwise is simply partisan.
I think its long been well known Bazza is rather found of the Chinese.
It''s fairly standard behaviour for the Chinese system.
An interesting story I was told by a Chinese national - that often these kind of influencing payments are made by private Chinese persons.
That they are quite often not a bag of redirected Chinese state money. The people in question do so at the direction of the Chinese state agencies, but provide the money themselves. They get Brownie points with the state for doing so, and the state gets plausible deniability.
What on earth is Chatham House? Is this like a swingers thing?
I guess most swingers groups might have the Chatham House rule, to be fair - you can discuss what happened with outsiders, but not with whom? I hasten to add this is not from personal experience. Although I did almost buy a house with pampas grass outside it last year
Working from sterotypes - probably reasonably well built, but very poorly insulated, not very cramped, with squarish rooms or sub-rooms, and in the same ownership for a long time in a leafy environment. May contain asbestos, and a small change of concrete cancer in the slab. Currently expensive to run if they have been too tight to invest in it.
I'm not totally sure, but I think you may have quoted the wrong post.
- 'reasonably well built' -- Fine - 'very poorly insulated' - Not much fat then? - 'not very cramped' -- too much information - 'with squarish rooms or sub-rooms' -- again, too much info - 'same ownership for a long time in a leafy environment' -- yep, I guess this squares with much of the sterotype of leafy suburbia and long term marriages - 'May contain asbestos' -- What? - 'small change of concrete cancer in the slab' -- ? - 'expensive to run if they have been too tight to invest in it' -- what are the operating costs for swingers' clubs? just a bowl for the keys, surely?
Edit: Or, referring to swingers' houses? Probably all those comments were fair about the house we looked at...
I'm commenting on the Pampas Grass outside, which was fashionable in the 1960s into the 1970s, and extrapolating a little too far. So yes - the one you were looking at. If its still there, the same people may be too, and may have done nothing to the house.
All the rest is based on normal characteristics for estate houses of that period.
- 'reasonably well built' -- Fine Trad methods in wide use. Now very different often. May well be better, but different methods - more likely preassembled.
- 'not very cramped' -- too much information Developers not very efficient at laying out estates in those days. If you compare a 1930s cul-de-sac with a 1970s cul-de-sac with a 2010s cul-de-sac you can see where extra houses are slotted in.
- 'with squarish rooms or sub-rooms' -- again, too much info Interesting change in floor plans for modern living. They go now more for rectangular rooms with less wasted space. The space that used to be behind the sofa is now probably in the kitchen behind the wall. A main room may be 17x11 rather than 15 x 15. Space for 2 activity areas.(
- 'same ownership for a long time in a leafy environment' -- yep, I guess this squares with much of the sterotype of leafy suburbia and long term marriages - 'May contain asbestos' -- What?- Was used in houses from approx the 1930s/40s into the 1970s. Bloody expensive when you need to remove it, and can kill you. Asbestosis got my dad about 10 years before a normal life expectancy.
- 'small change of concrete cancer in the slab' -- ? Sometimes ingredients used in concrete in mainly the 1940s/50s into the 1960s that cause the concrete to decay, so you may end up replacing the floor slab if you miss it. One risk of spacious bungalows.
- 'expensive to run if they have been too tight to invest in it' -- what are the operating costs for swingers' clubs? just a bowl for the keys, surely? - Heating with all that missing insulation.
This site needs at least one contributor from the bona fide upper class, for balance. (It could also do with more w/c contributors, mind you).
So it's a shame that Charles has departed.
Yes this site is swarming with the kind of people who buy their own furniture. Charles lent it a touch of genuine class.
Though I recall Charlie once recommending Samuel Windsor shoes. Once I’d picked myself up from the floor, I felt a burst of gratification that the old saw about poshos being tight as fuck was confirmed.
I don't know anything about the world of posh shoes. I always get my shoes from Clarkes.
I had two pairs of riding boots made - not to be posh, but I found a chap who was custom making boots for motorcycle usage - armoured inserts and everything. He charged less to make a pair of boots than quite a few places were charging for brand new.
I even got him to make a pair of buckled field boots based on an old picture.....
I had a pair of m/c boots made by Gasolina in Mexico, custom made to the extent that you take measurements of your feet and send them before the boots are made (one of my feet is apparently 10.5, the other 10.75, same standard width), about the same price as a pair of good quality motorcycle boots here. Mexico actually has quite a proud heritage of boot making, probably from its equestrian history I imagine.
Interesting - yes, I imagine they do. And equestrian stuff in very popular in Latin America among the rich (new or otherwise).
It is, though the new rich in Latin America has connotations. I have a pair of these (just too small for me unfortunately).
'This version in Brown Parade Finish gained popularity with the Mexican Army for their dress uniform. Eventually, as many Army officers retired and graduated into local and national police forces, they took the beloved Flying Jodhpur with them and adopted it to their police uniforms. A somewhat less attractive group of admirers of the Flying Jodhpur were, I am told, the more affluent members of the Mexican drug cartels, many of them former police officers who had gravitated to the more lucrative career.'
First up, as always, vote intention. Labour are registering a NINE point lead over the Conservatives:
CON🔵33% LAB🔴42% LD🟠11% GRN🟢4% SNP🟡3% REFUK 3% PC 1% OTHER 2%
(2/n)
Bang goes the "Labour aren't even at 40%" line of yesterday.
Tories now up 5% to 33% from 28% in last night's Yougov however and Labour lead cut from 10% last night to 9% already after Boris' apology.
Clearly he should apologise more often. Another ten apologies and the Tories will be back in the lead.
I think what's needed is a big umbrella one from the Conservative Party and in particular their MPs. I've sent them a draft for their approval and sign off.
30 months ago, with malice aforethought, thinking only of our electoral skin, we chose a person to lead our party and country who wasn’t fit to run a whelk stall and we’d like to apologize to every single member of the public for this. We won’t insult you with weasel talk of ‘hindsight’, pretending his plethora of inadequacies have come as a surprise to us, neither will we be appointing Sue Gray to look into it. Redemption starts with facing the truth and showing genuine remorse. What we did was wrong and we knew it was wrong. We are truly truly sorry. It won’t happen again until the next time.
Don't know why I should help but I felt compelled to.
Of course we could write a similar mea culpa from the Labour party for giving us Corbyn as LOTO. One of the main reasons we have Johnson as PM (and Brexit) is because the Labour Party in it's infinite wisdom thought that a very thick, shabby little man who is possibly anti-Semitic had done nothing with his life except be a backbench MP and drone on about Palestine was suitable as a candidate for PM of this country
Gosh I didn't expect anybody to reply with "but Corbyn". But ok, not 100% unfair, but neither 100% fair. Labour MPs, who knew Corbyn, didn't choose him. It was the members who did and their reasons were not shabby. This isn't an equivalent to Tory MPs, knowing Johnson would be a dreadful PM, nevertheless putting him there, thinking only of their seats.
However you could make a very good case that Labour have facilitated BoJo's career with three un-justifiable actions: 1. Ken Livingstone as London mayor. 2. Refusal to support TM compromise on Brexit. 3. Corbyn as leader.
He's a remainer but ultra loyal and has very little ambition.
Mundell is no mere remainer he is a Survivor. If Scotland was consumed by a nuclear fireball I'd back him as odds on favourite to be returned as the Member of Parliament Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale - possibly as the only surviving civilian in the constitutency .
First up, as always, vote intention. Labour are registering a NINE point lead over the Conservatives:
CON🔵33% LAB🔴42% LD🟠11% GRN🟢4% SNP🟡3% REFUK 3% PC 1% OTHER 2%
(2/n)
Is that all
Depends which polling firm. The only right way to do it is trends between polls from the same pollster.
Also how that polls comes to sit in the trend from other pollsters as time develops.
Also field work dates, was it all done the last couple of days.
Also not to belittle just how big 9 is.
And some talk about polling lag between events dear boy events and polls reflecting them of up to weeks, though personally I’m not sure that’s been properly tested.
Some answers now 🙂
All the fieldwork conducted after this weeks damaging “email” went public.
Folcatta carried out a few polls before Christmas showing much the same figures, though technically this is biggest lead yet for Labour but only by 1 point.
Personally I feel Johnson’s Non Apology was more damaging than the leaked email, so a lot of respondents to this poll hadn’t heard that yet. As the overall trend on poll of polls still showing gap narrowing between Conservatives and Labour, we are all interested to see some newer polls added soon?
Wrong
"Last night, we launched a poll at 8pm to get a snap reaction from the public after what was a remarkable day in British politics.
This is the first poll conducted entirely after yesterday's events.
Full thread below - all charts taken from our data collection platform.
(1/n) 11:48 AM · Jan 13, 2022"
Yes. I was wrong the start of field work, I saw 11th/12th. Must have been yougov just below on the chart.
Makes it not such a bad poll for Boris as I thought then.
I think its long been well known Bazza is rather found of the Chinese.
It''s fairly standard behaviour for the Chinese system.
An interesting story I was told by a Chinese national - that often these kind of influencing payments are made by private Chinese persons.
That they are quite often not a bag of redirected Chinese state money. The people in question do so at the direction of the Chinese state agencies, but provide the money themselves. They get Brownie points with the state for doing so, and the state gets plausible deniability.
I could see how Chinese nations who are academics in the west could be in a prime position for these type of moves using their own well paid salaries and the grant money they have to spend.
More from Graun feed: Libby Brooks in re Ms Sturgeon at FMQ:
'Despite her obvious political differences with Ross, she said, “even I’m not as derogatory about him as his own Tory colleagues are being”.
Quoting back to Ross Jacob Rees-Mogg’s comment about him being a “lightweight”, she went on:
"These might be personal insults directly to the leader of the Scottish Conservatives. But actually this says something much deeper about the Westminster establishment’s utter contempt for Scotland. If they can’t even show basic respect for their own colleagues, what chance do the rest of us have?
Westminster thinks Scotland doesn’t need to be listened to, can be ignored and now we’ve been told we have to thole [a Scots word meaning put up with] a prime minister that his own colleagues think is not fit for office."
Sturgeon concluded that independence would give Scotland the “added benefit no longer [having] to put up with being treated like something on the sole of Westminster’s shoe and I suspect even Douglas Ross finds that a really attractive proposition”.
An hour before the Holyrood session came an upbeat press release from the UK government, announcing a “landmark agreement” (pdf) setting out how the UK and devolved governments will work together “based upon on the existing values of mutual respect, maintaining trust and positive working”.
This post-Brexit upgrade of the joint ministerial committee set up by Tony Blair’s Labour government in 1999 has been spear-headed by Michael Gove, who said today it would build on “the incredible amount of collaboration already taking place between the UK Government and the devolved administrations”.'
Interesting that the Scottish Cons are rhetorically separating themselves from Westminster at a time when a constitutional crisis over Scotland is looming. I'm keeping a close eye on the odds for Sindy2 in 2023. I'm long of it at nearly 8 and it's quite a bit shorter now, some of that move in the last few days with all of this stuff going on.
