... That connection means Babbage's computing work was much more influential in progressing engineering than it ever was in computing.
When it was finally built, the Difference Engine did work as designed. It would have been fantastic if he had managed to build the Analytical Engine as it was designed to be programmable in the Turing sense.
Sound the klaxon! Incidental hospitalisations overtake non-incidentals for the first time ever in that series. Quick calculation suggests that something like 80% of incoming daily admissions are either not *for* COVID or not staying overnight so not very serious.
We've got a huge update for reinfections coming on Monday that is going to get everyone panicked for nothing, yet this data which there is already an existing series for is tucked away in a weekly release on the NHS website that no one can easily find. This data should be reflected in the dashboard stats for England at least. There's currently only 6k people in hospital *for* COVID right now in England, that's still dropping pretty rapidly, if one were to go by the dashboard stats that makes it seem as though 14k people are in hospital for COVID on the same day, more than double.
Yet Covid makes those 'somethings else' markedly more lethal, even being given anaesthetic. So it IS a huge problem. All across the board. It's just the way you are ill and maybe die that differs.
Somebody posted a "six stages of a project" thing the other day and said we have reached the "Disillusionment" stage.
That seems about right to me. I am looking forward to Stage 3 next - "Panic"
DK Brown's "Stages of a Project"
- Enthusiasm - Disillusionment - Panic - The Search for the Guilty - The punishment of the Innocent - Praise and Honour for the Non-Participants
I suspect we will see 3-5 in a single hour as the Gray report comes out.
Boris's panicking will result in anyone no matter how junior being punished as he tries to protect himself.
It sounds like the watering down of the Gray report is underway. I have little expectation of it having any effect except to identity the sheep to be culled to save the Big Dog.
If it is watered down it is the civil service unions work trying to protect their staff from being named, and not no10
It is suggested that it will be very bad for the civil servants in no 10 and Whitehall
I am sure it will be bad for them, but I am also sure that any political wiggleroom will be exploited to the maximum. If the wiggleroom can be increased by the correct sort of watering down then...
As the original supplier of the quoted stages of a project - it is a a favourite of mine....
The context was the HMS Captain saga. Where a ship was built against the advice of Chief Constructor (chief naval architect) of the Royal Navy. The ship rolled over and sank on the maiden voyage, killing nearly everyone on board. Including the designer....
- The Chief Constructor who had warned against the design was forced to resign. - His replacement was very nearly the naval architect for the shipyard that had mis-built the ship - the design was bad, but made worse by excess weight in construction...
On the junior people involved - everyone is trying to hide behind them.
The senior civil servants who are involved are trying to claim that it is really unfair on Doris the receptionist to bin her. Because if Doris goes, then Sir Reginald Fuckwit who was next in the conga line will get it in the neck.
The politicians will be doing the same with the junior SPADs....
Very interesting bit of history Mr M.
The history of the 19th cent Royal Navy is fascinating from a project management, technology, innovation, working culture, social changes (and many others) perspectives. There are lessons there for nearly every aspect of running things in todays world. There is even an early (and successful) usage of PFI!
The traditional view of a bunch of hidebound Admirals only interested in floggings and sails is rubbish - you could, in fact, argue that the RN was *too* keen on innovation. A considerable number of ships were built that were novel and utterly useless.
I believe Drachinifel's made the point in the past that until the early 1900s, warships were the most complex machines built by man. They were incredibly complex systems.
It makes sense that project management would also be complex.
And the RN Dockyards the most complex organizations in the UK for much of the C19, till perhaps the railways. No wonder Bentham cut his teeth and made his mark on them.
Gun turrets were by far the most complex system in the ships. The level of automation was high of the day, complete with a good deal of automated sequencing. Building them was the long lead item for a number of classes of ship - each one took years. Hence the old story of the turrets for Dreadnought being pinched from other ships being built.
Resigning in disgrace is a humiliation too far. Clinging on despite abuse of rules, if that is revealed, would be humiliating but with salve of power.
I presumed the leak was fake....
I always presume fakery on leaks.
I knew it was fake as soon as I saw it was by Joe Lycett. Did you click the link and read the "leak", was rather amusing I thought.
It was a funny but obvious joke, but shocking to read people underneath on Twitter wondering if its real or not.
That also reflects what's probaby, inevitably, very soon to come, though - multiple leaks. People are just waiting for it.
There is also the possibility that the simutaneous police enquiry is causing people to hesitate on that, though. That could be why we haven't heard more so far.
... That connection means Babbage's computing work was much more influential in progressing engineering than it ever was in computing.
When it was finally built, the Difference Engine did work as designed. It would have been fantastic if he had managed to build the Analytical Engine as it was designed to be programmable in the Turing sense.
A UTM half a century before Turing
Went to see the DE in the Science Museum, superb. There's great video of it actually running.
Somebody posted a "six stages of a project" thing the other day and said we have reached the "Disillusionment" stage.
That seems about right to me. I am looking forward to Stage 3 next - "Panic"
DK Brown's "Stages of a Project"
- Enthusiasm - Disillusionment - Panic - The Search for the Guilty - The punishment of the Innocent - Praise and Honour for the Non-Participants
I suspect we will see 3-5 in a single hour as the Gray report comes out.
Boris's panicking will result in anyone no matter how junior being punished as he tries to protect himself.
It sounds like the watering down of the Gray report is underway. I have little expectation of it having any effect except to identity the sheep to be culled to save the Big Dog.
If it is watered down it is the civil service unions work trying to protect their staff from being named, and not no10
It is suggested that it will be very bad for the civil servants in no 10 and Whitehall
I am sure it will be bad for them, but I am also sure that any political wiggleroom will be exploited to the maximum. If the wiggleroom can be increased by the correct sort of watering down then...
As the original supplier of the quoted stages of a project - it is a a favourite of mine....
The context was the HMS Captain saga. Where a ship was built against the advice of Chief Constructor (chief naval architect) of the Royal Navy. The ship rolled over and sank on the maiden voyage, killing nearly everyone on board. Including the designer....
- The Chief Constructor who had warned against the design was forced to resign. - His replacement was very nearly the naval architect for the shipyard that had mis-built the ship - the design was bad, but made worse by excess weight in construction...
On the junior people involved - everyone is trying to hide behind them.
The senior civil servants who are involved are trying to claim that it is really unfair on Doris the receptionist to bin her. Because if Doris goes, then Sir Reginald Fuckwit who was next in the conga line will get it in the neck.
The politicians will be doing the same with the junior SPADs....
Very interesting bit of history Mr M.
The history of the 19th cent Royal Navy is fascinating from a project management, technology, innovation, working culture, social changes (and many others) perspectives. There are lessons there for nearly every aspect of running things in todays world. There is even an early (and successful) usage of PFI!
The traditional view of a bunch of hidebound Admirals only interested in floggings and sails is rubbish - you could, in fact, argue that the RN was *too* keen on innovation. A considerable number of ships were built that were novel and utterly useless.
Entirely agree. A few years ago I was visiting Chatham Dockyard with a friend and we had a poke around the old sawmill in the NE corner. No indication or anything on site at the time - just derelict cleared space plus the building. But it turned out to have been a highly modern operation with travelling gantry crane going out to the timber dump area and bringing tree trunks back into the sawmill building, all rational flow and power. Even placed uphill from the rest of the yard to make it that much easier to move the sawn timber to where it was needed.
In 1814.
By IKB's dad Marc. Fresh from arguably the first powered mass production line in the world (the Block Mills in Portsmouth Dockyard).
See the very early adoption of the steam engine and then the propeller. See also triple expansion and the steam turbine.
One failure was spending a fortune on Babbage's machines - which never delivered any usable data. The end came when Astronomer Royal pointed out that it would cost orders of magnitude less to hire lots of mathematicians to check the results of doing it manually.
It wasn't about being against progress - Babbage's machines required very, very expensive levels of precision (for the time) to work. Less technically demanding calculators were built and used. And later, the RN was the first to use mechanical computers in gun laying.
That leads to one of my favourite connections tree.
Joseph Whitworth designed the surface plate table and standardised screw threads (for nuts and bolts). He also designed a machine capable of measuring tolerances down to a millionth of an inch. His standard for screw threads became the British Standard Whitworth (which I think was the world's first engineering standard).
When Babbage was making his Difference Engine, he used engineer Joseph Clement to build it. The engine required massive precision, and parts could not be farmed out to other engineers. The cost of making the parts caused Clement and Babbage to fall out.
At the time, Clement had a young man working for him. A certain Joseph Whitworth. It's not hard to work out where Babbage got the idea that precision in engineering might be a good thing.
That connection means Babbage's computing work was much more influential in progressing engineering than it ever was in computing.
If you read between the lines, both Clement & Whitworth took advantage of Babbage to build their businesses. Whitworth built several machine shops out of the Babbage machine money...
Babbage was well aware of the precision requirement at the start
Do you have more info about that first assertion please?
As for Babbage being well aware of the need for precision - of course he was. But Whitworth was the guy who delivered it over a decade later.
It was in the book published by the chap who lead the Different Engine build for the Science Museum. His opinion was that Babbage was very difficult to work with because of continual changes and that the contracts to make stuff ended up being a bit... padded. Whether the padding was justified by the costs of the continual changes was arguable.
Both Clement and Whitworth ended up doing very well out of the contacts for the various engines.
Doron Swade? There's a lecture by him here, but don't know if it mentions that. Does have video of the DE.
Simon Calder @SimonCalder · 27m EXCLUSIVE Taxpayers spent £500,000 pounds so the foreign secretary didn't have to fly to, from and within Australia on @Qantas . Instead, @trussliz travelled 22,000 miles by private government Airbus A321, creating almost 500 tonnes of CO2 emissions. #COP26
Muppet. The A321 is 10% slower than the 787 and has higher cabin altitude - no wonder she looked cream crackered!
The 787 cabin altitude is awesome, makes a huge difference to how you feel after a long flight.
Not that I miss long flights though, not been on a plane in two years!
I don't think "fake news" is correct. Obvious satire from a comedian, posted on his twitter account.
Yup although I think in his case it's stretching the point to call him a comedian - the GBSB was his zenith! Since then he's been dropping the stitches rather than having people in them!
Boris Johnson’s satisfaction rating has hit a record low amid the "Partygate" storm - falling to the same level as Theresa May’s worst score in her final months, exclusive @IpsosMORI poll for @EveningStandard finds... standard.co.uk/news/politics
Sound the klaxon! Incidental hospitalisations overtake non-incidentals for the first time ever in that series. Quick calculation suggests that something like 80% of incoming daily admissions are either not *for* COVID or not staying overnight so not very serious.
We've got a huge update for reinfections coming on Monday that is going to get everyone panicked for nothing, yet this data which there is already an existing series for is tucked away in a weekly release on the NHS website that no one can easily find. This data should be reflected in the dashboard stats for England at least. There's currently only 6k people in hospital *for* COVID right now in England, that's still dropping pretty rapidly, if one were to go by the dashboard stats that makes it seem as though 14k people are in hospital for COVID on the same day, more than double.
Yet Covid makes those 'somethings else' markedly more lethal, even being given anaesthetic. So it IS a huge problem. All across the board. It's just the way you are ill and maybe die that differs.
Yes, we had first experience of this that all ended ok but could have gone badly wrong.
The lady was admitted to hospital with Covid which wasn't in itsef life-threatening but she had incurred two serious infections (lungs and urinary tract), probably as a consequence of immunity lowered by Covid. The infections were blasted away by antibiotics but if left untreated may themselves have cause death.
The fortunately hypothetical question is whether this would have been classified as death from Covid, or merely one where it was present.
Somebody posted a "six stages of a project" thing the other day and said we have reached the "Disillusionment" stage.
That seems about right to me. I am looking forward to Stage 3 next - "Panic"
DK Brown's "Stages of a Project"
- Enthusiasm - Disillusionment - Panic - The Search for the Guilty - The punishment of the Innocent - Praise and Honour for the Non-Participants
I suspect we will see 3-5 in a single hour as the Gray report comes out.
Boris's panicking will result in anyone no matter how junior being punished as he tries to protect himself.
It sounds like the watering down of the Gray report is underway. I have little expectation of it having any effect except to identity the sheep to be culled to save the Big Dog.
If it is watered down it is the civil service unions work trying to protect their staff from being named, and not no10
It is suggested that it will be very bad for the civil servants in no 10 and Whitehall
I am sure it will be bad for them, but I am also sure that any political wiggleroom will be exploited to the maximum. If the wiggleroom can be increased by the correct sort of watering down then...
As the original supplier of the quoted stages of a project - it is a a favourite of mine....
The context was the HMS Captain saga. Where a ship was built against the advice of Chief Constructor (chief naval architect) of the Royal Navy. The ship rolled over and sank on the maiden voyage, killing nearly everyone on board. Including the designer....
- The Chief Constructor who had warned against the design was forced to resign. - His replacement was very nearly the naval architect for the shipyard that had mis-built the ship - the design was bad, but made worse by excess weight in construction...
