I think Rishi has blown it. Like Michael Portillo and David Miliband before him, he'll been seen as a politician who had the great prize within his grasp but wibbled.
Spot on, in the end Portillo failed to oust Major and Miliband failed to oust Brown and neither either ended up leaders of their party, loosing to IDS in 2001 and Ed Miliband in 2010 respectively.
Though Portillo has had a successful post politics career doing rail programmes and Miliband is head of international rescue in Manhattan so all not lost for Sunak longer term.
I wouldn't get too excited that your idol is in the clear. Whether it is Sunak or someone else, The Clown will not last past June IMO. There is just too much on him, and the vultures are just holding off until he is a little more wounded.
My humble prediction is that the drip drip of allegations and insinuations will ensure he ends up with a terrible result in May. MPs in more marginal constituencies will apply the swing to their GE result and take action. Whether it will be too late to prevent a Labour win at the next GE is open to conjecture.
As long as polls continue to show a hung parliament and a Labour lead under 10% and as long as the Tories hold Westminster and Kensington and Chelsea in May and as long as the Met and Gray inquiries find Boris did not do anything criminal. Then I predict Boris will still be PM and lead the Tories at the next general election
Hung Parliament on under 10% Labour lead?
Write out 100 times "Uniform National Swing does not work in the grand scheme of United Kingdom General Elections".
It does, on UNS on the new boundaries even a 9% Labour lead only leads to Labour 309 seats and Tories 246.
Labour still 17 short of a majority. Plus Starmer Labour is still not seen as as centrist as Blair's New Labour by the middle classes, even if not as bad as Corbyn Labour. So while they might tactically vote LD, they are much less likely to tactically vote Labour.
I am not, there is a 99% chance Starmer will not become PM with a majority in my view, even if he becomes PM with LD and SNP support in a hung parliament
I don't dispute that because of Scotland, but when you get to 6 to 7 percent all sorts of permutations come into play. You should be more concerned at the LD improvement today because you now have Labour to contend with on your left flank and the LDs to contend with on your not quite so left flank.
Yes, Sunak is increasingly looking like the Tory David Miliband.
Miliband was unable to force Brown out pre 2010 as Sunak is unable to force Boris out now. In the end Miliband not only failed to become PM he even failed to become Leader of the Opposition after his brother beat him for the leadership after Labour lost power
Reports he's Brexiteer in name only. Instrumental in blocking Article Sixteen trigger. Insisting on the highest tax rates in 70 years.
GAME OVER.
He has been an enthusiastic Brexiteer since his teens, so he's very definitely a believer.
If all they've got on him is an accusation he is not a proper Brexiter which won't stack up, they must be worried, as that is the nuclear option to undermine someone. Particularly clumsy, as Leon says.
When things get that desperate you know it is only a matter of time until it all falls apart. I wonder whet the odds of a Rishi resignation a la Geoffrey Howe. Will Rishi do a Geoffrey. Do it... do it....
I doubt it. He appeared fully on board at PMQs. Truss is more likely. But it’s not going to happen. Boris is safe.
From what I remember Geoffrey looked pretty on board until he wielded the knife. It is often what people don't say rather what they do.
Let it go. We all have to learn to accept Boris is staying put. He is utterly unfit for office, but the Tory party decided to go all in backing him.
Nope, not letting it go. Happy to be vilified and wear a hair shirt for a whole month and eat gruel if he is still in post in July.
The trouble is there’s nothing anyone can do about it. The Tory MPs bottled it. We’re stuck with him for years, unless somehow Starmer can pull off a miracle and kick him out in 2024.
A miracle isn't required. You simply have to trust that the public aren't completely away with the fairies. In Dec 19 Johnson was a bit of a novelty, and there was the compelling Get Brexit Done message, and there was Jeremy Corbyn. So, valid reasons for his win and no surprise that he did win. Next time none of this applies. No Brexit, no Corbyn, plus the public - assuming the most basic level of interest and critical faculties - have realized he's an incompetent, deeply corrupt sleazeball.
I don't think the Tory party (certainly not HYUFD) have realised how screwed they are with the incumbent. The floating voters have floated away.
I'm surprised Dominic Raab isn't even quoted. What happens if Johnson loses a Vote of No Confidence? Surely he would be compelled to stand aside before any Conservative membership election? So the Deputy Prime Minister may well have to accede in the short term.
Of course the wording of the question comes into play, but no one seems to have considered the possibility just outlined.
I think Boris would be duty and honour bound to remain in post as PM until the palace is involved. So, VONC against Johnson and he loses, triggering a leadership contest. Presume he runs, but loses. He's no longer leader of the Conservative Party but remains Prime Minister. New leader is elected. Boris is still PM until he either resigns office or the Conservative Party under their new leader triggers a VONC in Parliament, followed by a vote of confidence in the new leader. New leader then goes to the palace and becomes PM.
That's my understanding. It's a bit squishy, and I'm assuming BJ is a bit difficult to dislodge and may not actually offer his resignation to the Queen, either upon losing the Party Leadership or de jure confidence of the Commons. In either case, I don't think it matters too much, despite being pretty shoddy behaviour.
I find the juxtaposition of the words 'Boris', 'duty' and 'honour' strange!
Yes, Sunak is increasingly looking like the Tory David Miliband.
Miliband was unable to force Brown out pre 2010 as Sunak is unable to force Boris out now. In the end Miliband not only failed to become PM he even failed to become Leader of the Opposition after his brother beat him for the leadership after Labour lost power
Reports he's Brexiteer in name only. Instrumental in blocking Article Sixteen trigger. Insisting on the highest tax rates in 70 years.
GAME OVER.
He has been an enthusiastic Brexiteer since his teens, so he's very definitely a believer.
If all they've got on him is an accusation he is not a proper Brexiter which won't stack up, they must be worried, as that is the nuclear option to undermine someone. Particularly clumsy, as Leon says.
When things get that desperate you know it is only a matter of time until it all falls apart. I wonder whet the odds of a Rishi resignation a la Geoffrey Howe. Will Rishi do a Geoffrey. Do it... do it....
I doubt it. He appeared fully on board at PMQs. Truss is more likely. But it’s not going to happen. Boris is safe.
From what I remember Geoffrey looked pretty on board until he wielded the knife. It is often what people don't say rather what they do.
Let it go. We all have to learn to accept Boris is staying put. He is utterly unfit for office, but the Tory party decided to go all in backing him.
Nope, not letting it go. Happy to be vilified and wear a hair shirt for a whole month and eat gruel if he is still in post in July.
The trouble is there’s nothing anyone can do about it. The Tory MPs bottled it. We’re stuck with him for years, unless somehow Starmer can pull off a miracle and kick him out in 2024.
I think Cummings has a few more tricks up his sleeve. I hate the man, but he is seriously pissed (in the American sense)
Hope so because I am also seriously pissed (in the american sense).
“Not really. If you spend money on holidays, for a family, you tend to end up in something like that. Unless you really fight the demand for luxury bathrooms etc.”
+++++
I do not wish to pry into PB-ears private circumstances, but this is an intriguing comment
If you had a family holiday here - the Galle hotel we have been discussing - you’d need three rooms for yourself, one for you and the partner, two for the kids
But let’s budget and say just two rooms, and the kids share
Rooms are £500 a night. That’s £1000 a night. For two weeks that’s £14,000. Add in flights to Sri Lanka, trips, and the rest, and you’re heading for £20,000. For a winter holiday
Exactly how wealthy is the average PB-er?!
Well I push up the average lol.
Good to hear!
I’m quite well off, I guess, but I would blink furiously at dropping £20k on a winter holiday
In my professional capacity for the Knappers Gazette I’ve done trips that would have cost £100,000 for 2 weeks. They were great fun. But they certainly weren’t worth £100,000. I suppose some people are just so rich it doesn’t matter
Spend £100k every two weeks and it adds up to £2.6m in a year, or £26m in a decade.
There have been a few lottery jackpots that would still be left largely intact after that.
I’ve told this story before but it is maybe worth telling again
A few years ago the Gazette sent me HERE. Shuba Camp in the Busanga Plains in the Kafue National Park, Zambia. Stunning. Also extremely pricey, so lucky I wasn’t paying
You can only get in by private plane, and it floods half the year
Anyway while I was there the staff told me a story of a famous Silicon Valley software squillionaire - one of the MOST famous - who took over the camp for two weeks for his whole family, wife, kids, and their enormous entourage
He was horrified by the idea there wasn’t any Wi-Fi (it’s one of the most remote places in Africa) so at vast expense he flew in satellite dishes and hi-tech kit and space shuttles and whatever, ensuring they all had perfect Wi-Fi. Helicopters came and went
The result was - the staff told me - that his bored kids spent the whole trip on their phones and iPads, doing insta and WhatsApp and went on about one safari drive. It must have cost him a million quid (or whatever). Basically wasted. But if you’re worth 20 billion, what is that?
I think Rishi has blown it. Like Michael Portillo and David Miliband before him, he'll been seen as a politician who had the great prize within his grasp but wibbled.
Spot on, in the end Portillo failed to oust Major and Miliband failed to oust Brown and neither either ended up leaders of their party, loosing to IDS in 2001 and Ed Miliband in 2010 respectively.
Though Portillo has had a successful post politics career doing rail programmes and Miliband is head of international rescue in Manhattan so all not lost for Sunak longer term.
I wouldn't get too excited that your idol is in the clear. Whether it is Sunak or someone else, The Clown will not last past June IMO. There is just too much on him, and the vultures are just holding off until he is a little more wounded.
My humble prediction is that the drip drip of allegations and insinuations will ensure he ends up with a terrible result in May. MPs in more marginal constituencies will apply the swing to their GE result and take action. Whether it will be too late to prevent a Labour win at the next GE is open to conjecture.
As long as polls continue to show a hung parliament and a Labour lead under 10% and as long as the Tories hold Westminster and Kensington and Chelsea in May and as long as the Met and Gray inquiries find Boris did not do anything criminal. Then I predict Boris will still be PM and lead the Tories at the next general election
Hung Parliament on under 10% Labour lead?
Write out 100 times "Uniform National Swing does not work in the grand scheme of United Kingdom General Elections".
It does, on UNS on the new boundaries even a 9% Labour lead only leads to Labour 309 seats and Tories 246.
Labour still 17 short of a majority. Plus Starmer Labour is still not seen as as centrist as Blair's New Labour by the middle classes, even if not as bad as Corbyn Labour. So while they might tactically vote LD, they are much less likely to tactically vote Labour.
I am not, there is a 99% chance Starmer will not become PM with a majority in my view, even if he becomes PM with LD and SNP support in a hung parliament
I don't dispute that because of Scotland, but when you get to 6 to 7 percent all sorts of permutations come into play. You should be more concerned at the LD improvement today because you now have Labour to contend with on your left flank and the LDs to contend with on your not quite so left flank.
LD growth at Tory expense does not = a Labour majority even if it does = Starmer PM
Yes, Sunak is increasingly looking like the Tory David Miliband.
Miliband was unable to force Brown out pre 2010 as Sunak is unable to force Boris out now. In the end Miliband not only failed to become PM he even failed to become Leader of the Opposition after his brother beat him for the leadership after Labour lost power
Reports he's Brexiteer in name only. Instrumental in blocking Article Sixteen trigger. Insisting on the highest tax rates in 70 years.
GAME OVER.
He has been an enthusiastic Brexiteer since his teens, so he's very definitely a believer.
There is a quick calculation for working out "coincidental" deaths within 28 days of a positive test which is remarkably simple.
1/4 of the population has had a positive test for Covid. 600,000 people give or take die every year normally in the UK. 28 days is 28/365ths of the year
1/4 * 600,000 * 28/365 = 11,500.
That's 11,500 per year, right? So ~23k over the ~2 years of the pandemic?
(Now expecting to be told I've missed something obvious...)
No, you don't need to double it, because the 1/4 of the population is over the whole pandemic, so the estimate of deaths is as well.
As an even rougher rule of thumb, you can say that the probability of anyone dying in a given year is about 1%, and in a given month about 0.1%. It's much smaller than the ratio of the death rate to positive tests before most people were vaccinated, and even before Omicron. But it's more comparable now.
The answer to 'how many deaths did covid cause' is very difficult to pin down. Not many people who died did not have other conditions. But having - say - asthma is not a death sentence by itself. You can ask how long the individual would have lived had they not caught covid. It's impossible to answer of course - would they have caught flu if not covid? - would they have been hit by the proverbial bus the next day? - but you can ask it. But even if you can estimate an answer, there is a question of where you draw the line. My next door neighbour, for example, died of covid last August, I think - but he also had an unusual variant of Parkinson's disease, which 18 months previously had given him 12 months to live. He was already on borrowed time. It would have been a major surprise had he made it through another winter. So do you include him in the 'killed by covid' figures? I would argue probably not. But I am sure there are countless examples of those with co-morbidities where covid finished them off but who might have reasonably expected another 5, 10 years. It's hard to say in those cases that they would have died anyway. Where do you draw the line? Another 6 months? Another 2 years? 5?
As always, I'd say the key figure of interest in excess deaths.
Excess deaths is pretty clearly the best estimate we have, and not just because it's the most reliable comparisobn between countries. It'll be too high, but hopefully not by much.
Excess deaths does, of course, include people killed by lockdown. But I'd say that is of interest too.
Indeed so, that's what I meant when I said "it'll be too high" - it would be nice to know the number of people killed by lockdown as a separate figure, though, not lumped in with all the people killed by the virus. It would be pretty difficult to measure, though.
We know that excess deaths have mostly occurred at the same time as 28 day deaths, and certificated deaths. Those due to lockdown would be spread more evenly. Indeed excess deaths have gone negative at times during lockdown away from the peaks.
And we can check by looking at countries with lockdowns but very few covid deaths (eg Australia and New Zealand), where excess deaths were negative.
“Not really. If you spend money on holidays, for a family, you tend to end up in something like that. Unless you really fight the demand for luxury bathrooms etc.”
+++++
I do not wish to pry into PB-ears private circumstances, but this is an intriguing comment
If you had a family holiday here - the Galle hotel we have been discussing - you’d need three rooms for yourself, one for you and the partner, two for the kids
But let’s budget and say just two rooms, and the kids share
Rooms are £500 a night. That’s £1000 a night. For two weeks that’s £14,000. Add in flights to Sri Lanka, trips, and the rest, and you’re heading for £20,000. For a winter holiday
Exactly how wealthy is the average PB-er?!
I am in the top 2% of income in the country and would consider that exhorbitant. My boys holiday on their own now, but I am off to Costa Rica later in the year for a budget of £2000 each for a fortnight for myself and Mrs Foxy, including direct flights and trips.
I am not really a fan of luxury, and prefer 3 star type smaller places, as less sterile and more local colour.
In my experience the best is a mix. Spend 6 days somewhere characterful but cheap, then indulge yourself with a night or two of luxury. The contrast somehow makes both more enjoyable
One of the nicest places I have stayed in the last decade (when I have been all over the world and done all the 5 star stuff) is here:
Two star holiday apartments in Pelion Greece. About £40 a night in September (the ideal time to visit). Spellbinding
Yes, a bit of luxury is nice. Tea at the Old Cataract over looking the Nile at Aswan for example, or tea again at Reids in Madeira. A night at The Ark in the Abedares in Kenya was a highlight too. On the other hand street food in SE Asia is so vibrant tasty and entertaining that it is hard to beat for quality and value.
Lot to be said for the Oriental in Bangkok. Although I do know, slightly, someone who, in Bangkok on business, felt unsafe there and requested his firm transfer him to a US-owned hotel
In addition, the death certificates do split out "Deaths where covid was the underlying cause" and "Deaths were it was mentioned as a contributory cause"
It's overwhelmingly the former, especially as the "caused by" is concentrated heavily in the periods where covid deaths were highest.
I took a look at the England covid deaths data from the ONS (deaths on death certificates) and took the proportion of "covid the underlying cause" per month and came out with 88.96% of deaths with covid on the death certificate having covid as the specific cause of death.
In England, that's 137,790 out of 150,397. If it's the same UK-wide, then 156,943 out of 176,428 (as at the date I did this, a few days ago) were deaths FROM covid.
It would leave 20,000 or so where covid was merely a contributory factor.
I think Rishi has blown it. Like Michael Portillo and David Miliband before him, he'll been seen as a politician who had the great prize within his grasp but wibbled.
Spot on, in the end Portillo failed to oust Major and Miliband failed to oust Brown and neither either ended up leaders of their party, loosing to IDS in 2001 and Ed Miliband in 2010 respectively.
Though Portillo has had a successful post politics career doing rail programmes and Miliband is head of international rescue in Manhattan so all not lost for Sunak longer term.
I wouldn't get too excited that your idol is in the clear. Whether it is Sunak or someone else, The Clown will not last past June IMO. There is just too much on him, and the vultures are just holding off until he is a little more wounded.
My humble prediction is that the drip drip of allegations and insinuations will ensure he ends up with a terrible result in May. MPs in more marginal constituencies will apply the swing to their GE result and take action. Whether it will be too late to prevent a Labour win at the next GE is open to conjecture.
As long as polls continue to show a hung parliament and a Labour lead under 10% and as long as the Tories hold Westminster and Kensington and Chelsea in May and as long as the Met and Gray inquiries find Boris did not do anything criminal. Then I predict Boris will still be PM and lead the Tories at the next general election
Hung Parliament on under 10% Labour lead?
Write out 100 times "Uniform National Swing does not work in the grand scheme of United Kingdom General Elections".
It does, on UNS on the new boundaries even a 9% Labour lead only leads to Labour 309 seats and Tories 246.
Labour still 17 short of a majority. Plus Starmer Labour is still not seen as as centrist as Blair's New Labour by the middle classes, even if not as bad as Corbyn Labour. So while they might tactically vote LD, they are much less likely to tactically vote Labour.
I am not, there is a 99% chance Starmer will not become PM with a majority in my view, even if he becomes PM with LD and SNP support in a hung parliament
I don't dispute that because of Scotland, but when you get to 6 to 7 percent all sorts of permutations come into play. You should be more concerned at the LD improvement today because you now have Labour to contend with on your left flank and the LDs to contend with on your not quite so left flank.
Indeed. I remember being laughed at incredulously by some Tory friends (who thought they knew better) in advance of the 2015 election when I said I thought Cameron would get a small majority. Maybe it was a lucky guess (and I did milk it afterwards), but I think there is a reasonable chance Labour will get a majority after the next one. (Waiting for HY to start a response with "no")
I think Rishi has blown it. Like Michael Portillo and David Miliband before him, he'll been seen as a politician who had the great prize within his grasp but wibbled.
Spot on, in the end Portillo failed to oust Major and Miliband failed to oust Brown and neither either ended up leaders of their party, loosing to IDS in 2001 and Ed Miliband in 2010 respectively.
Though Portillo has had a successful post politics career doing rail programmes and Miliband is head of international rescue in Manhattan so all not lost for Sunak longer term.
I wouldn't get too excited that your idol is in the clear. Whether it is Sunak or someone else, The Clown will not last past June IMO. There is just too much on him, and the vultures are just holding off until he is a little more wounded.
My humble prediction is that the drip drip of allegations and insinuations will ensure he ends up with a terrible result in May. MPs in more marginal constituencies will apply the swing to their GE result and take action. Whether it will be too late to prevent a Labour win at the next GE is open to conjecture.