First up, as always, vote intention. Labour are registering a NINE point lead over the Conservatives:
CON🔵33% LAB🔴42% LD🟠11% GRN🟢4% SNP🟡3% REFUK 3% PC 1% OTHER 2%
(2/n)
Bang goes the "Labour aren't even at 40%" line of yesterday.
Tories now up 5% to 33% from 28% in last night's Yougov however and Labour lead cut from 10% last night to 9% already after Boris' apology.
Clearly he should apologise more often. Another ten apologies and the Tories will be back in the lead.
I think what's needed is a big umbrella one from the Conservative Party and in particular their MPs. I've sent them a draft for their approval and sign off.
30 months ago, with malice aforethought, thinking only of our electoral skin, we chose a person to lead our party and country who wasn’t fit to run a whelk stall and we’d like to apologize to every single member of the public for this. We won’t insult you with weasel talk of ‘hindsight’, pretending his plethora of inadequacies have come as a surprise to us, neither will we be appointing Sue Gray to look into it. Redemption starts with facing the truth and showing genuine remorse. What we did was wrong and we knew it was wrong. We are truly truly sorry. It won’t happen again until the next time.
Don't know why I should help but I felt compelled to.
Of course we could write a similar mea culpa from the Labour party for giving us Corbyn as LOTO. One of the main reasons we have Johnson as PM (and Brexit) is because the Labour Party in it's infinite wisdom thought that a very thick, shabby little man who is possibly anti-Semitic had done nothing with his life except be a backbench MP and drone on about Palestine was suitable as a candidate for PM of this country
Gosh I didn't expect anybody to reply with "but Corbyn". But ok, not 100% unfair, but neither 100% fair. Labour MPs, who knew Corbyn, didn't choose him. It was the members who did and their reasons were not shabby. This isn't an equivalent to Tory MPs, knowing Johnson would be a dreadful PM, nevertheless putting him there, thinking only of their seats.
Well, as you know, I am no fan of the decision to put Johnson in, but the Corbyn decision is absolutely symmetrical in every way. The Labour members put in Corbyn in pretty much the same way as the Tories, following his selection by Labour MPs. If anything Corbyn is significantly worse than Johnson; he had no ministerial experience and was a known extremist with a history of quasi-anti-Semitism. He is absolutely responsible for the chain of events that caused Brexit and resulted in The Clown becoming PM. Labour has to own the state of our politics as much as the Tories. Pretending otherwise is simply partisan.
Hm, yes: bad as the last two years have been, it would have been infinitely worse with Corbyn in charge. Worse still with Corbyn propped up by Sturgeon. @kinabalu, you say 'thinking only of their seats' as a bad thing - but if I could have had one thing and one thing only out of 2019 it would have been keeping Corbyn out. Utter wazzock though Johnson in, I can't in all honesty think of any better way 2019 would have panned out. Would Jeremy Hunt have beaten Corbyn? Possibly he would, but it's not a dice I'd want to roll.
I rather think too many hopes are being pinned on the Sue Grey investigation report.
She may be a tough cookie but -
1. She is not independent. 2. The scope is limited. She is being asked to establish facts in the light of applicable guidelines. 3. Guidelines are not and were not then the law. Non-compliance with a guideline did not mean that an offence had been committed. 4. If there is any suggestion of a criminal offence this would be reported to the police. So she will not be saying that the PM comitted a criminal offence or anything like it. 5. She is not reporting on whether he has misled the Commons or whether his apology is acceptable or not. 6. It is likely to show that a large number of civil servants, some of them pretty senior had poor judgment and/or gave poor advice and/or misunderstood what the rules / guidelines were.
Frankly Tory MPs have all the evidence they need now about the PM. Waiting for the report is an avoidance technique.
I will repost what I posted last night.
Tory MPs need to realise that this is not about whether he broke this or that rule. This is about a PM who has, in this and many other things, given the impression that the elite at the top are not subject to the same rules as the rest of us. Quite apart from the corrosion this does to the solidarity necessary in a society, especially during a crisis such as Covid, it completely undermines the Tories Brexit USP i.e. that they were on the side of the people against the unaccountable arrogant elite - a USP which Boris seemed to embody and which seemed to motivate the "levelling up" agenda. If that is undermined what do they have left?
And what USP do any of the rivals for the crown have?
I am no Boris supporter. But I do think the levelling up agenda - if properly thought and pushed through - had great promise and was necessary. It will be a shame if it gets forgotten. Sunak has already harmed it with the cuts to the rail improvements. And, frankly, I think Labour has nothing to say on this. They still take the same complacent and arrogant view that the North somehow "belongs" to them. So if the Tories lose those seats Labour will just behave as if nothing has changed and nothing will change.
Tories should be thinking about these issues when deciding the PM's future not fretting about parties. And, by the way, they need to be asking all the potential leaders these 2 questions, if they want to avoid jumping out of a frying pan into a fire -
1. During lockdowns did they ever attend any social events or "work parties" or meetings at which alcoholic drinks were served at all at No 10 and, if so, how many and when? 2. During lockdowns did they ever have any social events or "work parties" or meetings at which alcoholic drinks were served at their own departments and, if so, how many and when?
Why do you say “not independent”? Surely as a civil servant independent from the politics of this, and can provide what is needed, a list of the facts?
She is a civil servant reporting up to the Cabinet Secretary reporting on the activities of fellow civil servants. Sure - she can establish facts, assuming she has the power to pull emails/chats etc etc. But there is a potential conflict of interest and, possibly, an actual one. And it it is not really an independent investigation. Nor is she a lawyer who can determine with any real authority the legal position of any actions.
There's also the point that she will have no leeway at all outside of the brief given - unlike any independent enquiry ?
First up, as always, vote intention. Labour are registering a NINE point lead over the Conservatives:
CON🔵33% LAB🔴42% LD🟠11% GRN🟢4% SNP🟡3% REFUK 3% PC 1% OTHER 2%
(2/n)
Bang goes the "Labour aren't even at 40%" line of yesterday.
Tories now up 5% to 33% from 28% in last night's Yougov however and Labour lead cut from 10% last night to 9% already after Boris' apology.
Clearly he should apologise more often. Another ten apologies and the Tories will be back in the lead.
I think what's needed is a big umbrella one from the Conservative Party and in particular their MPs. I've sent them a draft for their approval and sign off.
30 months ago, with malice aforethought, thinking only of our electoral skin, we chose a person to lead our party and country who wasn’t fit to run a whelk stall and we’d like to apologize to every single member of the public for this. We won’t insult you with weasel talk of ‘hindsight’, pretending his plethora of inadequacies have come as a surprise to us, neither will we be appointing Sue Gray to look into it. Redemption starts with facing the truth and showing genuine remorse. What we did was wrong and we knew it was wrong. We are truly truly sorry. It won’t happen again until the next time.
Don't know why I should help but I felt compelled to.
Of course we could write a similar mea culpa from the Labour party for giving us Corbyn as LOTO. One of the main reasons we have Johnson as PM (and Brexit) is because the Labour Party in it's infinite wisdom thought that a very thick, shabby little man who is possibly anti-Semitic had done nothing with his life except be a backbench MP and drone on about Palestine was suitable as a candidate for PM of this country
Gosh I didn't expect anybody to reply with "but Corbyn". But ok, not 100% unfair, but neither 100% fair. Labour MPs, who knew Corbyn, didn't choose him. It was the members who did and their reasons were not shabby. This isn't an equivalent to Tory MPs, knowing Johnson would be a dreadful PM, nevertheless putting him there, thinking only of their seats.
Well, as you know, I am no fan of the decision to put Johnson in, but the Corbyn decision is absolutely symmetrical in every way. The Labour members put in Corbyn in pretty much the same way as the Tories, following his selection by Labour MPs. If anything Corbyn is significantly worse than Johnson; he had no ministerial experience and was a known extremist with a history of quasi-anti-Semitism. He is absolutely responsible for the chain of events that caused Brexit and resulted in The Clown becoming PM. Labour has to own the state of our politics as much as the Tories. Pretending otherwise is simply partisan.
First up, as always, vote intention. Labour are registering a NINE point lead over the Conservatives:
CON🔵33% LAB🔴42% LD🟠11% GRN🟢4% SNP🟡3% REFUK 3% PC 1% OTHER 2%
(2/n)
Bang goes the "Labour aren't even at 40%" line of yesterday.
Tories now up 5% to 33% from 28% in last night's Yougov however and Labour lead cut from 10% last night to 9% already after Boris' apology.
Clearly he should apologise more often. Another ten apologies and the Tories will be back in the lead.
I think what's needed is a big umbrella one from the Conservative Party and in particular their MPs. I've sent them a draft for their approval and sign off.
30 months ago, with malice aforethought, thinking only of our electoral skin, we chose a person to lead our party and country who wasn’t fit to run a whelk stall and we’d like to apologize to every single member of the public for this. We won’t insult you with weasel talk of ‘hindsight’, pretending his plethora of inadequacies have come as a surprise to us, neither will we be appointing Sue Gray to look into it. Redemption starts with facing the truth and showing genuine remorse. What we did was wrong and we knew it was wrong. We are truly truly sorry. It won’t happen again until the next time.
Don't know why I should help but I felt compelled to.
Of course we could write a similar mea culpa from the Labour party for giving us Corbyn as LOTO. One of the main reasons we have Johnson as PM (and Brexit) is because the Labour Party in it's infinite wisdom thought that a very thick, shabby little man who is possibly anti-Semitic had done nothing with his life except be a backbench MP and drone on about Palestine was suitable as a candidate for PM of this country
Gosh I didn't expect anybody to reply with "but Corbyn". But ok, not 100% unfair, but neither 100% fair. Labour MPs, who knew Corbyn, didn't choose him. It was the members who did and their reasons were not shabby. This isn't an equivalent to Tory MPs, knowing Johnson would be a dreadful PM, nevertheless putting him there, thinking only of their seats.
However you could make a very good case that Labour have facilitated BoJo's career with three un-justifiable actions: 1. Ken Livingstone as London mayor. 2. Refusal to support TM compromise on Brexit. 3. Corbyn as leader.
Ken won the Mayoralty as an independent, defeating the Labour candidate Frank Dobson (who represented what is now Keir Starmer's seat).
If the Queen doesn't do what this letter asks her to do then she really must hate the military.
More than 150 veterans have signed an open letter calling for Queen Elizabeth to strip her son Prince Andrew of his military titles over his relationship with disgraced late U.S. financier Jeffrey Epstein, the campaign group Republic said on Thursday.
A day after Andrew's lawyers failed to persuade a U.S. judge to dismiss Virginia Giuffre's civil lawsuit against him which accuses the royal of sexually abusing her when she was a teenager, the anti-monarchy group released the letter from veterans angry that he still held honorary military roles.
Their letter to the 95-year-old monarch called for her to take immediate action because Andrew, the Duke of York, had been "uncooperative and less than truthful" about his relationship with Epstein, and had brought the armed services he represented into disrepute.
"We are particularly upset and angry that Prince Andrew remains a member of the armed forces and continues to hold military titles, positions and ranks, including that of Vice Admiral of the Royal Navy," the letter said.