On the junior people involved - everyone is trying to hide behind them.
The senior civil servants who are involved are trying to claim that it is really unfair on Doris the receptionist to bin her. Because if Doris goes, then Sir Reginald Fuckwit who was next in the conga line will get it in the neck.
The politicians will be doing the same with the junior SPADs....
Very interesting bit of history Mr M.
The history of the 19th cent Royal Navy is fascinating from a project management, technology, innovation, working culture, social changes (and many others) perspectives. There are lessons there for nearly every aspect of running things in todays world. There is even an early (and successful) usage of PFI!
The traditional view of a bunch of hidebound Admirals only interested in floggings and sails is rubbish - you could, in fact, argue that the RN was *too* keen on innovation. A considerable number of ships were built that were novel and utterly useless.
Entirely agree. A few years ago I was visiting Chatham Dockyard with a friend and we had a poke around the old sawmill in the NE corner. No indication or anything on site at the time - just derelict cleared space plus the building. But it turned out to have been a highly modern operation with travelling gantry crane going out to the timber dump area and bringing tree trunks back into the sawmill building, all rational flow and power. Even placed uphill from the rest of the yard to make it that much easier to move the sawn timber to where it was needed.
In 1814.
By IKB's dad Marc. Fresh from arguably the first powered mass production line in the world (the Block Mills in Portsmouth Dockyard).
See the very early adoption of the steam engine and then the propeller. See also triple expansion and the steam turbine.
One failure was spending a fortune on Babbage's machines - which never delivered any usable data. The end came when Astronomer Royal pointed out that it would cost orders of magnitude less to hire lots of mathematicians to check the results of doing it manually.
It wasn't about being against progress - Babbage's machines required very, very expensive levels of precision (for the time) to work. Less technically demanding calculators were built and used. And later, the RN was the first to use mechanical computers in gun laying.
The Admiralty also innovated with tanks, as any reader of The Churchill Factor, the leading biography, will know. And carrier-borne aircraft.
Oh yes, His Maj's Land Ship Centipede and all that (though I am under the impression the tanks were more a matter of Churchill trying to poke his fingers into every pie rather than anything very useful for the Navy, the later- mooted Zeebrugge landings with tanks notwithstanding).
Boris Johnson’s satisfaction rating has hit a record low amid the "Partygate" storm - falling to the same level as Theresa May’s worst score in her final months, exclusive @IpsosMORI poll for @EveningStandard finds... standard.co.uk/news/politics
Yep with little further for Boris' satisfaction score to fall, the only way is up from here.
"For all his failings, the Prime Minister knows this and has a keener sense of human frailty than many. Look at his last 2 X pmqs outings. They are all about the projection of strength and not giving a toss, mixed with a Johnsonian dollop of humour to diffuse the earnest.
"His subtext is clear. I'm not going anywhere no matter how bad it gets. You didn't elect me for ethics. So to get me out you're going to have to take me out"
Somebody posted a "six stages of a project" thing the other day and said we have reached the "Disillusionment" stage.
That seems about right to me. I am looking forward to Stage 3 next - "Panic"
DK Brown's "Stages of a Project"
- Enthusiasm - Disillusionment - Panic - The Search for the Guilty - The punishment of the Innocent - Praise and Honour for the Non-Participants
I suspect we will see 3-5 in a single hour as the Gray report comes out.
Boris's panicking will result in anyone no matter how junior being punished as he tries to protect himself.
It sounds like the watering down of the Gray report is underway. I have little expectation of it having any effect except to identity the sheep to be culled to save the Big Dog.
If it is watered down it is the civil service unions work trying to protect their staff from being named, and not no10
It is suggested that it will be very bad for the civil servants in no 10 and Whitehall
I am sure it will be bad for them, but I am also sure that any political wiggleroom will be exploited to the maximum. If the wiggleroom can be increased by the correct sort of watering down then...
As the original supplier of the quoted stages of a project - it is a a favourite of mine....
The context was the HMS Captain saga. Where a ship was built against the advice of Chief Constructor (chief naval architect) of the Royal Navy. The ship rolled over and sank on the maiden voyage, killing nearly everyone on board. Including the designer....
- The Chief Constructor who had warned against the design was forced to resign. - His replacement was very nearly the naval architect for the shipyard that had mis-built the ship - the design was bad, but made worse by excess weight in construction...
On the junior people involved - everyone is trying to hide behind them.
The senior civil servants who are involved are trying to claim that it is really unfair on Doris the receptionist to bin her. Because if Doris goes, then Sir Reginald Fuckwit who was next in the conga line will get it in the neck.
The politicians will be doing the same with the junior SPADs....
Very interesting bit of history Mr M.
The history of the 19th cent Royal Navy is fascinating from a project management, technology, innovation, working culture, social changes (and many others) perspectives. There are lessons there for nearly every aspect of running things in todays world. There is even an early (and successful) usage of PFI!
The traditional view of a bunch of hidebound Admirals only interested in floggings and sails is rubbish - you could, in fact, argue that the RN was *too* keen on innovation. A considerable number of ships were built that were novel and utterly useless.
Entirely agree. A few years ago I was visiting Chatham Dockyard with a friend and we had a poke around the old sawmill in the NE corner. No indication or anything on site at the time - just derelict cleared space plus the building. But it turned out to have been a highly modern operation with travelling gantry crane going out to the timber dump area and bringing tree trunks back into the sawmill building, all rational flow and power. Even placed uphill from the rest of the yard to make it that much easier to move the sawn timber to where it was needed.
In 1814.
By IKB's dad Marc. Fresh from arguably the first powered mass production line in the world (the Block Mills in Portsmouth Dockyard).
See the very early adoption of the steam engine and then the propeller. See also triple expansion and the steam turbine.
One failure was spending a fortune on Babbage's machines - which never delivered any usable data. The end came when Astronomer Royal pointed out that it would cost orders of magnitude less to hire lots of mathematicians to check the results of doing it manually.
It wasn't about being against progress - Babbage's machines required very, very expensive levels of precision (for the time) to work. Less technically demanding calculators were built and used. And later, the RN was the first to use mechanical computers in gun laying.
Indeed; my dad maintained the later generation of these computers (as well as the gun turrets and guns). Though other aspects of naval life didn't change so quickly, especially the hammocks and broadside messing (where each group of sailors nominated one to go and collect the food from the galley and serve it up in their mess). As became very clear when Dad took me to see HMS Victory.
IMO the biggest scandal was not accepting the evidence that lemons and limes prevented scurvy, known by the likes of ?Richard Hawkins? in the late 1500s. Lind got evidence 150 years later, and it still took the RN 50-odd years to accept it.
Think how many lives would have been saved if it had been acknowledged earlier.
Somebody posted a "six stages of a project" thing the other day and said we have reached the "Disillusionment" stage.
That seems about right to me. I am looking forward to Stage 3 next - "Panic"
DK Brown's "Stages of a Project"
- Enthusiasm - Disillusionment - Panic - The Search for the Guilty - The punishment of the Innocent - Praise and Honour for the Non-Participants
I suspect we will see 3-5 in a single hour as the Gray report comes out.
Boris's panicking will result in anyone no matter how junior being punished as he tries to protect himself.
It sounds like the watering down of the Gray report is underway. I have little expectation of it having any effect except to identity the sheep to be culled to save the Big Dog.
If it is watered down it is the civil service unions work trying to protect their staff from being named, and not no10
It is suggested that it will be very bad for the civil servants in no 10 and Whitehall
I am sure it will be bad for them, but I am also sure that any political wiggleroom will be exploited to the maximum. If the wiggleroom can be increased by the correct sort of watering down then...
As the original supplier of the quoted stages of a project - it is a a favourite of mine....
The context was the HMS Captain saga. Where a ship was built against the advice of Chief Constructor (chief naval architect) of the Royal Navy. The ship rolled over and sank on the maiden voyage, killing nearly everyone on board. Including the designer....
- The Chief Constructor who had warned against the design was forced to resign. - His replacement was very nearly the naval architect for the shipyard that had mis-built the ship - the design was bad, but made worse by excess weight in construction...
On the junior people involved - everyone is trying to hide behind them.
The senior civil servants who are involved are trying to claim that it is really unfair on Doris the receptionist to bin her. Because if Doris goes, then Sir Reginald Fuckwit who was next in the conga line will get it in the neck.
The politicians will be doing the same with the junior SPADs....
Very interesting bit of history Mr M.
The history of the 19th cent Royal Navy is fascinating from a project management, technology, innovation, working culture, social changes (and many others) perspectives. There are lessons there for nearly every aspect of running things in todays world. There is even an early (and successful) usage of PFI!
The traditional view of a bunch of hidebound Admirals only interested in floggings and sails is rubbish - you could, in fact, argue that the RN was *too* keen on innovation. A considerable number of ships were built that were novel and utterly useless.
Entirely agree. A few years ago I was visiting Chatham Dockyard with a friend and we had a poke around the old sawmill in the NE corner. No indication or anything on site at the time - just derelict cleared space plus the building. But it turned out to have been a highly modern operation with travelling gantry crane going out to the timber dump area and bringing tree trunks back into the sawmill building, all rational flow and power. Even placed uphill from the rest of the yard to make it that much easier to move the sawn timber to where it was needed.
In 1814.
By IKB's dad Marc. Fresh from arguably the first powered mass production line in the world (the Block Mills in Portsmouth Dockyard).
See the very early adoption of the steam engine and then the propeller. See also triple expansion and the steam turbine.
One failure was spending a fortune on Babbage's machines - which never delivered any usable data. The end came when Astronomer Royal pointed out that it would cost orders of magnitude less to hire lots of mathematicians to check the results of doing it manually.
It wasn't about being against progress - Babbage's machines required very, very expensive levels of precision (for the time) to work. Less technically demanding calculators were built and used. And later, the RN was the first to use mechanical computers in gun laying.
The Admiralty also innovated with tanks, as any reader of The Churchill Factor, the leading biography, will know. And carrier-borne aircraft.
Oh yes, His Maj's Land Ship Centipede and all that (though I am under the impression the tanks were more a matter of Churchill trying to poke his fingers into every pie rather than anything very useful for the Navy, the later- mooted Zeebrugge landings with tanks notwithstanding).
Apparently, though I might have got this from Boris so dyor, the Admiralty's land ships is why tanks use nautical terms like hatches.
Somebody posted a "six stages of a project" thing the other day and said we have reached the "Disillusionment" stage.
That seems about right to me. I am looking forward to Stage 3 next - "Panic"
DK Brown's "Stages of a Project"
- Enthusiasm - Disillusionment - Panic - The Search for the Guilty - The punishment of the Innocent - Praise and Honour for the Non-Participants
I suspect we will see 3-5 in a single hour as the Gray report comes out.
Boris's panicking will result in anyone no matter how junior being punished as he tries to protect himself.
It sounds like the watering down of the Gray report is underway. I have little expectation of it having any effect except to identity the sheep to be culled to save the Big Dog.
If it is watered down it is the civil service unions work trying to protect their staff from being named, and not no10
It is suggested that it will be very bad for the civil servants in no 10 and Whitehall
I am sure it will be bad for them, but I am also sure that any political wiggleroom will be exploited to the maximum. If the wiggleroom can be increased by the correct sort of watering down then...
As the original supplier of the quoted stages of a project - it is a a favourite of mine....
The context was the HMS Captain saga. Where a ship was built against the advice of Chief Constructor (chief naval architect) of the Royal Navy. The ship rolled over and sank on the maiden voyage, killing nearly everyone on board. Including the designer....
- The Chief Constructor who had warned against the design was forced to resign. - His replacement was very nearly the naval architect for the shipyard that had mis-built the ship - the design was bad, but made worse by excess weight in construction...
On the junior people involved - everyone is trying to hide behind them.
The senior civil servants who are involved are trying to claim that it is really unfair on Doris the receptionist to bin her. Because if Doris goes, then Sir Reginald Fuckwit who was next in the conga line will get it in the neck.
The politicians will be doing the same with the junior SPADs....
Very interesting bit of history Mr M.
The history of the 19th cent Royal Navy is fascinating from a project management, technology, innovation, working culture, social changes (and many others) perspectives. There are lessons there for nearly every aspect of running things in todays world. There is even an early (and successful) usage of PFI!
The traditional view of a bunch of hidebound Admirals only interested in floggings and sails is rubbish - you could, in fact, argue that the RN was *too* keen on innovation. A considerable number of ships were built that were novel and utterly useless.
Entirely agree. A few years ago I was visiting Chatham Dockyard with a friend and we had a poke around the old sawmill in the NE corner. No indication or anything on site at the time - just derelict cleared space plus the building. But it turned out to have been a highly modern operation with travelling gantry crane going out to the timber dump area and bringing tree trunks back into the sawmill building, all rational flow and power. Even placed uphill from the rest of the yard to make it that much easier to move the sawn timber to where it was needed.
In 1814.