As long as polls continue to show a hung parliament and a Labour lead under 10% and as long as the Tories hold Westminster and Kensington and Chelsea in May and as long as the Met and Gray inquiries find Boris did not do anything criminal. Then I predict Boris will still be PM and lead the Tories at the next general election
Hung Parliament on under 10% Labour lead?
Write out 100 times "Uniform National Swing does not work in the grand scheme of United Kingdom General Elections".
It does, on UNS on the new boundaries even a 9% Labour lead only leads to Labour 309 seats and Tories 246.
Labour still 17 short of a majority. Plus Starmer Labour is still not seen as as centrist as Blair's New Labour by the middle classes, even if not as bad as Corbyn Labour. So while they might tactically vote LD, they are much less likely to tactically vote Labour.
I am not, there is a 99% chance Starmer will not become PM with a majority in my view, even if he becomes PM with LD and SNP support in a hung parliament
I don't dispute that because of Scotland, but when you get to 6 to 7 percent all sorts of permutations come into play. You should be more concerned at the LD improvement today because you now have Labour to contend with on your left flank and the LDs to contend with on your not quite so left flank.
Indeed. I remember being laughed at incredulously by some Tory friends (who thought they knew better) in advance of the 2015 election when I said I thought Cameron would get a small majority. Maybe it was a lucky guess (and I did milk it afterwards), but I think there is a reasonable chance Labour will get a majority after the next one. (Waiting for HY to start a response with "no")
I can't see Labour getting more than 300 seats at the next election (due to Labour weakness in the West Midlands and Scotland) but I do now think they could get a majority at the election after next whether Starmer makes it or not.
Yes, Sunak is increasingly looking like the Tory David Miliband.
Miliband was unable to force Brown out pre 2010 as Sunak is unable to force Boris out now. In the end Miliband not only failed to become PM he even failed to become Leader of the Opposition after his brother beat him for the leadership after Labour lost power
Reports he's Brexiteer in name only. Instrumental in blocking Article Sixteen trigger. Insisting on the highest tax rates in 70 years.
GAME OVER.
He has been an enthusiastic Brexiteer since his teens, so he's very definitely a believer.
“Not really. If you spend money on holidays, for a family, you tend to end up in something like that. Unless you really fight the demand for luxury bathrooms etc.”
+++++
I do not wish to pry into PB-ears private circumstances, but this is an intriguing comment
If you had a family holiday here - the Galle hotel we have been discussing - you’d need three rooms for yourself, one for you and the partner, two for the kids
But let’s budget and say just two rooms, and the kids share
Rooms are £500 a night. That’s £1000 a night. For two weeks that’s £14,000. Add in flights to Sri Lanka, trips, and the rest, and you’re heading for £20,000. For a winter holiday
Exactly how wealthy is the average PB-er?!
Well I push up the average lol.
Good to hear!
I’m quite well off, I guess, but I would blink furiously at dropping £20k on a winter holiday
In my professional capacity for the Knappers Gazette I’ve done trips that would have cost £100,000 for 2 weeks. They were great fun. But they certainly weren’t worth £100,000. I suppose some people are just so rich it doesn’t matter
Spend £100k every two weeks and it adds up to £2.6m in a year, or £26m in a decade.
There have been a few lottery jackpots that would still be left largely intact after that.
The economics of the holiday industry baffle me. I don't feel well-off. But I know what the average family income is, and we earn a fair bit more than that. I usually tick one of the top two boxes in surveys on the 'household income' page. And while I'll never feel entirely comfortable, we're probably top decile for capital. And yet almost all holidays I see advertised are wildly, wildly unaffordable. I consider £3000 for a week away for five towards the upper end of extravagant. Yet almost any foreign family holiday that isn't transparently worse than staying at home seems to be more than this. I simply don't understand how this works. There surely can't be that many people who can afford a holiday like this every year. And don't get me started on Disneyland. Not that I want to go - but I don't see how more than a tiny proportion of the population can ever afford it.
Indeed
The Maldives are particularly nuts. I went there for the Gazette and they are as lovely as everyone says, but they are also ridiculously expensive (certainly the nicer island-hotels). Somewhere like Soneva Fushi. A fortnight there is £30-40k easy for a family.
“Not really. If you spend money on holidays, for a family, you tend to end up in something like that. Unless you really fight the demand for luxury bathrooms etc.”
+++++
I do not wish to pry into PB-ears private circumstances, but this is an intriguing comment
If you had a family holiday here - the Galle hotel we have been discussing - you’d need three rooms for yourself, one for you and the partner, two for the kids
But let’s budget and say just two rooms, and the kids share
Rooms are £500 a night. That’s £1000 a night. For two weeks that’s £14,000. Add in flights to Sri Lanka, trips, and the rest, and you’re heading for £20,000. For a winter holiday
Exactly how wealthy is the average PB-er?!
Well I push up the average lol.
Good to hear!
I’m quite well off, I guess, but I would blink furiously at dropping £20k on a winter holiday
In my professional capacity for the Knappers Gazette I’ve done trips that would have cost £100,000 for 2 weeks. They were great fun. But they certainly weren’t worth £100,000. I suppose some people are just so rich it doesn’t matter
Spend £100k every two weeks and it adds up to £2.6m in a year, or £26m in a decade.
There have been a few lottery jackpots that would still be left largely intact after that.
The economics of the holiday industry baffle me. I don't feel well-off. But I know what the average family income is, and we earn a fair bit more than that. I usually tick one of the top two boxes in surveys on the 'household income' page. And while I'll never feel entirely comfortable, we're probably top decile for capital. And yet almost all holidays I see advertised are wildly, wildly unaffordable. I consider £3000 for a week away for five towards the upper end of extravagant. Yet almost any foreign family holiday that isn't transparently worse than staying at home seems to be more than this. I simply don't understand how this works. There surely can't be that many people who can afford a holiday like this every year. And don't get me started on Disneyland. Not that I want to go - but I don't see how more than a tiny proportion of the population can ever afford it.
It is a very good question. We were in the high income bracket, although not now we have retired and by most accounts we would be considered wealthy, but maybe that is because I am just mean because I don't splash out on expensive holidays, etc. I tend to organise them myself. My cycling trip last year cost about £500. I guess typically I would spend £1000 - £2000. We were splashing out on a trip to California, Death Valley and Las Vegas and that was going to cost about £5000 before Covid cancelled it, but that was a big trip for us.
Same re cars. We have 2, both bought when 1 year old, now 12 and 7 years old respectively, both at the cheaper end of the market
I guess it is priorities. Others just splash the cash. Maybe they are right.
I think Rishi has blown it. Like Michael Portillo and David Miliband before him, he'll been seen as a politician who had the great prize within his grasp but wibbled.
Spot on, in the end Portillo failed to oust Major and Miliband failed to oust Brown and neither either ended up leaders of their party, loosing to IDS in 2001 and Ed Miliband in 2010 respectively.
Though Portillo has had a successful post politics career doing rail programmes and Miliband is head of international rescue in Manhattan so all not lost for Sunak longer term.
I wouldn't get too excited that your idol is in the clear. Whether it is Sunak or someone else, The Clown will not last past June IMO. There is just too much on him, and the vultures are just holding off until he is a little more wounded.
My humble prediction is that the drip drip of allegations and insinuations will ensure he ends up with a terrible result in May. MPs in more marginal constituencies will apply the swing to their GE result and take action. Whether it will be too late to prevent a Labour win at the next GE is open to conjecture.
As long as polls continue to show a hung parliament and a Labour lead under 10% and as long as the Tories hold Westminster and Kensington and Chelsea in May and as long as the Met and Gray inquiries find Boris did not do anything criminal. Then I predict Boris will still be PM and lead the Tories at the next general election
Hung Parliament on under 10% Labour lead?
Write out 100 times "Uniform National Swing does not work in the grand scheme of United Kingdom General Elections".
It does, on UNS on the new boundaries even a 9% Labour lead only leads to Labour 309 seats and Tories 246.
Labour still 17 short of a majority. Plus Starmer Labour is still not seen as as centrist as Blair's New Labour by the middle classes, even if not as bad as Corbyn Labour. So while they might tactically vote LD, they are much less likely to tactically vote Labour.
I am not, there is a 99% chance Starmer will not become PM with a majority in my view, even if he becomes PM with LD and SNP support in a hung parliament
I don't dispute that because of Scotland, but when you get to 6 to 7 percent all sorts of permutations come into play. You should be more concerned at the LD improvement today because you now have Labour to contend with on your left flank and the LDs to contend with on your not quite so left flank.
Indeed. I remember being laughed at incredulously by some Tory friends (who thought they knew better) in advance of the 2015 election when I said I thought Cameron would get a small majority. Maybe it was a lucky guess (and I did milk it afterwards), but I think there is a reasonable chance Labour will get a majority after the next one. (Waiting for HY to start a response with "no")
The Tories failed to get a majority in 2010 though despite being 7% ahead.
The Tories only got a majority in 2015 as the LD vote collapsed. Similarly I doubt Labour will get a majority again unless the SNP vote collapses unless they go much more to the centre a la New Labour than they are now.
Remember until Blair Labour had only won a majority in England twice, in 1945 and 1966. Boris is also the most successful Tory leader in Wales ever.
“Not really. If you spend money on holidays, for a family, you tend to end up in something like that. Unless you really fight the demand for luxury bathrooms etc.”
+++++
I do not wish to pry into PB-ears private circumstances, but this is an intriguing comment
If you had a family holiday here - the Galle hotel we have been discussing - you’d need three rooms for yourself, one for you and the partner, two for the kids
But let’s budget and say just two rooms, and the kids share
Rooms are £500 a night. That’s £1000 a night. For two weeks that’s £14,000. Add in flights to Sri Lanka, trips, and the rest, and you’re heading for £20,000. For a winter holiday
Exactly how wealthy is the average PB-er?!
Well I push up the average lol.
Good to hear!
I’m quite well off, I guess, but I would blink furiously at dropping £20k on a winter holiday
In my professional capacity for the Knappers Gazette I’ve done trips that would have cost £100,000 for 2 weeks. They were great fun. But they certainly weren’t worth £100,000. I suppose some people are just so rich it doesn’t matter
Spend £100k every two weeks and it adds up to £2.6m in a year, or £26m in a decade.
There have been a few lottery jackpots that would still be left largely intact after that.
I’ve told this story before but it is maybe worth telling again
A few years ago the Gazette sent me HERE. Shuba Camp in the Busanga Plains in the Kafue National Park, Zambia. Stunning. Also extremely pricey, so lucky I wasn’t paying
You can only get in by private plane, and it floods half the year
Anyway while I was there the staff told me a story of a famous Silicon Valley software squillionaire - one of the MOST famous - who took over the camp for two weeks for his whole family, wife, kids, and their enormous entourage
He was horrified by the idea there wasn’t any Wi-Fi (it’s one of the most remote places in Africa) so at vast expense he flew in satellite dishes and hi-tech kit and space shuttles and whatever, ensuring they all had perfect Wi-Fi. Helicopters came and went
The result was - the staff told me - that his bored kids spent the whole trip on their phones and iPads, doing insta and WhatsApp and went on about one safari drive. It must have cost him a million quid (or whatever). Basically wasted. But if you’re worth 20 billion, what is that?
“Not really. If you spend money on holidays, for a family, you tend to end up in something like that. Unless you really fight the demand for luxury bathrooms etc.”
+++++
I do not wish to pry into PB-ears private circumstances, but this is an intriguing comment
If you had a family holiday here - the Galle hotel we have been discussing - you’d need three rooms for yourself, one for you and the partner, two for the kids
But let’s budget and say just two rooms, and the kids share
Rooms are £500 a night. That’s £1000 a night. For two weeks that’s £14,000. Add in flights to Sri Lanka, trips, and the rest, and you’re heading for £20,000. For a winter holiday
Exactly how wealthy is the average PB-er?!
Well I push up the average lol.
Good to hear!
I’m quite well off, I guess, but I would blink furiously at dropping £20k on a winter holiday
In my professional capacity for the Knappers Gazette I’ve done trips that would have cost £100,000 for 2 weeks. They were great fun. But they certainly weren’t worth £100,000. I suppose some people are just so rich it doesn’t matter
Spend £100k every two weeks and it adds up to £2.6m in a year, or £26m in a decade.
There have been a few lottery jackpots that would still be left largely intact after that.
“Several years ago I was in Crete - beautiful - but I was dismayed by the number of estate agents offering coastal sites for sale. They were all English-language promotions so clearly going after Brits seeking the good life. It was pretty clear that the remaining undeveloped coastline was likely to be wrecked before long.
Fortunately the Cretan interior is pretty dramatic and for most of the holiday that's where we headed. White Mountains etc. Just such a shame about the fate of the coast.”
++++
Yes, Crete is a good example of touristic spoliation. All those lovely Venetian towns along the north coast, now essentially ruined by a long stream of tourist tat. Horrible and sad
Thailand is another example: destroying island after island, like there is an inexhaustible number. There isn’t. It’s like the hunters who believed the American buffalo were infinite in number, even as they shot the last great herds
If there is one upside to Covid, it may be a rethink of the way we are fucking up all the nicest corners of our planet. And yes, I know this is hypocrisy, as I earn money visiting them
Earliest example of that I can remember is Corfu. Idyllic when I went as a kid in the early 70s; well on the way to despoilation before the end of the decade.
Still, if universal prosperity eventually leads to sharp population declines, the problem will solve itself. Even if we're not around to see it.
Corfu is tragic. I went there with kids and friends a few years back. It was sad more than anything
The idiotic thing is, just over the coast on the mainland there is an entirely unspoiled coast with lovely Venetian towns, like Preveza
We stayed in what I think was the very first multi storey hotel on the island. It had a cafe on the roof - and four floors below that incomplete and completely open to the elements. Still remember queueing for smallpox innoculation at the airport.
“Not really. If you spend money on holidays, for a family, you tend to end up in something like that. Unless you really fight the demand for luxury bathrooms etc.”
+++++
I do not wish to pry into PB-ears private circumstances, but this is an intriguing comment
If you had a family holiday here - the Galle hotel we have been discussing - you’d need three rooms for yourself, one for you and the partner, two for the kids
But let’s budget and say just two rooms, and the kids share
Rooms are £500 a night. That’s £1000 a night. For two weeks that’s £14,000. Add in flights to Sri Lanka, trips, and the rest, and you’re heading for £20,000. For a winter holiday
Exactly how wealthy is the average PB-er?!
Well I push up the average lol.
Good to hear!
I’m quite well off, I guess, but I would blink furiously at dropping £20k on a winter holiday
In my professional capacity for the Knappers Gazette I’ve done trips that would have cost £100,000 for 2 weeks. They were great fun. But they certainly weren’t worth £100,000. I suppose some people are just so rich it doesn’t matter
Spend £100k every two weeks and it adds up to £2.6m in a year, or £26m in a decade.
There have been a few lottery jackpots that would still be left largely intact after that.
I do wonder where Elon Musk holidays
Famously he pretty much doesn't
Sad. I like to think he unexpectedly does Hoseasons boating holidays on the canals of Shropshire, like Harrison Ford
“Not really. If you spend money on holidays, for a family, you tend to end up in something like that. Unless you really fight the demand for luxury bathrooms etc.”
+++++
I do not wish to pry into PB-ears private circumstances, but this is an intriguing comment
If you had a family holiday here - the Galle hotel we have been discussing - you’d need three rooms for yourself, one for you and the partner, two for the kids
But let’s budget and say just two rooms, and the kids share
Rooms are £500 a night. That’s £1000 a night. For two weeks that’s £14,000. Add in flights to Sri Lanka, trips, and the rest, and you’re heading for £20,000. For a winter holiday
Exactly how wealthy is the average PB-er?!
Well I push up the average lol.
Good to hear!
I’m quite well off, I guess, but I would blink furiously at dropping £20k on a winter holiday
In my professional capacity for the Knappers Gazette I’ve done trips that would have cost £100,000 for 2 weeks. They were great fun. But they certainly weren’t worth £100,000. I suppose some people are just so rich it doesn’t matter
Spend £100k every two weeks and it adds up to £2.6m in a year, or £26m in a decade.
There have been a few lottery jackpots that would still be left largely intact after that.
I’ve told this story before but it is maybe worth telling again
A few years ago the Gazette sent me HERE. Shuba Camp in the Busanga Plains in the Kafue National Park, Zambia. Stunning. Also extremely pricey, so lucky I wasn’t paying
You can only get in by private plane, and it floods half the year
Anyway while I was there the staff told me a story of a famous Silicon Valley software squillionaire - one of the MOST famous - who took over the camp for two weeks for his whole family, wife, kids, and their enormous entourage
He was horrified by the idea there wasn’t any Wi-Fi (it’s one of the most remote places in Africa) so at vast expense he flew in satellite dishes and hi-tech kit and space shuttles and whatever, ensuring they all had perfect Wi-Fi. Helicopters came and went
The result was - the staff told me - that his bored kids spent the whole trip on their phones and iPads, doing insta and WhatsApp and went on about one safari drive. It must have cost him a million quid (or whatever). Basically wasted. But if you’re worth 20 billion, what is that?
I do wonder where Elon Musk holidays
In his office
Well, he does spend most of his time at the beach these days....
I think Rishi has blown it. Like Michael Portillo and David Miliband before him, he'll been seen as a politician who had the great prize within his grasp but wibbled.
Spot on, in the end Portillo failed to oust Major and Miliband failed to oust Brown and neither either ended up leaders of their party, loosing to IDS in 2001 and Ed Miliband in 2010 respectively.
Though Portillo has had a successful post politics career doing rail programmes and Miliband is head of international rescue in Manhattan so all not lost for Sunak longer term.
I wouldn't get too excited that your idol is in the clear. Whether it is Sunak or someone else, The Clown will not last past June IMO. There is just too much on him, and the vultures are just holding off until he is a little more wounded.
My humble prediction is that the drip drip of allegations and insinuations will ensure he ends up with a terrible result in May. MPs in more marginal constituencies will apply the swing to their GE result and take action. Whether it will be too late to prevent a Labour win at the next GE is open to conjecture.
As long as polls continue to show a hung parliament and a Labour lead under 10% and as long as the Tories hold Westminster and Kensington and Chelsea in May and as long as the Met and Gray inquiries find Boris did not do anything criminal. Then I predict Boris will still be PM and lead the Tories at the next general election
Hung Parliament on under 10% Labour lead?
Write out 100 times "Uniform National Swing does not work in the grand scheme of United Kingdom General Elections".
It does, on UNS on the new boundaries even a 9% Labour lead only leads to Labour 309 seats and Tories 246.
Labour still 17 short of a majority. Plus Starmer Labour is still not seen as as centrist as Blair's New Labour by the middle classes, even if not as bad as Corbyn Labour. So while they might tactically vote LD, they are much less likely to tactically vote Labour.
I am not, there is a 99% chance Starmer will not become PM with a majority in my view, even if he becomes PM with LD and SNP support in a hung parliament
I don't dispute that because of Scotland, but when you get to 6 to 7 percent all sorts of permutations come into play. You should be more concerned at the LD improvement today because you now have Labour to contend with on your left flank and the LDs to contend with on your not quite so left flank.