"We are therefore asking that you take immediate steps to strip Prince Andrew of all his military ranks and titles and, if necessary, that he be dishonourably discharged."
First up, as always, vote intention. Labour are registering a NINE point lead over the Conservatives:
CON🔵33% LAB🔴42% LD🟠11% GRN🟢4% SNP🟡3% REFUK 3% PC 1% OTHER 2%
(2/n)
Bang goes the "Labour aren't even at 40%" line of yesterday.
Tories now up 5% to 33% from 28% in last night's Yougov however and Labour lead cut from 10% last night to 9% already after Boris' apology.
Clearly he should apologise more often. Another ten apologies and the Tories will be back in the lead.
I think what's needed is a big umbrella one from the Conservative Party and in particular their MPs. I've sent them a draft for their approval and sign off.
30 months ago, with malice aforethought, thinking only of our electoral skin, we chose a person to lead our party and country who wasn’t fit to run a whelk stall and we’d like to apologize to every single member of the public for this. We won’t insult you with weasel talk of ‘hindsight’, pretending his plethora of inadequacies have come as a surprise to us, neither will we be appointing Sue Gray to look into it. Redemption starts with facing the truth and showing genuine remorse. What we did was wrong and we knew it was wrong. We are truly truly sorry. It won’t happen again until the next time.
Don't know why I should help but I felt compelled to.
Of course we could write a similar mea culpa from the Labour party for giving us Corbyn as LOTO. One of the main reasons we have Johnson as PM (and Brexit) is because the Labour Party in it's infinite wisdom thought that a very thick, shabby little man who is possibly anti-Semitic had done nothing with his life except be a backbench MP and drone on about Palestine was suitable as a candidate for PM of this country
Gosh I didn't expect anybody to reply with "but Corbyn". But ok, not 100% unfair, but neither 100% fair. Labour MPs, who knew Corbyn, didn't choose him. It was the members who did and their reasons were not shabby. This isn't an equivalent to Tory MPs, knowing Johnson would be a dreadful PM, nevertheless putting him there, thinking only of their seats.
However you could make a very good case that Labour have facilitated BoJo's career with three un-justifiable actions: 1. Ken Livingstone as London mayor. 2. Refusal to support TM compromise on Brexit. 3. Corbyn as leader.
TM compromise on Brexit... Ha ha. It's the way you tell em.
First up, as always, vote intention. Labour are registering a NINE point lead over the Conservatives:
CON🔵33% LAB🔴42% LD🟠11% GRN🟢4% SNP🟡3% REFUK 3% PC 1% OTHER 2%
(2/n)
Bang goes the "Labour aren't even at 40%" line of yesterday.
Tories now up 5% to 33% from 28% in last night's Yougov however and Labour lead cut from 10% last night to 9% already after Boris' apology.
Clearly he should apologise more often. Another ten apologies and the Tories will be back in the lead.
I think what's needed is a big umbrella one from the Conservative Party and in particular their MPs. I've sent them a draft for their approval and sign off.
30 months ago, with malice aforethought, thinking only of our electoral skin, we chose a person to lead our party and country who wasn’t fit to run a whelk stall and we’d like to apologize to every single member of the public for this. We won’t insult you with weasel talk of ‘hindsight’, pretending his plethora of inadequacies have come as a surprise to us, neither will we be appointing Sue Gray to look into it. Redemption starts with facing the truth and showing genuine remorse. What we did was wrong and we knew it was wrong. We are truly truly sorry. It won’t happen again until the next time.
Don't know why I should help but I felt compelled to.
Of course we could write a similar mea culpa from the Labour party for giving us Corbyn as LOTO. One of the main reasons we have Johnson as PM (and Brexit) is because the Labour Party in it's infinite wisdom thought that a very thick, shabby little man who is possibly anti-Semitic had done nothing with his life except be a backbench MP and drone on about Palestine was suitable as a candidate for PM of this country
Gosh I didn't expect anybody to reply with "but Corbyn". But ok, not 100% unfair, but neither 100% fair. Labour MPs, who knew Corbyn, didn't choose him. It was the members who did and their reasons were not shabby. This isn't an equivalent to Tory MPs, knowing Johnson would be a dreadful PM, nevertheless putting him there, thinking only of their seats.
Well, as you know, I am no fan of the decision to put Johnson in, but the Corbyn decision is absolutely symmetrical in every way. The Labour members put in Corbyn in pretty much the same way as the Tories, following his selection by Labour MPs. If anything Corbyn is significantly worse than Johnson; he had no ministerial experience and was a known extremist with a history of quasi-anti-Semitism. He is absolutely responsible for the chain of events that caused Brexit and resulted in The Clown becoming PM. Labour has to own the state of our politics as much as the Tories. Pretending otherwise is simply partisan.
BiB - so it was Corbyn who called the referendum?
Corbyn's ambiguous at best position on Brexit probably made the difference when the vote was 52:48. A capable leader making the case for Remain with vigour might well have shifted 2% of the voters....
What on earth is Chatham House? Is this like a swingers thing?
I guess most swingers groups might have the Chatham House rule, to be fair - you can discuss what happened with outsiders, but not with whom? I hasten to add this is not from personal experience. Although I did almost buy a house with pampas grass outside it last year
Working from sterotypes - probably reasonably well built, but very poorly insulated, not very cramped, with squarish rooms or sub-rooms, and in the same ownership for a long time in a leafy environment. May contain asbestos, and a small change of concrete cancer in the slab. Currently expensive to run if they have been too tight to invest in it.
I'm not totally sure, but I think you may have quoted the wrong post.
- 'reasonably well built' -- Fine - 'very poorly insulated' - Not much fat then? - 'not very cramped' -- too much information - 'with squarish rooms or sub-rooms' -- again, too much info - 'same ownership for a long time in a leafy environment' -- yep, I guess this squares with much of the sterotype of leafy suburbia and long term marriages - 'May contain asbestos' -- What? - 'small change of concrete cancer in the slab' -- ? - 'expensive to run if they have been too tight to invest in it' -- what are the operating costs for swingers' clubs? just a bowl for the keys, surely?
Edit: Or, referring to swingers' houses? Probably all those comments were fair about the house we looked at...
I'm commenting on the Pampas Grass outside, which was fashionable in the 1960s into the 1970s, and extrapolating a little too far. So yes - the one you were looking at. If its still there, the same people may be too, and may have done nothing to the house.
All the rest is based on normal characteristics for estate houses of that period.
- 'reasonably well built' -- Fine Trad methods in wide use. Now very different often. May well be better, but different methods - more likely preassembled.
- 'not very cramped' -- too much information Developers not very efficient at laying out estates in those days. If you compare a 1930s cul-de-sac with a 1970s cul-de-sac with a 2010s cul-de-sac you can see where extra houses are slotted in.
- 'with squarish rooms or sub-rooms' -- again, too much info Interesting change in floor plans for modern living. They go now more for rectangular rooms with less wasted space. The space that used to be behind the sofa is now probably in the kitchen behind the wall. A main room may be 17x11 rather than 15 x 15. Space for 2 activity areas.(
- 'same ownership for a long time in a leafy environment' -- yep, I guess this squares with much of the sterotype of leafy suburbia and long term marriages - 'May contain asbestos' -- What?- Was used in houses from approx the 1930s/40s into the 1970s. Bloody expensive when you need to remove it, and can kill you. Asbestosis got my dad about 10 years before a normal life expectancy.
- 'small change of concrete cancer in the slab' -- ? Sometimes ingredients used in concrete in mainly the 1940s/50s into the 1960s that cause the concrete to decay, so you may end up replacing the floor slab if you miss it. One risk of spacious bungalows.
- 'expensive to run if they have been too tight to invest in it' -- what are the operating costs for swingers' clubs? just a bowl for the keys, surely? - Heating with all that missing insulation.
Heh, yep I was late to work out that possible meaning (the 'swingers' house). The answers were all pretty good matches to my comment about why schools largely not suitable for ASHP retrofit, hence my confusion.
First up, as always, vote intention. Labour are registering a NINE point lead over the Conservatives:
CON🔵33% LAB🔴42% LD🟠11% GRN🟢4% SNP🟡3% REFUK 3% PC 1% OTHER 2%
(2/n)
Bang goes the "Labour aren't even at 40%" line of yesterday.
Tories now up 5% to 33% from 28% in last night's Yougov however and Labour lead cut from 10% last night to 9% already after Boris' apology.
Clearly he should apologise more often. Another ten apologies and the Tories will be back in the lead.
I think what's needed is a big umbrella one from the Conservative Party and in particular their MPs. I've sent them a draft for their approval and sign off.
30 months ago, with malice aforethought, thinking only of our electoral skin, we chose a person to lead our party and country who wasn’t fit to run a whelk stall and we’d like to apologize to every single member of the public for this. We won’t insult you with weasel talk of ‘hindsight’, pretending his plethora of inadequacies have come as a surprise to us, neither will we be appointing Sue Gray to look into it. Redemption starts with facing the truth and showing genuine remorse. What we did was wrong and we knew it was wrong. We are truly truly sorry. It won’t happen again until the next time.
Don't know why I should help but I felt compelled to.
Of course we could write a similar mea culpa from the Labour party for giving us Corbyn as LOTO. One of the main reasons we have Johnson as PM (and Brexit) is because the Labour Party in it's infinite wisdom thought that a very thick, shabby little man who is possibly anti-Semitic had done nothing with his life except be a backbench MP and drone on about Palestine was suitable as a candidate for PM of this country
Gosh I didn't expect anybody to reply with "but Corbyn". But ok, not 100% unfair, but neither 100% fair. Labour MPs, who knew Corbyn, didn't choose him. It was the members who did and their reasons were not shabby. This isn't an equivalent to Tory MPs, knowing Johnson would be a dreadful PM, nevertheless putting him there, thinking only of their seats.
However you could make a very good case that Labour have facilitated BoJo's career with three un-justifiable actions: 1. Ken Livingstone as London mayor. 2. Refusal to support TM compromise on Brexit. 3. Corbyn as leader.
Ken won the Mayoralty as an independent, defeating the Labour candidate Frank Dobson (who represented what is now Keir Starmer's seat).
I'd forgotten that but checked Wikepedia and he was re-instated to party and official Labour candidate when defeated by Johnstone.
It is interesting that Bozo still thinks that the event on 20th May 2020 was 'work', as Princess Nut Nit was there in the picture together with her dog. What sort of 'work' involves the boss's fiancée and her pet?
To be fair I worked at a company where the chairman’s wife would turn up (and often with their dogs) to Friday afternoon apero’s as we were winding up for the week.
I think she thought we were honoured with her presence and expected some kind of deference to her and the chairman was too scared of her to tell her she wasn’t wanted there. We all just made small talk with her until she left and then we could go full Wolf of Wall Street.
So effectively it was work, with drinks during work, and boss’ wife/dogs.