By IKB's dad Marc. Fresh from arguably the first powered mass production line in the world (the Block Mills in Portsmouth Dockyard).
See the very early adoption of the steam engine and then the propeller. See also triple expansion and the steam turbine.
One failure was spending a fortune on Babbage's machines - which never delivered any usable data. The end came when Astronomer Royal pointed out that it would cost orders of magnitude less to hire lots of mathematicians to check the results of doing it manually.
It wasn't about being against progress - Babbage's machines required very, very expensive levels of precision (for the time) to work. Less technically demanding calculators were built and used. And later, the RN was the first to use mechanical computers in gun laying.
That leads to one of my favourite connections tree.
Joseph Whitworth designed the surface plate table and standardised screw threads (for nuts and bolts). He also designed a machine capable of measuring tolerances down to a millionth of an inch. His standard for screw threads became the British Standard Whitworth (which I think was the world's first engineering standard).
When Babbage was making his Difference Engine, he used engineer Joseph Clement to build it. The engine required massive precision, and parts could not be farmed out to other engineers. The cost of making the parts caused Clement and Babbage to fall out.
At the time, Clement had a young man working for him. A certain Joseph Whitworth. It's not hard to work out where Babbage got the idea that precision in engineering might be a good thing.
That connection means Babbage's computing work was much more influential in progressing engineering than it ever was in computing.
If you read between the lines, both Clement & Whitworth took advantage of Babbage to build their businesses. Whitworth built several machine shops out of the Babbage machine money...
Babbage was well aware of the precision requirement at the start
Do you have more info about that first assertion please?
As for Babbage being well aware of the need for precision - of course he was. But Whitworth was the guy who delivered it over a decade later.
It was in the book published by the chap who lead the Different Engine build for the Science Museum. His opinion was that Babbage was very difficult to work with because of continual changes and that the contracts to make stuff ended up being a bit... padded. Whether the padding was justified by the costs of the continual changes was arguable.
Both Clement and Whitworth ended up doing very well out of the contacts for the various engines.
I haven't read that book, but I do worry about 'Great Man' disease. When writing a history of Great Men, it is all too easy for them to become heroes. As such, every success is their own, and every failure is the fault of someone else.
... That connection means Babbage's computing work was much more influential in progressing engineering than it ever was in computing.
When it was finally built, the Difference Engine did work as designed. It would have been fantastic if he had managed to build the Analytical Engine as it was designed to be programmable in the Turing sense.
A UTM half a century before Turing
It was also a bit of a dead end - vastly more expensive than the manual alternatives and required a high level of precision, so the expense couldn't be reduced.
A number of less ambitious calculating machines were later built, culminating in the work of Herman Hollerith, who was actually aware of the cost/capability issue. So he designed his machines to be cheaper than doing the work manually.
Boris Johnson’s satisfaction rating has hit a record low amid the "Partygate" storm - falling to the same level as Theresa May’s worst score in her final months, exclusive @IpsosMORI poll for @EveningStandard finds... standard.co.uk/news/politics
'However, it is not as bad as John Major’s low point of 76/17 in August 1994, or Margaret Thatcher’s of 76/20 in March 1990.
It is also similar to Tony Blair’s lowest in Jan 2007 of 68/25, while his successor Gordon Brown had results at this level at his low points in 2008/9.'
Somebody posted a "six stages of a project" thing the other day and said we have reached the "Disillusionment" stage.
That seems about right to me. I am looking forward to Stage 3 next - "Panic"
DK Brown's "Stages of a Project"
- Enthusiasm - Disillusionment - Panic - The Search for the Guilty - The punishment of the Innocent - Praise and Honour for the Non-Participants
I suspect we will see 3-5 in a single hour as the Gray report comes out.
Boris's panicking will result in anyone no matter how junior being punished as he tries to protect himself.
It sounds like the watering down of the Gray report is underway. I have little expectation of it having any effect except to identity the sheep to be culled to save the Big Dog.
If it is watered down it is the civil service unions work trying to protect their staff from being named, and not no10
It is suggested that it will be very bad for the civil servants in no 10 and Whitehall
I am sure it will be bad for them, but I am also sure that any political wiggleroom will be exploited to the maximum. If the wiggleroom can be increased by the correct sort of watering down then...
As the original supplier of the quoted stages of a project - it is a a favourite of mine....
The context was the HMS Captain saga. Where a ship was built against the advice of Chief Constructor (chief naval architect) of the Royal Navy. The ship rolled over and sank on the maiden voyage, killing nearly everyone on board. Including the designer....
- The Chief Constructor who had warned against the design was forced to resign. - His replacement was very nearly the naval architect for the shipyard that had mis-built the ship - the design was bad, but made worse by excess weight in construction...
On the junior people involved - everyone is trying to hide behind them.
The senior civil servants who are involved are trying to claim that it is really unfair on Doris the receptionist to bin her. Because if Doris goes, then Sir Reginald Fuckwit who was next in the conga line will get it in the neck.
The politicians will be doing the same with the junior SPADs....
Very interesting bit of history Mr M.
The history of the 19th cent Royal Navy is fascinating from a project management, technology, innovation, working culture, social changes (and many others) perspectives. There are lessons there for nearly every aspect of running things in todays world. There is even an early (and successful) usage of PFI!
The traditional view of a bunch of hidebound Admirals only interested in floggings and sails is rubbish - you could, in fact, argue that the RN was *too* keen on innovation. A considerable number of ships were built that were novel and utterly useless.
Entirely agree. A few years ago I was visiting Chatham Dockyard with a friend and we had a poke around the old sawmill in the NE corner. No indication or anything on site at the time - just derelict cleared space plus the building. But it turned out to have been a highly modern operation with travelling gantry crane going out to the timber dump area and bringing tree trunks back into the sawmill building, all rational flow and power. Even placed uphill from the rest of the yard to make it that much easier to move the sawn timber to where it was needed.
In 1814.
By IKB's dad Marc. Fresh from arguably the first powered mass production line in the world (the Block Mills in Portsmouth Dockyard).
See the very early adoption of the steam engine and then the propeller. See also triple expansion and the steam turbine.
One failure was spending a fortune on Babbage's machines - which never delivered any usable data. The end came when Astronomer Royal pointed out that it would cost orders of magnitude less to hire lots of mathematicians to check the results of doing it manually.
It wasn't about being against progress - Babbage's machines required very, very expensive levels of precision (for the time) to work. Less technically demanding calculators were built and used. And later, the RN was the first to use mechanical computers in gun laying.
The Admiralty also innovated with tanks, as any reader of The Churchill Factor, the leading biography, will know. And carrier-borne aircraft.
The sponsorship of William Froude and his work on model testing led to much more scientific ship design.
Which made it natural to use wind tunnels to design ships - for the aircraft carriers. Another first.
"For all his failings, the Prime Minister knows this and has a keener sense of human frailty than many. Look at his last 2 X pmqs outings. They are all about the projection of strength and not giving a toss, mixed with a Johnsonian dollop of humour to diffuse the earnest.
"His subtext is clear. I'm not going anywhere no matter how bad it gets. You didn't elect me for ethics. So to get me out you're going to have to take me out"
Boris Johnson’s satisfaction rating has hit a record low amid the "Partygate" storm - falling to the same level as Theresa May’s worst score in her final months, exclusive @IpsosMORI poll for @EveningStandard finds... standard.co.uk/news/politics
Labour 40% (+1)
Conservative 31% (-3)
Lib dems 13 % (+2)
And @HYUFD will be along to say this is a good poll as labour's lead is less than 10%
Somebody posted a "six stages of a project" thing the other day and said we have reached the "Disillusionment" stage.
That seems about right to me. I am looking forward to Stage 3 next - "Panic"
DK Brown's "Stages of a Project"
- Enthusiasm - Disillusionment - Panic - The Search for the Guilty - The punishment of the Innocent - Praise and Honour for the Non-Participants
I suspect we will see 3-5 in a single hour as the Gray report comes out.
Boris's panicking will result in anyone no matter how junior being punished as he tries to protect himself.
It sounds like the watering down of the Gray report is underway. I have little expectation of it having any effect except to identity the sheep to be culled to save the Big Dog.
If it is watered down it is the civil service unions work trying to protect their staff from being named, and not no10
It is suggested that it will be very bad for the civil servants in no 10 and Whitehall
I am sure it will be bad for them, but I am also sure that any political wiggleroom will be exploited to the maximum. If the wiggleroom can be increased by the correct sort of watering down then...
As the original supplier of the quoted stages of a project - it is a a favourite of mine....
The context was the HMS Captain saga. Where a ship was built against the advice of Chief Constructor (chief naval architect) of the Royal Navy. The ship rolled over and sank on the maiden voyage, killing nearly everyone on board. Including the designer....
- The Chief Constructor who had warned against the design was forced to resign. - His replacement was very nearly the naval architect for the shipyard that had mis-built the ship - the design was bad, but made worse by excess weight in construction...
On the junior people involved - everyone is trying to hide behind them.
The senior civil servants who are involved are trying to claim that it is really unfair on Doris the receptionist to bin her. Because if Doris goes, then Sir Reginald Fuckwit who was next in the conga line will get it in the neck.
The politicians will be doing the same with the junior SPADs....
Very interesting bit of history Mr M.
The history of the 19th cent Royal Navy is fascinating from a project management, technology, innovation, working culture, social changes (and many others) perspectives. There are lessons there for nearly every aspect of running things in todays world. There is even an early (and successful) usage of PFI!
The traditional view of a bunch of hidebound Admirals only interested in floggings and sails is rubbish - you could, in fact, argue that the RN was *too* keen on innovation. A considerable number of ships were built that were novel and utterly useless.
Entirely agree. A few years ago I was visiting Chatham Dockyard with a friend and we had a poke around the old sawmill in the NE corner. No indication or anything on site at the time - just derelict cleared space plus the building. But it turned out to have been a highly modern operation with travelling gantry crane going out to the timber dump area and bringing tree trunks back into the sawmill building, all rational flow and power. Even placed uphill from the rest of the yard to make it that much easier to move the sawn timber to where it was needed.
In 1814.
By IKB's dad Marc. Fresh from arguably the first powered mass production line in the world (the Block Mills in Portsmouth Dockyard).
See the very early adoption of the steam engine and then the propeller. See also triple expansion and the steam turbine.
One failure was spending a fortune on Babbage's machines - which never delivered any usable data. The end came when Astronomer Royal pointed out that it would cost orders of magnitude less to hire lots of mathematicians to check the results of doing it manually.
It wasn't about being against progress - Babbage's machines required very, very expensive levels of precision (for the time) to work. Less technically demanding calculators were built and used. And later, the RN was the first to use mechanical computers in gun laying.
The Admiralty also innovated with tanks, as any reader of The Churchill Factor, the leading biography, will know. And carrier-borne aircraft.
Oh yes, His Maj's Land Ship Centipede and all that (though I am under the impression the tanks were more a matter of Churchill trying to poke his fingers into every pie rather than anything very useful for the Navy, the later- mooted Zeebrugge landings with tanks notwithstanding).
Apparently, though I might have got this from Boris so dyor, the Admiralty's land ships is why tanks use nautical terms like hatches.
Another nice example must be 'sponson' for the bay window like armament housing on the side of the WW1 rhomboid tank. Though that must have fallen out of use as tank design changed.
Somebody posted a "six stages of a project" thing the other day and said we have reached the "Disillusionment" stage.
That seems about right to me. I am looking forward to Stage 3 next - "Panic"
DK Brown's "Stages of a Project"
- Enthusiasm - Disillusionment - Panic - The Search for the Guilty - The punishment of the Innocent - Praise and Honour for the Non-Participants
I suspect we will see 3-5 in a single hour as the Gray report comes out.
Boris's panicking will result in anyone no matter how junior being punished as he tries to protect himself.
It sounds like the watering down of the Gray report is underway. I have little expectation of it having any effect except to identity the sheep to be culled to save the Big Dog.
If it is watered down it is the civil service unions work trying to protect their staff from being named, and not no10
It is suggested that it will be very bad for the civil servants in no 10 and Whitehall
I am sure it will be bad for them, but I am also sure that any political wiggleroom will be exploited to the maximum. If the wiggleroom can be increased by the correct sort of watering down then...
As the original supplier of the quoted stages of a project - it is a a favourite of mine....
The context was the HMS Captain saga. Where a ship was built against the advice of Chief Constructor (chief naval architect) of the Royal Navy. The ship rolled over and sank on the maiden voyage, killing nearly everyone on board. Including the designer....
- The Chief Constructor who had warned against the design was forced to resign. - His replacement was very nearly the naval architect for the shipyard that had mis-built the ship - the design was bad, but made worse by excess weight in construction...
On the junior people involved - everyone is trying to hide behind them.
The senior civil servants who are involved are trying to claim that it is really unfair on Doris the receptionist to bin her. Because if Doris goes, then Sir Reginald Fuckwit who was next in the conga line will get it in the neck.
The politicians will be doing the same with the junior SPADs....