Indeed. I remember being laughed at incredulously by some Tory friends (who thought they knew better) in advance of the 2015 election when I said I thought Cameron would get a small majority. Maybe it was a lucky guess (and I did milk it afterwards), but I think there is a reasonable chance Labour will get a majority after the next one. (Waiting for HY to start a response with "no")
The Tories failed to get a majority in 2010 though despite being 7% ahead.
The Tories only got a majority in 2015 as the LD vote collapsed. Similarly I doubt Labour will get a majority again unless the SNP vote collapses unless they go much more to the centre a la New Labour than they are now.
Remember until Blair Labour had only won a majority in England twice, in 1945 and 1966.
Labour have never faced a PM so discredited and who has a near universal reputation among the population for dishonesty and incompetence. That said I think he will be gone by July, or else I have to wear a hair shirt for a month and eat gruel.
“Not really. If you spend money on holidays, for a family, you tend to end up in something like that. Unless you really fight the demand for luxury bathrooms etc.”
+++++
I do not wish to pry into PB-ears private circumstances, but this is an intriguing comment
If you had a family holiday here - the Galle hotel we have been discussing - you’d need three rooms for yourself, one for you and the partner, two for the kids
But let’s budget and say just two rooms, and the kids share
Rooms are £500 a night. That’s £1000 a night. For two weeks that’s £14,000. Add in flights to Sri Lanka, trips, and the rest, and you’re heading for £20,000. For a winter holiday
Exactly how wealthy is the average PB-er?!
Well I push up the average lol.
Good to hear!
I’m quite well off, I guess, but I would blink furiously at dropping £20k on a winter holiday
In my professional capacity for the Knappers Gazette I’ve done trips that would have cost £100,000 for 2 weeks. They were great fun. But they certainly weren’t worth £100,000. I suppose some people are just so rich it doesn’t matter
Spend £100k every two weeks and it adds up to £2.6m in a year, or £26m in a decade.
There have been a few lottery jackpots that would still be left largely intact after that.
I do wonder where Elon Musk holidays
Famously he pretty much doesn't
Sad. I like to think he unexpectedly does Hoseasons boating holidays on the canals of Shropshire, like Harrison Ford
The best hotels in my experience have been in Switzerland. It has something to do with the national characteristic. What you want from a hotel is a comfortable and clean room, the stuff to work, have what you need and otherwise be left alone. All of that is very Swiss. Hotels invariably meet your needs at any price point.
For somewhat similar reasons I am a fan of Premier Inn. No soul, but you can compromise on that for a decent room at a decent price.
I think Rishi has blown it. Like Michael Portillo and David Miliband before him, he'll been seen as a politician who had the great prize within his grasp but wibbled.
Spot on, in the end Portillo failed to oust Major and Miliband failed to oust Brown and neither either ended up leaders of their party, loosing to IDS in 2001 and Ed Miliband in 2010 respectively.
Though Portillo has had a successful post politics career doing rail programmes and Miliband is head of international rescue in Manhattan so all not lost for Sunak longer term.
I wouldn't get too excited that your idol is in the clear. Whether it is Sunak or someone else, The Clown will not last past June IMO. There is just too much on him, and the vultures are just holding off until he is a little more wounded.
My humble prediction is that the drip drip of allegations and insinuations will ensure he ends up with a terrible result in May. MPs in more marginal constituencies will apply the swing to their GE result and take action. Whether it will be too late to prevent a Labour win at the next GE is open to conjecture.
As long as polls continue to show a hung parliament and a Labour lead under 10% and as long as the Tories hold Westminster and Kensington and Chelsea in May and as long as the Met and Gray inquiries find Boris did not do anything criminal. Then I predict Boris will still be PM and lead the Tories at the next general election
Hung Parliament on under 10% Labour lead?
Write out 100 times "Uniform National Swing does not work in the grand scheme of United Kingdom General Elections".
It does, on UNS on the new boundaries even a 9% Labour lead only leads to Labour 309 seats and Tories 246.
Labour still 17 short of a majority. Plus Starmer Labour is still not seen as as centrist as Blair's New Labour by the middle classes, even if not as bad as Corbyn Labour. So while they might tactically vote LD, they are much less likely to tactically vote Labour.
I am not, there is a 99% chance Starmer will not become PM with a majority in my view, even if he becomes PM with LD and SNP support in a hung parliament
The betting currently says 19% chance Labour majority. Presumably just wishful thinking on your part.
This is why Boris Johnson should resign/be forced out.
First official estimate puts French growth in 2021 at 7% - the highest annual figure for half a century! And ahead of the previous forecast of 6.7 or 6.8%. If confirmed this would make France the fastest growing G7 country last year
The UK data, when they are published, will probably show UK GDP growth in 2021 as slightly higher than that - around 7.3% I would expect - although UK GDP fell more than French GDP in 2020 (-9.4% vs - 8.0%). Both the decline and recovery in the UK are likely over-stated by the way the data are calculated. The big picture, as is often the case, is that differences between the two countries are much exaggerated, but France is probably marginally ahead taking 2020 and 2021 together, and that is probably down to Brexit.
That's a fair summary, I took the IMF projections forwards and it looks like at the end of 2023 the UK will have lost around 2.8% in growth potential and France around 2.6% in lost growth potential. Both countries have had almost identical pandemic responses, poor early decision making and Macron is very much in the "keep everything open" camp despite huge infection numbers like Boris.
The most interesting of them all is Germany which didn't have as big a fall as the UK or France but also having little to no bounceback and it seems as though they are already heading to trend growth so their lost potential could be significantly higher than both France or the UK. The other one I've seen that's gone a bit unnoticed is that the city consensus has downgraded all three countries' trend growth rate post pandemic which is probably a much, much bigger concern for governments than what this year's bounce back looks like. That will change long term tax growth expectations meaning structurally lower spending or higher taxes will be required.
That's roughly how I read. Though I think you may be underplaying German underperformance during 2021. Their investment figures suffered badly.
Despite the interminable blathering about Brexit, we are all more or less in lockstep at this time.
One other factor not often mentioned is different timings of the Omicron wave.
Even the most pessimistic of post-Brexit forecasts had UK and EU growth differing by levels which pale to insignifance in comparison with the impact of covid. Brexit may well have a negative impact on UK growth (though my own view is, in the medium term, not). But any impact will be dwarfed by the impact of covid.
I'm not convinced of that. Forecasts have been a Brexit cost to the UK economy of 1%-10%, and 3-4% in GDP, summarised here:
Surveys of economists in 2016 showed overwhelming agreement that Brexit would likely reduce the UK's real per-capita income level. 2019 and 2017 surveys of existing academic research found that the credible estimates ranged between GDP losses of 1.2–4.5% for the UK and a cost of between 1%–10% of the UK's income per capita. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_effects_of_Brexit#Long-term_impact_on_the_UK_economy
In reality UK 2021 growth is down as 6.9%, and France now at 7% according to latest figures. Virtually no difference.
That really does not drown out the Brexit forecasts that we were peddled, never mind such as the collapsing house prices and soaring unemployment.
I'd say that current evidence suggests that such forecasts from various remain campaign groups were a tissue of bollocks.
What is a credible estimate?
I do them for a living and, imo, a long list of caveats indicates credibility, even if that undermines the confidence you can place on the figure.
That's an excellent question.
I'd say it divides by time - before and after the thing estimated occurred.
An estimate (ie forecast) is credible, not by quantity of caveats - that could be arsecover or pandering to a desired answer - but by whether those caveats are defensible, and recognisably relate to the context. And whether the model being used has left out factors that are the right ones, and simplified the world in a justifiable way. And, too, that the data used is as good as available.
After the fact, a model which is not adjusted in a similarly justifiable way after the predictions diverge from what actually happened, is not very credible.
Especially if a rhetoric built on it also is not adjusted.
“Not really. If you spend money on holidays, for a family, you tend to end up in something like that. Unless you really fight the demand for luxury bathrooms etc.”
+++++
I do not wish to pry into PB-ears private circumstances, but this is an intriguing comment
If you had a family holiday here - the Galle hotel we have been discussing - you’d need three rooms for yourself, one for you and the partner, two for the kids
But let’s budget and say just two rooms, and the kids share
Rooms are £500 a night. That’s £1000 a night. For two weeks that’s £14,000. Add in flights to Sri Lanka, trips, and the rest, and you’re heading for £20,000. For a winter holiday
Exactly how wealthy is the average PB-er?!
Well I push up the average lol.
Good to hear!
I’m quite well off, I guess, but I would blink furiously at dropping £20k on a winter holiday
In my professional capacity for the Knappers Gazette I’ve done trips that would have cost £100,000 for 2 weeks. They were great fun. But they certainly weren’t worth £100,000. I suppose some people are just so rich it doesn’t matter
Spend £100k every two weeks and it adds up to £2.6m in a year, or £26m in a decade.
There have been a few lottery jackpots that would still be left largely intact after that.
The economics of the holiday industry baffle me. I don't feel well-off. But I know what the average family income is, and we earn a fair bit more than that. I usually tick one of the top two boxes in surveys on the 'household income' page. And while I'll never feel entirely comfortable, we're probably top decile for capital. And yet almost all holidays I see advertised are wildly, wildly unaffordable. I consider £3000 for a week away for five towards the upper end of extravagant. Yet almost any foreign family holiday that isn't transparently worse than staying at home seems to be more than this. I simply don't understand how this works. There surely can't be that many people who can afford a holiday like this every year. And don't get me started on Disneyland. Not that I want to go - but I don't see how more than a tiny proportion of the population can ever afford it.
Indeed
The Maldives are particularly nuts. I went there for the Gazette and they are as lovely as everyone says, but they are also ridiculously expensive (certainly the nicer island-hotels). Somewhere like Soneva Fushi. A fortnight there is £30-40k easy for a family.
I presumed I was surrounded by billionaires but there were a lot of Brits who seemed perfectly normal middle class. Lawyers, doctors, what have you
My only explanation is that there is a LOT of inherited wealth in the UK (and elsewhere)
We also didn't pay when we went to the Maldives. The resort was absolutely pristine and we felt very lucky to be there but it is fundamentally just a beach (albeit a very pretty one) and it's not something I would have spent money on. Perhaps the people who pay to go there are those people who write articles in the Telegraph saying they can't afford to live on £100k a year. Some people are just a bit bling.
“Not really. If you spend money on holidays, for a family, you tend to end up in something like that. Unless you really fight the demand for luxury bathrooms etc.”
+++++
I do not wish to pry into PB-ears private circumstances, but this is an intriguing comment
If you had a family holiday here - the Galle hotel we have been discussing - you’d need three rooms for yourself, one for you and the partner, two for the kids
But let’s budget and say just two rooms, and the kids share
Rooms are £500 a night. That’s £1000 a night. For two weeks that’s £14,000. Add in flights to Sri Lanka, trips, and the rest, and you’re heading for £20,000. For a winter holiday
Exactly how wealthy is the average PB-er?!
Well I push up the average lol.
Good to hear!
I’m quite well off, I guess, but I would blink furiously at dropping £20k on a winter holiday
In my professional capacity for the Knappers Gazette I’ve done trips that would have cost £100,000 for 2 weeks. They were great fun. But they certainly weren’t worth £100,000. I suppose some people are just so rich it doesn’t matter
Spend £100k every two weeks and it adds up to £2.6m in a year, or £26m in a decade.
There have been a few lottery jackpots that would still be left largely intact after that.
The economics of the holiday industry baffle me. I don't feel well-off. But I know what the average family income is, and we earn a fair bit more than that. I usually tick one of the top two boxes in surveys on the 'household income' page. And while I'll never feel entirely comfortable, we're probably top decile for capital. And yet almost all holidays I see advertised are wildly, wildly unaffordable. I consider £3000 for a week away for five towards the upper end of extravagant. Yet almost any foreign family holiday that isn't transparently worse than staying at home seems to be more than this. I simply don't understand how this works. There surely can't be that many people who can afford a holiday like this every year. And don't get me started on Disneyland. Not that I want to go - but I don't see how more than a tiny proportion of the population can ever afford it.
Indeed
The Maldives are particularly nuts. I went there for the Gazette and they are as lovely as everyone says, but they are also ridiculously expensive (certainly the nicer island-hotels). Somewhere like Soneva Fushi. A fortnight there is £30-40k easy for a family.
I presumed I was surrounded by billionaires but there were a lot of Brits who seemed perfectly normal middle class. Lawyers, doctors, what have you
My only explanation is that there is a LOT of inherited wealth in the UK (and elsewhere)
We also didn't pay when we went to the Maldives. The resort was absolutely pristine and we felt very lucky to be there but it is fundamentally just a beach (albeit a very pretty one) and it's not something I would have spent money on. Perhaps the people who pay to go there are those people who write articles in the Telegraph saying they can't afford to live on £100k a year. Some people are just a bit bling.
I guess there's not much point going somewhere like the Maldives if you don't dive
I think Rishi has blown it. Like Michael Portillo and David Miliband before him, he'll been seen as a politician who had the great prize within his grasp but wibbled.
Spot on, in the end Portillo failed to oust Major and Miliband failed to oust Brown and neither either ended up leaders of their party, loosing to IDS in 2001 and Ed Miliband in 2010 respectively.
Though Portillo has had a successful post politics career doing rail programmes and Miliband is head of international rescue in Manhattan so all not lost for Sunak longer term.
I wouldn't get too excited that your idol is in the clear. Whether it is Sunak or someone else, The Clown will not last past June IMO. There is just too much on him, and the vultures are just holding off until he is a little more wounded.
My humble prediction is that the drip drip of allegations and insinuations will ensure he ends up with a terrible result in May. MPs in more marginal constituencies will apply the swing to their GE result and take action. Whether it will be too late to prevent a Labour win at the next GE is open to conjecture.
As long as polls continue to show a hung parliament and a Labour lead under 10% and as long as the Tories hold Westminster and Kensington and Chelsea in May and as long as the Met and Gray inquiries find Boris did not do anything criminal. Then I predict Boris will still be PM and lead the Tories at the next general election
Hung Parliament on under 10% Labour lead?
Write out 100 times "Uniform National Swing does not work in the grand scheme of United Kingdom General Elections".
It does, on UNS
I'll stop you there and repeat the post you're replying to because obviously you haven't read it or haven't understood it.
Uniform National Swing does not work in the grand scheme of United Kingdom General Elections.
Now take the rest of the day off.
Clearly neither of you have bothered to read the rest of my post 'Plus Starmer Labour is still not seen as as centrist as Blair's New Labour by the middle classes, even if not as bad as Corbyn Labour. So while they might tactically vote LD, they are much less likely to tactically vote Labour.
Compare too the by election results in North Shropshire and Chesham and Amersham where the LDs were challengers and won with Old Bexley and Sidcup where Labour were challengers and the Tories held on'
There has been no repeal Clause 4 moment from Starmer, no real attempt to go all out to the centre as Blair did and Starmer also has zero charisma unlike Blair. There will be far less tactical voting for Labour next time than there was in 1997, even if there is tactical voting for the LDs.
So I repeat, Labour is still a million miles from a majority and will be unless it either regains most of the seats it lost to the SNP in Scotland or goes much more to the centre a la New Labour pre 1997
Where you may be wrong again in your analysis referencing 1997 is this: No there has been no clause 4 moment, but there have been multiple Boris Johnson moments which might have the same effect.
I am of an age and in a financial position where it makes no real odds to me if Labour or the Conservatives win the next election. I would have supported any party of rejoin, but as they no longer exist that is not something I need worry about.
Sunak, Hunt, Tugendhat, Starmer, I can live with any of them, but Johnson? A man I have a burning desire to depose because of his Brexit lies, his shameful misogyny, his lazy incompetence as Foreign Secretary, his casual ignorance of Northern Ireland, his shameful begging for money (hi, Lulu Lytle) his prorogation of parliament, his lies to the monarch, his misleading of parliament, his kneejerk reactions to personal political crisis, the charge list goes on and on, notwithstanding his parties whilst we all locked down.
I believe he has sold my proud nation down the river on a raft of false narratives in order to self-aggrandise Boris Johnson, and for no other function. I suspect I am not alone, and people like me will think incredibly carefully where to put our cross on election day to punish this scoundrel. Anyone but Boris, UNS indeed!
“Not really. If you spend money on holidays, for a family, you tend to end up in something like that. Unless you really fight the demand for luxury bathrooms etc.”
+++++
I do not wish to pry into PB-ears private circumstances, but this is an intriguing comment
If you had a family holiday here - the Galle hotel we have been discussing - you’d need three rooms for yourself, one for you and the partner, two for the kids
But let’s budget and say just two rooms, and the kids share
Rooms are £500 a night. That’s £1000 a night. For two weeks that’s £14,000. Add in flights to Sri Lanka, trips, and the rest, and you’re heading for £20,000. For a winter holiday
Exactly how wealthy is the average PB-er?!
Well I push up the average lol.
Good to hear!
I’m quite well off, I guess, but I would blink furiously at dropping £20k on a winter holiday
In my professional capacity for the Knappers Gazette I’ve done trips that would have cost £100,000 for 2 weeks. They were great fun. But they certainly weren’t worth £100,000. I suppose some people are just so rich it doesn’t matter
Spend £100k every two weeks and it adds up to £2.6m in a year, or £26m in a decade.
There have been a few lottery jackpots that would still be left largely intact after that.
The economics of the holiday industry baffle me. I don't feel well-off. But I know what the average family income is, and we earn a fair bit more than that. I usually tick one of the top two boxes in surveys on the 'household income' page. And while I'll never feel entirely comfortable, we're probably top decile for capital. And yet almost all holidays I see advertised are wildly, wildly unaffordable. I consider £3000 for a week away for five towards the upper end of extravagant. Yet almost any foreign family holiday that isn't transparently worse than staying at home seems to be more than this. I simply don't understand how this works. There surely can't be that many people who can afford a holiday like this every year. And don't get me started on Disneyland. Not that I want to go - but I don't see how more than a tiny proportion of the population can ever afford it.
Indeed
The Maldives are particularly nuts. I went there for the Gazette and they are as lovely as everyone says, but they are also ridiculously expensive (certainly the nicer island-hotels). Somewhere like Soneva Fushi. A fortnight there is £30-40k easy for a family.
I presumed I was surrounded by billionaires but there were a lot of Brits who seemed perfectly normal middle class. Lawyers, doctors, what have you
My only explanation is that there is a LOT of inherited wealth in the UK (and elsewhere)
We also didn't pay when we went to the Maldives. The resort was absolutely pristine and we felt very lucky to be there but it is fundamentally just a beach (albeit a very pretty one) and it's not something I would have spent money on. Perhaps the people who pay to go there are those people who write articles in the Telegraph saying they can't afford to live on £100k a year. Some people are just a bit bling.
I guess there's not much point going somewhere like the Maldives if you don't dive
Completely wrong. Famously, the snorkelling in the Maldives is much better than the diving
There is a quick calculation for working out "coincidental" deaths within 28 days of a positive test which is remarkably simple.
1/4 of the population has had a positive test for Covid. 600,000 people give or take die every year normally in the UK. 28 days is 28/365ths of the year
1/4 * 600,000 * 28/365 = 11,500.
That's 11,500 per year, right? So ~23k over the ~2 years of the pandemic?
(Now expecting to be told I've missed something obvious...)
No, you don't need to double it, because the 1/4 of the population is over the whole pandemic, so the estimate of deaths is as well.