Yes, it's true that work and socializing can be blurred in certain types of jobs and I can imagine Downing St is one such environment. This is why the revelations up to now on this have looked like weak sauce to me. But this one is different. It was clearly a social event. A party even. It's really not possible to maintain otherwise.
First up, as always, vote intention. Labour are registering a NINE point lead over the Conservatives:
CON🔵33% LAB🔴42% LD🟠11% GRN🟢4% SNP🟡3% REFUK 3% PC 1% OTHER 2%
(2/n)
Bang goes the "Labour aren't even at 40%" line of yesterday.
Tories now up 5% to 33% from 28% in last night's Yougov however and Labour lead cut from 10% last night to 9% already after Boris' apology.
Clearly he should apologise more often. Another ten apologies and the Tories will be back in the lead.
I think what's needed is a big umbrella one from the Conservative Party and in particular their MPs. I've sent them a draft for their approval and sign off.
30 months ago, with malice aforethought, thinking only of our electoral skin, we chose a person to lead our party and country who wasn’t fit to run a whelk stall and we’d like to apologize to every single member of the public for this. We won’t insult you with weasel talk of ‘hindsight’, pretending his plethora of inadequacies have come as a surprise to us, neither will we be appointing Sue Gray to look into it. Redemption starts with facing the truth and showing genuine remorse. What we did was wrong and we knew it was wrong. We are truly truly sorry. It won’t happen again until the next time.
Don't know why I should help but I felt compelled to.
Of course we could write a similar mea culpa from the Labour party for giving us Corbyn as LOTO. One of the main reasons we have Johnson as PM (and Brexit) is because the Labour Party in it's infinite wisdom thought that a very thick, shabby little man who is possibly anti-Semitic had done nothing with his life except be a backbench MP and drone on about Palestine was suitable as a candidate for PM of this country
Gosh I didn't expect anybody to reply with "but Corbyn". But ok, not 100% unfair, but neither 100% fair. Labour MPs, who knew Corbyn, didn't choose him. It was the members who did and their reasons were not shabby. This isn't an equivalent to Tory MPs, knowing Johnson would be a dreadful PM, nevertheless putting him there, thinking only of their seats.
Well, as you know, I am no fan of the decision to put Johnson in, but the Corbyn decision is absolutely symmetrical in every way. The Labour members put in Corbyn in pretty much the same way as the Tories, following his selection by Labour MPs. If anything Corbyn is significantly worse than Johnson; he had no ministerial experience and was a known extremist with a history of quasi-anti-Semitism. He is absolutely responsible for the chain of events that caused Brexit and resulted in The Clown becoming PM. Labour has to own the state of our politics as much as the Tories. Pretending otherwise is simply partisan.
Hm, yes: bad as the last two years have been, it would have been infinitely worse with Corbyn in charge. Worse still with Corbyn propped up by Sturgeon. @kinabalu, you say 'thinking only of their seats' as a bad thing - but if I could have had one thing and one thing only out of 2019 it would have been keeping Corbyn out. Utter wazzock though Johnson in, I can't in all honesty think of any better way 2019 would have panned out. Would Jeremy Hunt have beaten Corbyn? Possibly he would, but it's not a dice I'd want to roll.
Hunt had no answer for how to get us out of the Article 50 quagmire. He was willing to keep extending it and would have been no better at that than May.
Boris at least had a policy. He had a change. Hunt didn't.
And until there was a solution, which Boris got, there couldn't be an early election.
The MPs and members absolutely made the correct decision at the time. But the time has moved on and so should the party.
Politicians don't last forever in a democracy and it's time for Boris to go and be replaced with a view to the future, not refight the battles of the past.
If the Queen doesn't do what this letter asks her to do then she really must hate the military.
More than 150 veterans have signed an open letter calling for Queen Elizabeth to strip her son Prince Andrew of his military titles over his relationship with disgraced late U.S. financier Jeffrey Epstein, the campaign group Republic said on Thursday.
A day after Andrew's lawyers failed to persuade a U.S. judge to dismiss Virginia Giuffre's civil lawsuit against him which accuses the royal of sexually abusing her when she was a teenager, the anti-monarchy group released the letter from veterans angry that he still held honorary military roles.
Their letter to the 95-year-old monarch called for her to take immediate action because Andrew, the Duke of York, had been "uncooperative and less than truthful" about his relationship with Epstein, and had brought the armed services he represented into disrepute.
"We are particularly upset and angry that Prince Andrew remains a member of the armed forces and continues to hold military titles, positions and ranks, including that of Vice Admiral of the Royal Navy," the letter said.
"We are therefore asking that you take immediate steps to strip Prince Andrew of all his military ranks and titles and, if necessary, that he be dishonourably discharged."
First up, as always, vote intention. Labour are registering a NINE point lead over the Conservatives:
CON🔵33% LAB🔴42% LD🟠11% GRN🟢4% SNP🟡3% REFUK 3% PC 1% OTHER 2%
(2/n)
Bang goes the "Labour aren't even at 40%" line of yesterday.
Tories now up 5% to 33% from 28% in last night's Yougov however and Labour lead cut from 10% last night to 9% already after Boris' apology.
Clearly he should apologise more often. Another ten apologies and the Tories will be back in the lead.
I think what's needed is a big umbrella one from the Conservative Party and in particular their MPs. I've sent them a draft for their approval and sign off.
30 months ago, with malice aforethought, thinking only of our electoral skin, we chose a person to lead our party and country who wasn’t fit to run a whelk stall and we’d like to apologize to every single member of the public for this. We won’t insult you with weasel talk of ‘hindsight’, pretending his plethora of inadequacies have come as a surprise to us, neither will we be appointing Sue Gray to look into it. Redemption starts with facing the truth and showing genuine remorse. What we did was wrong and we knew it was wrong. We are truly truly sorry. It won’t happen again until the next time.
Don't know why I should help but I felt compelled to.
Of course we could write a similar mea culpa from the Labour party for giving us Corbyn as LOTO. One of the main reasons we have Johnson as PM (and Brexit) is because the Labour Party in it's infinite wisdom thought that a very thick, shabby little man who is possibly anti-Semitic had done nothing with his life except be a backbench MP and drone on about Palestine was suitable as a candidate for PM of this country
Gosh I didn't expect anybody to reply with "but Corbyn". But ok, not 100% unfair, but neither 100% fair. Labour MPs, who knew Corbyn, didn't choose him. It was the members who did and their reasons were not shabby. This isn't an equivalent to Tory MPs, knowing Johnson would be a dreadful PM, nevertheless putting him there, thinking only of their seats.
However you could make a very good case that Labour have facilitated BoJo's career with three un-justifiable actions: 1. Ken Livingstone as London mayor. 2. Refusal to support TM compromise on Brexit. 3. Corbyn as leader.
Ken Livingstone as London Mayor wasn't Labour's "action"; quite the reverse: he got himself chucked out the party by standing against the official candidate in 2000, and they eventually bowed to the inevitable and let him back in to defend his position in 2004. I think they still nominated an "official" candidate though, who was subsequently persuaded to step aside.
If they had refused to re-admit Livingstone, he would almost certainly have won again as an independent in 2004, and then finished 2nd behind Johnson in 2008. The only question is whether a different official Labour candidate would have been better placed in 2012.
Edit: also, your points are in the wrong order: clearly, 3) should come before 2), as it led directly to it.
Another "wait for Sue Gray" response from a Scottish Tory MP, this time David Duguid (who was axed from the Scotland Office in the last reshuffle, but got a fisheries envoy job instead) https://twitter.com/BenPhilip_/status/1481619326063030275
First up, as always, vote intention. Labour are registering a NINE point lead over the Conservatives:
CON🔵33% LAB🔴42% LD🟠11% GRN🟢4% SNP🟡3% REFUK 3% PC 1% OTHER 2%
(2/n)
Bang goes the "Labour aren't even at 40%" line of yesterday.
Tories now up 5% to 33% from 28% in last night's Yougov however and Labour lead cut from 10% last night to 9% already after Boris' apology.
Clearly he should apologise more often. Another ten apologies and the Tories will be back in the lead.
I think what's needed is a big umbrella one from the Conservative Party and in particular their MPs. I've sent them a draft for their approval and sign off.
30 months ago, with malice aforethought, thinking only of our electoral skin, we chose a person to lead our party and country who wasn’t fit to run a whelk stall and we’d like to apologize to every single member of the public for this. We won’t insult you with weasel talk of ‘hindsight’, pretending his plethora of inadequacies have come as a surprise to us, neither will we be appointing Sue Gray to look into it. Redemption starts with facing the truth and showing genuine remorse. What we did was wrong and we knew it was wrong. We are truly truly sorry. It won’t happen again until the next time.
Don't know why I should help but I felt compelled to.
Of course we could write a similar mea culpa from the Labour party for giving us Corbyn as LOTO. One of the main reasons we have Johnson as PM (and Brexit) is because the Labour Party in it's infinite wisdom thought that a very thick, shabby little man who is possibly anti-Semitic had done nothing with his life except be a backbench MP and drone on about Palestine was suitable as a candidate for PM of this country
Gosh I didn't expect anybody to reply with "but Corbyn". But ok, not 100% unfair, but neither 100% fair. Labour MPs, who knew Corbyn, didn't choose him. It was the members who did and their reasons were not shabby. This isn't an equivalent to Tory MPs, knowing Johnson would be a dreadful PM, nevertheless putting him there, thinking only of their seats.
However you could make a very good case that Labour have facilitated BoJo's career with three un-justifiable actions: 1. Ken Livingstone as London mayor. 2. Refusal to support TM compromise on Brexit. 3. Corbyn as leader.
TM compromise on Brexit... Ha ha. It's the way you tell em.
What would you prefer current situation or TM solution?
I think its long been well known Bazza is rather found of the Chinese.
It''s fairly standard behaviour for the Chinese system.
An interesting story I was told by a Chinese national - that often these kind of influencing payments are made by private Chinese persons.
That they are quite often not a bag of redirected Chinese state money. The people in question do so at the direction of the Chinese state agencies, but provide the money themselves. They get Brownie points with the state for doing so, and the state gets plausible deniability.
I could see how Chinese nations who are academics in the west could be in a prime position for these type of moves using their own well paid salaries and the grant money they have to spend.
In addition: it appears the 'researcher' was Christine Lee's son. It seems a little odd to accept money for a research position that has to be filled by a relative of the donor ...
In short it is absurd to deny that Corbyn being put onto the shortlist by MPs and then selected by the membership was not a contributory factor in Bozza winning in 2019.
As I responded to @divvie yesterday I will put my hand up step forward and shout it from the rooftops that I voted Cons for precisely the reason that I could not stomach an ultra-left anti-semite as PM.
Those who voted for him (Corbyn) did so overlooking his anti-semitism; I voted for Johnson knowing his twattishness but deemed it hugely preferable to having Corbyn as PM.
What on earth is Chatham House? Is this like a swingers thing?