Very interesting bit of history Mr M.
The history of the 19th cent Royal Navy is fascinating from a project management, technology, innovation, working culture, social changes (and many others) perspectives. There are lessons there for nearly every aspect of running things in todays world. There is even an early (and successful) usage of PFI!
The traditional view of a bunch of hidebound Admirals only interested in floggings and sails is rubbish - you could, in fact, argue that the RN was *too* keen on innovation. A considerable number of ships were built that were novel and utterly useless.
I believe Drachinifel's made the point in the past that until the early 1900s, warships were the most complex machines built by man. They were incredibly complex systems.
It makes sense that project management would also be complex.
And the RN Dockyards the most complex organizations in the UK for much of the C19, till perhaps the railways. No wonder Bentham cut his teeth and made his mark on them.
Gun turrets were by far the most complex system in the ships. The level of automation was high of the day, complete with a good deal of automated sequencing. Building them was the long lead item for a number of classes of ship - each one took years. Hence the old story of the turrets for Dreadnought being pinched from other ships being built.
Relating to this topic - nice change from PartyGate - perhaps the person who most personifies the Navy's preoccupation with modernisation is Adm Jacky Fisher. Jan Morris's biography - "Fisher's Face" - is well worth a read. And to get a flavour of his personality, try his idiosyncratic memoirs, "Memories", featuring his unique approach to font sizes. After Nelson, surely our most consequential naval figure.
Boris Johnson’s satisfaction rating has hit a record low amid the "Partygate" storm - falling to the same level as Theresa May’s worst score in her final months, exclusive @IpsosMORI poll for @EveningStandard finds... standard.co.uk/news/politics
Somebody posted a "six stages of a project" thing the other day and said we have reached the "Disillusionment" stage.
That seems about right to me. I am looking forward to Stage 3 next - "Panic"
DK Brown's "Stages of a Project"
- Enthusiasm - Disillusionment - Panic - The Search for the Guilty - The punishment of the Innocent - Praise and Honour for the Non-Participants
I suspect we will see 3-5 in a single hour as the Gray report comes out.
Boris's panicking will result in anyone no matter how junior being punished as he tries to protect himself.
It sounds like the watering down of the Gray report is underway. I have little expectation of it having any effect except to identity the sheep to be culled to save the Big Dog.
If it is watered down it is the civil service unions work trying to protect their staff from being named, and not no10
It is suggested that it will be very bad for the civil servants in no 10 and Whitehall
I am sure it will be bad for them, but I am also sure that any political wiggleroom will be exploited to the maximum. If the wiggleroom can be increased by the correct sort of watering down then...
As the original supplier of the quoted stages of a project - it is a a favourite of mine....
The context was the HMS Captain saga. Where a ship was built against the advice of Chief Constructor (chief naval architect) of the Royal Navy. The ship rolled over and sank on the maiden voyage, killing nearly everyone on board. Including the designer....
- The Chief Constructor who had warned against the design was forced to resign. - His replacement was very nearly the naval architect for the shipyard that had mis-built the ship - the design was bad, but made worse by excess weight in construction...
On the junior people involved - everyone is trying to hide behind them.
The senior civil servants who are involved are trying to claim that it is really unfair on Doris the receptionist to bin her. Because if Doris goes, then Sir Reginald Fuckwit who was next in the conga line will get it in the neck.
The politicians will be doing the same with the junior SPADs....
Very interesting bit of history Mr M.
The history of the 19th cent Royal Navy is fascinating from a project management, technology, innovation, working culture, social changes (and many others) perspectives. There are lessons there for nearly every aspect of running things in todays world. There is even an early (and successful) usage of PFI!
The traditional view of a bunch of hidebound Admirals only interested in floggings and sails is rubbish - you could, in fact, argue that the RN was *too* keen on innovation. A considerable number of ships were built that were novel and utterly useless.
Entirely agree. A few years ago I was visiting Chatham Dockyard with a friend and we had a poke around the old sawmill in the NE corner. No indication or anything on site at the time - just derelict cleared space plus the building. But it turned out to have been a highly modern operation with travelling gantry crane going out to the timber dump area and bringing tree trunks back into the sawmill building, all rational flow and power. Even placed uphill from the rest of the yard to make it that much easier to move the sawn timber to where it was needed.
In 1814.
By IKB's dad Marc. Fresh from arguably the first powered mass production line in the world (the Block Mills in Portsmouth Dockyard).
See the very early adoption of the steam engine and then the propeller. See also triple expansion and the steam turbine.
One failure was spending a fortune on Babbage's machines - which never delivered any usable data. The end came when Astronomer Royal pointed out that it would cost orders of magnitude less to hire lots of mathematicians to check the results of doing it manually.
It wasn't about being against progress - Babbage's machines required very, very expensive levels of precision (for the time) to work. Less technically demanding calculators were built and used. And later, the RN was the first to use mechanical computers in gun laying.
The Admiralty also innovated with tanks, as any reader of The Churchill Factor, the leading biography, will know. And carrier-borne aircraft.
The sponsorship of William Froude and his work on model testing led to much more scientific ship design.
Which made it natural to use wind tunnels to design ships - for the aircraft carriers. Another first.
I think the Froude tank at Haslar has gone? But this is a huge treat of an outing, in normal times anyway (with the castle almost next door as well):
This is where a leader like Macron would never allow something like this to happen and why I respect how he operates in France. Robust defence of free speech and free thought.
Don't the police have anything better to do, like investigating all those parties in No 10?
I don't understand where our supposedly right wing Home Secretary is in all of this, how have we got to a stage where thought crimes are being pursued by the police? Though maybe that's what she wants.
The police have long had a tendency to do this, all by themselves.
When a special edition of Charlie Hebdo was published as push back against the terrorist attack, some Police forces tried to get newsagents to give them lists of who'd bought it.
I missed that. Gods. Another brilliant move from my local police. Glad they moved on to success re Operation Midland (yes that was the Met, but Wiltshire involved at various bits)
If the police raid my flat and use the books I own as test of character, I'm fucked.
Own two by Dan Brown.
I own 7! And a Thomas Knox.
Do to the Thomas Knox books what I have done with the Twilight novels I own.
Lord almighty, the things I had to fake to have a relationship, saying that Bella and Edward was the greatest love story in history was close to the top.
For some unfathomable reason - which we are now both denying responsibility for - my wife and I watched the Twilight movie last night.
Boris Johnson’s satisfaction rating has hit a record low amid the "Partygate" storm - falling to the same level as Theresa May’s worst score in her final months, exclusive @IpsosMORI poll for @EveningStandard finds... standard.co.uk/news/politics
Boris Johnson’s satisfaction rating has hit a record low amid the "Partygate" storm - falling to the same level as Theresa May’s worst score in her final months, exclusive @IpsosMORI poll for @EveningStandard finds... standard.co.uk/news/politics
'However, it is not as bad as John Major’s low point of 76/17 in August 1994, or Margaret Thatcher’s of 76/20 in March 1990.
It is also similar to Tony Blair’s lowest in Jan 2007 of 68/25, while his successor Gordon Brown had results at this level at his low points in 2008/9.'
Somebody posted a "six stages of a project" thing the other day and said we have reached the "Disillusionment" stage.
That seems about right to me. I am looking forward to Stage 3 next - "Panic"
DK Brown's "Stages of a Project"
- Enthusiasm - Disillusionment - Panic - The Search for the Guilty - The punishment of the Innocent - Praise and Honour for the Non-Participants
I suspect we will see 3-5 in a single hour as the Gray report comes out.
Boris's panicking will result in anyone no matter how junior being punished as he tries to protect himself.
It sounds like the watering down of the Gray report is underway. I have little expectation of it having any effect except to identity the sheep to be culled to save the Big Dog.
If it is watered down it is the civil service unions work trying to protect their staff from being named, and not no10
It is suggested that it will be very bad for the civil servants in no 10 and Whitehall
I am sure it will be bad for them, but I am also sure that any political wiggleroom will be exploited to the maximum. If the wiggleroom can be increased by the correct sort of watering down then...
As the original supplier of the quoted stages of a project - it is a a favourite of mine....
The context was the HMS Captain saga. Where a ship was built against the advice of Chief Constructor (chief naval architect) of the Royal Navy. The ship rolled over and sank on the maiden voyage, killing nearly everyone on board. Including the designer....
- The Chief Constructor who had warned against the design was forced to resign. - His replacement was very nearly the naval architect for the shipyard that had mis-built the ship - the design was bad, but made worse by excess weight in construction...
On the junior people involved - everyone is trying to hide behind them.
The senior civil servants who are involved are trying to claim that it is really unfair on Doris the receptionist to bin her. Because if Doris goes, then Sir Reginald Fuckwit who was next in the conga line will get it in the neck.
The politicians will be doing the same with the junior SPADs....
Very interesting bit of history Mr M.
The history of the 19th cent Royal Navy is fascinating from a project management, technology, innovation, working culture, social changes (and many others) perspectives. There are lessons there for nearly every aspect of running things in todays world. There is even an early (and successful) usage of PFI!
The traditional view of a bunch of hidebound Admirals only interested in floggings and sails is rubbish - you could, in fact, argue that the RN was *too* keen on innovation. A considerable number of ships were built that were novel and utterly useless.
Entirely agree. A few years ago I was visiting Chatham Dockyard with a friend and we had a poke around the old sawmill in the NE corner. No indication or anything on site at the time - just derelict cleared space plus the building. But it turned out to have been a highly modern operation with travelling gantry crane going out to the timber dump area and bringing tree trunks back into the sawmill building, all rational flow and power. Even placed uphill from the rest of the yard to make it that much easier to move the sawn timber to where it was needed.
In 1814.
By IKB's dad Marc. Fresh from arguably the first powered mass production line in the world (the Block Mills in Portsmouth Dockyard).
See the very early adoption of the steam engine and then the propeller. See also triple expansion and the steam turbine.
One failure was spending a fortune on Babbage's machines - which never delivered any usable data. The end came when Astronomer Royal pointed out that it would cost orders of magnitude less to hire lots of mathematicians to check the results of doing it manually.
It wasn't about being against progress - Babbage's machines required very, very expensive levels of precision (for the time) to work. Less technically demanding calculators were built and used. And later, the RN was the first to use mechanical computers in gun laying.
The Admiralty also innovated with tanks, as any reader of The Churchill Factor, the leading biography, will know. And carrier-borne aircraft.
Oh yes, His Maj's Land Ship Centipede and all that (though I am under the impression the tanks were more a matter of Churchill trying to poke his fingers into every pie rather than anything very useful for the Navy, the later- mooted Zeebrugge landings with tanks notwithstanding).
Apparently, though I might have got this from Boris so dyor, the Admiralty's land ships is why tanks use nautical terms like hatches.
Another nice example must be 'sponson' for the bay window like armament housing on the side of the WW1 rhomboid tank. Though that must have fallen out of use as tank design changed.
The army had some interest in mechanisation - tractors to pull heavy guns, for example - but there were few officers who'd been exposed to possibilities in the area.
Somebody posted a "six stages of a project" thing the other day and said we have reached the "Disillusionment" stage.
That seems about right to me. I am looking forward to Stage 3 next - "Panic"
DK Brown's "Stages of a Project"
- Enthusiasm - Disillusionment - Panic - The Search for the Guilty - The punishment of the Innocent - Praise and Honour for the Non-Participants
I suspect we will see 3-5 in a single hour as the Gray report comes out.
Boris's panicking will result in anyone no matter how junior being punished as he tries to protect himself.
It sounds like the watering down of the Gray report is underway. I have little expectation of it having any effect except to identity the sheep to be culled to save the Big Dog.
If it is watered down it is the civil service unions work trying to protect their staff from being named, and not no10
It is suggested that it will be very bad for the civil servants in no 10 and Whitehall
I am sure it will be bad for them, but I am also sure that any political wiggleroom will be exploited to the maximum. If the wiggleroom can be increased by the correct sort of watering down then...
As the original supplier of the quoted stages of a project - it is a a favourite of mine....
The context was the HMS Captain saga. Where a ship was built against the advice of Chief Constructor (chief naval architect) of the Royal Navy. The ship rolled over and sank on the maiden voyage, killing nearly everyone on board. Including the designer....
- The Chief Constructor who had warned against the design was forced to resign. - His replacement was very nearly the naval architect for the shipyard that had mis-built the ship - the design was bad, but made worse by excess weight in construction...
On the junior people involved - everyone is trying to hide behind them.
The senior civil servants who are involved are trying to claim that it is really unfair on Doris the receptionist to bin her. Because if Doris goes, then Sir Reginald Fuckwit who was next in the conga line will get it in the neck.
The politicians will be doing the same with the junior SPADs....
Very interesting bit of history Mr M.
The history of the 19th cent Royal Navy is fascinating from a project management, technology, innovation, working culture, social changes (and many others) perspectives. There are lessons there for nearly every aspect of running things in todays world. There is even an early (and successful) usage of PFI!