As an even rougher rule of thumb, you can say that the probability of anyone dying in a given year is about 1%, and in a given month about 0.1%. It's much smaller than the ratio of the death rate to positive tests before most people were vaccinated, and even before Omicron. But it's more comparable now.
The answer to 'how many deaths did covid cause' is very difficult to pin down. Not many people who died did not have other conditions. But having - say - asthma is not a death sentence by itself. You can ask how long the individual would have lived had they not caught covid. It's impossible to answer of course - would they have caught flu if not covid? - would they have been hit by the proverbial bus the next day? - but you can ask it. But even if you can estimate an answer, there is a question of where you draw the line. My next door neighbour, for example, died of covid last August, I think - but he also had an unusual variant of Parkinson's disease, which 18 months previously had given him 12 months to live. He was already on borrowed time. It would have been a major surprise had he made it through another winter. So do you include him in the 'killed by covid' figures? I would argue probably not. But I am sure there are countless examples of those with co-morbidities where covid finished them off but who might have reasonably expected another 5, 10 years. It's hard to say in those cases that they would have died anyway. Where do you draw the line? Another 6 months? Another 2 years? 5?
As always, I'd say the key figure of interest in excess deaths.
Excess deaths is pretty clearly the best estimate we have, and not just because it's the most reliable comparisobn between countries. It'll be too high, but hopefully not by much.
Excess deaths does, of course, include people killed by lockdown. But I'd say that is of interest too.
Indeed so, that's what I meant when I said "it'll be too high" - it would be nice to know the number of people killed by lockdown as a separate figure, though, not lumped in with all the people killed by the virus. It would be pretty difficult to measure, though.
We know that excess deaths have mostly occurred at the same time as 28 day deaths, and certificated deaths. Those due to lockdown would be spread more evenly. Indeed excess deaths have gone negative at times during lockdown away from the peaks.
And we can check by looking at countries with lockdowns but very few covid deaths (eg Australia and New Zealand), where excess deaths were negative.
Given the estimated number of deaths due to air pollution is ~50,000 in the UK, it's plausible that lockdown would have resulted in negative excess deaths in the UK too, in the absence of Covid.
Of course, I'm not advocating for lockdown as a way to save lives from air pollution, but it's very unlikely that there was a net increase in deaths due to lockdown (ignoring Covid deaths).
Sam Coates Sky @SamCoatesSky More clarification from the Met today, this via PA
Metropolitan Police officers are currently investigating possible breaches of Covid rules that could warrant fixed penalty notices rather than more serious offences, the PA news agency understands.
The birthday gathering with cake was an article in The Times and no one even noticed.
LOL. No-one cared at the time, because there was really nothing to care about. It’s only a story now, because of Cummings being vindictive and the Lobby trying to find a story. So we have this rubbish leading the news for a week, and the Leader of the Opposition calling for the PM to resign because his wife bought a cake to the office on his birthday.
You really are living up to the second part of your name this morning Mr Sandpit.
It really matters because most of this country went through hell during the lockdowns. We weren't able to visit loved ones. We weren't able to have birthday parties. In some cases we even had to endure loved ones dying alone.
Do you really not understand why this matters so much to us all or are you just trying the hardest to be the nastiest person on the forum?
I understand why people are angry, I’m saying that the anger specifically about the government is misplaced, and that events are being re-cast with the benefit of hindsight and a lack of knowledge as to what were actually the regulations at various times.
Talking of Times, the newspaper of record mentioned that the PM received a birthday cake, the day after it happened. Why didn’t everyone jump up and down about it at the time? Because at the time there was actually nothing wrong with it.
Are you related to a certain Mr Icke
The Times at the time seems to have said
"Boris Johnson celebrated his 56th birthday yesterday with a small gathering in the cabinet room. Rishi Sunak, the chancellor, and a group of aides sang him Happy Birthday before they tucked into a Union Jack cake."
Which may or may not have been within the rules at the time.
"Up to 30 people attended, sang Happy Birthday and were served cake, according to ITV News. As well as Downing Street staff, the interior designer Lulu Lytle - who was not a member of No 10 staff - was present."
It's not exactly the same thing is it? At that time "small gathering" would have made me think 5 or 6 people. And Lulu Lytle can't be described as an "aide".
According to the same article, at the time
"Gatherings of more than two people inside were banned by law. An exception was allowed if the gathering "was reasonably necessary" for work purposes."
Not sure why Sandpit is so confident that there was nothing wrong with the birthday party. Sounds quite likely that it broke the law to me.
People are confusing rules, guidance and law, as they applied to private individuals, workplaces, and public events at various times. Of course rules were different at care homes, hospitals and funerals, compared to offices.
There is a difference between inviting people to a party, and the wife of the boss - who lives on site - showing up with a birthday cake at a workplace. Remember that most white-collar workplaces were closed at the time, so there’s very few direct comparisons to be made.
I’ve been that project manager who sends for pizza and occasionally beer, for a team working their arses off into the night. It is a massive boost to morale.
I’m not a massive Boris Johnson fan, but think that both the media and Oppsoition are being idiots in not looking at what’s actually important at the moment. I’d rather they were all expending their energy on what’s happening in Ukraine, than petty obsessions about whether or not the PM had a cake for his birthday two years ago, or how much it costs for a diplomatic delegation to travel to Australia.
Also in the news today, Ursula VdL told by EU court to disclose text messages with Pfizer CEO. Governments everywhere were under mad pressure in 2020, and bent all their normal rules to keep people alive. I have litttle sympathy with people trying to micro-analyse their decisions now, with plenty of time and 20/20 hindsight.
I think Rishi has blown it. Like Michael Portillo and David Miliband before him, he'll been seen as a politician who had the great prize within his grasp but wibbled.
Spot on, in the end Portillo failed to oust Major and Miliband failed to oust Brown and neither either ended up leaders of their party, loosing to IDS in 2001 and Ed Miliband in 2010 respectively.
Though Portillo has had a successful post politics career doing rail programmes and Miliband is head of international rescue in Manhattan so all not lost for Sunak longer term.
I wouldn't get too excited that your idol is in the clear. Whether it is Sunak or someone else, The Clown will not last past June IMO. There is just too much on him, and the vultures are just holding off until he is a little more wounded.
My humble prediction is that the drip drip of allegations and insinuations will ensure he ends up with a terrible result in May. MPs in more marginal constituencies will apply the swing to their GE result and take action. Whether it will be too late to prevent a Labour win at the next GE is open to conjecture.
As long as polls continue to show a hung parliament and a Labour lead under 10% and as long as the Tories hold Westminster and Kensington and Chelsea in May and as long as the Met and Gray inquiries find Boris did not do anything criminal. Then I predict Boris will still be PM and lead the Tories at the next general election
Hung Parliament on under 10% Labour lead?
Write out 100 times "Uniform National Swing does not work in the grand scheme of United Kingdom General Elections".
It does, on UNS
I'll stop you there and repeat the post you're replying to because obviously you haven't read it or haven't understood it.
Uniform National Swing does not work in the grand scheme of United Kingdom General Elections.
Now take the rest of the day off.
Clearly neither of you have bothered to read the rest of my post 'Plus Starmer Labour is still not seen as as centrist as Blair's New Labour by the middle classes, even if not as bad as Corbyn Labour. So while they might tactically vote LD, they are much less likely to tactically vote Labour.
Compare too the by election results in North Shropshire and Chesham and Amersham where the LDs were challengers and won with Old Bexley and Sidcup where Labour were challengers and the Tories held on'
There has been no repeal Clause 4 moment from Starmer, no real attempt to go all out to the centre as Blair did and Starmer also has zero charisma unlike Blair. There will be far less tactical voting for Labour next time than there was in 1997, even if there is tactical voting for the LDs.
So I repeat, Labour is still a million miles from a majority and will be unless it either regains most of the seats it lost to the SNP in Scotland or goes much more to the centre a la New Labour pre 1997
Where you may be wrong again in your analysis referencing 1997 is this: No there has been no clause 4 moment, but there have been multiple Boris Johnson moments which might have the same effect.
I am of an age and in a financial position where it makes no real odds to me if Labour or the Conservatives win the next election. I would have supported any party of rejoin, but as they no longer exist that is not something I need worry about.
Sunak, Hunt, Tugendhat, Starmer, I can live with any of them, but Johnson? A man I have a burning desire to depose because of his Brexit lies, his shameful misogyny, his lazy incompetence as Foreign Secretary, his casual ignorance of Northern Ireland, his shameful begging for money (hi, Lulu Lytle)his prorogation of parliament, his lies to the monarch, his misleading of parliament, his kneejerk reactions to personal political crisis, the charge list goes on and on, notwithstanding his parties whilst we all locked down.
I believe he has sold my proud nation down the river on a raft of false narratives in order to self-aggrandise Boris Johnson, and for no other function. I suspect I am not alone, and people like me will think incredibly carefully where to put our cross on election day to punish this scoundrel. Anyone but Boris, UNS indeed!
Great post. I feel much the same, except I am still suspicious of a Labour government, though I am beginning to think they cannot be worse than this one while it is led by a clown. I think when people like me (I used to be a Tory activist only 10 years ago ffs) think like this, I would not be surprised to see a Labour majority
“Not really. If you spend money on holidays, for a family, you tend to end up in something like that. Unless you really fight the demand for luxury bathrooms etc.”
+++++
I do not wish to pry into PB-ears private circumstances, but this is an intriguing comment
If you had a family holiday here - the Galle hotel we have been discussing - you’d need three rooms for yourself, one for you and the partner, two for the kids
But let’s budget and say just two rooms, and the kids share
Rooms are £500 a night. That’s £1000 a night. For two weeks that’s £14,000. Add in flights to Sri Lanka, trips, and the rest, and you’re heading for £20,000. For a winter holiday
Exactly how wealthy is the average PB-er?!
Well I push up the average lol.
Good to hear!
I’m quite well off, I guess, but I would blink furiously at dropping £20k on a winter holiday
In my professional capacity for the Knappers Gazette I’ve done trips that would have cost £100,000 for 2 weeks. They were great fun. But they certainly weren’t worth £100,000. I suppose some people are just so rich it doesn’t matter
Spend £100k every two weeks and it adds up to £2.6m in a year, or £26m in a decade.
There have been a few lottery jackpots that would still be left largely intact after that.
The economics of the holiday industry baffle me. I don't feel well-off. But I know what the average family income is, and we earn a fair bit more than that. I usually tick one of the top two boxes in surveys on the 'household income' page. And while I'll never feel entirely comfortable, we're probably top decile for capital. And yet almost all holidays I see advertised are wildly, wildly unaffordable. I consider £3000 for a week away for five towards the upper end of extravagant. Yet almost any foreign family holiday that isn't transparently worse than staying at home seems to be more than this. I simply don't understand how this works. There surely can't be that many people who can afford a holiday like this every year. And don't get me started on Disneyland. Not that I want to go - but I don't see how more than a tiny proportion of the population can ever afford it.
Indeed
The Maldives are particularly nuts. I went there for the Gazette and they are as lovely as everyone says, but they are also ridiculously expensive (certainly the nicer island-hotels). Somewhere like Soneva Fushi. A fortnight there is £30-40k easy for a family.
I presumed I was surrounded by billionaires but there were a lot of Brits who seemed perfectly normal middle class. Lawyers, doctors, what have you
My only explanation is that there is a LOT of inherited wealth in the UK (and elsewhere)
We also didn't pay when we went to the Maldives. The resort was absolutely pristine and we felt very lucky to be there but it is fundamentally just a beach (albeit a very pretty one) and it's not something I would have spent money on. Perhaps the people who pay to go there are those people who write articles in the Telegraph saying they can't afford to live on £100k a year. Some people are just a bit bling.
I guess there's not much point going somewhere like the Maldives if you don't dive
Completely wrong. Famously, the snorkelling in the Maldives is much better than the diving
I have done both, and I promise you you are totally wrong. Snorkelling is great in the Maldives, but nowhere near as good as diving.
For example, being surrounded by mantas circling around you is probably better than going into space (and much cheaper), and you cannot get the same effect snorkelling.
I think Rishi has blown it. Like Michael Portillo and David Miliband before him, he'll been seen as a politician who had the great prize within his grasp but wibbled.
Spot on, in the end Portillo failed to oust Major and Miliband failed to oust Brown and neither either ended up leaders of their party, loosing to IDS in 2001 and Ed Miliband in 2010 respectively.
Though Portillo has had a successful post politics career doing rail programmes and Miliband is head of international rescue in Manhattan so all not lost for Sunak longer term.
I wouldn't get too excited that your idol is in the clear. Whether it is Sunak or someone else, The Clown will not last past June IMO. There is just too much on him, and the vultures are just holding off until he is a little more wounded.
My humble prediction is that the drip drip of allegations and insinuations will ensure he ends up with a terrible result in May. MPs in more marginal constituencies will apply the swing to their GE result and take action. Whether it will be too late to prevent a Labour win at the next GE is open to conjecture.
As long as polls continue to show a hung parliament and a Labour lead under 10% and as long as the Tories hold Westminster and Kensington and Chelsea in May and as long as the Met and Gray inquiries find Boris did not do anything criminal. Then I predict Boris will still be PM and lead the Tories at the next general election
Hung Parliament on under 10% Labour lead?
Write out 100 times "Uniform National Swing does not work in the grand scheme of United Kingdom General Elections".
It does, on UNS
I'll stop you there and repeat the post you're replying to because obviously you haven't read it or haven't understood it.
Uniform National Swing does not work in the grand scheme of United Kingdom General Elections.
Now take the rest of the day off.
Clearly neither of you have bothered to read the rest of my post 'Plus Starmer Labour is still not seen as as centrist as Blair's New Labour by the middle classes, even if not as bad as Corbyn Labour. So while they might tactically vote LD, they are much less likely to tactically vote Labour.
Compare too the by election results in North Shropshire and Chesham and Amersham where the LDs were challengers and won with Old Bexley and Sidcup where Labour were challengers and the Tories held on'
There has been no repeal Clause 4 moment from Starmer, no real attempt to go all out to the centre as Blair did and Starmer also has zero charisma unlike Blair. There will be far less tactical voting for Labour next time than there was in 1997, even if there is tactical voting for the LDs.
So I repeat, Labour is still a million miles from a majority and will be unless it either regains most of the seats it lost to the SNP in Scotland or goes much more to the centre a la New Labour pre 1997
Where you may be wrong again in your analysis referencing 1997 is this: No there has been no clause 4 moment, but there have been multiple Boris Johnson moments which might have the same effect.
I am of an age and in a financial position where it makes no real odds to me if Labour or the Conservatives win the next election. I would have supported any party of rejoin, but as they no longer exist that is not something I need worry about.
Sunak, Hunt, Tugendhat, Starmer, I can live with any of them, but Johnson? A man I have a burning desire to depose because of his Brexit lies, his shameful misogyny, his lazy incompetence as Foreign Secretary, his casual ignorance of Northern Ireland, his shameful begging for money (hi, Lulu Lytle) his prorogation of parliament, his lies to the monarch, his misleading of parliament, his kneejerk reactions to personal political crisis, the charge list goes on and on, notwithstanding his parties whilst we all locked down.
I believe he has sold my proud nation down the river on a raft of false narratives in order to self-aggrandise Boris Johnson, and for no other function. I suspect I am not alone, and people like me will think incredibly carefully where to put our cross on election day to punish this scoundrel. Anyone but Boris, UNS indeed!
Even Trump was only beaten by Biden by 5% in 2020.
If Starmer beats Boris by 5% he will be PM in a hung parliament but well short of a majority.
Latest Labour lead with gold standard Survation? 5%.
John Major was a decent man in 1997 but not as ruthless as Boris and Trump in trying to hold onto power
However like many such people, it's probably hard to disentangle business from pleasure: e.g. he may go somewhere nice with the kids and have a few meetings, and call it 'working'.
Like Bill Gates reading every line of Microsoft's code, or Steve Jobs designing everything Apple made, it's rubbish.
I think Rishi has blown it. Like Michael Portillo and David Miliband before him, he'll been seen as a politician who had the great prize within his grasp but wibbled.
Spot on, in the end Portillo failed to oust Major and Miliband failed to oust Brown and neither either ended up leaders of their party, loosing to IDS in 2001 and Ed Miliband in 2010 respectively.
Though Portillo has had a successful post politics career doing rail programmes and Miliband is head of international rescue in Manhattan so all not lost for Sunak longer term.
I wouldn't get too excited that your idol is in the clear. Whether it is Sunak or someone else, The Clown will not last past June IMO. There is just too much on him, and the vultures are just holding off until he is a little more wounded.
My humble prediction is that the drip drip of allegations and insinuations will ensure he ends up with a terrible result in May. MPs in more marginal constituencies will apply the swing to their GE result and take action. Whether it will be too late to prevent a Labour win at the next GE is open to conjecture.
As long as polls continue to show a hung parliament and a Labour lead under 10% and as long as the Tories hold Westminster and Kensington and Chelsea in May and as long as the Met and Gray inquiries find Boris did not do anything criminal. Then I predict Boris will still be PM and lead the Tories at the next general election
Hung Parliament on under 10% Labour lead?
Write out 100 times "Uniform National Swing does not work in the grand scheme of United Kingdom General Elections".
It does, on UNS on the new boundaries even a 9% Labour lead only leads to Labour 309 seats and Tories 246.
Labour still 17 short of a majority. Plus Starmer Labour is still not seen as as centrist as Blair's New Labour by the middle classes, even if not as bad as Corbyn Labour. So while they might tactically vote LD, they are much less likely to tactically vote Labour.
I am not, there is a 99% chance Starmer will not become PM with a majority in my view, even if he becomes PM with LD and SNP support in a hung parliament
I don't dispute that because of Scotland, but when you get to 6 to 7 percent all sorts of permutations come into play. You should be more concerned at the LD improvement today because you now have Labour to contend with on your left flank and the LDs to contend with on your not quite so left flank.
LD growth at Tory expense does not = a Labour majority even if it does = Starmer PM
To an extent a fair point, however as Tory seats tumble to LDs, I suspect it opens up the larger narrative that Labour will do better on a large single figure lead than you suggest too, and I haven't forgotten Scotland. Your basic charge that a Labour majority is unlikely still stands, that is not to say the Conservatives can't fall much further than you anticipate under Johnson.
Sam Coates Sky @SamCoatesSky More clarification from the Met today, this via PA
Metropolitan Police officers are currently investigating possible breaches of Covid rules that could warrant fixed penalty notices rather than more serious offences, the PA news agency understands.
“Not really. If you spend money on holidays, for a family, you tend to end up in something like that. Unless you really fight the demand for luxury bathrooms etc.”
+++++
I do not wish to pry into PB-ears private circumstances, but this is an intriguing comment
If you had a family holiday here - the Galle hotel we have been discussing - you’d need three rooms for yourself, one for you and the partner, two for the kids
But let’s budget and say just two rooms, and the kids share
Rooms are £500 a night. That’s £1000 a night. For two weeks that’s £14,000. Add in flights to Sri Lanka, trips, and the rest, and you’re heading for £20,000. For a winter holiday
Exactly how wealthy is the average PB-er?!
Well I push up the average lol.
Good to hear!
I’m quite well off, I guess, but I would blink furiously at dropping £20k on a winter holiday
In my professional capacity for the Knappers Gazette I’ve done trips that would have cost £100,000 for 2 weeks. They were great fun. But they certainly weren’t worth £100,000. I suppose some people are just so rich it doesn’t matter
Spend £100k every two weeks and it adds up to £2.6m in a year, or £26m in a decade.