I guess most swingers groups might have the Chatham House rule, to be fair - you can discuss what happened with outsiders, but not with whom? I hasten to add this is not from personal experience. Although I did almost buy a house with pampas grass outside it last year
Working from sterotypes - probably reasonably well built, but very poorly insulated, not very cramped, with squarish rooms or sub-rooms, and in the same ownership for a long time in a leafy environment. May contain asbestos, and a small change of concrete cancer in the slab. Currently expensive to run if they have been too tight to invest in it.
I'm not totally sure, but I think you may have quoted the wrong post.
- 'reasonably well built' -- Fine - 'very poorly insulated' - Not much fat then? - 'not very cramped' -- too much information - 'with squarish rooms or sub-rooms' -- again, too much info - 'same ownership for a long time in a leafy environment' -- yep, I guess this squares with much of the sterotype of leafy suburbia and long term marriages - 'May contain asbestos' -- What? - 'small change of concrete cancer in the slab' -- ? - 'expensive to run if they have been too tight to invest in it' -- what are the operating costs for swingers' clubs? just a bowl for the keys, surely?
Edit: Or, referring to swingers' houses? Probably all those comments were fair about the house we looked at...
I'm commenting on the Pampas Grass outside, which was fashionable in the 1960s into the 1970s, and extrapolating a little too far. So yes - the one you were looking at. If its still there, the same people may be too, and may have done nothing to the house.
All the rest is based on normal characteristics for estate houses of that period.
- 'reasonably well built' -- Fine Trad methods in wide use. Now very different often. May well be better, but different methods - more likely preassembled.
- 'not very cramped' -- too much information Developers not very efficient at laying out estates in those days. If you compare a 1930s cul-de-sac with a 1970s cul-de-sac with a 2010s cul-de-sac you can see where extra houses are slotted in.
- 'with squarish rooms or sub-rooms' -- again, too much info Interesting change in floor plans for modern living. They go now more for rectangular rooms with less wasted space. The space that used to be behind the sofa is now probably in the kitchen behind the wall. A main room may be 17x11 rather than 15 x 15. Space for 2 activity areas.(
- 'same ownership for a long time in a leafy environment' -- yep, I guess this squares with much of the sterotype of leafy suburbia and long term marriages - 'May contain asbestos' -- What?- Was used in houses from approx the 1930s/40s into the 1970s. Bloody expensive when you need to remove it, and can kill you. Asbestosis got my dad about 10 years before a normal life expectancy.
- 'small change of concrete cancer in the slab' -- ? Sometimes ingredients used in concrete in mainly the 1940s/50s into the 1960s that cause the concrete to decay, so you may end up replacing the floor slab if you miss it. One risk of spacious bungalows.
- 'expensive to run if they have been too tight to invest in it' -- what are the operating costs for swingers' clubs? just a bowl for the keys, surely? - Heating with all that missing insulation.
Heh, yep I was late to work out that possible meaning (the 'swingers' house). The answers were all pretty good matches to my comment about why schools largely not suitable for ASHP retrofit, hence my confusion.
My local schools are all full of asbestos, reaching the end of the lifetime in the next 15 years.
Perhaps 100+ in Notts. A local campaign issue that reaches every household. Similar but less extreme in Derbys and County Durham.
A classic needed-investment that could be sold as "Levelling Up" if Boris and the Tories were awake.
In short it is absurd to deny that Corbyn being put onto the shortlist by MPs and then selected by the membership was not a contributory factor in Bozza winning in 2019.
As I responded to @divvie yesterday I will put my hand up step forward and shout it from the rooftops that I voted Cons for precisely the reason that I could not stomach an ultra-left anti-semite as PM.
Those who voted for him (Corbyn) did so overlooking his anti-semitism; I voted for Johnson knowing his twattishness but deemed it hugely preferable to having Corbyn as PM.
It's ok, I think everyone heard you the first 243 times.
First up, as always, vote intention. Labour are registering a NINE point lead over the Conservatives:
CON🔵33% LAB🔴42% LD🟠11% GRN🟢4% SNP🟡3% REFUK 3% PC 1% OTHER 2%
(2/n)
Bang goes the "Labour aren't even at 40%" line of yesterday.
Tories now up 5% to 33% from 28% in last night's Yougov however and Labour lead cut from 10% last night to 9% already after Boris' apology.
Clearly he should apologise more often. Another ten apologies and the Tories will be back in the lead.
I think what's needed is a big umbrella one from the Conservative Party and in particular their MPs. I've sent them a draft for their approval and sign off.
30 months ago, with malice aforethought, thinking only of our electoral skin, we chose a person to lead our party and country who wasn’t fit to run a whelk stall and we’d like to apologize to every single member of the public for this. We won’t insult you with weasel talk of ‘hindsight’, pretending his plethora of inadequacies have come as a surprise to us, neither will we be appointing Sue Gray to look into it. Redemption starts with facing the truth and showing genuine remorse. What we did was wrong and we knew it was wrong. We are truly truly sorry. It won’t happen again until the next time.
Don't know why I should help but I felt compelled to.
Of course we could write a similar mea culpa from the Labour party for giving us Corbyn as LOTO. One of the main reasons we have Johnson as PM (and Brexit) is because the Labour Party in it's infinite wisdom thought that a very thick, shabby little man who is possibly anti-Semitic had done nothing with his life except be a backbench MP and drone on about Palestine was suitable as a candidate for PM of this country
Gosh I didn't expect anybody to reply with "but Corbyn". But ok, not 100% unfair, but neither 100% fair. Labour MPs, who knew Corbyn, didn't choose him. It was the members who did and their reasons were not shabby. This isn't an equivalent to Tory MPs, knowing Johnson would be a dreadful PM, nevertheless putting him there, thinking only of their seats.
However you could make a very good case that Labour have facilitated BoJo's career with three un-justifiable actions: 1. Ken Livingstone as London mayor. 2. Refusal to support TM compromise on Brexit. 3. Corbyn as leader.
TM compromise on Brexit... Ha ha. It's the way you tell em.
What would you prefer current situation or TM solution?
I don't think there's enough difference between them for me to care much either way. Neither are sustainable positions anyway.
First up, as always, vote intention. Labour are registering a NINE point lead over the Conservatives:
CON🔵33% LAB🔴42% LD🟠11% GRN🟢4% SNP🟡3% REFUK 3% PC 1% OTHER 2%
(2/n)
Bang goes the "Labour aren't even at 40%" line of yesterday.
Tories now up 5% to 33% from 28% in last night's Yougov however and Labour lead cut from 10% last night to 9% already after Boris' apology.
Clearly he should apologise more often. Another ten apologies and the Tories will be back in the lead.
I think what's needed is a big umbrella one from the Conservative Party and in particular their MPs. I've sent them a draft for their approval and sign off.
30 months ago, with malice aforethought, thinking only of our electoral skin, we chose a person to lead our party and country who wasn’t fit to run a whelk stall and we’d like to apologize to every single member of the public for this. We won’t insult you with weasel talk of ‘hindsight’, pretending his plethora of inadequacies have come as a surprise to us, neither will we be appointing Sue Gray to look into it. Redemption starts with facing the truth and showing genuine remorse. What we did was wrong and we knew it was wrong. We are truly truly sorry. It won’t happen again until the next time.
Don't know why I should help but I felt compelled to.
Of course we could write a similar mea culpa from the Labour party for giving us Corbyn as LOTO. One of the main reasons we have Johnson as PM (and Brexit) is because the Labour Party in it's infinite wisdom thought that a very thick, shabby little man who is possibly anti-Semitic had done nothing with his life except be a backbench MP and drone on about Palestine was suitable as a candidate for PM of this country
Gosh I didn't expect anybody to reply with "but Corbyn". But ok, not 100% unfair, but neither 100% fair. Labour MPs, who knew Corbyn, didn't choose him. It was the members who did and their reasons were not shabby. This isn't an equivalent to Tory MPs, knowing Johnson would be a dreadful PM, nevertheless putting him there, thinking only of their seats.
Well, as you know, I am no fan of the decision to put Johnson in, but the Corbyn decision is absolutely symmetrical in every way. The Labour members put in Corbyn in pretty much the same way as the Tories, following his selection by Labour MPs. If anything Corbyn is significantly worse than Johnson; he had no ministerial experience and was a known extremist with a history of quasi-anti-Semitism. He is absolutely responsible for the chain of events that caused Brexit and resulted in The Clown becoming PM. Labour has to own the state of our politics as much as the Tories. Pretending otherwise is simply partisan.
BiB - so it was Corbyn who called the referendum?
7/10 is hardly ringing endorsement, now, is it? As for the referendum itself it was a great example of democracy: a large minority wanted one and put pressure on the major parties to grant one using their votes as leverage.
If the Queen doesn't do what this letter asks her to do then she really must hate the military.
More than 150 veterans have signed an open letter calling for Queen Elizabeth to strip her son Prince Andrew of his military titles over his relationship with disgraced late U.S. financier Jeffrey Epstein, the campaign group Republic said on Thursday.
A day after Andrew's lawyers failed to persuade a U.S. judge to dismiss Virginia Giuffre's civil lawsuit against him which accuses the royal of sexually abusing her when she was a teenager, the anti-monarchy group released the letter from veterans angry that he still held honorary military roles.
Their letter to the 95-year-old monarch called for her to take immediate action because Andrew, the Duke of York, had been "uncooperative and less than truthful" about his relationship with Epstein, and had brought the armed services he represented into disrepute.
"We are particularly upset and angry that Prince Andrew remains a member of the armed forces and continues to hold military titles, positions and ranks, including that of Vice Admiral of the Royal Navy," the letter said.
"We are therefore asking that you take immediate steps to strip Prince Andrew of all his military ranks and titles and, if necessary, that he be dishonourably discharged."
In short it is absurd to deny that Corbyn being put onto the shortlist by MPs and then selected by the membership was not a contributory factor in Bozza winning in 2019.
As I responded to @divvie yesterday I will put my hand up step forward and shout it from the rooftops that I voted Cons for precisely the reason that I could not stomach an ultra-left anti-semite as PM.
Those who voted for him (Corbyn) did so overlooking his anti-semitism; I voted for Johnson knowing his twattishness but deemed it hugely preferable to having Corbyn as PM.
It's ok, I think everyone heard you the first 243 times.
More from Graun feed: Libby Brooks in re Ms Sturgeon at FMQ:
'Despite her obvious political differences with Ross, she said, “even I’m not as derogatory about him as his own Tory colleagues are being”.
Quoting back to Ross Jacob Rees-Mogg’s comment about him being a “lightweight”, she went on:
"These might be personal insults directly to the leader of the Scottish Conservatives. But actually this says something much deeper about the Westminster establishment’s utter contempt for Scotland. If they can’t even show basic respect for their own colleagues, what chance do the rest of us have?
Westminster thinks Scotland doesn’t need to be listened to, can be ignored and now we’ve been told we have to thole [a Scots word meaning put up with] a prime minister that his own colleagues think is not fit for office."
Sturgeon concluded that independence would give Scotland the “added benefit no longer [having] to put up with being treated like something on the sole of Westminster’s shoe and I suspect even Douglas Ross finds that a really attractive proposition”.