The traditional view of a bunch of hidebound Admirals only interested in floggings and sails is rubbish - you could, in fact, argue that the RN was *too* keen on innovation. A considerable number of ships were built that were novel and utterly useless.
I believe Drachinifel's made the point in the past that until the early 1900s, warships were the most complex machines built by man. They were incredibly complex systems.
It makes sense that project management would also be complex.
And the RN Dockyards the most complex organizations in the UK for much of the C19, till perhaps the railways. No wonder Bentham cut his teeth and made his mark on them.
Gun turrets were by far the most complex system in the ships. The level of automation was high of the day, complete with a good deal of automated sequencing. Building them was the long lead item for a number of classes of ship - each one took years. Hence the old story of the turrets for Dreadnought being pinched from other ships being built.
Relating to this topic - nice change from PartyGate - perhaps the person who most personifies the Navy's preoccupation with modernisation is Adm Jacky Fisher. Jan Morris's biography - "Fisher's Face" - is well worth a read. And to get a flavour of his personality, try his idiosyncratic memoirs, "Memories", featuring his unique approach to font sizes. After Nelson, surely our most consequential naval figure.
Also check out "The Great Edwardian Naval Feud" by Richard Freeman.
Boris Johnson’s satisfaction rating has hit a record low amid the "Partygate" storm - falling to the same level as Theresa May’s worst score in her final months, exclusive @IpsosMORI poll for @EveningStandard finds... standard.co.uk/news/politics
Boris Johnson’s satisfaction rating has hit a record low amid the "Partygate" storm - falling to the same level as Theresa May’s worst score in her final months, exclusive @IpsosMORI poll for @EveningStandard finds... standard.co.uk/news/politics
"For all his failings, the Prime Minister knows this and has a keener sense of human frailty than many. Look at his last 2 X pmqs outings. They are all about the projection of strength and not giving a toss, mixed with a Johnsonian dollop of humour to diffuse the earnest.
"His subtext is clear. I'm not going anywhere no matter how bad it gets. You didn't elect me for ethics. So to get me out you're going to have to take me out"
Yup. Johnson's superpower is his utter shamelessness. It is worrying because our unwritten constitution tends to rely on people behaving properly. A rogue like Johnson can get away with almost anything.
Somebody posted a "six stages of a project" thing the other day and said we have reached the "Disillusionment" stage.
That seems about right to me. I am looking forward to Stage 3 next - "Panic"
DK Brown's "Stages of a Project"
- Enthusiasm - Disillusionment - Panic - The Search for the Guilty - The punishment of the Innocent - Praise and Honour for the Non-Participants
I suspect we will see 3-5 in a single hour as the Gray report comes out.
Boris's panicking will result in anyone no matter how junior being punished as he tries to protect himself.
It sounds like the watering down of the Gray report is underway. I have little expectation of it having any effect except to identity the sheep to be culled to save the Big Dog.
If it is watered down it is the civil service unions work trying to protect their staff from being named, and not no10
It is suggested that it will be very bad for the civil servants in no 10 and Whitehall
I am sure it will be bad for them, but I am also sure that any political wiggleroom will be exploited to the maximum. If the wiggleroom can be increased by the correct sort of watering down then...
As the original supplier of the quoted stages of a project - it is a a favourite of mine....
The context was the HMS Captain saga. Where a ship was built against the advice of Chief Constructor (chief naval architect) of the Royal Navy. The ship rolled over and sank on the maiden voyage, killing nearly everyone on board. Including the designer....
- The Chief Constructor who had warned against the design was forced to resign. - His replacement was very nearly the naval architect for the shipyard that had mis-built the ship - the design was bad, but made worse by excess weight in construction...
On the junior people involved - everyone is trying to hide behind them.
The senior civil servants who are involved are trying to claim that it is really unfair on Doris the receptionist to bin her. Because if Doris goes, then Sir Reginald Fuckwit who was next in the conga line will get it in the neck.
The politicians will be doing the same with the junior SPADs....
Very interesting bit of history Mr M.
The history of the 19th cent Royal Navy is fascinating from a project management, technology, innovation, working culture, social changes (and many others) perspectives. There are lessons there for nearly every aspect of running things in todays world. There is even an early (and successful) usage of PFI!
The traditional view of a bunch of hidebound Admirals only interested in floggings and sails is rubbish - you could, in fact, argue that the RN was *too* keen on innovation. A considerable number of ships were built that were novel and utterly useless.
Entirely agree. A few years ago I was visiting Chatham Dockyard with a friend and we had a poke around the old sawmill in the NE corner. No indication or anything on site at the time - just derelict cleared space plus the building. But it turned out to have been a highly modern operation with travelling gantry crane going out to the timber dump area and bringing tree trunks back into the sawmill building, all rational flow and power. Even placed uphill from the rest of the yard to make it that much easier to move the sawn timber to where it was needed.
In 1814.
By IKB's dad Marc. Fresh from arguably the first powered mass production line in the world (the Block Mills in Portsmouth Dockyard).
See the very early adoption of the steam engine and then the propeller. See also triple expansion and the steam turbine.
One failure was spending a fortune on Babbage's machines - which never delivered any usable data. The end came when Astronomer Royal pointed out that it would cost orders of magnitude less to hire lots of mathematicians to check the results of doing it manually.
It wasn't about being against progress - Babbage's machines required very, very expensive levels of precision (for the time) to work. Less technically demanding calculators were built and used. And later, the RN was the first to use mechanical computers in gun laying.
Indeed; my dad maintained the later generation of these computers (as well as the gun turrets and guns). Though other aspects of naval life didn't change so quickly, especially the hammocks and broadside messing (where each group of sailors nominated one to go and collect the food from the galley and serve it up in their mess). As became very clear when Dad took me to see HMS Victory.
IMO the biggest scandal was not accepting the evidence that lemons and limes prevented scurvy, known by the likes of ?Richard Hawkins? in the late 1500s. Lind got evidence 150 years later, and it still took the RN 50-odd years to accept it.
Think how many lives would have been saved if it had been acknowledged earlier.
Even so, I'm not sure that the definitive book has been written yet. One confounding factor was the processing methods and cultivars used. Another was, surely, the other foods - rancid fat seems to have used up vitC more quickly (as one might expect of an antioxidant) so some thought it was the food (but without realising the link). IIRC ship's cooks were seen to be prone to scujrvy, attributed to helping themselves to the 'slush' surplus fat skimmed off the boiling salt meat. Or am I misremembering?
Somebody posted a "six stages of a project" thing the other day and said we have reached the "Disillusionment" stage.
That seems about right to me. I am looking forward to Stage 3 next - "Panic"
DK Brown's "Stages of a Project"
- Enthusiasm - Disillusionment - Panic - The Search for the Guilty - The punishment of the Innocent - Praise and Honour for the Non-Participants
I suspect we will see 3-5 in a single hour as the Gray report comes out.
Boris's panicking will result in anyone no matter how junior being punished as he tries to protect himself.
It sounds like the watering down of the Gray report is underway. I have little expectation of it having any effect except to identity the sheep to be culled to save the Big Dog.
If it is watered down it is the civil service unions work trying to protect their staff from being named, and not no10
It is suggested that it will be very bad for the civil servants in no 10 and Whitehall
I am sure it will be bad for them, but I am also sure that any political wiggleroom will be exploited to the maximum. If the wiggleroom can be increased by the correct sort of watering down then...
As the original supplier of the quoted stages of a project - it is a a favourite of mine....
The context was the HMS Captain saga. Where a ship was built against the advice of Chief Constructor (chief naval architect) of the Royal Navy. The ship rolled over and sank on the maiden voyage, killing nearly everyone on board. Including the designer....
- The Chief Constructor who had warned against the design was forced to resign. - His replacement was very nearly the naval architect for the shipyard that had mis-built the ship - the design was bad, but made worse by excess weight in construction...
On the junior people involved - everyone is trying to hide behind them.
The senior civil servants who are involved are trying to claim that it is really unfair on Doris the receptionist to bin her. Because if Doris goes, then Sir Reginald Fuckwit who was next in the conga line will get it in the neck.
The politicians will be doing the same with the junior SPADs....
Very interesting bit of history Mr M.
The history of the 19th cent Royal Navy is fascinating from a project management, technology, innovation, working culture, social changes (and many others) perspectives. There are lessons there for nearly every aspect of running things in todays world. There is even an early (and successful) usage of PFI!
The traditional view of a bunch of hidebound Admirals only interested in floggings and sails is rubbish - you could, in fact, argue that the RN was *too* keen on innovation. A considerable number of ships were built that were novel and utterly useless.
I believe Drachinifel's made the point in the past that until the early 1900s, warships were the most complex machines built by man. They were incredibly complex systems.
It makes sense that project management would also be complex.
And the RN Dockyards the most complex organizations in the UK for much of the C19, till perhaps the railways. No wonder Bentham cut his teeth and made his mark on them.
Gun turrets were by far the most complex system in the ships. The level of automation was high of the day, complete with a good deal of automated sequencing. Building them was the long lead item for a number of classes of ship - each one took years. Hence the old story of the turrets for Dreadnought being pinched from other ships being built.
Relating to this topic - nice change from PartyGate - perhaps the person who most personifies the Navy's preoccupation with modernisation is Adm Jacky Fisher. Jan Morris's biography - "Fisher's Face" - is well worth a read. And to get a flavour of his personality, try his idiosyncratic memoirs, "Memories", featuring his unique approach to font sizes. After Nelson, surely our most consequential naval figure.
I've got original editions of 'Memories' and 'Records' on a bookshelf.
Haven't they learned yet what happens when a book is banned?
Many people in their 40s and 50s will tell you what happened when Peter Wright’s Spycatcher got banned, and that was before we had an internet!
Yup. I was one of the mug's that bought it. The only thing I learned was what a complete shambles the security services were.
I came across it in a Book Exchange and swapped it for some other books I was handing in. It was an interesting read in its own way, but I did wonder what all the fuss was about.
Somebody posted a "six stages of a project" thing the other day and said we have reached the "Disillusionment" stage.
That seems about right to me. I am looking forward to Stage 3 next - "Panic"
DK Brown's "Stages of a Project"
- Enthusiasm - Disillusionment - Panic - The Search for the Guilty - The punishment of the Innocent - Praise and Honour for the Non-Participants
I suspect we will see 3-5 in a single hour as the Gray report comes out.
Boris's panicking will result in anyone no matter how junior being punished as he tries to protect himself.
It sounds like the watering down of the Gray report is underway. I have little expectation of it having any effect except to identity the sheep to be culled to save the Big Dog.
If it is watered down it is the civil service unions work trying to protect their staff from being named, and not no10
It is suggested that it will be very bad for the civil servants in no 10 and Whitehall
I am sure it will be bad for them, but I am also sure that any political wiggleroom will be exploited to the maximum. If the wiggleroom can be increased by the correct sort of watering down then...
As the original supplier of the quoted stages of a project - it is a a favourite of mine....
The context was the HMS Captain saga. Where a ship was built against the advice of Chief Constructor (chief naval architect) of the Royal Navy. The ship rolled over and sank on the maiden voyage, killing nearly everyone on board. Including the designer....
- The Chief Constructor who had warned against the design was forced to resign. - His replacement was very nearly the naval architect for the shipyard that had mis-built the ship - the design was bad, but made worse by excess weight in construction...
On the junior people involved - everyone is trying to hide behind them.
The senior civil servants who are involved are trying to claim that it is really unfair on Doris the receptionist to bin her. Because if Doris goes, then Sir Reginald Fuckwit who was next in the conga line will get it in the neck.
The politicians will be doing the same with the junior SPADs....
Very interesting bit of history Mr M.
The history of the 19th cent Royal Navy is fascinating from a project management, technology, innovation, working culture, social changes (and many others) perspectives. There are lessons there for nearly every aspect of running things in todays world. There is even an early (and successful) usage of PFI!
The traditional view of a bunch of hidebound Admirals only interested in floggings and sails is rubbish - you could, in fact, argue that the RN was *too* keen on innovation. A considerable number of ships were built that were novel and utterly useless.
I believe Drachinifel's made the point in the past that until the early 1900s, warships were the most complex machines built by man. They were incredibly complex systems.
It makes sense that project management would also be complex.
And the RN Dockyards the most complex organizations in the UK for much of the C19, till perhaps the railways. No wonder Bentham cut his teeth and made his mark on them.
Gun turrets were by far the most complex system in the ships. The level of automation was high of the day, complete with a good deal of automated sequencing. Building them was the long lead item for a number of classes of ship - each one took years. Hence the old story of the turrets for Dreadnought being pinched from other ships being built.
Relating to this topic - nice change from PartyGate - perhaps the person who most personifies the Navy's preoccupation with modernisation is Adm Jacky Fisher. Jan Morris's biography - "Fisher's Face" - is well worth a read. And to get a flavour of his personality, try his idiosyncratic memoirs, "Memories", featuring his unique approach to font sizes. After Nelson, surely our most consequential naval figure.