There have been a few lottery jackpots that would still be left largely intact after that.
The economics of the holiday industry baffle me. I don't feel well-off. But I know what the average family income is, and we earn a fair bit more than that. I usually tick one of the top two boxes in surveys on the 'household income' page. And while I'll never feel entirely comfortable, we're probably top decile for capital. And yet almost all holidays I see advertised are wildly, wildly unaffordable. I consider £3000 for a week away for five towards the upper end of extravagant. Yet almost any foreign family holiday that isn't transparently worse than staying at home seems to be more than this. I simply don't understand how this works. There surely can't be that many people who can afford a holiday like this every year. And don't get me started on Disneyland. Not that I want to go - but I don't see how more than a tiny proportion of the population can ever afford it.
Indeed
The Maldives are particularly nuts. I went there for the Gazette and they are as lovely as everyone says, but they are also ridiculously expensive (certainly the nicer island-hotels). Somewhere like Soneva Fushi. A fortnight there is £30-40k easy for a family.
I presumed I was surrounded by billionaires but there were a lot of Brits who seemed perfectly normal middle class. Lawyers, doctors, what have you
My only explanation is that there is a LOT of inherited wealth in the UK (and elsewhere)
We also didn't pay when we went to the Maldives. The resort was absolutely pristine and we felt very lucky to be there but it is fundamentally just a beach (albeit a very pretty one) and it's not something I would have spent money on. Perhaps the people who pay to go there are those people who write articles in the Telegraph saying they can't afford to live on £100k a year. Some people are just a bit bling.
I guess there's not much point going somewhere like the Maldives if you don't dive
Completely wrong. Famously, the snorkelling in the Maldives is much better than the diving
Both are somewhat better than my first scuba dive at Gildenburgh one cold February ...
Sam Coates Sky @SamCoatesSky More clarification from the Met today, this via PA
Metropolitan Police officers are currently investigating possible breaches of Covid rules that could warrant fixed penalty notices rather than more serious offences, the PA news agency understands.
The birthday gathering with cake was an article in The Times and no one even noticed.
LOL. No-one cared at the time, because there was really nothing to care about. It’s only a story now, because of Cummings being vindictive and the Lobby trying to find a story. So we have this rubbish leading the news for a week, and the Leader of the Opposition calling for the PM to resign because his wife bought a cake to the office on his birthday.
You really are living up to the second part of your name this morning Mr Sandpit.
It really matters because most of this country went through hell during the lockdowns. We weren't able to visit loved ones. We weren't able to have birthday parties. In some cases we even had to endure loved ones dying alone.
Do you really not understand why this matters so much to us all or are you just trying the hardest to be the nastiest person on the forum?
I understand why people are angry, I’m saying that the anger specifically about the government is misplaced, and that events are being re-cast with the benefit of hindsight and a lack of knowledge as to what were actually the regulations at various times.
Talking of Times, the newspaper of record mentioned that the PM received a birthday cake, the day after it happened. Why didn’t everyone jump up and down about it at the time? Because at the time there was actually nothing wrong with it.
Are you related to a certain Mr Icke
The Times at the time seems to have said
"Boris Johnson celebrated his 56th birthday yesterday with a small gathering in the cabinet room. Rishi Sunak, the chancellor, and a group of aides sang him Happy Birthday before they tucked into a Union Jack cake."
Which may or may not have been within the rules at the time.
"Up to 30 people attended, sang Happy Birthday and were served cake, according to ITV News. As well as Downing Street staff, the interior designer Lulu Lytle - who was not a member of No 10 staff - was present."
It's not exactly the same thing is it? At that time "small gathering" would have made me think 5 or 6 people. And Lulu Lytle can't be described as an "aide".
According to the same article, at the time
"Gatherings of more than two people inside were banned by law. An exception was allowed if the gathering "was reasonably necessary" for work purposes."
Not sure why Sandpit is so confident that there was nothing wrong with the birthday party. Sounds quite likely that it broke the law to me.
People are confusing rules, guidance and law, as they applied to private individuals, workplaces, and public events at various times. Of course rules were different at care homes, hospitals and funerals, compared to offices.
There is a difference between inviting people to a party, and the wife of the boss - who lives on site - showing up with a birthday cake at a workplace. Remember that most white-collar workplaces were closed at the time, so there’s very few direct comparisons to be made.
I’ve been that project manager who sends for pizza and occasionally beer, for a team working their arses off into the night. It is a massive boost to morale.
I’m not a massive Boris Johnson fan, but think that both the media and Oppsoition are being idiots in not looking at what’s actually important at the moment. I’d rather they were all expending their energy on what’s happening in Ukraine, than petty obsessions about whether or not the PM had a cake for his birthday two years ago, or how much it costs for a diplomatic delegation to travel to Australia.
Also in the news today, Ursula VdL told by EU court to disclose text messages with Pfizer CEO. Governments everywhere were under mad pressure in 2020, and bent all their normal rules to keep people alive. I have litttle sympathy with people trying to micro-analyse their decisions now, with plenty of time and 20/20 hindsight.
Still sounds like Johnson's birthday party was against the law (however unimportant you think this is), whereas the original Times report wasn't clear. Not sure what care homes or any of the other stuff have got to do with it. Anyway, I'm no lawyer so perhaps someone with more expertise can shed some light.
89K Covid cases. Down about 6K on last week. 2 days in a row where the cases have been lower than the week before. Hopefully this is a sign that cases will now run down further.
All other key metrics are down. Everything heading in the right direction!
“Not really. If you spend money on holidays, for a family, you tend to end up in something like that. Unless you really fight the demand for luxury bathrooms etc.”
+++++
I do not wish to pry into PB-ears private circumstances, but this is an intriguing comment
If you had a family holiday here - the Galle hotel we have been discussing - you’d need three rooms for yourself, one for you and the partner, two for the kids
But let’s budget and say just two rooms, and the kids share
Rooms are £500 a night. That’s £1000 a night. For two weeks that’s £14,000. Add in flights to Sri Lanka, trips, and the rest, and you’re heading for £20,000. For a winter holiday
Exactly how wealthy is the average PB-er?!
Well I push up the average lol.
Good to hear!
I’m quite well off, I guess, but I would blink furiously at dropping £20k on a winter holiday
In my professional capacity for the Knappers Gazette I’ve done trips that would have cost £100,000 for 2 weeks. They were great fun. But they certainly weren’t worth £100,000. I suppose some people are just so rich it doesn’t matter
Spend £100k every two weeks and it adds up to £2.6m in a year, or £26m in a decade.
There have been a few lottery jackpots that would still be left largely intact after that.
The economics of the holiday industry baffle me. I don't feel well-off. But I know what the average family income is, and we earn a fair bit more than that. I usually tick one of the top two boxes in surveys on the 'household income' page. And while I'll never feel entirely comfortable, we're probably top decile for capital. And yet almost all holidays I see advertised are wildly, wildly unaffordable. I consider £3000 for a week away for five towards the upper end of extravagant. Yet almost any foreign family holiday that isn't transparently worse than staying at home seems to be more than this. I simply don't understand how this works. There surely can't be that many people who can afford a holiday like this every year. And don't get me started on Disneyland. Not that I want to go - but I don't see how more than a tiny proportion of the population can ever afford it.
The average family holiday to Spain or France, even in the height of summer, would cost far less than £3,000 probably under £1,000
Well maybe. But just getting four return tickets by air in the school holidays would cost over £1000. There must be cheap holidays out there - or no-one would be able to afford holidays at all. But those that I've seen look awful - at least compared to the option of staying at home. I don't know much about the abroad market. But I know a fair bit about the British market. And it's dashed difficult to get a self-catering place for 5 in the school holidays for much under £1000.
Sam Coates Sky @SamCoatesSky More clarification from the Met today, this via PA
Metropolitan Police officers are currently investigating possible breaches of Covid rules that could warrant fixed penalty notices rather than more serious offences, the PA news agency understands.
So the Police are wasting time investigating something that may end up with a fixed penalty notice.
That's not what makes less sense to me, however.
Lord Macdonald : "'If we're talking about fixed penalty notices – like parking tickets, essentially – if we're talking about that kind of resolution, then to take the rather grave step to delay a report that is going to shed public light on the subject matter of what may be a major public scandal, I think that is undesirable and I think it may be a misjudgment.
'But only police know what it is that is really at play here.
'It is really to say that if we are simply talking about lockdown breaches and fixed penalty notices, this move by the police this morning seems to be disproportionate.'"
Sam Coates Sky @SamCoatesSky More clarification from the Met today, this via PA
Metropolitan Police officers are currently investigating possible breaches of Covid rules that could warrant fixed penalty notices rather than more serious offences, the PA news agency understands.
Sam Coates Sky @SamCoatesSky More clarification from the Met today, this via PA
Metropolitan Police officers are currently investigating possible breaches of Covid rules that could warrant fixed penalty notices rather than more serious offences, the PA news agency understands.
So the Police are wasting time investigating something that may end up with a fixed penalty notice.
That's not what makes less sense to me, however.
Lord Macdonald : "'If we're talking about fixed penalty notices – like parking tickets, essentially – if we're talking about that kind of resolution, then to take the rather grave step to delay a report that is going to shed public light on the subject matter of what may be a major public scandal, I think that is undesirable and I think it may be a misjudgment."
Contrast this from yesterday suggesting FPNs for attenders but investigation of organisers
However like many such people, it's probably hard to disentangle business from pleasure: e.g. he may go somewhere nice with the kids and have a few meetings, and call it 'working'.
Like Bill Gates reading every line of Microsoft's code, or Steve Jobs designing everything Apple made, it's rubbish.
I know someone that has met him a few times, so I am not sure it is. He is a one off, and not necessarily in a good way.
“But is it really unreasonable for the Foreign Secretary, travelling halfway around the world in the middle of a mounting crisis that could well end in a full-blown Russian invasion of Ukraine, to make use of a specialised aeroplane that allows, amongst other things, for secure comms?
“Do we really expect one of the Government’s most senior members to huddle with her aides in First Class (assuming the penny-pinchers are prepared to afford her even that "luxury") discussing sensitive diplomatic information?
“Government aircraft of this sort are not flying palaces. They are workplaces, and allow for more effective use of ministers’ valuable time.”
Yes, Sunak is increasingly looking like the Tory David Miliband.
Miliband was unable to force Brown out pre 2010 as Sunak is unable to force Boris out now. In the end Miliband not only failed to become PM he even failed to become Leader of the Opposition after his brother beat him for the leadership after Labour lost power
Reports he's Brexiteer in name only. Instrumental in blocking Article Sixteen trigger. Insisting on the highest tax rates in 70 years.
GAME OVER.
He has been an enthusiastic Brexiteer since his teens, so he's very definitely a believer.
Yes that’s a curiously obvious lie. He was a vocally eurosceptic SCHOOLBOY. All this is on record
Therefore this sounds like some clumsy attempt to smear him by Borisovians
Thing is he looks like a Remainer - wealthy, cosmopolitan, financial background. So it's a good smear for Boris to set in motion. Ironic that the tactic you suggested be used against Sir Keir is now being used by Leavers against one of their own.
I confess i was a bit surprised when I read that he was a convinced Brexiteer. However, he is ENORMOUSLY wealthy. I have noted that the rich and super-rich are much more Brexity than the merely affluent, who are generally Remainer if not Remoaner
I recall a birthday party a few weeks before the referendum where the room contained about 5 people in the top 100 Sunday Times wealthiest people thing. All were Leave
True, however there are different ways of Being Brexit.
Crudely, there are those who really want a lot more globalisation- to take their squillions wherever and however they like, for whom Europe is too small a stage. Set against them, there are those who want a lot less globalisation- fewer foreign faces and voices, bring all the factories back to Britain, preferably to Mytown. Somewhere in the middle, you have the Boris types- don't care what happens really, as long as they are unambiguously in charge.
Sunak and others in the super-rich appear in the first category. But there aren't many of them. To get anywhere near 52%, you need those who want to pull up the drawbridge. Only disadvantage of this approach is that you're stuffed when you try to chart a path afterwards.
The Brexit Rishi believes in isn't the same one Boris believes in. So who is the guardian of the True Brexit?
“Not really. If you spend money on holidays, for a family, you tend to end up in something like that. Unless you really fight the demand for luxury bathrooms etc.”
+++++
I do not wish to pry into PB-ears private circumstances, but this is an intriguing comment
If you had a family holiday here - the Galle hotel we have been discussing - you’d need three rooms for yourself, one for you and the partner, two for the kids
But let’s budget and say just two rooms, and the kids share
Rooms are £500 a night. That’s £1000 a night. For two weeks that’s £14,000. Add in flights to Sri Lanka, trips, and the rest, and you’re heading for £20,000. For a winter holiday
Exactly how wealthy is the average PB-er?!
Well I push up the average lol.
Good to hear!
I’m quite well off, I guess, but I would blink furiously at dropping £20k on a winter holiday
In my professional capacity for the Knappers Gazette I’ve done trips that would have cost £100,000 for 2 weeks. They were great fun. But they certainly weren’t worth £100,000. I suppose some people are just so rich it doesn’t matter
Spend £100k every two weeks and it adds up to £2.6m in a year, or £26m in a decade.
There have been a few lottery jackpots that would still be left largely intact after that.
The economics of the holiday industry baffle me. I don't feel well-off. But I know what the average family income is, and we earn a fair bit more than that. I usually tick one of the top two boxes in surveys on the 'household income' page. And while I'll never feel entirely comfortable, we're probably top decile for capital. And yet almost all holidays I see advertised are wildly, wildly unaffordable. I consider £3000 for a week away for five towards the upper end of extravagant. Yet almost any foreign family holiday that isn't transparently worse than staying at home seems to be more than this. I simply don't understand how this works. There surely can't be that many people who can afford a holiday like this every year. And don't get me started on Disneyland. Not that I want to go - but I don't see how more than a tiny proportion of the population can ever afford it.
Indeed
The Maldives are particularly nuts. I went there for the Gazette and they are as lovely as everyone says, but they are also ridiculously expensive (certainly the nicer island-hotels). Somewhere like Soneva Fushi. A fortnight there is £30-40k easy for a family.
I presumed I was surrounded by billionaires but there were a lot of Brits who seemed perfectly normal middle class. Lawyers, doctors, what have you
My only explanation is that there is a LOT of inherited wealth in the UK (and elsewhere)
We also didn't pay when we went to the Maldives. The resort was absolutely pristine and we felt very lucky to be there but it is fundamentally just a beach (albeit a very pretty one) and it's not something I would have spent money on. Perhaps the people who pay to go there are those people who write articles in the Telegraph saying they can't afford to live on £100k a year. Some people are just a bit bling.
I guess there's not much point going somewhere like the Maldives if you don't dive
Completely wrong. Famously, the snorkelling in the Maldives is much better than the diving
I have done both, and I promise you you are totally wrong. Snorkelling is great in the Maldives, but nowhere near as good as diving.
For example, being surrounded by mantas circling around you is probably better than going into space (and much cheaper), and you cannot get the same effect snorkelling.
I doubt you even manage to leave the bar.
Er, sorry, I’ve also done both in the Maldives. I dive a fair bit
In terms of bang per buck, rewards received for effort made, the snorkeling is far superior. On a good reef you just have to dip your head in the water and you are surrounded by billions of fish. It is surreally good. The best snorkelling in the world? Certainly up there
Diving in the Maldives is good but not world class. And you have all the bloody effort that goes with diving
“But is it really unreasonable for the Foreign Secretary, travelling halfway around the world in the middle of a mounting crisis that could well end in a full-blown Russian invasion of Ukraine, to make use of a specialised aeroplane that allows, amongst other things, for secure comms?
“Do we really expect one of the Government’s most senior members to huddle with her aides in First Class (assuming the penny-pinchers are prepared to afford her even that "luxury") discussing sensitive diplomatic information?
“Government aircraft of this sort are not flying palaces. They are workplaces, and allow for more effective use of ministers’ valuable time.”
And yet previous FSs used to use normal scheduled flights.
“Not really. If you spend money on holidays, for a family, you tend to end up in something like that. Unless you really fight the demand for luxury bathrooms etc.”
+++++
I do not wish to pry into PB-ears private circumstances, but this is an intriguing comment
If you had a family holiday here - the Galle hotel we have been discussing - you’d need three rooms for yourself, one for you and the partner, two for the kids
But let’s budget and say just two rooms, and the kids share
Rooms are £500 a night. That’s £1000 a night. For two weeks that’s £14,000. Add in flights to Sri Lanka, trips, and the rest, and you’re heading for £20,000. For a winter holiday
Exactly how wealthy is the average PB-er?!
Well I push up the average lol.
Good to hear!
I’m quite well off, I guess, but I would blink furiously at dropping £20k on a winter holiday
In my professional capacity for the Knappers Gazette I’ve done trips that would have cost £100,000 for 2 weeks. They were great fun. But they certainly weren’t worth £100,000. I suppose some people are just so rich it doesn’t matter
Spend £100k every two weeks and it adds up to £2.6m in a year, or £26m in a decade.
There have been a few lottery jackpots that would still be left largely intact after that.
The economics of the holiday industry baffle me. I don't feel well-off. But I know what the average family income is, and we earn a fair bit more than that. I usually tick one of the top two boxes in surveys on the 'household income' page. And while I'll never feel entirely comfortable, we're probably top decile for capital. And yet almost all holidays I see advertised are wildly, wildly unaffordable. I consider £3000 for a week away for five towards the upper end of extravagant. Yet almost any foreign family holiday that isn't transparently worse than staying at home seems to be more than this. I simply don't understand how this works. There surely can't be that many people who can afford a holiday like this every year. And don't get me started on Disneyland. Not that I want to go - but I don't see how more than a tiny proportion of the population can ever afford it.
Indeed
The Maldives are particularly nuts. I went there for the Gazette and they are as lovely as everyone says, but they are also ridiculously expensive (certainly the nicer island-hotels). Somewhere like Soneva Fushi. A fortnight there is £30-40k easy for a family.
I presumed I was surrounded by billionaires but there were a lot of Brits who seemed perfectly normal middle class. Lawyers, doctors, what have you
My only explanation is that there is a LOT of inherited wealth in the UK (and elsewhere)
We also didn't pay when we went to the Maldives. The resort was absolutely pristine and we felt very lucky to be there but it is fundamentally just a beach (albeit a very pretty one) and it's not something I would have spent money on. Perhaps the people who pay to go there are those people who write articles in the Telegraph saying they can't afford to live on £100k a year. Some people are just a bit bling.
I guess there's not much point going somewhere like the Maldives if you don't dive
Completely wrong. Famously, the snorkelling in the Maldives is much better than the diving
I have done both, and I promise you you are totally wrong. Snorkelling is great in the Maldives, but nowhere near as good as diving.
For example, being surrounded by mantas circling around you is probably better than going into space (and much cheaper), and you cannot get the same effect snorkelling.
I doubt you even manage to leave the bar.
Er, sorry, I’ve also done both in the Maldives. I dive a fair bit
In terms of bang per buck, rewards received for effort made, the snorkeling is far superior. On a good reef you just have to dip your head in the water and you are surrounded by billions of fish. It is surreally good. The best snorkelling in the world? Certainly up there
Diving in the Maldives is good but not world class. And you have all the bloody effort that goes with diving
However like many such people, it's probably hard to disentangle business from pleasure: e.g. he may go somewhere nice with the kids and have a few meetings, and call it 'working'.