An hour before the Holyrood session came an upbeat press release from the UK government, announcing a “landmark agreement” (pdf) setting out how the UK and devolved governments will work together “based upon on the existing values of mutual respect, maintaining trust and positive working”.
This post-Brexit upgrade of the joint ministerial committee set up by Tony Blair’s Labour government in 1999 has been spear-headed by Michael Gove, who said today it would build on “the incredible amount of collaboration already taking place between the UK Government and the devolved administrations”.'
She's an astute politician. In fact she's everything the 'Entitled' Rees-Mogg isn't.
Point of order! Some of the polls field work conducted before he spoke?
Nope, start time 8 pm last night
Useful confirmation.
I think it is worth noting, though, that we on this site are fairly unusual in our level attention to the news. Undoubtedly, a lot of people will have had the gist of the story by late evening yesterday, but these things take a little time to settle. Quite a few people will have learned more by seeing clips on the 10 O'Clock News, catching a radio bulletin, or by reading the newspaper. Others will develop their view based on casual conversations over the following hours and days, social media comments by friends, passing comments by the DJs on Heart FM etc.
So it's hard to say the impact is priced into the poll just because the poll was conducted after the day's events at Westminster had wrapped up. Reactions tend to be a little slower than we, as voracious consumers of news think they will.
I'm not saying for sure if that plays one way or the another. Personally, I think the more this percolates, the worse it gets for Johnson and better for Starmer. But I would say that, and know there are others on here who think differently.
Mr. kinabalu, Corbyn was only on the shortlist because Labour MPs put him there.
They deserve the blame just as much as the PCP for Johnson.
Objectively false assertion. A small number putting him on the ballot to include the 'left' in the contest - not in a million years expecting him to be competitive - is not of the same order of culpability as the majority picking him and sending him to the members as preferred choice and hot favourite.
First up, as always, vote intention. Labour are registering a NINE point lead over the Conservatives:
CON🔵33% LAB🔴42% LD🟠11% GRN🟢4% SNP🟡3% REFUK 3% PC 1% OTHER 2%
(2/n)
Bang goes the "Labour aren't even at 40%" line of yesterday.
Tories now up 5% to 33% from 28% in last night's Yougov however and Labour lead cut from 10% last night to 9% already after Boris' apology.
Clearly he should apologise more often. Another ten apologies and the Tories will be back in the lead.
I think what's needed is a big umbrella one from the Conservative Party and in particular their MPs. I've sent them a draft for their approval and sign off.
30 months ago, with malice aforethought, thinking only of our electoral skin, we chose a person to lead our party and country who wasn’t fit to run a whelk stall and we’d like to apologize to every single member of the public for this. We won’t insult you with weasel talk of ‘hindsight’, pretending his plethora of inadequacies have come as a surprise to us, neither will we be appointing Sue Gray to look into it. Redemption starts with facing the truth and showing genuine remorse. What we did was wrong and we knew it was wrong. We are truly truly sorry. It won’t happen again until the next time.
Don't know why I should help but I felt compelled to.
Of course we could write a similar mea culpa from the Labour party for giving us Corbyn as LOTO. One of the main reasons we have Johnson as PM (and Brexit) is because the Labour Party in it's infinite wisdom thought that a very thick, shabby little man who is possibly anti-Semitic had done nothing with his life except be a backbench MP and drone on about Palestine was suitable as a candidate for PM of this country
Gosh I didn't expect anybody to reply with "but Corbyn". But ok, not 100% unfair, but neither 100% fair. Labour MPs, who knew Corbyn, didn't choose him. It was the members who did and their reasons were not shabby. This isn't an equivalent to Tory MPs, knowing Johnson would be a dreadful PM, nevertheless putting him there, thinking only of their seats.
Well, as you know, I am no fan of the decision to put Johnson in, but the Corbyn decision is absolutely symmetrical in every way. The Labour members put in Corbyn in pretty much the same way as the Tories, following his selection by Labour MPs. If anything Corbyn is significantly worse than Johnson; he had no ministerial experience and was a known extremist with a history of quasi-anti-Semitism. He is absolutely responsible for the chain of events that caused Brexit and resulted in The Clown becoming PM. Labour has to own the state of our politics as much as the Tories. Pretending otherwise is simply partisan.
Basically, pretty much everything in UK politics in the last ten years stems from Eric Joyce getting drunk and punching Tories in Strangers' Bar.
If the Queen doesn't do what this letter asks her to do then she really must hate the military.
More than 150 veterans have signed an open letter calling for Queen Elizabeth to strip her son Prince Andrew of his military titles over his relationship with disgraced late U.S. financier Jeffrey Epstein, the campaign group Republic said on Thursday.
A day after Andrew's lawyers failed to persuade a U.S. judge to dismiss Virginia Giuffre's civil lawsuit against him which accuses the royal of sexually abusing her when she was a teenager, the anti-monarchy group released the letter from veterans angry that he still held honorary military roles.
Their letter to the 95-year-old monarch called for her to take immediate action because Andrew, the Duke of York, had been "uncooperative and less than truthful" about his relationship with Epstein, and had brought the armed services he represented into disrepute.
"We are particularly upset and angry that Prince Andrew remains a member of the armed forces and continues to hold military titles, positions and ranks, including that of Vice Admiral of the Royal Navy," the letter said.
"We are therefore asking that you take immediate steps to strip Prince Andrew of all his military ranks and titles and, if necessary, that he be dishonourably discharged."
First up, as always, vote intention. Labour are registering a NINE point lead over the Conservatives:
CON🔵33% LAB🔴42% LD🟠11% GRN🟢4% SNP🟡3% REFUK 3% PC 1% OTHER 2%
(2/n)
Bang goes the "Labour aren't even at 40%" line of yesterday.
Tories now up 5% to 33% from 28% in last night's Yougov however and Labour lead cut from 10% last night to 9% already after Boris' apology.
Clearly he should apologise more often. Another ten apologies and the Tories will be back in the lead.
I think what's needed is a big umbrella one from the Conservative Party and in particular their MPs. I've sent them a draft for their approval and sign off.
30 months ago, with malice aforethought, thinking only of our electoral skin, we chose a person to lead our party and country who wasn’t fit to run a whelk stall and we’d like to apologize to every single member of the public for this. We won’t insult you with weasel talk of ‘hindsight’, pretending his plethora of inadequacies have come as a surprise to us, neither will we be appointing Sue Gray to look into it. Redemption starts with facing the truth and showing genuine remorse. What we did was wrong and we knew it was wrong. We are truly truly sorry. It won’t happen again until the next time.
Don't know why I should help but I felt compelled to.
Of course we could write a similar mea culpa from the Labour party for giving us Corbyn as LOTO. One of the main reasons we have Johnson as PM (and Brexit) is because the Labour Party in it's infinite wisdom thought that a very thick, shabby little man who is possibly anti-Semitic had done nothing with his life except be a backbench MP and drone on about Palestine was suitable as a candidate for PM of this country
Gosh I didn't expect anybody to reply with "but Corbyn". But ok, not 100% unfair, but neither 100% fair. Labour MPs, who knew Corbyn, didn't choose him. It was the members who did and their reasons were not shabby. This isn't an equivalent to Tory MPs, knowing Johnson would be a dreadful PM, nevertheless putting him there, thinking only of their seats.
Well, as you know, I am no fan of the decision to put Johnson in, but the Corbyn decision is absolutely symmetrical in every way. The Labour members put in Corbyn in pretty much the same way as the Tories, following his selection by Labour MPs. If anything Corbyn is significantly worse than Johnson; he had no ministerial experience and was a known extremist with a history of quasi-anti-Semitism. He is absolutely responsible for the chain of events that caused Brexit and resulted in The Clown becoming PM. Labour has to own the state of our politics as much as the Tories. Pretending otherwise is simply partisan.
BiB - so it was Corbyn who called the referendum?
Corbyn's ambiguous at best position on Brexit probably made the difference when the vote was 52:48. A capable leader making the case for Remain with vigour might well have shifted 2% of the voters....
I don't dispute that at all. I was merely questioning the claim that Corbyn was "absolutely responsible for the chain of events that caused Brexit". Absolutely? I think Cameron had a role.
If the Queen doesn't do what this letter asks her to do then she really must hate the military.
More than 150 veterans have signed an open letter calling for Queen Elizabeth to strip her son Prince Andrew of his military titles over his relationship with disgraced late U.S. financier Jeffrey Epstein, the campaign group Republic said on Thursday.
A day after Andrew's lawyers failed to persuade a U.S. judge to dismiss Virginia Giuffre's civil lawsuit against him which accuses the royal of sexually abusing her when she was a teenager, the anti-monarchy group released the letter from veterans angry that he still held honorary military roles.
Their letter to the 95-year-old monarch called for her to take immediate action because Andrew, the Duke of York, had been "uncooperative and less than truthful" about his relationship with Epstein, and had brought the armed services he represented into disrepute.
"We are particularly upset and angry that Prince Andrew remains a member of the armed forces and continues to hold military titles, positions and ranks, including that of Vice Admiral of the Royal Navy," the letter said.
"We are therefore asking that you take immediate steps to strip Prince Andrew of all his military ranks and titles and, if necessary, that he be dishonourably discharged."
First up, as always, vote intention. Labour are registering a NINE point lead over the Conservatives:
CON🔵33% LAB🔴42% LD🟠11% GRN🟢4% SNP🟡3% REFUK 3% PC 1% OTHER 2%
(2/n)
Bang goes the "Labour aren't even at 40%" line of yesterday.
Tories now up 5% to 33% from 28% in last night's Yougov however and Labour lead cut from 10% last night to 9% already after Boris' apology.
Clearly he should apologise more often. Another ten apologies and the Tories will be back in the lead.
I think what's needed is a big umbrella one from the Conservative Party and in particular their MPs. I've sent them a draft for their approval and sign off.
30 months ago, with malice aforethought, thinking only of our electoral skin, we chose a person to lead our party and country who wasn’t fit to run a whelk stall and we’d like to apologize to every single member of the public for this. We won’t insult you with weasel talk of ‘hindsight’, pretending his plethora of inadequacies have come as a surprise to us, neither will we be appointing Sue Gray to look into it. Redemption starts with facing the truth and showing genuine remorse. What we did was wrong and we knew it was wrong. We are truly truly sorry. It won’t happen again until the next time.
Don't know why I should help but I felt compelled to.
Of course we could write a similar mea culpa from the Labour party for giving us Corbyn as LOTO. One of the main reasons we have Johnson as PM (and Brexit) is because the Labour Party in it's infinite wisdom thought that a very thick, shabby little man who is possibly anti-Semitic had done nothing with his life except be a backbench MP and drone on about Palestine was suitable as a candidate for PM of this country
Gosh I didn't expect anybody to reply with "but Corbyn". But ok, not 100% unfair, but neither 100% fair. Labour MPs, who knew Corbyn, didn't choose him. It was the members who did and their reasons were not shabby. This isn't an equivalent to Tory MPs, knowing Johnson would be a dreadful PM, nevertheless putting him there, thinking only of their seats.