Also check out "The Great Edwardian Naval Feud" by Richard Freeman.
"Rules of the Game" by Gordon and "Castles of Steel" by Massie
It's hard to say who was more barking - Fisher or Beresford. But Beresford lost the plot before Fisher.
Boris Johnson’s satisfaction rating has hit a record low amid the "Partygate" storm - falling to the same level as Theresa May’s worst score in her final months, exclusive @IpsosMORI poll for @EveningStandard finds... standard.co.uk/news/politics
Labour 40% (+1)
Conservative 31% (-3)
Lib dems 13 % (+2)
And @HYUFD will be along to say this is a good poll as labour's lead is less than 10%
Boris Johnson’s satisfaction rating has hit a record low amid the "Partygate" storm - falling to the same level as Theresa May’s worst score in her final months, exclusive @IpsosMORI poll for @EveningStandard finds... standard.co.uk/news/politics
Labour lead still under 10% (and the previous poll from Ipsos Mori was 3rd-10th December last year, mainly before partygate)
If Starmer could have picked the numbers himself he could hardly have done better - good enough to consolidate his authority but not so good that the Conservatives have no option but to sack their leader,
Those figures for Lib + Green look particularly ominous for the Conservatives. That's one hell of an anti-Tory alliance building.
Boris Johnson’s satisfaction rating has hit a record low amid the "Partygate" storm - falling to the same level as Theresa May’s worst score in her final months, exclusive @IpsosMORI poll for @EveningStandard finds... standard.co.uk/news/politics
'However, it is not as bad as John Major’s low point of 76/17 in August 1994, or Margaret Thatcher’s of 76/20 in March 1990.
It is also similar to Tony Blair’s lowest in Jan 2007 of 68/25, while his successor Gordon Brown had results at this level at his low points in 2008/9.'
Does it not worry you Mr Saeed al-Sahhaf, that the infidel Labour enemy is maybe not going to "be burned in their tanks" and that in fact they have over two years to push their lead to over your magic10%, which when you consider the flakiness of the Green vote one could argue they are there already?
Haven't they learned yet what happens when a book is banned?
Many people in their 40s and 50s will tell you what happened when Peter Wright’s Spycatcher got banned, and that was before we had an internet!
Yup. I was one of the mug's that bought it. The only thing I learned was what a complete shambles the security services were.
I came across it in a Book Exchange and swapped it for some other books I was handing in. It was an interesting read in its own way, but I did wonder what all the fuss was about.
The main thing I got from it, was that Peter Wright was a dangerous lunatic who had an advanced case of Angleton's Disease*
*My invented name for the paranoid spiral that some spy hunters end up in - everyone is a spy. Evidence that someone is not a spy just means they are a really cunning spy....
Haven't they learned yet what happens when a book is banned?
Many people in their 40s and 50s will tell you what happened when Peter Wright’s Spycatcher got banned, and that was before we had an internet!
Yup. I was one of the mug's that bought it. The only thing I learned was what a complete shambles the security services were.
I came across it in a Book Exchange and swapped it for some other books I was handing in. It was an interesting read in its own way, but I did wonder what all the fuss was about.
iirc (which I might not) New Scientist wondered why Wright was bodging up home-made versions of electronics kit he could have bought at any shop in the Edgware Road or borrowed from the BBC.
But MI5 contemplating a coup against the elected government was sort of big news, as would have been the Prime Minister being a Soviet spy.
Simon Calder @SimonCalder · 27m EXCLUSIVE Taxpayers spent £500,000 pounds so the foreign secretary didn't have to fly to, from and within Australia on @Qantas. Instead, @trussliz travelled 22,000 miles by private government Airbus A321, creating almost 500 tonnes of CO2 emissions. #COP26
Yeeeouch. That's not going to do her leadership campaign much good.
Boris Johnson’s satisfaction rating has hit a record low amid the "Partygate" storm - falling to the same level as Theresa May’s worst score in her final months, exclusive @IpsosMORI poll for @EveningStandard finds... standard.co.uk/news/politics
Mrs May was a paragon of competence and stability compared to The Clown
Tories with Boris Johnson as leader the next election = Stepmom on a niche website.
No, Tories under Truss, Patel or Gove would see a Labour majority most likely. Tories under Boris on current polls would see a hung parliament (even today's Mori and certainly today's Kantar).
Sunak may or may not do fractionally better than Boris. Not if he continues announcement's like today's on UC however, Major got a bounce after Thatcher from scrapping the poll tax. Sunak's plan for a bounce is? Increased NI bills from April he put forward last year and force skilled workers recently made redundant to take unskilled jobs after just a month on benefits rather than apply for jobs in their previous field for 3 months as now
Boris Johnson’s satisfaction rating has hit a record low amid the "Partygate" storm - falling to the same level as Theresa May’s worst score in her final months, exclusive @IpsosMORI poll for @EveningStandard finds... standard.co.uk/news/politics
Simon Calder @SimonCalder · 27m EXCLUSIVE Taxpayers spent £500,000 pounds so the foreign secretary didn't have to fly to, from and within Australia on @Qantas. Instead, @trussliz travelled 22,000 miles by private government Airbus A321, creating almost 500 tonnes of CO2 emissions. #COP26
Yeeeouch. That's not going to do her leadership campaign much good.
Boris Johnson’s satisfaction rating has hit a record low amid the "Partygate" storm - falling to the same level as Theresa May’s worst score in her final months, exclusive @IpsosMORI poll for @EveningStandard finds... standard.co.uk/news/politics
I don’t see why it’s sensible for Tory MPs to look at the polling and conclude “it’s best to ride this out to an inevitable loss at the next election”
There’s some fundamental basics the government isn’t getting right under Boris. Surely a change in letter gives them a bit of time to reset some of the government business as we head toward a general election
"For all his failings, the Prime Minister knows this and has a keener sense of human frailty than many. Look at his last 2 X pmqs outings. They are all about the projection of strength and not giving a toss, mixed with a Johnsonian dollop of humour to diffuse the earnest.
"His subtext is clear. I'm not going anywhere no matter how bad it gets. You didn't elect me for ethics. So to get me out you're going to have to take me out"
Somebody posted a "six stages of a project" thing the other day and said we have reached the "Disillusionment" stage.
That seems about right to me. I am looking forward to Stage 3 next - "Panic"
DK Brown's "Stages of a Project"
- Enthusiasm - Disillusionment - Panic - The Search for the Guilty - The punishment of the Innocent - Praise and Honour for the Non-Participants
I suspect we will see 3-5 in a single hour as the Gray report comes out.
Boris's panicking will result in anyone no matter how junior being punished as he tries to protect himself.
It sounds like the watering down of the Gray report is underway. I have little expectation of it having any effect except to identity the sheep to be culled to save the Big Dog.
I am laying off a little on Sunak this morning.
Time and tide and all that. His moment may well be passing.
Personally, I have never rated him. He was an anonymous MP until elevated to Chancellor after which all he has done is to spend money at levels that would make a Corbynite blanche!
Exactly he has don enothing of note, however they are easy pleased on here.
Morning Malc. How's your lady wife now?
Hello OKC, she is a lot better , still getting some odd things every so often , all her bones aching and strange sensation with all the nerves on her head giving sharp pains. Not sure if connected. Her lungs are not 100% , as she cannot do anything like the exercise she used to but in grand scheme of things we cannot complain at all. Hope you and wife are well. Sun shining here today.
Boris Johnson’s satisfaction rating has hit a record low amid the "Partygate" storm - falling to the same level as Theresa May’s worst score in her final months, exclusive @IpsosMORI poll for @EveningStandard finds... standard.co.uk/news/politics
Labour lead still under 10% (and the previous poll from Ipsos Mori was 3rd-10th December last year, mainly before partygate)
If Starmer could have picked the numbers himself he could hardly have done better - good enough to consolidate his authority but not so good that the Conservatives have no option but to sack their leader,
Those figures for Lib + Green look particularly ominous for the Conservatives. That's one hell of an anti-Tory alliance building.
62% for the traffic light alliance seems very high.
Leaves only 7% for assorted Nationalists and continuity fruitcakes.
Haven't they learned yet what happens when a book is banned?
Many people in their 40s and 50s will tell you what happened when Peter Wright’s Spycatcher got banned, and that was before we had an internet!
Yup. I was one of the mug's that bought it. The only thing I learned was what a complete shambles the security services were.
I came across it in a Book Exchange and swapped it for some other books I was handing in. It was an interesting read in its own way, but I did wonder what all the fuss was about.
It was largely about his Pension gripe, Bev. Did have some nice moments though.
I particularly liked the bit about the fellow spy who used to spend the first half-hour of the day examining his teeth. It was somehow reassuring to learn that such senior people have similar odd habits to the rest of us.
Boris Johnson’s satisfaction rating has hit a record low amid the "Partygate" storm - falling to the same level as Theresa May’s worst score in her final months, exclusive @IpsosMORI poll for @EveningStandard finds... standard.co.uk/news/politics
Boris Johnson’s satisfaction rating has hit a record low amid the "Partygate" storm - falling to the same level as Theresa May’s worst score in her final months, exclusive @IpsosMORI poll for @EveningStandard finds... standard.co.uk/news/politics
This is where a leader like Macron would never allow something like this to happen and why I respect how he operates in France. Robust defence of free speech and free thought.
Don't the police have anything better to do, like investigating all those parties in No 10?
I don't understand where our supposedly right wing Home Secretary is in all of this, how have we got to a stage where thought crimes are being pursued by the police? Though maybe that's what she wants.
The police have long had a tendency to do this, all by themselves.
When a special edition of Charlie Hebdo was published as push back against the terrorist attack, some Police forces tried to get newsagents to give them lists of who'd bought it.
I guess my point is that the Home Secretary should be repealing the laws that allow this kind of policing, but I guess it appeals to her authoritarian view that no one should be able to say anything unless specifically approved by her.
It reveals that the tory commitment to 'freedom of speech and thought' is actually a sham, at least on the part of the government. On the one hand, they allow this type of policing of 'hate' to happen. On the other, they bring in laws that seek to hamper investigative journalism that may result in problems for them; as well as placing legal limitations on legitimate protest. I've said repeatedly that you can expect nothing in terms of meaningful action from the government on this type of problem, the only people you can rely on is the backbenchers in the Conservative Party, and even then it is a rear guard action watering down bad laws bought forward by the government.
The problem is that nearly anything can be described as "needing to be investigated"
It's back to police culture - see @Cyclefree on that subject.
The bigger issue is fundamentally with the laws themselves, specifically the encroachment of law in to areas that were traditionally regarded as the private sphere. It is inevitable that the police will have to adapt to that. By getting angered at the way the police target anti-trans activists, people are really angry at the underlying laws which protect trans people from what they percieve as harrassment.
Obviously there are examples of administrative overreach, such as the recording of 'non crime hate incidents', which resulted in the Miller case. But my argument is that such events cannot be disassociated from changes in the broader legal framework, which essentially encourages such interventions on the part of public authorities, right up to criminal sanctions. The definition of harrasment, which is a criminal offence, is so expansive that it can account for almost anything. Many posts on here could be so construed. The authorities can pick and choose who they want to pursue. It is all very, very far from the role of the police as traditionally understood.
Boris Johnson’s satisfaction rating has hit a record low amid the "Partygate" storm - falling to the same level as Theresa May’s worst score in her final months, exclusive @IpsosMORI poll for @EveningStandard finds... standard.co.uk/news/politics
Labour lead still under 10% (and the previous poll from Ipsos Mori was 3rd-10th December last year, mainly before partygate)
You need to bear in mind there's a lot of Green votes for Labour to squeeze. At least half of that vote will go Labour at an actual GE.
If Corbyn is not reinstated by Starmer? Wishful thinking.
Plus remember Boris still has RefUK to squeeze further
I can see the Greens getting 5% in a real GE although I think most of that will be concentrated in a small no. of urban seats like Bristol West which is the Greens only viable target. I will be surprised if most Green supporters do not vote tactically for Labour in marginal seats like Altrincham and Sale W. Some of that Green vote will probably go to the Lib Dems in the south if they don't stand in some Con/LD marginals like last time.
Hold on, that comparison is BS because you can't compare right to centre+left. As we saw in 2010, the centre can end up siding with either wing.
What's most dangerous for the Tories is the Lab+Green score being so high. When it comes down to it leftist voters will be given the opportunity to kick the Tories out and they won't sabotage that by voting Green.
Boris Johnson’s satisfaction rating has hit a record low amid the "Partygate" storm - falling to the same level as Theresa May’s worst score in her final months, exclusive @IpsosMORI poll for @EveningStandard finds... standard.co.uk/news/politics
Mrs May was a paragon of competence and stability compared to The Clown
May always tried her hardest, her issues were policy related not conduct pertaining to her personally which was and always has been impecable. She must be enjoying this.