Like Bill Gates reading every line of Microsoft's code, or Steve Jobs designing everything Apple made, it's rubbish.
I know someone that has met him a few times, so I am not sure it is. He is a one off, and not necessarily in a good way.
Well, on the holidays thing there are a fair few cases of his being seen abroad with his kids. The people who were tracking his flights was a good source of info.
Sam Coates Sky @SamCoatesSky More clarification from the Met today, this via PA
Metropolitan Police officers are currently investigating possible breaches of Covid rules that could warrant fixed penalty notices rather than more serious offences, the PA news agency understands.
So the Police are wasting time investigating something that may end up with a fixed penalty notice.
That's not what makes less sense to me, however.
Lord Macdonald : "'If we're talking about fixed penalty notices – like parking tickets, essentially – if we're talking about that kind of resolution, then to take the rather grave step to delay a report that is going to shed public light on the subject matter of what may be a major public scandal, I think that is undesirable and I think it may be a misjudgment."
Contrast this from yesterday suggesting FPNs for attenders but investigation of organisers
As I’m in the small minority, I’ll go for the conspiracy theory - that they’re going to try and get junior staff to accept FPNs for “Attending a party”, then use the fact that many people have admitted to attending “a party” to charge the higher-ups with organising “a party”.
If I were one of the junior staff, I would be consulting a lawyer or a Union rep before accepting an FPN, in the same way I would never accept a police caution.
Sam Coates Sky @SamCoatesSky More clarification from the Met today, this via PA
Metropolitan Police officers are currently investigating possible breaches of Covid rules that could warrant fixed penalty notices rather than more serious offences, the PA news agency understands.
So the Police are wasting time investigating something that may end up with a fixed penalty notice.
Wasn't this always the case? The only penalties for breaking the Covid rules are fixed penalty notices AFAIK.
Except the "organiser". £10k fine. Poor Bozo might have to mortgage the wallpaper. This might be in fact the delay. Perhaps they are trying to ascertain who the "organiser" is
“Not really. If you spend money on holidays, for a family, you tend to end up in something like that. Unless you really fight the demand for luxury bathrooms etc.”
+++++
I do not wish to pry into PB-ears private circumstances, but this is an intriguing comment
If you had a family holiday here - the Galle hotel we have been discussing - you’d need three rooms for yourself, one for you and the partner, two for the kids
But let’s budget and say just two rooms, and the kids share
Rooms are £500 a night. That’s £1000 a night. For two weeks that’s £14,000. Add in flights to Sri Lanka, trips, and the rest, and you’re heading for £20,000. For a winter holiday
Exactly how wealthy is the average PB-er?!
Well I push up the average lol.
Good to hear!
I’m quite well off, I guess, but I would blink furiously at dropping £20k on a winter holiday
In my professional capacity for the Knappers Gazette I’ve done trips that would have cost £100,000 for 2 weeks. They were great fun. But they certainly weren’t worth £100,000. I suppose some people are just so rich it doesn’t matter
Spend £100k every two weeks and it adds up to £2.6m in a year, or £26m in a decade.
There have been a few lottery jackpots that would still be left largely intact after that.
The economics of the holiday industry baffle me. I don't feel well-off. But I know what the average family income is, and we earn a fair bit more than that. I usually tick one of the top two boxes in surveys on the 'household income' page. And while I'll never feel entirely comfortable, we're probably top decile for capital. And yet almost all holidays I see advertised are wildly, wildly unaffordable. I consider £3000 for a week away for five towards the upper end of extravagant. Yet almost any foreign family holiday that isn't transparently worse than staying at home seems to be more than this. I simply don't understand how this works. There surely can't be that many people who can afford a holiday like this every year. And don't get me started on Disneyland. Not that I want to go - but I don't see how more than a tiny proportion of the population can ever afford it.
Indeed
The Maldives are particularly nuts. I went there for the Gazette and they are as lovely as everyone says, but they are also ridiculously expensive (certainly the nicer island-hotels). Somewhere like Soneva Fushi. A fortnight there is £30-40k easy for a family.
I presumed I was surrounded by billionaires but there were a lot of Brits who seemed perfectly normal middle class. Lawyers, doctors, what have you
My only explanation is that there is a LOT of inherited wealth in the UK (and elsewhere)
We also didn't pay when we went to the Maldives. The resort was absolutely pristine and we felt very lucky to be there but it is fundamentally just a beach (albeit a very pretty one) and it's not something I would have spent money on. Perhaps the people who pay to go there are those people who write articles in the Telegraph saying they can't afford to live on £100k a year. Some people are just a bit bling.
I guess there's not much point going somewhere like the Maldives if you don't dive
Completely wrong. Famously, the snorkelling in the Maldives is much better than the diving
I have done both, and I promise you you are totally wrong. Snorkelling is great in the Maldives, but nowhere near as good as diving.
For example, being surrounded by mantas circling around you is probably better than going into space (and much cheaper), and you cannot get the same effect snorkelling.
I doubt you even manage to leave the bar.
Er, sorry, I’ve also done both in the Maldives. I dive a fair bit
In terms of bang per buck, rewards received for effort made, the snorkeling is far superior. On a good reef you just have to dip your head in the water and you are surrounded by billions of fish. It is surreally good. The best snorkelling in the world? Certainly up there
Diving in the Maldives is good but not world class. And you have all the bloody effort that goes with diving
Interesting comparative analysis of the Covid response in 20 countries on various health and economic indicators. Don't necessarily accept the overall UK ranking at 20/20 (world-beating!) but some noteworthy detail. As I suspected, the UK has injected a larger than average fiscal stimulus to rather modest effect. Also it spent all the money on coping with pandemic at the time leaving nothing for the recovery.
However like many such people, it's probably hard to disentangle business from pleasure: e.g. he may go somewhere nice with the kids and have a few meetings, and call it 'working'.
Like Bill Gates reading every line of Microsoft's code, or Steve Jobs designing everything Apple made, it's rubbish.
I know someone that has met him a few times, so I am not sure it is. He is a one off, and not necessarily in a good way.
For a man worth seven trillion dollars, Musk is weirdly and easily annoyed by minor people on Twitter with 6 followers. Quite strange
However like many such people, it's probably hard to disentangle business from pleasure: e.g. he may go somewhere nice with the kids and have a few meetings, and call it 'working'.
Like Bill Gates reading every line of Microsoft's code, or Steve Jobs designing everything Apple made, it's rubbish.
I know someone that has met him a few times, so I am not sure it is. He is a one off, and not necessarily in a good way.
For a man worth seven trillion dollars, Musk is weirdly and easily annoyed by minor people on Twitter with 6 followers. Quite strange
He is a very weird dude all-round...the few long form interviews he has done with Joe Rogan and Lex Fridman only reinforces that.
“Not really. If you spend money on holidays, for a family, you tend to end up in something like that. Unless you really fight the demand for luxury bathrooms etc.”
+++++
I do not wish to pry into PB-ears private circumstances, but this is an intriguing comment
If you had a family holiday here - the Galle hotel we have been discussing - you’d need three rooms for yourself, one for you and the partner, two for the kids
But let’s budget and say just two rooms, and the kids share
Rooms are £500 a night. That’s £1000 a night. For two weeks that’s £14,000. Add in flights to Sri Lanka, trips, and the rest, and you’re heading for £20,000. For a winter holiday
Exactly how wealthy is the average PB-er?!
Well I push up the average lol.
Good to hear!
I’m quite well off, I guess, but I would blink furiously at dropping £20k on a winter holiday
In my professional capacity for the Knappers Gazette I’ve done trips that would have cost £100,000 for 2 weeks. They were great fun. But they certainly weren’t worth £100,000. I suppose some people are just so rich it doesn’t matter
Spend £100k every two weeks and it adds up to £2.6m in a year, or £26m in a decade.
There have been a few lottery jackpots that would still be left largely intact after that.
I’ve told this story before but it is maybe worth telling again
A few years ago the Gazette sent me HERE. Shuba Camp in the Busanga Plains in the Kafue National Park, Zambia. Stunning. Also extremely pricey, so lucky I wasn’t paying
You can only get in by private plane, and it floods half the year
Anyway while I was there the staff told me a story of a famous Silicon Valley software squillionaire - one of the MOST famous - who took over the camp for two weeks for his whole family, wife, kids, and their enormous entourage
He was horrified by the idea there wasn’t any Wi-Fi (it’s one of the most remote places in Africa) so at vast expense he flew in satellite dishes and hi-tech kit and space shuttles and whatever, ensuring they all had perfect Wi-Fi. Helicopters came and went
The result was - the staff told me - that his bored kids spent the whole trip on their phones and iPads, doing insta and WhatsApp and went on about one safari drive. It must have cost him a million quid (or whatever). Basically wasted. But if you’re worth 20 billion, what is that?
I do wonder where Elon Musk holidays
He has a bijou beach house on the Sea of Tranquility
However like many such people, it's probably hard to disentangle business from pleasure: e.g. he may go somewhere nice with the kids and have a few meetings, and call it 'working'.
Like Bill Gates reading every line of Microsoft's code, or Steve Jobs designing everything Apple made, it's rubbish.
I know someone that has met him a few times, so I am not sure it is. He is a one off, and not necessarily in a good way.
For a man worth seven trillion dollars, Musk is weirdly and easily annoyed by minor people on Twitter with 6 followers. Quite strange
Indeed, his behaviour toward the cave rescuer in Thailand was a disgrace. He should have apologised, withdrawn the "pedoguy" comment and chucked him a few grand. Made him look a first class twat. Still, I like his cars!
Given the briefing against Sunak re Article 16, it's worth noting that there are at least three reasons to oppose invoking it now:
Firstly, and this is my view, the EU is not currently in breach of its treaty obligations. The current Northern Ireland arrangements are meant to be transitional, and to be replaced by a trusted trader scheme. There was some significant foot dragging by the EU prior to the middle of 2021, but they have since published their SmartBorder 2.0 proposal and the latest report from Parliament's Northern Ireland group reports "heartened by the increased level of engagement".
Now some people will say "ah but it should be done now"... but the reality is that the Trusted Trader scheme was never going to be up and running within 12 months of leaving the transition period. We still have - realistically - six to nine months before the EU and the UK's proposals are merged into one. And then a further 18 months for Accenture to repeatedly balls it up before it is live.
Secondly, you might think that the EU is in breach, but regard now as the wrong time to trigger Article 16. Given existing pressures on the cost of living, and the likelihood of the EU responding to its invocation with escalations of its own, you might think. "we shouldn't pull the trigger on this thing when we're out the wood with Omicron and are in a better position with our non-EU supply chains."
Thirdly, you might think that invoking Article 16 should be done with the consent of the people it affects: i.e. the population of Northern Ireland. And the polls suggest that while 80% of TUV/DUP voters support it, pretty much 100% of Alliance/SF/SDLP voters oppose it. In total, it's about 60/40 against its use.
Sam Coates Sky @SamCoatesSky More clarification from the Met today, this via PA
Metropolitan Police officers are currently investigating possible breaches of Covid rules that could warrant fixed penalty notices rather than more serious offences, the PA news agency understands.
However like many such people, it's probably hard to disentangle business from pleasure: e.g. he may go somewhere nice with the kids and have a few meetings, and call it 'working'.
Like Bill Gates reading every line of Microsoft's code, or Steve Jobs designing everything Apple made, it's rubbish.
I know someone that has met him a few times, so I am not sure it is. He is a one off, and not necessarily in a good way.
For a man worth seven trillion dollars, Musk is weirdly and easily annoyed by minor people on Twitter with 6 followers. Quite strange
He is a very weird dude all-round...the few long form interviews he has done with Joe Rogan and Lex Fridman only reinforces that.
Indeed, but we definitely need more Elon Musks in the world.
The Fridman interview especially, is worth watching.
However like many such people, it's probably hard to disentangle business from pleasure: e.g. he may go somewhere nice with the kids and have a few meetings, and call it 'working'.
Like Bill Gates reading every line of Microsoft's code, or Steve Jobs designing everything Apple made, it's rubbish.
I know someone that has met him a few times, so I am not sure it is. He is a one off, and not necessarily in a good way.
Sounds like a "work outing"
My nephew, a design engineer, works in his company and has had a few direct meetings - finds him reasonable enough, and not the weirdo that the media (and perhaps his own publicity machine) like to depict. Perhaps he varies, like most of us...
“Not really. If you spend money on holidays, for a family, you tend to end up in something like that. Unless you really fight the demand for luxury bathrooms etc.”
+++++
I do not wish to pry into PB-ears private circumstances, but this is an intriguing comment
If you had a family holiday here - the Galle hotel we have been discussing - you’d need three rooms for yourself, one for you and the partner, two for the kids
But let’s budget and say just two rooms, and the kids share
Rooms are £500 a night. That’s £1000 a night. For two weeks that’s £14,000. Add in flights to Sri Lanka, trips, and the rest, and you’re heading for £20,000. For a winter holiday
Exactly how wealthy is the average PB-er?!
Well I push up the average lol.
Good to hear!
I’m quite well off, I guess, but I would blink furiously at dropping £20k on a winter holiday
In my professional capacity for the Knappers Gazette I’ve done trips that would have cost £100,000 for 2 weeks. They were great fun. But they certainly weren’t worth £100,000. I suppose some people are just so rich it doesn’t matter
Spend £100k every two weeks and it adds up to £2.6m in a year, or £26m in a decade.
There have been a few lottery jackpots that would still be left largely intact after that.
I’ve told this story before but it is maybe worth telling again
A few years ago the Gazette sent me HERE. Shuba Camp in the Busanga Plains in the Kafue National Park, Zambia. Stunning. Also extremely pricey, so lucky I wasn’t paying
You can only get in by private plane, and it floods half the year
Anyway while I was there the staff told me a story of a famous Silicon Valley software squillionaire - one of the MOST famous - who took over the camp for two weeks for his whole family, wife, kids, and their enormous entourage
He was horrified by the idea there wasn’t any Wi-Fi (it’s one of the most remote places in Africa) so at vast expense he flew in satellite dishes and hi-tech kit and space shuttles and whatever, ensuring they all had perfect Wi-Fi. Helicopters came and went
The result was - the staff told me - that his bored kids spent the whole trip on their phones and iPads, doing insta and WhatsApp and went on about one safari drive. It must have cost him a million quid (or whatever). Basically wasted. But if you’re worth 20 billion, what is that?
I do wonder where Elon Musk holidays
He has a bijou beach house on the Sea of Tranquility
Given the briefing against Sunak re Article 16, it's worth noting that there are at least three reasons to oppose invoking it now:
Firstly, and this is my view, the EU is not currently in breach of its treaty obligations. The current Northern Ireland arrangements are meant to be transitional, and to be replaced by a trusted trader scheme. There was some significant foot dragging by the EU prior to the middle of 2021, but they have since published their SmartBorder 2.0 proposal and the latest report from Parliament's Northern Ireland group reports "heartened by the increased level of engagement".
Now some people will say "ah but it should be done now"... but the reality is that the Trusted Trader scheme was never going to be up and running within 12 months of leaving the transition period. We still have - realistically - six to nine months before the EU and the UK's proposals are merged into one. And then a further 18 months for Accenture to repeatedly balls it up before it is live.
Secondly, you might think that the EU is in breach, but regard now as the wrong time to trigger Article 16. Given existing pressures on the cost of living, and the likelihood of the EU responding to its invocation with escalations of its own, you might think. "we shouldn't pull the trigger on this thing when we're out the wood with Omicron and are in a better position with our non-EU supply chains."
Thirdly, you might think that invoking Article 16 should be done with the consent of the people it affects: i.e. the population of Northern Ireland. And the polls suggest that while 80% of TUV/DUP voters support it, pretty much 100% of Alliance/SF/SDLP voters oppose it. In total, it's about 60/40 against its use.
Latest is that DUP ministers at Stormont will prevent checks being carried out in NI on goods going to and from GB.
Truss will then turn a blind eye rather than actually invoking Art 16. As long as the Irish border continues to be open I expect most voters in NI bar SF hardliners would not be too bothered, even if the EU are not happy the UK Government can say take it up with the DUP, nothing to do with us guv! https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/brexit-checks-dup-liz-truss-b2002745.html
“Not really. If you spend money on holidays, for a family, you tend to end up in something like that. Unless you really fight the demand for luxury bathrooms etc.”
+++++
I do not wish to pry into PB-ears private circumstances, but this is an intriguing comment
If you had a family holiday here - the Galle hotel we have been discussing - you’d need three rooms for yourself, one for you and the partner, two for the kids
But let’s budget and say just two rooms, and the kids share
Rooms are £500 a night. That’s £1000 a night. For two weeks that’s £14,000. Add in flights to Sri Lanka, trips, and the rest, and you’re heading for £20,000. For a winter holiday
Exactly how wealthy is the average PB-er?!
Well I push up the average lol.
Good to hear!
I’m quite well off, I guess, but I would blink furiously at dropping £20k on a winter holiday
In my professional capacity for the Knappers Gazette I’ve done trips that would have cost £100,000 for 2 weeks. They were great fun. But they certainly weren’t worth £100,000. I suppose some people are just so rich it doesn’t matter
Spend £100k every two weeks and it adds up to £2.6m in a year, or £26m in a decade.
There have been a few lottery jackpots that would still be left largely intact after that.
The economics of the holiday industry baffle me. I don't feel well-off. But I know what the average family income is, and we earn a fair bit more than that. I usually tick one of the top two boxes in surveys on the 'household income' page. And while I'll never feel entirely comfortable, we're probably top decile for capital. And yet almost all holidays I see advertised are wildly, wildly unaffordable. I consider £3000 for a week away for five towards the upper end of extravagant. Yet almost any foreign family holiday that isn't transparently worse than staying at home seems to be more than this. I simply don't understand how this works. There surely can't be that many people who can afford a holiday like this every year. And don't get me started on Disneyland. Not that I want to go - but I don't see how more than a tiny proportion of the population can ever afford it.
The average family holiday to Spain or France, even in the height of summer, would cost far less than £3,000 probably under £1,000
Well maybe. But just getting four return tickets by air in the school holidays would cost over £1000. There must be cheap holidays out there - or no-one would be able to afford holidays at all. But those that I've seen look awful - at least compared to the option of staying at home. I don't know much about the abroad market. But I know a fair bit about the British market. And it's dashed difficult to get a self-catering place for 5 in the school holidays for much under £1000.
A family holiday in France or Spain for under £1000, for a fortnight, during the school hols? How? Surely impossible, unless you drive and camp or something, and do it mega cheap, buying all your food in the nearest Aldi
How many do that?
I guess for a week at a two star hotel, but even then you’d be hard pushed with a family
However like many such people, it's probably hard to disentangle business from pleasure: e.g. he may go somewhere nice with the kids and have a few meetings, and call it 'working'.
Like Bill Gates reading every line of Microsoft's code, or Steve Jobs designing everything Apple made, it's rubbish.
I know someone that has met him a few times, so I am not sure it is. He is a one off, and not necessarily in a good way.
Sounds like a "work outing"
My nephew, a design engineer, works in his company and has had a few direct meetings - finds him reasonable enough, and not the weirdo that the media (and perhaps his own publicity machine) like to depict. Perhaps he varies, like most of us...