However you could make a very good case that Labour have facilitated BoJo's career with three un-justifiable actions: 1. Ken Livingstone as London mayor. 2. Refusal to support TM compromise on Brexit. 3. Corbyn as leader.
Ken won the Mayoralty as an independent, defeating the Labour candidate Frank Dobson (who represented what is now Keir Starmer's seat).
I'd forgotten that but checked Wikepedia and he was re-instated to party and official Labour candidate when defeated by Johnstone.
This “Johnstone” was the compromise candidate?
I am not sure I would want to be represented by a blend of those two.
First up, as always, vote intention. Labour are registering a NINE point lead over the Conservatives:
CON🔵33% LAB🔴42% LD🟠11% GRN🟢4% SNP🟡3% REFUK 3% PC 1% OTHER 2%
(2/n)
Bang goes the "Labour aren't even at 40%" line of yesterday.
Tories now up 5% to 33% from 28% in last night's Yougov however and Labour lead cut from 10% last night to 9% already after Boris' apology.
Clearly he should apologise more often. Another ten apologies and the Tories will be back in the lead.
I think what's needed is a big umbrella one from the Conservative Party and in particular their MPs. I've sent them a draft for their approval and sign off.
30 months ago, with malice aforethought, thinking only of our electoral skin, we chose a person to lead our party and country who wasn’t fit to run a whelk stall and we’d like to apologize to every single member of the public for this. We won’t insult you with weasel talk of ‘hindsight’, pretending his plethora of inadequacies have come as a surprise to us, neither will we be appointing Sue Gray to look into it. Redemption starts with facing the truth and showing genuine remorse. What we did was wrong and we knew it was wrong. We are truly truly sorry. It won’t happen again until the next time.
Don't know why I should help but I felt compelled to.
Of course we could write a similar mea culpa from the Labour party for giving us Corbyn as LOTO. One of the main reasons we have Johnson as PM (and Brexit) is because the Labour Party in it's infinite wisdom thought that a very thick, shabby little man who is possibly anti-Semitic had done nothing with his life except be a backbench MP and drone on about Palestine was suitable as a candidate for PM of this country
Gosh I didn't expect anybody to reply with "but Corbyn". But ok, not 100% unfair, but neither 100% fair. Labour MPs, who knew Corbyn, didn't choose him. It was the members who did and their reasons were not shabby. This isn't an equivalent to Tory MPs, knowing Johnson would be a dreadful PM, nevertheless putting him there, thinking only of their seats.
Well, as you know, I am no fan of the decision to put Johnson in, but the Corbyn decision is absolutely symmetrical in every way. The Labour members put in Corbyn in pretty much the same way as the Tories, following his selection by Labour MPs. If anything Corbyn is significantly worse than Johnson; he had no ministerial experience and was a known extremist with a history of quasi-anti-Semitism. He is absolutely responsible for the chain of events that caused Brexit and resulted in The Clown becoming PM. Labour has to own the state of our politics as much as the Tories. Pretending otherwise is simply partisan.
Hm, yes: bad as the last two years have been, it would have been infinitely worse with Corbyn in charge. Worse still with Corbyn propped up by Sturgeon. @kinabalu, you say 'thinking only of their seats' as a bad thing - but if I could have had one thing and one thing only out of 2019 it would have been keeping Corbyn out. Utter wazzock though Johnson in, I can't in all honesty think of any better way 2019 would have panned out. Would Jeremy Hunt have beaten Corbyn? Possibly he would, but it's not a dice I'd want to roll.
So for you having a raving nutter English Marxist with an outright majority would be better than if he had to work with a Scottish social democrat?
Mr. kinabalu, Corbyn was only on the shortlist because Labour MPs put him there.
They deserve the blame just as much as the PCP for Johnson.
Objectively false assertion. A small number putting him on the ballot to include the 'left' in the contest - not in a million years expecting him to be competitive - is not of the same order of culpability as the majority picking him and sending him to the members as preferred choice and hot favourite.
Is that the same as @BlancheLivermore voting for Nigel Farage but not supporting him.
If the Queen doesn't do what this letter asks her to do then she really must hate the military.
More than 150 veterans have signed an open letter calling for Queen Elizabeth to strip her son Prince Andrew of his military titles over his relationship with disgraced late U.S. financier Jeffrey Epstein, the campaign group Republic said on Thursday.
A day after Andrew's lawyers failed to persuade a U.S. judge to dismiss Virginia Giuffre's civil lawsuit against him which accuses the royal of sexually abusing her when she was a teenager, the anti-monarchy group released the letter from veterans angry that he still held honorary military roles.
Their letter to the 95-year-old monarch called for her to take immediate action because Andrew, the Duke of York, had been "uncooperative and less than truthful" about his relationship with Epstein, and had brought the armed services he represented into disrepute.
"We are particularly upset and angry that Prince Andrew remains a member of the armed forces and continues to hold military titles, positions and ranks, including that of Vice Admiral of the Royal Navy," the letter said.
"We are therefore asking that you take immediate steps to strip Prince Andrew of all his military ranks and titles and, if necessary, that he be dishonourably discharged."
Mr. kinabalu, Corbyn was only on the shortlist because Labour MPs put him there.
They deserve the blame just as much as the PCP for Johnson.
Objectively false assertion. A small number putting him on the ballot to include the 'left' in the contest - not in a million years expecting him to be competitive - is not of the same order of culpability as the majority picking him and sending him to the members as preferred choice and hot favourite.
Is that the same as @BlancheLivermore voting for Nigel Farage but not supporting him.
Mr. kinabalu, Corbyn was only on the shortlist because Labour MPs put him there.
They deserve the blame just as much as the PCP for Johnson.
Objectively false assertion. A small number putting him on the ballot to include the 'left' in the contest - not in a million years expecting him to be competitive - is not of the same order of culpability as the majority picking him and sending him to the members as preferred choice and hot favourite.
Is that the same as @BlancheLivermore voting for Nigel Farage but not supporting him.
When did I vote for Farage?
I think he meant me.
And I have always opposed Farage which is why I never voted for Farage or any party associated with him for a Westminster election.
Joke ballots like Strictly, X Factor, I'm a Celeb or the 2019 European Parliament are not real elections. In the only real Westminster election of 2019 I voted Conservative.
If the Queen doesn't do what this letter asks her to do then she really must hate the military.
More than 150 veterans have signed an open letter calling for Queen Elizabeth to strip her son Prince Andrew of his military titles over his relationship with disgraced late U.S. financier Jeffrey Epstein, the campaign group Republic said on Thursday.
A day after Andrew's lawyers failed to persuade a U.S. judge to dismiss Virginia Giuffre's civil lawsuit against him which accuses the royal of sexually abusing her when she was a teenager, the anti-monarchy group released the letter from veterans angry that he still held honorary military roles.
Their letter to the 95-year-old monarch called for her to take immediate action because Andrew, the Duke of York, had been "uncooperative and less than truthful" about his relationship with Epstein, and had brought the armed services he represented into disrepute.
"We are particularly upset and angry that Prince Andrew remains a member of the armed forces and continues to hold military titles, positions and ranks, including that of Vice Admiral of the Royal Navy," the letter said.
"We are therefore asking that you take immediate steps to strip Prince Andrew of all his military ranks and titles and, if necessary, that he be dishonourably discharged."
What's the point of the ranks he does have? Are they ever used in anger? Do they come with monies?
The point is to make him feel nice for having them. Taking them away is therefore an effective punishment.
There were reports at the funeral of Phillip that Andrew wanted to go in uniform IIRC, and that the Queen had to step in to sort out the disagreement about it with Charles. I recall thinking at the time that that it took a 95 year old woman, who had just lost her lifelong love and companion, to stop the rest of them bickering over something inconsequential, was not an encouraging sign.
Mr. kinabalu, Corbyn was only on the shortlist because Labour MPs put him there.
They deserve the blame just as much as the PCP for Johnson.
Objectively false assertion. A small number putting him on the ballot to include the 'left' in the contest - not in a million years expecting him to be competitive - is not of the same order of culpability as the majority picking him and sending him to the members as preferred choice and hot favourite.
Sort of. They were stupid for risking an outcome that they did not want, and which they knew the public would not want, but it is true they did not recommend him. The Tory MPs making him the preferred choice was because of the, correct, assumption the public would want him him too, at least in the short term. So they were less stupid since they expected him to win (unlike those with Corbyn), but were more culpable since they accepted the potential risks.
First up, as always, vote intention. Labour are registering a NINE point lead over the Conservatives:
CON🔵33% LAB🔴42% LD🟠11% GRN🟢4% SNP🟡3% REFUK 3% PC 1% OTHER 2%
(2/n)
Bang goes the "Labour aren't even at 40%" line of yesterday.
Tories now up 5% to 33% from 28% in last night's Yougov however and Labour lead cut from 10% last night to 9% already after Boris' apology.
Clearly he should apologise more often. Another ten apologies and the Tories will be back in the lead.
I think what's needed is a big umbrella one from the Conservative Party and in particular their MPs. I've sent them a draft for their approval and sign off.
30 months ago, with malice aforethought, thinking only of our electoral skin, we chose a person to lead our party and country who wasn’t fit to run a whelk stall and we’d like to apologize to every single member of the public for this. We won’t insult you with weasel talk of ‘hindsight’, pretending his plethora of inadequacies have come as a surprise to us, neither will we be appointing Sue Gray to look into it. Redemption starts with facing the truth and showing genuine remorse. What we did was wrong and we knew it was wrong. We are truly truly sorry. It won’t happen again until the next time.
Don't know why I should help but I felt compelled to.
Of course we could write a similar mea culpa from the Labour party for giving us Corbyn as LOTO. One of the main reasons we have Johnson as PM (and Brexit) is because the Labour Party in it's infinite wisdom thought that a very thick, shabby little man who is possibly anti-Semitic had done nothing with his life except be a backbench MP and drone on about Palestine was suitable as a candidate for PM of this country
Gosh I didn't expect anybody to reply with "but Corbyn". But ok, not 100% unfair, but neither 100% fair. Labour MPs, who knew Corbyn, didn't choose him. It was the members who did and their reasons were not shabby. This isn't an equivalent to Tory MPs, knowing Johnson would be a dreadful PM, nevertheless putting him there, thinking only of their seats.
Well, as you know, I am no fan of the decision to put Johnson in, but the Corbyn decision is absolutely symmetrical in every way. The Labour members put in Corbyn in pretty much the same way as the Tories, following his selection by Labour MPs. If anything Corbyn is significantly worse than Johnson; he had no ministerial experience and was a known extremist with a history of quasi-anti-Semitism. He is absolutely responsible for the chain of events that caused Brexit and resulted in The Clown becoming PM. Labour has to own the state of our politics as much as the Tories. Pretending otherwise is simply partisan.
Hm, yes: bad as the last two years have been, it would have been infinitely worse with Corbyn in charge. Worse still with Corbyn propped up by Sturgeon. @kinabalu, you say 'thinking only of their seats' as a bad thing - but if I could have had one thing and one thing only out of 2019 it would have been keeping Corbyn out. Utter wazzock though Johnson in, I can't in all honesty think of any better way 2019 would have panned out. Would Jeremy Hunt have beaten Corbyn? Possibly he would, but it's not a dice I'd want to roll.