Boris Johnson’s satisfaction rating has hit a record low amid the "Partygate" storm - falling to the same level as Theresa May’s worst score in her final months, exclusive @IpsosMORI poll for @EveningStandard finds... standard.co.uk/news/politics
Labour lead still under 10% (and the previous poll from Ipsos Mori was 3rd-10th December last year, mainly before partygate)
You need to bear in mind there's a lot of Green votes for Labour to squeeze. At least half of that vote will go Labour at an actual GE.
If Corbyn is not reinstated by Starmer? Wishful thinking.
Plus remember Boris still has RefUK to squeeze further
Yes Boris is going to squeeze further a party that is polling so dreadfully they're not even named in the results. 😂
You'll grasp any straw won't you. You're the only person on the site who actually thinks RefUK are a serious party or relevant at all.
'However, even as the “parties” storm engulfs Mr Johnson, he is still as popular among Conservative supporters as Keir is among Labour’s.
The Prime Minister has seen his satisfaction rating among Tory backers drop ten points in a month to 57 per cent, with dissatisfied up six points to 34 per cent, a net score of plus 23.'
Boris Johnson’s satisfaction rating has hit a record low amid the "Partygate" storm - falling to the same level as Theresa May’s worst score in her final months, exclusive @IpsosMORI poll for @EveningStandard finds... standard.co.uk/news/politics
Labour lead still under 10% (and the previous poll from Ipsos Mori was 3rd-10th December last year, mainly before partygate)
You need to bear in mind there's a lot of Green votes for Labour to squeeze. At least half of that vote will go Labour at an actual GE.
If Corbyn is not reinstated by Starmer? Wishful thinking.
Plus remember Boris still has RefUK to squeeze further
Yes Boris is going to squeeze further a party that is polling so dreadfully they're not even named in the results. 😂
You'll grasp any straw won't you. You're the only person on the site who actually thinks RefUK are a serious party or relevant at all.
Labour will squeeze Green voters on the day. No one on the left will give up a chance of kicking Boris and the Tories out if it looks like they can. If someone like Rishi takes over and get the Tories up to 41 or 42 points Labour will struggle to do it.
What would you think of a requirement for Cabinet ministers to have spent at least two years on that departments relevant select committee or as a junior minister before being eligible to represent that department in Cabinet?
This would reduce random cabinet reshuffles by design and hopefully also lead to MPs gaining deeper understanding and knowledge of a specific area rather than pretending to know everything about everything.
Boris Johnson’s satisfaction rating has hit a record low amid the "Partygate" storm - falling to the same level as Theresa May’s worst score in her final months, exclusive @IpsosMORI poll for @EveningStandard finds... standard.co.uk/news/politics
Labour lead still under 10% (and the previous poll from Ipsos Mori was 3rd-10th December last year, mainly before partygate)
You need to bear in mind there's a lot of Green votes for Labour to squeeze. At least half of that vote will go Labour at an actual GE.
If Corbyn is not reinstated by Starmer? Wishful thinking.
Plus remember Boris still has RefUK to squeeze further
Yes Boris is going to squeeze further a party that is polling so dreadfully they're not even named in the results. 😂
You'll grasp any straw won't you. You're the only person on the site who actually thinks RefUK are a serious party or relevant at all.
Labour will squeeze Green voters on the day. No one on the left will give up a chance of kicking Boris and the Tories out if it looks like they can. If someone like Rishi takes over and get the Tories up to 41 or 42 points Labour will struggle to do it.
Hold on, that comparison is BS because you can't compare right to centre+left. As we saw in 2010, the centre can end up siding with either wing.
What's most dangerous for the Tories is the Lab+Green score being so high. When it comes down to it leftist voters will be given the opportunity to kick the Tories out and they won't sabotage that by voting Green.
Spot on there Max. I really don't know where this idea that you lump in the LD's with Labour comes from.
In the Lord Ashcroft debate about Johnson on Conhome, one of the top voted posts concludes 'any new leader should come from the backbenches'.
That's instructive.
The tories don't see the point of changing Johnson unless the policy approach changes. All that a leader from the cabinet offers is what many tories see as continuity Blairism from someone who is isn't as good as Johnson at winning votes. What's the point of that? Remainer Truss and Tax and spend Sunak need not apply.
Trouble is, the backbencher rebels don't have a champion. Frost is the closest, but he isn't an MP.
And so the status quo could last for for some time.
Boris Johnson’s satisfaction rating has hit a record low amid the "Partygate" storm - falling to the same level as Theresa May’s worst score in her final months, exclusive @IpsosMORI poll for @EveningStandard finds... standard.co.uk/news/politics
Labour lead still under 10% (and the previous poll from Ipsos Mori was 3rd-10th December last year, mainly before partygate)
You need to bear in mind there's a lot of Green votes for Labour to squeeze. At least half of that vote will go Labour at an actual GE.
If Corbyn is not reinstated by Starmer? Wishful thinking.
Plus remember Boris still has RefUK to squeeze further
Yes Boris is going to squeeze further a party that is polling so dreadfully they're not even named in the results. 😂
You'll grasp any straw won't you. You're the only person on the site who actually thinks RefUK are a serious party or relevant at all.
Labour will squeeze Green voters on the day. No one on the left will give up a chance of kicking Boris and the Tories out if it looks like they can. If someone like Rishi takes over and get the Tories up to 41 or 42 points Labour will struggle to do it.
I think Rishi has a lower ceiling and higher floor than Boris. His personal ratings are actually quite good right now, he needs to grasp the nettle at some point though or Starmer's wife will be measuring up the curtains.
Boris Johnson’s satisfaction rating has hit a record low amid the "Partygate" storm - falling to the same level as Theresa May’s worst score in her final months, exclusive @IpsosMORI poll for @EveningStandard finds... standard.co.uk/news/politics
Labour lead still under 10% (and the previous poll from Ipsos Mori was 3rd-10th December last year, mainly before partygate)
You need to bear in mind there's a lot of Green votes for Labour to squeeze. At least half of that vote will go Labour at an actual GE.
If Corbyn is not reinstated by Starmer? Wishful thinking.
Plus remember Boris still has RefUK to squeeze further
Yes Boris is going to squeeze further a party that is polling so dreadfully they're not even named in the results. 😂
You'll grasp any straw won't you. You're the only person on the site who actually thinks RefUK are a serious party or relevant at all.
Labour will squeeze Green voters on the day. No one on the left will give up a chance of kicking Boris and the Tories out if it looks like they can. If someone like Rishi takes over and get the Tories up to 41 or 42 points Labour will struggle to do it.
You honestly think Sunak is going to get 41% to 42% after forcing skilled workers to take unskilled jobs just a month after redundancy from reports today and after he will responsible for the NI rise in April? Not to mention Sunak backed Brexit just like Boris so he is not going to appeal to remainers Cameron won but no longer voting Tory as he will not appeal to the redwall Boris won in 2019
What would you think of a requirement for Cabinet ministers to have spent at least two years on that departments relevant select committee or as a junior minister before being eligible to represent that department in Cabinet?
This would reduce random cabinet reshuffles by design and hopefully also lead to MPs gaining deeper understanding and knowledge of a specific area rather than pretending to know everything about everything.
That's a great idea.
But never going to happen because it reduces the flexibility a PM needs to reward/ punish loyal / disloyal MPs.
Hold on, that comparison is BS because you can't compare right to centre+left. As we saw in 2010, the centre can end up siding with either wing.
What's most dangerous for the Tories is the Lab+Green score being so high. When it comes down to it leftist voters will be given the opportunity to kick the Tories out and they won't sabotage that by voting Green.
Spot on there Max. I really don't know where this idea that you lump in the LD's with Labour comes from.
Especially if Johnson stays, I think there will be very major tactical voting and informal co-operation between those two parties. And even if he doesn't, if Starmer is smart with offering PR, he'll be even better placed. That's no appetite whatsoever for another coalition with the Tories among the lib dem base.
Boris Johnson’s satisfaction rating has hit a record low amid the "Partygate" storm - falling to the same level as Theresa May’s worst score in her final months, exclusive @IpsosMORI poll for @EveningStandard finds... standard.co.uk/news/politics
Labour lead still under 10% (and the previous poll from Ipsos Mori was 3rd-10th December last year, mainly before partygate)
If Starmer could have picked the numbers himself he could hardly have done better - good enough to consolidate his authority but not so good that the Conservatives have no option but to sack their leader,
Those figures for Lib + Green look particularly ominous for the Conservatives. That's one hell of an anti-Tory alliance building.
62% for the traffic light alliance seems very high.
Leaves only 7% for assorted Nationalists and continuity fruitcakes.
Yes, I know. Boris seems to be creating something of a jam at the traffic lights.
On that poll I think we could see Labour getting something like 43-45% and the Tories something like 33-34% with a bit of swing back. Labour are in majority territory, though maybe just a small one. Something that was unimaginable in the aftermath of the 2019 election. That's how badly Boris has blown it.
On that poll I think we could see Labour getting something like 43-45% and the Tories something like 33-34% with a bit of swing back. Labour are in majority territory, though maybe just a small one. Something that was unimaginable in the aftermath of the 2019 election. That's how badly Boris has blown it.
I don't think it'll be a majority, but a 2010 reversal is on the cards at the moment. Boris Brown...
Davey & Starmer are politically close enough, and Labour may get enough that he may not need the Nats...
Hold on, that comparison is BS because you can't compare right to centre+left. As we saw in 2010, the centre can end up siding with either wing.
What's most dangerous for the Tories is the Lab+Green score being so high. When it comes down to it leftist voters will be given the opportunity to kick the Tories out and they won't sabotage that by voting Green.
Spot on there Max. I really don't know where this idea that you lump in the LD's with Labour comes from.
Especially if Johnson stays, I think there will be very major tactical voting and informal co-operation between those parties. And even if he doesn't, if Starmer is smart with offering PR, he'll be even better placed. That's no appetite whatsoever for another coalition with the Tories among the lib dem base.
PR of course splits Labour anyway, Corbyn definitely would form his own party and there would never be another majority Labour government again. RefUK would also win seats.
PR ends the 2 party system so it is a different backdrop
The nightmare scenario for the Tories is losing the voters they gained from Brexit without winning back the ones they lost. It feels like that's where they're heading as long as Johnson stays in charge.
And who's the biggest anti-Tory tactical voting motivator ? Bozza.
One of the many benefits of Corbyn going (and not being replaced with Long-Bailey, Burgon, or some other Socialist Campaign Group dunce) is that it's made Lab-Lib tactical voting a thing again.
I look at that poll and see 45% voting Labour on polling day (as Greens / Lib Dems switch to a Labour candidate who can win) while the Tories will need to work to get their voters into a polling station.
Boris Johnson’s satisfaction rating has hit a record low amid the "Partygate" storm - falling to the same level as Theresa May’s worst score in her final months, exclusive @IpsosMORI poll for @EveningStandard finds... standard.co.uk/news/politics
Labour lead still under 10% (and the previous poll from Ipsos Mori was 3rd-10th December last year, mainly before partygate)
You need to bear in mind there's a lot of Green votes for Labour to squeeze. At least half of that vote will go Labour at an actual GE.
If Corbyn is not reinstated by Starmer? Wishful thinking.
Plus remember Boris still has RefUK to squeeze further
Yes Boris is going to squeeze further a party that is polling so dreadfully they're not even named in the results. 😂
You'll grasp any straw won't you. You're the only person on the site who actually thinks RefUK are a serious party or relevant at all.
Labour will squeeze Green voters on the day. No one on the left will give up a chance of kicking Boris and the Tories out if it looks like they can. If someone like Rishi takes over and get the Tories up to 41 or 42 points Labour will struggle to do it.
You honestly think Sunak is going to get 41% to 42% after forcing skilled workers to take unskilled jobs just a month after redundancy from reports today and after he will responsible for the NI rise in April? Not to mention Sunak backed Brexit just like Boris so he is not going to appeal to remainers Cameron won but no longer voting Tory as he will not appeal to the redwall Boris won in 2019
Yes, competence will go a long way to restoring the Tory score. His ceiling is probably around there and people are still willing to give the Tories a listen, just not Boris.
Imagine how 155,000 bereaved families feel looking at this.
...
Does anyone know who the braying bearded tory in this clip is? He has pretty much handed my vote to the LDs
J. Gullis, MP for Stoke-on-Trent. I linked to his diatribe against lefty snitches yesterday, and as i said then it's astounding to me what an inexhaustible supply the PCP has of these cnuts.
The PCP is not alone, the labour party has its fair share too.
For me, a key moment in the downfall of our civilisation was on election night in 2017, when Nick Clegg was succeeded by Jared O'Mara. Clegg delivered a stateman like resignation speech. O Mara, who runs nightclubs, then came forward and started ranting in to the microphone, cheered on by a rowdy mob of supporters.
Against this Jonathan Gullis is an intellectual giant, having spent 7 years as a teacher rising to head of year in a secondary school.