Tell your nephew that I love his work! (assuming he works on the cars)
Sam Coates Sky @SamCoatesSky More clarification from the Met today, this via PA
Metropolitan Police officers are currently investigating possible breaches of Covid rules that could warrant fixed penalty notices rather than more serious offences, the PA news agency understands.
I think Rishi has blown it. Like Michael Portillo and David Miliband before him, he'll been seen as a politician who had the great prize within his grasp but wibbled.
Spot on, in the end Portillo failed to oust Major and Miliband failed to oust Brown and neither either ended up leaders of their party, loosing to IDS in 2001 and Ed Miliband in 2010 respectively.
Though Portillo has had a successful post politics career doing rail programmes and Miliband is head of international rescue in Manhattan so all not lost for Sunak longer term.
I wouldn't get too excited that your idol is in the clear. Whether it is Sunak or someone else, The Clown will not last past June IMO. There is just too much on him, and the vultures are just holding off until he is a little more wounded.
My humble prediction is that the drip drip of allegations and insinuations will ensure he ends up with a terrible result in May. MPs in more marginal constituencies will apply the swing to their GE result and take action. Whether it will be too late to prevent a Labour win at the next GE is open to conjecture.
As long as polls continue to show a hung parliament and a Labour lead under 10% and as long as the Tories hold Westminster and Kensington and Chelsea in May and as long as the Met and Gray inquiries find Boris did not do anything criminal. Then I predict Boris will still be PM and lead the Tories at the next general election
Hung Parliament on under 10% Labour lead?
Write out 100 times "Uniform National Swing does not work in the grand scheme of United Kingdom General Elections".
It does, on UNS
I'll stop you there and repeat the post you're replying to because obviously you haven't read it or haven't understood it.
Uniform National Swing does not work in the grand scheme of United Kingdom General Elections.
Now take the rest of the day off.
Clearly neither of you have bothered to read the rest of my post 'Plus Starmer Labour is still not seen as as centrist as Blair's New Labour by the middle classes, even if not as bad as Corbyn Labour. So while they might tactically vote LD, they are much less likely to tactically vote Labour.
Compare too the by election results in North Shropshire and Chesham and Amersham where the LDs were challengers and won with Old Bexley and Sidcup where Labour were challengers and the Tories held on'
There has been no repeal Clause 4 moment from Starmer, no real attempt to go all out to the centre as Blair did and Starmer also has zero charisma unlike Blair. There will be far less tactical voting for Labour next time than there was in 1997, even if there is tactical voting for the LDs.
So I repeat, Labour is still a million miles from a majority and will be unless it either regains most of the seats it lost to the SNP in Scotland or goes much more to the centre a la New Labour pre 1997
Where you may be wrong again in your analysis referencing 1997 is this: No there has been no clause 4 moment, but there have been multiple Boris Johnson moments which might have the same effect.
I am of an age and in a financial position where it makes no real odds to me if Labour or the Conservatives win the next election. I would have supported any party of rejoin, but as they no longer exist that is not something I need worry about.
Sunak, Hunt, Tugendhat, Starmer, I can live with any of them, but Johnson? A man I have a burning desire to depose because of his Brexit lies, his shameful misogyny, his lazy incompetence as Foreign Secretary, his casual ignorance of Northern Ireland, his shameful begging for money (hi, Lulu Lytle)his prorogation of parliament, his lies to the monarch, his misleading of parliament, his kneejerk reactions to personal political crisis, the charge list goes on and on, notwithstanding his parties whilst we all locked down.
I believe he has sold my proud nation down the river on a raft of false narratives in order to self-aggrandise Boris Johnson, and for no other function. I suspect I am not alone, and people like me will think incredibly carefully where to put our cross on election day to punish this scoundrel. Anyone but Boris, UNS indeed!
Great post. I feel much the same, except I am still suspicious of a Labour government, though I am beginning to think they cannot be worse than this one while it is led by a clown. I think when people like me (I used to be a Tory activist only 10 years ago ffs) think like this, I would not be surprised to see a Labour majority
I could never see myself ever voting Conservative, and I never have, although I have voted for pretty much everything else. I was a New Labour activist, and Iraq apart I have no regrets. In 2019 given the choice of Tugendhat or Corbyn I could have happily voted for Tugendhat's Conservatives. That wasn't an option I had in 2019 and I knew a Johnson landslide was far more dangerous than a Corbyn minority (and I had Brexit to worry about). I am a socially and fiscally left wing centrist, not a believer in big state, but a supporter of genuine meritocratic opportunities for all, I do not advocate an effort free social security system, so a benevolent feudal Tory, one nation Conservative Party is not a million miles from me.
I have no doubt if you voted Labour, over time they would disappoint, however in the here and now you have to consider the best way to get back a Conservative Party you could comfortably support. Corbyn getting pasted in 2019 has left me with a Labour Party I am much more comfortable with in just two years, but it wasn't all about getting rid of just Corbyn, but also the hateful leeches backing him, and that is still very much work in progress. You still have, even with Johnson gone, a cabal of hateful, malevolent right wing populists who could easily retake control of your party, even after Johnson is deposed. These clowns needs their political teeth extracting too, before you once again have the Tory Party of Ted Heath or McMillan.
Sam Coates Sky @SamCoatesSky More clarification from the Met today, this via PA
Metropolitan Police officers are currently investigating possible breaches of Covid rules that could warrant fixed penalty notices rather than more serious offences, the PA news agency understands.
So the Police are wasting time investigating something that may end up with a fixed penalty notice.
That's not what makes less sense to me, however.
Lord Macdonald : "'If we're talking about fixed penalty notices – like parking tickets, essentially – if we're talking about that kind of resolution, then to take the rather grave step to delay a report that is going to shed public light on the subject matter of what may be a major public scandal, I think that is undesirable and I think it may be a misjudgment."
Contrast this from yesterday suggesting FPNs for attenders but investigation of organisers
As I’m in the small minority, I’ll go for the conspiracy theory - that they’re going to try and get junior staff to accept FPNs for “Attending a party”, then use the fact that many people have admitted to attending “a party” to charge the higher-ups with organising “a party”.
If I were one of the junior staff, I would be consulting a lawyer or a Union rep before accepting an FPN, in the same way I would never accept a police caution.
Any junior staff member who does not seek good legal advice in this situation, when directly or from the Union is very foolish indeed.
So we have a situation where the Met are saying it's only penalty notices, and the former DPP Macdonald ( and Starmer, it looks like ) both seem to think what is going on makes no sense, in that case.
However like many such people, it's probably hard to disentangle business from pleasure: e.g. he may go somewhere nice with the kids and have a few meetings, and call it 'working'.
Like Bill Gates reading every line of Microsoft's code, or Steve Jobs designing everything Apple made, it's rubbish.
I know someone that has met him a few times, so I am not sure it is. He is a one off, and not necessarily in a good way.
For a man worth seven trillion dollars, Musk is weirdly and easily annoyed by minor people on Twitter with 6 followers. Quite strange
He is a very weird dude all-round...the few long form interviews he has done with Joe Rogan and Lex Fridman only reinforces that.
Indeed, but we definitely need more Elon Musks in the world.
The Fridman interview especially, is worth watching.
The comments I've had from past colleagues who actually met him, is that there seem to be two Elon's. Bored Elon = Bad Elon. Better Elon is when he has something to do - preferably solving a numerical or physical problem.
I think Rishi has blown it. Like Michael Portillo and David Miliband before him, he'll been seen as a politician who had the great prize within his grasp but wibbled.
Spot on, in the end Portillo failed to oust Major and Miliband failed to oust Brown and neither either ended up leaders of their party, loosing to IDS in 2001 and Ed Miliband in 2010 respectively.
Though Portillo has had a successful post politics career doing rail programmes and Miliband is head of international rescue in Manhattan so all not lost for Sunak longer term.
I wouldn't get too excited that your idol is in the clear. Whether it is Sunak or someone else, The Clown will not last past June IMO. There is just too much on him, and the vultures are just holding off until he is a little more wounded.
My humble prediction is that the drip drip of allegations and insinuations will ensure he ends up with a terrible result in May. MPs in more marginal constituencies will apply the swing to their GE result and take action. Whether it will be too late to prevent a Labour win at the next GE is open to conjecture.
As long as polls continue to show a hung parliament and a Labour lead under 10% and as long as the Tories hold Westminster and Kensington and Chelsea in May and as long as the Met and Gray inquiries find Boris did not do anything criminal. Then I predict Boris will still be PM and lead the Tories at the next general election
Hung Parliament on under 10% Labour lead?
Write out 100 times "Uniform National Swing does not work in the grand scheme of United Kingdom General Elections".
It does, on UNS
I'll stop you there and repeat the post you're replying to because obviously you haven't read it or haven't understood it.
Uniform National Swing does not work in the grand scheme of United Kingdom General Elections.
Now take the rest of the day off.
Clearly neither of you have bothered to read the rest of my post 'Plus Starmer Labour is still not seen as as centrist as Blair's New Labour by the middle classes, even if not as bad as Corbyn Labour. So while they might tactically vote LD, they are much less likely to tactically vote Labour.
Compare too the by election results in North Shropshire and Chesham and Amersham where the LDs were challengers and won with Old Bexley and Sidcup where Labour were challengers and the Tories held on'
There has been no repeal Clause 4 moment from Starmer, no real attempt to go all out to the centre as Blair did and Starmer also has zero charisma unlike Blair. There will be far less tactical voting for Labour next time than there was in 1997, even if there is tactical voting for the LDs.
So I repeat, Labour is still a million miles from a majority and will be unless it either regains most of the seats it lost to the SNP in Scotland or goes much more to the centre a la New Labour pre 1997
Where you may be wrong again in your analysis referencing 1997 is this: No there has been no clause 4 moment, but there have been multiple Boris Johnson moments which might have the same effect.
I am of an age and in a financial position where it makes no real odds to me if Labour or the Conservatives win the next election. I would have supported any party of rejoin, but as they no longer exist that is not something I need worry about.
Sunak, Hunt, Tugendhat, Starmer, I can live with any of them, but Johnson? A man I have a burning desire to depose because of his Brexit lies, his shameful misogyny, his lazy incompetence as Foreign Secretary, his casual ignorance of Northern Ireland, his shameful begging for money (hi, Lulu Lytle) his prorogation of parliament, his lies to the monarch, his misleading of parliament, his kneejerk reactions to personal political crisis, the charge list goes on and on, notwithstanding his parties whilst we all locked down.
I believe he has sold my proud nation down the river on a raft of false narratives in order to self-aggrandise Boris Johnson, and for no other function. I suspect I am not alone, and people like me will think incredibly carefully where to put our cross on election day to punish this scoundrel. Anyone but Boris, UNS indeed!
Even Trump was only beaten by Biden by 5% in 2020.
If Starmer beats Boris by 5% he will be PM in a hung parliament but well short of a majority.
Latest Labour lead with gold standard Survation? 5%.
John Major was a decent man in 1997 but not as ruthless as Boris and Trump in trying to hold onto power
ONS: average age of death from Covid-19 is 82.5 years. This is slightly higher than the average age of deaths from all causes.
Yes, but that ignores the difference between life expectancy at birth, and life expectancy at 82 years, which is not zero.
The suggestion that nearly all who die of covid were in their last days is one of the most offensive of arguments, and actuarially innumerate.
I have no problem with libertarian and other arguments against lockdowns, but trivialising and dismissing covid deaths is horrible.
One part of Foxy's argument is lost on me. LE at 82.5 is not zero. Agreed. (LE at age 112 is not zero either). Nor is LE at the age all the non covid deaths die zero. Everyone dies on a day when their life expectancy, from an actuarial point of view, is more than zero. So what is special about Covid deaths being at a date when LE is not zero, as compared with all the other people who, on average, died younger and on a day when their LE was more than zero?
I think Rishi has blown it. Like Michael Portillo and David Miliband before him, he'll been seen as a politician who had the great prize within his grasp but wibbled.
Spot on, in the end Portillo failed to oust Major and Miliband failed to oust Brown and neither either ended up leaders of their party, loosing to IDS in 2001 and Ed Miliband in 2010 respectively.
Though Portillo has had a successful post politics career doing rail programmes and Miliband is head of international rescue in Manhattan so all not lost for Sunak longer term.
I wouldn't get too excited that your idol is in the clear. Whether it is Sunak or someone else, The Clown will not last past June IMO. There is just too much on him, and the vultures are just holding off until he is a little more wounded.
My humble prediction is that the drip drip of allegations and insinuations will ensure he ends up with a terrible result in May. MPs in more marginal constituencies will apply the swing to their GE result and take action. Whether it will be too late to prevent a Labour win at the next GE is open to conjecture.
As long as polls continue to show a hung parliament and a Labour lead under 10% and as long as the Tories hold Westminster and Kensington and Chelsea in May and as long as the Met and Gray inquiries find Boris did not do anything criminal. Then I predict Boris will still be PM and lead the Tories at the next general election
Hung Parliament on under 10% Labour lead?
Write out 100 times "Uniform National Swing does not work in the grand scheme of United Kingdom General Elections".
It does, on UNS
I'll stop you there and repeat the post you're replying to because obviously you haven't read it or haven't understood it.
Uniform National Swing does not work in the grand scheme of United Kingdom General Elections.
Now take the rest of the day off.
Clearly neither of you have bothered to read the rest of my post 'Plus Starmer Labour is still not seen as as centrist as Blair's New Labour by the middle classes, even if not as bad as Corbyn Labour. So while they might tactically vote LD, they are much less likely to tactically vote Labour.
Compare too the by election results in North Shropshire and Chesham and Amersham where the LDs were challengers and won with Old Bexley and Sidcup where Labour were challengers and the Tories held on'
There has been no repeal Clause 4 moment from Starmer, no real attempt to go all out to the centre as Blair did and Starmer also has zero charisma unlike Blair. There will be far less tactical voting for Labour next time than there was in 1997, even if there is tactical voting for the LDs.
So I repeat, Labour is still a million miles from a majority and will be unless it either regains most of the seats it lost to the SNP in Scotland or goes much more to the centre a la New Labour pre 1997
Where you may be wrong again in your analysis referencing 1997 is this: No there has been no clause 4 moment, but there have been multiple Boris Johnson moments which might have the same effect.
I am of an age and in a financial position where it makes no real odds to me if Labour or the Conservatives win the next election. I would have supported any party of rejoin, but as they no longer exist that is not something I need worry about.
Sunak, Hunt, Tugendhat, Starmer, I can live with any of them, but Johnson? A man I have a burning desire to depose because of his Brexit lies, his shameful misogyny, his lazy incompetence as Foreign Secretary, his casual ignorance of Northern Ireland, his shameful begging for money (hi, Lulu Lytle)his prorogation of parliament, his lies to the monarch, his misleading of parliament, his kneejerk reactions to personal political crisis, the charge list goes on and on, notwithstanding his parties whilst we all locked down.
I believe he has sold my proud nation down the river on a raft of false narratives in order to self-aggrandise Boris Johnson, and for no other function. I suspect I am not alone, and people like me will think incredibly carefully where to put our cross on election day to punish this scoundrel. Anyone but Boris, UNS indeed!
Great post. I feel much the same, except I am still suspicious of a Labour government, though I am beginning to think they cannot be worse than this one while it is led by a clown. I think when people like me (I used to be a Tory activist only 10 years ago ffs) think like this, I would not be surprised to see a Labour majority
I could never see myself ever voting Conservative, and I never have, although I have voted for pretty much everything else. I was a New Labour activist, and Iraq apart I have no regrets. In 2019 given the choice of Tugendhat or Corbyn I could have happily voted for Tugendhat's Conservatives. That wasn't an option I had in 2019 and I knew a Johnson landslide was far more dangerous than a Corbyn minority (and I had Brexit to worry about). I am a socially and fiscally left wing centrist, not a believer in big state, but a supporter of genuine meritocratic opportunities for all, I do not advocate an effort free social security system, so a benevolent feudal Tory, one nation Conservative Party is not a million miles from me.
I have no doubt if you voted Labour, over time they would disappoint, however in the here and now you have to consider the best way to get back a Conservative Party you could comfortably support. Corbyn getting pasted in 2019 has left me with a Labour Party I am much more comfortable with in just two years, but it wasn't all about getting rid of just Corbyn, but also the hateful leeches backing him, and that is still very much work in progress. You still have, even with Johnson gone, a cabal of hateful, malevolent right wing populists who could easily retake control of your party, even after Johnson is deposed. These clowns needs their political teeth extracting too, before you once again have the Tory Party of Ted Heath or McMillan.
Yep, but as an optimist I have to hope that sanity might return!
Sam Coates Sky @SamCoatesSky More clarification from the Met today, this via PA
Metropolitan Police officers are currently investigating possible breaches of Covid rules that could warrant fixed penalty notices rather than more serious offences, the PA news agency understands.
So the Police are wasting time investigating something that may end up with a fixed penalty notice.
Wasn't this always the case? The only penalties for breaking the Covid rules are fixed penalty notices AFAIK.
Conspiring to break the law is I believe much more serious, as evidenced by a trivial example - if I smoke on a train I can merely be fined. But if you're opposite me and I ask if you mind and you say "no, go for it", then we are conspiring and in principle can be imprisoned for a period of years. Obviously that won't happen in such a case, but where deliberate breaches of major public policy are involved, the courts might take a more serious view.
That said, Sam Coates' comments suggests it is indeed just FPNs!
89K Covid cases. Down about 6K on last week. 2 days in a row where the cases have been lower than the week before. Hopefully this is a sign that cases will now run down further.
All other key metrics are down. Everything heading in the right direction!
“Not really. If you spend money on holidays, for a family, you tend to end up in something like that. Unless you really fight the demand for luxury bathrooms etc.”
+++++
I do not wish to pry into PB-ears private circumstances, but this is an intriguing comment
If you had a family holiday here - the Galle hotel we have been discussing - you’d need three rooms for yourself, one for you and the partner, two for the kids
But let’s budget and say just two rooms, and the kids share
Rooms are £500 a night. That’s £1000 a night. For two weeks that’s £14,000. Add in flights to Sri Lanka, trips, and the rest, and you’re heading for £20,000. For a winter holiday
Exactly how wealthy is the average PB-er?!
Well I push up the average lol.
Good to hear!
I’m quite well off, I guess, but I would blink furiously at dropping £20k on a winter holiday
In my professional capacity for the Knappers Gazette I’ve done trips that would have cost £100,000 for 2 weeks. They were great fun. But they certainly weren’t worth £100,000. I suppose some people are just so rich it doesn’t matter
Spend £100k every two weeks and it adds up to £2.6m in a year, or £26m in a decade.
There have been a few lottery jackpots that would still be left largely intact after that.
The economics of the holiday industry baffle me. I don't feel well-off. But I know what the average family income is, and we earn a fair bit more than that. I usually tick one of the top two boxes in surveys on the 'household income' page. And while I'll never feel entirely comfortable, we're probably top decile for capital. And yet almost all holidays I see advertised are wildly, wildly unaffordable. I consider £3000 for a week away for five towards the upper end of extravagant. Yet almost any foreign family holiday that isn't transparently worse than staying at home seems to be more than this. I simply don't understand how this works. There surely can't be that many people who can afford a holiday like this every year. And don't get me started on Disneyland. Not that I want to go - but I don't see how more than a tiny proportion of the population can ever afford it.