So for you having a raving nutter English Marxist with an outright majority would be better than if he had to work with a Scottish social democrat?
Well if that Scottish social democrat had been John Reid, no. But the social democrat in question happens to be a Scottish Nationalist who has an active interest in p*ssing off the English and no interest in the long term health of the UK. I don't see Scottish Nationalism as actively pernicious. But having the UK run by people who actively want to split it up is not really in the country's interests.
Comments
All the fieldwork conducted after this weeks damaging “email” went public.
Folcatta carried out a few polls before Christmas showing much the same figures, though technically this is biggest lead yet for Labour but only by 1 point.
Personally I feel Johnson’s Non Apology was more damaging than the leaked email, so a lot of respondents to this poll hadn’t heard that yet. As the overall trend on poll of polls still showing gap narrowing between Conservatives and Labour, we are all interested to see some newer polls added soon?
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/jan/13/omicron-retreat-conservatives-covid-taxes-inflation-bills
If Omicron is on the retreat, that’s bad news for the Conservatives
Starmer's already got in front of that saying he will reject it.
He's a remainer but ultra loyal and has very little ambition.
They want Boris gone in their time and on their agenda. Not labour's
“When a meeting, or part thereof, is held under the Chatham House Rule, participants are free to use the information received, but neither the identity nor the affiliation of the speaker(s), nor that of any other participant, may be revealed.”
On here, anyone can see the (assumed or otherwise) identity of the speaker. There may be a rule about not disclosing the real identity of pseudonymous posters, but that is not the Chatham House Rule.
I just installed a second one in our house via a highly dangerous and unlicensed splitting of the meter tails so we can have a second consumer unit dedicated to EV charging.
The 54th letter could happen any second even without another damaging “revelation” in public domain.
One interesting point about what makes a revelation damaging because it is newsworthy - Cummings had said there was a proper party on 20th some time ago, but it’s only with release of emails or pictures something becomes so newsworthy to bear real pressure?
@patrickkmaguire
Email from the Speaker to MPs names Christine Lee, a solicitor whose firm donated several hundreds of thousands of pounds to parliamentarians (most notably Labour’s Barry Gardiner) as a Chinese agent
https://twitter.com/patrickkmaguire/status/1481612658839277571
"Last night, we launched a poll at 8pm to get a snap reaction from the public after what was a remarkable day in British politics.
This is the first poll conducted entirely after yesterday's events.
Full thread below - all charts taken from our data collection platform.
(1/n)
11:48 AM · Jan 13, 2022"
Because the reckoning begins.
Brexit is doneHeard from some Brexiteers on here today that essentially Johnson needs to be hung onto because him leaving office would be a "threat to Brexit getting done". Jesus, when will Brexit be Brexity enough for them to accept Brexit is done?
https://twitter.com/NicholasTyrone/status/1481310793366913032
My regards to the surreal pink hair dryer nose avatar for help with that.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-59963700
Businesses seem to be taking vaccine nudging into their own hands.
This will be a huge moment and of course Douglas Ross saying Boris could not guarantee anything else would not come out is a red flashing light
If we're not allowed to exile antivaxxers to Rockall then making them poor is fine by me.
Take away all benefits from them, ban them from using public transport or owning cars/bikes etc.
He needs to go because what he's done is wrong, but that doesn't mean he's been dreadful.
India are the 1st team to lose all 20 wickets in a Test to catches.
https://twitter.com/AWSStats/status/1481617078880718850
Fascinating test match in progress.
An interesting story I was told by a Chinese national - that often these kind of influencing payments are made by private Chinese persons.
That they are quite often not a bag of redirected Chinese state money. The people in question do so at the direction of the Chinese state agencies, but provide the money themselves. They get Brownie points with the state for doing so, and the state gets plausible deniability.
All the rest is based on normal characteristics for estate houses of that period.
- 'reasonably well built' -- Fine
Trad methods in wide use. Now very different often. May well be better, but different methods - more likely preassembled.
- 'very poorly insulated' - Not much fat then?
Building regs at the time. Attention to insulation started seriously about 1980.
See the Homeworld 81 exhibition in Milton Keynes
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-beds-bucks-herts-56996505
- 'not very cramped' -- too much information
Developers not very efficient at laying out estates in those days. If you compare a 1930s cul-de-sac with a 1970s cul-de-sac with a 2010s cul-de-sac you can see where extra houses are slotted in.
- 'with squarish rooms or sub-rooms' -- again, too much info
Interesting change in floor plans for modern living. They go now more for rectangular rooms with less wasted space. The space that used to be behind the sofa is now probably in the kitchen behind the wall. A main room may be 17x11 rather than 15 x 15. Space for 2 activity areas.(
- 'same ownership for a long time in a leafy environment' -- yep, I guess this squares with much of the sterotype of leafy suburbia and long term marriages
- 'May contain asbestos' -- What?-
Was used in houses from approx the 1930s/40s into the 1970s. Bloody expensive when you need to remove it, and can kill you. Asbestosis got my dad about 10 years before a normal life expectancy.
- 'small change of concrete cancer in the slab' -- ?
Sometimes ingredients used in concrete in mainly the 1940s/50s into the 1960s that cause the concrete to decay, so you may end up replacing the floor slab if you miss it. One risk of spacious bungalows.
- 'expensive to run if they have been too tight to invest in it' -- what are the operating costs for swingers' clubs? just a bowl for the keys, surely?
- Heating with all that missing insulation.
https://classicshoesformen.com/the-collection/new-tres-caballos-for-navarro-brothers-flying-jodhpur-boot-42d/
'This version in Brown Parade Finish gained popularity with the Mexican Army for their dress uniform. Eventually, as many Army officers retired and graduated into local and national police forces, they took the beloved Flying Jodhpur with them and adopted it to their police uniforms. A somewhat less attractive group of admirers of the Flying Jodhpur were, I am told, the more affluent members of the Mexican drug cartels, many of them former police officers who had gravitated to the more lucrative career.'
Perhaps @mexicanpete can comment?
They deserve the blame just as much as the PCP for Johnson.
1. Ken Livingstone as London mayor.
2. Refusal to support TM compromise on Brexit.
3. Corbyn as leader.
Makes it not such a bad poll for Boris as I thought then.
Hey and listen ... homicide homicide HOMICIDE!
@kinabalu, you say 'thinking only of their seats' as a bad thing - but if I could have had one thing and one thing only out of 2019 it would have been keeping Corbyn out.
Utter wazzock though Johnson in, I can't in all honesty think of any better way 2019 would have panned out. Would Jeremy Hunt have beaten Corbyn? Possibly he would, but it's not a dice I'd want to roll.
https://insideevs.com/news/557646/northvolt-ett-first-battery-produced/
Whatever happened to 'Britvolt' ?
More than 150 veterans have signed an open letter calling for Queen Elizabeth to strip her son Prince Andrew of his military titles over his relationship with disgraced late U.S. financier Jeffrey Epstein, the campaign group Republic said on Thursday.
A day after Andrew's lawyers failed to persuade a U.S. judge to dismiss Virginia Giuffre's civil lawsuit against him which accuses the royal of sexually abusing her when she was a teenager, the anti-monarchy group released the letter from veterans angry that he still held honorary military roles.
Their letter to the 95-year-old monarch called for her to take immediate action because Andrew, the Duke of York, had been "uncooperative and less than truthful" about his relationship with Epstein, and had brought the armed services he represented into disrepute.
"We are particularly upset and angry that Prince Andrew remains a member of the armed forces and continues to hold military titles, positions and ranks, including that of Vice Admiral of the Royal Navy," the letter said.
"We are therefore asking that you take immediate steps to strip Prince Andrew of all his military ranks and titles and, if necessary, that he be dishonourably discharged."
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/prince-andrews-legal-team-decline-comment-us-court-decision-2022-01-13/
Boris successor needs to send him to the back benches immediately
Boris at least had a policy. He had a change. Hunt didn't.
And until there was a solution, which Boris got, there couldn't be an early election.
The MPs and members absolutely made the correct decision at the time. But the time has moved on and so should the party.
Politicians don't last forever in a democracy and it's time for Boris to go and be replaced with a view to the future, not refight the battles of the past.
If they had refused to re-admit Livingstone, he would almost certainly have won again as an independent in 2004, and then finished 2nd behind Johnson in 2008. The only question is whether a different official Labour candidate would have been better placed in 2012.
Edit: also, your points are in the wrong order: clearly, 3) should come before 2), as it led directly to it.
https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm/cmregmem/210118/gardiner_barry.htm
https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm/cmregmem/161121/gardiner_barry.htm
In addition: it appears the 'researcher' was Christine Lee's son. It seems a little odd to accept money for a research position that has to be filled by a relative of the donor ...
As I responded to @divvie yesterday I will put my hand up step forward and shout it from the rooftops that I voted Cons for precisely the reason that I could not stomach an ultra-left anti-semite as PM.
Those who voted for him (Corbyn) did so overlooking his anti-semitism; I voted for Johnson knowing his twattishness but deemed it hugely preferable to having Corbyn as PM.
Perhaps 100+ in Notts. A local campaign issue that reaches every household. Similar but less extreme in Derbys and County Durham.
A classic needed-investment that could be sold as "Levelling Up" if Boris and the Tories were awake.
I think it is worth noting, though, that we on this site are fairly unusual in our level attention to the news. Undoubtedly, a lot of people will have had the gist of the story by late evening yesterday, but these things take a little time to settle. Quite a few people will have learned more by seeing clips on the 10 O'Clock News, catching a radio bulletin, or by reading the newspaper. Others will develop their view based on casual conversations over the following hours and days, social media comments by friends, passing comments by the DJs on Heart FM etc.
So it's hard to say the impact is priced into the poll just because the poll was conducted after the day's events at Westminster had wrapped up. Reactions tend to be a little slower than we, as voracious consumers of news think they will.
I'm not saying for sure if that plays one way or the another. Personally, I think the more this percolates, the worse it gets for Johnson and better for Starmer. But I would say that, and know there are others on here who think differently.
I am not sure I would want to be represented by a blend of those two.
And I have always opposed Farage which is why I never voted for Farage or any party associated with him for a Westminster election.
Joke ballots like Strictly, X Factor, I'm a Celeb or the 2019 European Parliament are not real elections. In the only real Westminster election of 2019 I voted Conservative.
There were reports at the funeral of Phillip that Andrew wanted to go in uniform IIRC, and that the Queen had to step in to sort out the disagreement about it with Charles. I recall thinking at the time that that it took a 95 year old woman, who had just lost her lifelong love and companion, to stop the rest of them bickering over something inconsequential, was not an encouraging sign.
But the social democrat in question happens to be a Scottish Nationalist who has an active interest in p*ssing off the English and no interest in the long term health of the UK.
I don't see Scottish Nationalism as actively pernicious. But having the UK run by people who actively want to split it up is not really in the country's interests.