Ultimately most people in Parliament are either professional politicians, or have come from very average backgrounds and have not had any major levels of success in their careers. I guess that they are like many people posting on here. They are definetely not the brightest and the best. This is another reason why Keir Starmer is so exceptional.
I appreciate your nuanced posts, and I certainly don't have any time for O'Mara, but I think your last para is not quite right. I knew a great many intelligent MPs, very successful in previous careers, who were seriously interested in getting policy right. The problem was that talent in previous professions doesn't guarantee talent in the rough and tumble world of politics. There were quite a few people from business and lecturing who were frankly not very good at front bench combat. Conversely the front-benchers were focused on combat and had little time to debate policy. The reason I'm a fan of Michael Gove is that he's unusually a combination of active mind and combative politician. Starmer is another, I think, as you imply.
By contrast, take Oliver Letwin. A successful banker, I think, with excellent connections, a Brexiteer with an enquiring mind and a real commitment to honesty (and genuinely nice, which still matters). But as a combatant he was seen as dangerous, with major political clangers, and he was sidelined in favour of people with far less intellectual vigour.
The problem is how to find ways for the bright figures to engage usefully without being tripped up by our savage gotcha culture. The Select Committee system is the best bet, and the simple mechanism of allowing them to introduce legislation, or even be the channel for it, as in the US model, would engage the best minds more productively.
Absolutely.
People (and especially perhaps who knows chippy people on PB) misunderestimate the ability, hard work, sacrifice and dedication that is required to become an MP.
I can genuinely say that there is not one PB-er who wouldn't be destroyed in debate on just about any subject in politics. To become an MP (and don't you know it, Nick) you will have cut your teeth on selection process after debate after argument after discussion.
I don't agree with this at all. I've met three MP's, one in the course of work. One was extremely bright and able, able to think well beyond his role, another was bright but not extraordinary, and certainly not wildly quick in debate, and the other could only be described as a pompous fool.
The exception to Topping’s general rule is where safe seats, for reasons somewhat mysterious but doubtless money and patronage and connections figure in there somewhere, pick a dodo as their candidate and hence their MP, and he or she (normally he) sits there as a monument to their, and our, stupidity for decades thereafter.
In seats there there is a genuine electoral contest, you need a candidate able to lead a campaign and motivate a team and communicate effectively with voters, and most selection committees will avoid putting a bozo up in circumstances that would embarrass their party.
The other exception is where a seat is assumed to be safe for one party and hence a long shot for another, and that another is careless and gives a bozo a run thinking they have nothing to lose. Cf. Jared O’Mara.
Hold on, that comparison is BS because you can't compare right to centre+left. As we saw in 2010, the centre can end up siding with either wing.
What's most dangerous for the Tories is the Lab+Green score being so high. When it comes down to it leftist voters will be given the opportunity to kick the Tories out and they won't sabotage that by voting Green.
Spot on there Max. I really don't know where this idea that you lump in the LD's with Labour comes from.
Not spot on in a world of 67% dissatisfaction with tories/70% with PM. 2010 redux not a likely thing.
In the Lord Ashcroft debate about Johnson on Conhome, one of the top voted posts concludes 'any new leader should come from the backbenches'.
That's instructive.
The tories don't see the point of changing Johnson unless the policy approach changes. All that a leader from the cabinet offers is what many tories see as continuity Blairism from someone who is isn't as good as Johnson at winning votes. What's the point of that? Remainer Truss and Tax and spend Sunak need not apply.
Trouble is, the backbencher rebels don't have a champion. Frost is the closest, but he isn't an MP.
And so the status quo could last for for some time.
The problem for Johnson is that, as far as the actual process is concerned, the decision over who should be the next leader is entirely separate from that of whether the current incumbent should remain in place. So although, obviously, the backbench MPs will have an eye to who might replace him, that doesn't actually matter at the moment if they are of a mind that anyone would be better than Johnson. They don't have to choose someone else as part of the process of getting rid of him. They can just dump him and then worry about who will replace him.
Hold on, that comparison is BS because you can't compare right to centre+left. As we saw in 2010, the centre can end up siding with either wing.
What's most dangerous for the Tories is the Lab+Green score being so high. When it comes down to it leftist voters will be given the opportunity to kick the Tories out and they won't sabotage that by voting Green.
Spot on there Max. I really don't know where this idea that you lump in the LD's with Labour comes from.
Especially if Johnson stays, I think there will be very major tactical voting and informal co-operation between those parties. And even if he doesn't, if Starmer is smart with offering PR, he'll be even better placed. That's no appetite whatsoever for another coalition with the Tories among the lib dem base.
PR of course splits Labour anyway, Corbyn definitely would form his own party and there would never be another majority Labour government again. RefUK would also win seats.
PR ends the 2 party system so it is a different backdrop
I'm not sure I agree with that, but those would also be developments for the next parliament and further elections off in the future in any case, however, if Starmer were to offer them before the next election.
On that poll I think we could see Labour getting something like 43-45% and the Tories something like 33-34% with a bit of swing back. Labour are in majority territory, though maybe just a small one. Something that was unimaginable in the aftermath of the 2019 election. That's how badly Boris has blown it.
I don't think it'll be a majority, but a 2010 reversal is on the cards at the moment. Boris Brown...
Davey & Starmer are politically close enough, and Labour may get enough that he may not need the Nats...
Brown was undefeated at the ballot box, only Ed Miliband and Corbyn saw the Tories get a majority
Boris Johnson’s satisfaction rating has hit a record low amid the "Partygate" storm - falling to the same level as Theresa May’s worst score in her final months, exclusive @IpsosMORI poll for @EveningStandard finds... standard.co.uk/news/politics
Labour lead still under 10% (and the previous poll from Ipsos Mori was 3rd-10th December last year, mainly before partygate)
You need to bear in mind there's a lot of Green votes for Labour to squeeze. At least half of that vote will go Labour at an actual GE.
If Corbyn is not reinstated by Starmer? Wishful thinking.
Plus remember Boris still has RefUK to squeeze further
Yes Boris is going to squeeze further a party that is polling so dreadfully they're not even named in the results. 😂
You'll grasp any straw won't you. You're the only person on the site who actually thinks RefUK are a serious party or relevant at all.
Labour will squeeze Green voters on the day. No one on the left will give up a chance of kicking Boris and the Tories out if it looks like they can. If someone like Rishi takes over and get the Tories up to 41 or 42 points Labour will struggle to do it.
You honestly think Sunak is going to get 41% to 42% after forcing skilled workers to take unskilled jobs just a month after redundancy from reports today and after he will responsible for the NI rise in April? Not to mention Sunak backed Brexit just like Boris so he is not going to appeal to remainers Cameron won but no longer voting Tory as he will not appeal to the redwall Boris won in 2019
People may not like the decisions that Sunak is making as Chancellor, but it's perfectly possible to win whilst being unpopular midterm for hard decisions made by a chancellor (Poll tax/1992). What people won't accept is rank hypocrisy and incompetence - (Back to basics/1997)
Comments
A UTM half a century before Turing
There is also the possibility that the simutaneous police enquiry is causing people to hesitate on that, though. That could be why we haven't heard more so far.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7K5p_tBcrd0
Not that I miss long flights though, not been on a plane in two years!
Boris Johnson’s satisfaction rating has hit a record low amid the "Partygate" storm - falling to the same level as Theresa May’s worst score in her final months, exclusive @IpsosMORI poll for @EveningStandard finds... standard.co.uk/news/politics
The lady was admitted to hospital with Covid which wasn't in itsef life-threatening but she had incurred two serious infections (lungs and urinary tract), probably as a consequence of immunity lowered by Covid. The infections were blasted away by antibiotics but if left untreated may themselves have cause death.
The fortunately hypothetical question is whether this would have been classified as death from Covid, or merely one where it was present.
https://twitter.com/NIHargrave/status/1486399240767213572
"For all his failings, the Prime Minister knows this and has a keener sense of human frailty than many. Look at his last 2 X pmqs outings. They are all about the projection of strength and not giving a toss, mixed with a Johnsonian dollop of humour to diffuse the earnest.
"His subtext is clear. I'm not going anywhere no matter how bad it gets. You didn't elect me for ethics. So to get me out you're going to have to take me out"
Think how many lives would have been saved if it had been acknowledged earlier.
A number of less ambitious calculating machines were later built, culminating in the work of Herman Hollerith, who was actually aware of the cost/capability issue. So he designed his machines to be cheaper than doing the work manually.
It is also similar to Tony Blair’s lowest in Jan 2007 of 68/25, while his successor Gordon Brown had results at this level at his low points in 2008/9.'
Labour lead still under 10% even on this IpsosMori poll too
https://www.standard.co.uk/news/politics/boris-johnson-satisfaction-rating-partygate-record-low-ipsos-mori-poll-b979124.html
Which made it natural to use wind tunnels to design ships - for the aircraft carriers. Another first.
Conservative 31% (-3)
Lib dems 13 % (+2)
And @HYUFD will be along to say this is a good poll as labour's lead is less than 10%
Lab 40 (+1)
Con 31 (-3)
Lib 13 (+2)
Grn 9 (+2)
Green figure seems very high to me.
https://www.standard.co.uk/news/politics/boris-johnson-satisfaction-rating-partygate-record-low-ipsos-mori-poll-b979124.html
https://www.scottishmaritimemuseum.org/plan_your_visit/dumbarton/
At least I did some knitting at the same time.
The army had some interest in mechanisation - tractors to pull heavy guns, for example - but there were few officers who'd been exposed to possibilities in the area.
It's hard to say who was more barking - Fisher or Beresford. But Beresford lost the plot before Fisher.
https://www.standard.co.uk/news/politics/boris-johnson-satisfaction-rating-partygate-record-low-ipsos-mori-poll-b979124.html
Those figures for Lib + Green look particularly ominous for the Conservatives. That's one hell of an anti-Tory alliance building.
Tories with Boris Johnson as leader the next election = Stepmom on a niche website.
*My invented name for the paranoid spiral that some spy hunters end up in - everyone is a spy. Evidence that someone is not a spy just means they are a really cunning spy....
But MI5 contemplating a coup against the elected government was sort of big news, as would have been the Prime Minister being a Soviet spy.
Sunak may or may not do fractionally better than Boris. Not if he continues announcement's like today's on UC however, Major got a bounce after Thatcher from scrapping the poll tax. Sunak's plan for a bounce is? Increased NI bills from April he put forward last year and force skilled workers recently made redundant to take unskilled jobs after just a month on benefits rather than apply for jobs in their previous field for 3 months as now
@darrenmccaffrey
JUST IN: Prime Minister Boris Johnson has dismissed claims he approved the controversial airlift of animals from Afghanistan as “total rhubarb” (PA)
https://twitter.com/darrenmccaffrey/status/1486683632068661252
There’s some fundamental basics the government isn’t getting right under Boris. Surely a change in letter gives them a bit of time to reset some of the government business as we head toward a general election
Leaves only 7% for assorted Nationalists and continuity fruitcakes.
I particularly liked the bit about the fellow spy who used to spend the first half-hour of the day examining his teeth. It was somehow reassuring to learn that such senior people have similar odd habits to the rest of us.
Plus remember Boris still has RefUK to squeeze further
You'll grasp any straw won't you. You're the only person on the site who actually thinks RefUK are a serious party or relevant at all.
What's most dangerous for the Tories is the Lab+Green score being so high. When it comes down to it leftist voters will be given the opportunity to kick the Tories out and they won't sabotage that by voting Green.
She must be enjoying this.
The Prime Minister has seen his satisfaction rating among Tory backers drop ten points in a month to 57 per cent, with dissatisfied up six points to 34 per cent, a net score of plus 23.'
Boris still has the party and a +23% rating from party supporters, not you and Cummings and after today's UC gaffe by Sunak and with Sunak's NI rise coming soon, soon even Sunak may do no better than Boris v Starmer, just as all other Tory alternatives v Starmer do worse than Boris now
https://www.standard.co.uk/news/politics/boris-johnson-satisfaction-rating-partygate-record-low-ipsos-mori-poll-b979124.html
I really don't know where this idea that you lump in the LD's with Labour comes from.
That's instructive.
The tories don't see the point of changing Johnson unless the policy approach changes. All that a leader from the cabinet offers is what many tories see as continuity Blairism from someone who is isn't as good as Johnson at winning votes. What's the point of that? Remainer Truss and Tax and spend Sunak need not apply.
Trouble is, the backbencher rebels don't have a champion. Frost is the closest, but he isn't an MP.
And so the status quo could last for for some time.
Davey & Starmer are politically close enough, and Labour may get enough that he may not need the Nats...
PR ends the 2 party system so it is a different backdrop
In seats there there is a genuine electoral contest, you need a candidate able to lead a campaign and motivate a team and communicate effectively with voters, and most selection committees will avoid putting a bozo up in circumstances that would embarrass their party.
The other exception is where a seat is assumed to be safe for one party and hence a long shot for another, and that another is careless and gives a bozo a run thinking they have nothing to lose. Cf. Jared O’Mara.