The average family holiday to Spain or France, even in the height of summer, would cost far less than £3,000 probably under £1,000
Well maybe. But just getting four return tickets by air in the school holidays would cost over £1000. There must be cheap holidays out there - or no-one would be able to afford holidays at all. But those that I've seen look awful - at least compared to the option of staying at home. I don't know much about the abroad market. But I know a fair bit about the British market. And it's dashed difficult to get a self-catering place for 5 in the school holidays for much under £1000.
A family holiday in France or Spain for under £1000, for a fortnight, during the school hols? How? Surely impossible, unless you drive and camp or something, and do it mega cheap, buying all your food in the nearest Aldi
How many do that?
I guess for a week at a two star hotel, but even then you’d be hard pushed with a family
Even if you drive, the ferry costs at that time push the bill up quite steeply. The overnight from Portsmouth to St Malo is really convenient and great fun (especially with a few friends' families) but costs a few bob in the school holidays. More than flying, although you then save on the car hire.
However like many such people, it's probably hard to disentangle business from pleasure: e.g. he may go somewhere nice with the kids and have a few meetings, and call it 'working'.
Like Bill Gates reading every line of Microsoft's code, or Steve Jobs designing everything Apple made, it's rubbish.
I know someone that has met him a few times, so I am not sure it is. He is a one off, and not necessarily in a good way.
For a man worth seven trillion dollars, Musk is weirdly and easily annoyed by minor people on Twitter with 6 followers. Quite strange
He is a very weird dude all-round...the few long form interviews he has done with Joe Rogan and Lex Fridman only reinforces that.
Indeed, but we definitely need more Elon Musks in the world.
The Fridman interview especially, is worth watching.
A guy who I shared an office with when doing my PhD was rather similar individual.
On one occasion we had one of the most famous academics in our field come for a visit as they were thinking of changing institutions and a personal friend of our supervisor, and the whole exercise was to butter him up with examples of the interesting work we had been doing.
Academic comes into our lab, asks mini Elon Musk what he had been working on, Mini Elon shows him, world famous academic says interesting, its a bit like my work on such and such, did you try this....Mini Elon sits there in silence for an uncomfortable long time, before telling him to his face his whole research was based upon a flawed premise.
Sam Coates Sky @SamCoatesSky More clarification from the Met today, this via PA
Metropolitan Police officers are currently investigating possible breaches of Covid rules that could warrant fixed penalty notices rather than more serious offences, the PA news agency understands.
So the Police are wasting time investigating something that may end up with a fixed penalty notice.
Wasn't this always the case? The only penalties for breaking the Covid rules are fixed penalty notices AFAIK.
Conspiring to break the law is I believe much more serious, as evidenced by a trivial example - if I smoke on a train I can merely be fined. But if you're opposite me and I ask if you mind and you say "no, go for it", then we are conspiring and in principle can be imprisoned for a period of years. Obviously that won't happen in such a case, but where deliberate breaches of major public policy are involved, the courts might take a more serious view.
That said, Sam Coates' comments suggests it is indeed just FPNs!
But the police are saying they're not investigating conspiracy, however.
89K Covid cases. Down about 6K on last week. 2 days in a row where the cases have been lower than the week before. Hopefully this is a sign that cases will now run down further.
All other key metrics are down. Everything heading in the right direction!
Strictly speaking three days in a row – although Day 1 was only by an absolute whisker
Given the briefing against Sunak re Article 16, it's worth noting that there are at least three reasons to oppose invoking it now:
Firstly, and this is my view, the EU is not currently in breach of its treaty obligations. The current Northern Ireland arrangements are meant to be transitional, and to be replaced by a trusted trader scheme. There was some significant foot dragging by the EU prior to the middle of 2021, but they have since published their SmartBorder 2.0 proposal and the latest report from Parliament's Northern Ireland group reports "heartened by the increased level of engagement".
Now some people will say "ah but it should be done now"... but the reality is that the Trusted Trader scheme was never going to be up and running within 12 months of leaving the transition period. We still have - realistically - six to nine months before the EU and the UK's proposals are merged into one. And then a further 18 months for Accenture to repeatedly balls it up before it is live.
Secondly, you might think that the EU is in breach, but regard now as the wrong time to trigger Article 16. Given existing pressures on the cost of living, and the likelihood of the EU responding to its invocation with escalations of its own, you might think. "we shouldn't pull the trigger on this thing when we're out the wood with Omicron and are in a better position with our non-EU supply chains."
Thirdly, you might think that invoking Article 16 should be done with the consent of the people it affects: i.e. the population of Northern Ireland. And the polls suggest that while 80% of TUV/DUP voters support it, pretty much 100% of Alliance/SF/SDLP voters oppose it. In total, it's about 60/40 against its use.
The biggest reason for not invoking Article 16 is it resolves absolutely nothing, but makes an already messy situation much worse. Once you invoke it, the first and essentially only response from an EU country or the USA to any UK request at all will be, when you are going to sort out Article 16? Sooner or later the UK government will have to back down at a huge cost of credibility and wasted energy.
89K Covid cases. Down about 6K on last week. 2 days in a row where the cases have been lower than the week before. Hopefully this is a sign that cases will now run down further.
All other key metrics are down. Everything heading in the right direction!
Deepti Gurdasani @dgurdasani1 · 1h Sorry, just deleted and repost this thread due to an important error- the frequency of omicron BA.2 in England as per the ONS report of 19th Jan was 5.5%, *not* 22%. The rest of the thread is the same.
Yes, Sunak is increasingly looking like the Tory David Miliband.
Miliband was unable to force Brown out pre 2010 as Sunak is unable to force Boris out now. In the end Miliband not only failed to become PM he even failed to become Leader of the Opposition after his brother beat him for the leadership after Labour lost power
Reports he's Brexiteer in name only. Instrumental in blocking Article Sixteen trigger. Insisting on the highest tax rates in 70 years.
GAME OVER.
He has been an enthusiastic Brexiteer since his teens, so he's very definitely a believer.
Yes that’s a curiously obvious lie. He was a vocally eurosceptic SCHOOLBOY. All this is on record
Therefore this sounds like some clumsy attempt to smear him by Borisovians
Thing is he looks like a Remainer - wealthy, cosmopolitan, financial background. So it's a good smear for Boris to set in motion. Ironic that the tactic you suggested be used against Sir Keir is now being used by Leavers against one of their own.
I confess i was a bit surprised when I read that he was a convinced Brexiteer. However, he is ENORMOUSLY wealthy. I have noted that the rich and super-rich are much more Brexity than the merely affluent, who are generally Remainer if not Remoaner
I recall a birthday party a few weeks before the referendum where the room contained about 5 people in the top 100 Sunday Times wealthiest people thing. All were Leave
True, however there are different ways of Being Brexit.
Crudely, there are those who really want a lot more globalisation- to take their squillions wherever and however they like, for whom Europe is too small a stage. Set against them, there are those who want a lot less globalisation- fewer foreign faces and voices, bring all the factories back to Britain, preferably to Mytown. Somewhere in the middle, you have the Boris types- don't care what happens really, as long as they are unambiguously in charge.
Sunak and others in the super-rich appear in the first category. But there aren't many of them. To get anywhere near 52%, you need those who want to pull up the drawbridge. Only disadvantage of this approach is that you're stuffed when you try to chart a path afterwards.
The Brexit Rishi believes in isn't the same one Boris believes in. So who is the guardian of the True Brexit?
True
But who is the guardian of the true EU, the one that won’t march on to ever closer union, slowly leeching powers from the member states?
No one, that’s who. Because it does not exist. The EU is inexorably federalizing, Cameron’s renegotiation failure proved this. We are better off out, because we would have been increasingly unhappy in a Federal EU, yet unable to stop it
Sam Coates Sky @SamCoatesSky More clarification from the Met today, this via PA
Metropolitan Police officers are currently investigating possible breaches of Covid rules that could warrant fixed penalty notices rather than more serious offences, the PA news agency understands.
“Not really. If you spend money on holidays, for a family, you tend to end up in something like that. Unless you really fight the demand for luxury bathrooms etc.”
+++++
I do not wish to pry into PB-ears private circumstances, but this is an intriguing comment
If you had a family holiday here - the Galle hotel we have been discussing - you’d need three rooms for yourself, one for you and the partner, two for the kids
But let’s budget and say just two rooms, and the kids share
Rooms are £500 a night. That’s £1000 a night. For two weeks that’s £14,000. Add in flights to Sri Lanka, trips, and the rest, and you’re heading for £20,000. For a winter holiday
Exactly how wealthy is the average PB-er?!
Well I push up the average lol.
Good to hear!
I’m quite well off, I guess, but I would blink furiously at dropping £20k on a winter holiday
In my professional capacity for the Knappers Gazette I’ve done trips that would have cost £100,000 for 2 weeks. They were great fun. But they certainly weren’t worth £100,000. I suppose some people are just so rich it doesn’t matter
Spend £100k every two weeks and it adds up to £2.6m in a year, or £26m in a decade.
There have been a few lottery jackpots that would still be left largely intact after that.
The economics of the holiday industry baffle me. I don't feel well-off. But I know what the average family income is, and we earn a fair bit more than that. I usually tick one of the top two boxes in surveys on the 'household income' page. And while I'll never feel entirely comfortable, we're probably top decile for capital. And yet almost all holidays I see advertised are wildly, wildly unaffordable. I consider £3000 for a week away for five towards the upper end of extravagant. Yet almost any foreign family holiday that isn't transparently worse than staying at home seems to be more than this. I simply don't understand how this works. There surely can't be that many people who can afford a holiday like this every year. And don't get me started on Disneyland. Not that I want to go - but I don't see how more than a tiny proportion of the population can ever afford it.
The average family holiday to Spain or France, even in the height of summer, would cost far less than £3,000 probably under £1,000
Well maybe. But just getting four return tickets by air in the school holidays would cost over £1000. There must be cheap holidays out there - or no-one would be able to afford holidays at all. But those that I've seen look awful - at least compared to the option of staying at home. I don't know much about the abroad market. But I know a fair bit about the British market. And it's dashed difficult to get a self-catering place for 5 in the school holidays for much under £1000.
A family holiday in France or Spain for under £1000, for a fortnight, during the school hols? How? Surely impossible, unless you drive and camp or something, and do it mega cheap, buying all your food in the nearest Aldi
How many do that?
I guess for a week at a two star hotel, but even then you’d be hard pushed with a family
2 weeks in Benidorm for 2 adults and 2 children in July for £761 here
So we have a situation where the Met are saying it's only penalty notices, and the former DPP Macdonald ( and Starmer, it looks like ) both seem to think what is going on makes no sense, in that case.
Just what exactly is going on ?
What is going on is a high level exercise in delay, complexification and confusion. The intention is that everyone over time gets lost and bored in the detail and delay, and that such blame as there is finally is dispersed in so many directions that the tiger is tamed.
Comments
A few years ago the Gazette sent me HERE. Shuba Camp in the Busanga Plains in the Kafue National Park, Zambia. Stunning. Also extremely pricey, so lucky I wasn’t paying
https://www.theluxurysafaricompany.com/zambia/kafue/shumba-camp/
You can only get in by private plane, and it floods half the year
Anyway while I was there the staff told me a story of a famous Silicon Valley software squillionaire - one of the MOST famous - who took over the camp for two weeks for his whole family, wife, kids, and their enormous entourage
He was horrified by the idea there wasn’t any Wi-Fi (it’s one of the most remote places in Africa) so at vast expense he flew in satellite dishes and hi-tech kit and space shuttles and whatever, ensuring they all had perfect Wi-Fi. Helicopters came and went
The result was - the staff told me - that his bored kids spent the whole trip on their phones and iPads, doing insta and WhatsApp and went on about one safari drive. It must have cost him a million quid (or whatever). Basically wasted. But if you’re worth 20 billion, what is that?
I do wonder where Elon Musk holidays
Although I do know, slightly, someone who, in Bangkok on business, felt unsafe there and requested his firm transfer him to a US-owned hotel
It's overwhelmingly the former, especially as the "caused by" is concentrated heavily in the periods where covid deaths were highest.
I took a look at the England covid deaths data from the ONS (deaths on death certificates) and took the proportion of "covid the underlying cause" per month and came out with 88.96% of deaths with covid on the death certificate having covid as the specific cause of death.
In England, that's 137,790 out of 150,397. If it's the same UK-wide, then 156,943 out of 176,428 (as at the date I did this, a few days ago) were deaths FROM covid.
It would leave 20,000 or so where covid was merely a contributory factor.
The Maldives are particularly nuts. I went there for the Gazette and they are as lovely as everyone says, but they are also ridiculously expensive (certainly the nicer island-hotels). Somewhere like Soneva Fushi. A fortnight there is £30-40k easy for a family.
https://soneva.com/resorts/soneva-fushi/
I presumed I was surrounded by billionaires but there were a lot of Brits who seemed perfectly normal middle class. Lawyers, doctors, what have you
My only explanation is that there is a LOT of inherited wealth in the UK (and elsewhere)
Same re cars. We have 2, both bought when 1 year old, now 12 and 7 years old respectively, both at the cheaper end of the market
I guess it is priorities. Others just splash the cash. Maybe they are right.
The Tories only got a majority in 2015 as the LD vote collapsed. Similarly I doubt Labour will get a majority again unless the SNP vote collapses unless they go much more to the centre a la New Labour than they are now.
Remember until Blair Labour had only won a majority in England twice, in 1945 and 1966. Boris is also the most successful Tory leader in Wales ever.
Still remember queueing for smallpox innoculation at the airport.
https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2004/jul/09/boatingholidays.britishidentityandsociety.uknews?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
For somewhat similar reasons I am a fan of Premier Inn. No soul, but you can compromise on that for a decent room at a decent price.
I'd say it divides by time - before and after the thing estimated occurred.
An estimate (ie forecast) is credible, not by quantity of caveats - that could be arsecover or pandering to a desired answer - but by whether those caveats are defensible, and recognisably relate to the context. And whether the model being used has left out factors that are the right ones, and simplified the world in a justifiable way. And, too, that the data used is as good as available.
After the fact, a model which is not adjusted in a similarly justifiable way after the predictions diverge from what actually happened, is not very credible.
Especially if a rhetoric built on it also is not adjusted.
At which point I may get critiqued myself...
Perhaps the people who pay to go there are those people who write articles in the Telegraph saying they can't afford to live on £100k a year. Some people are just a bit bling.
I am of an age and in a financial position where it makes no real odds to me if Labour or the Conservatives win the next election. I would have supported any party of rejoin, but as they no longer exist that is not something I need worry about.
Sunak, Hunt, Tugendhat, Starmer, I can live with any of them, but Johnson? A man I have a burning desire to depose because of his Brexit lies, his shameful misogyny, his lazy incompetence as Foreign Secretary, his casual ignorance of Northern Ireland, his shameful begging for money (hi, Lulu Lytle) his prorogation of parliament, his lies to the monarch, his misleading of parliament, his kneejerk reactions to personal political crisis, the charge list goes on and on, notwithstanding his parties whilst we all locked down.
I believe he has sold my proud nation down the river on a raft of false narratives in order to self-aggrandise Boris Johnson, and for no other function. I suspect I am not alone, and people like me will think incredibly carefully where to put our cross on election day to punish this scoundrel. Anyone but Boris, UNS indeed!
Of course, I'm not advocating for lockdown as a way to save lives from air pollution, but it's very unlikely that there was a net increase in deaths due to lockdown (ignoring Covid deaths).
@SamCoatesSky
More clarification from the Met today, this via PA
Metropolitan Police officers are currently investigating possible breaches of Covid rules that could warrant fixed penalty notices rather than more serious offences, the PA news agency understands.
https://twitter.com/SamCoatesSky/status/1487092345719902208
There is a difference between inviting people to a party, and the wife of the boss - who lives on site - showing up with a birthday cake at a workplace. Remember that most white-collar workplaces were closed at the time, so there’s very few direct comparisons to be made.
I’ve been that project manager who sends for pizza and occasionally beer, for a team working their arses off into the night. It is a massive boost to morale.
I’m not a massive Boris Johnson fan, but think that both the media and Oppsoition are being idiots in not looking at what’s actually important at the moment. I’d rather they were all expending their energy on what’s happening in Ukraine, than petty obsessions about whether or not the PM had a cake for his birthday two years ago, or how much it costs for a diplomatic delegation to travel to Australia.
Also in the news today, Ursula VdL told by EU court to disclose text messages with Pfizer CEO. Governments everywhere were under mad pressure in 2020, and bent all their normal rules to keep people alive. I have litttle sympathy with people trying to micro-analyse their decisions now, with plenty of time and 20/20 hindsight.
For example, being surrounded by mantas circling around you is probably better than going into space (and much cheaper), and you cannot get the same effect snorkelling.
I doubt you even manage to leave the bar.
If Starmer beats Boris by 5% he will be PM in a hung parliament but well short of a majority.
Latest Labour lead with gold standard Survation? 5%.
John Major was a decent man in 1997 but not as ruthless as Boris and Trump in trying to hold onto power
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9885639/Visit-Florence-Elon-Musk-hails-Italian-city-family-enjoy-tour-famed-Uffizi-Gallery.html
However like many such people, it's probably hard to disentangle business from pleasure: e.g. he may go somewhere nice with the kids and have a few meetings, and call it 'working'.
Like Bill Gates reading every line of Microsoft's code, or Steve Jobs designing everything Apple made, it's rubbish.
All other key metrics are down. Everything heading in the right direction!
All Brits
Well: 12% / Badly: 77%
Con voters
Well: 23% / Badly: 64%
Lab voters
Well: 3% / Badly: 93%
https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/survey-results/daily/2022/01/28/55fd3/2?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=daily_questions&utm_campaign=question_2 https://twitter.com/YouGov/status/1487094681745997824/photo/1
But just getting four return tickets by air in the school holidays would cost over £1000.
There must be cheap holidays out there - or no-one would be able to afford holidays at all. But those that I've seen look awful - at least compared to the option of staying at home.
I don't know much about the abroad market. But I know a fair bit about the British market. And it's dashed difficult to get a self-catering place for 5 in the school holidays for much under £1000.
Lord Macdonald : "'If we're talking about fixed penalty notices – like parking tickets, essentially – if we're talking about that kind of resolution, then to take the rather grave step to delay a report that is going to shed public light on the subject matter of what may be a major public scandal, I think that is undesirable and I think it may be a misjudgment.
'But only police know what it is that is really at play here.
'It is really to say that if we are simply talking about lockdown breaches and fixed penalty notices, this move by the police this morning seems to be disproportionate.'"
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/01/27/dozens-attended-downing-street-parties-can-pay-fines-instead/
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/01/28/ignore-hysteria-truss-right-use-government-plane/
“But is it really unreasonable for the Foreign Secretary, travelling halfway around the world in the middle of a mounting crisis that could well end in a full-blown Russian invasion of Ukraine, to make use of a specialised aeroplane that allows, amongst other things, for secure comms?
“Do we really expect one of the Government’s most senior members to huddle with her aides in First Class (assuming the penny-pinchers are prepared to afford her even that "luxury") discussing sensitive diplomatic information?
“Government aircraft of this sort are not flying palaces. They are workplaces, and allow for more effective use of ministers’ valuable time.”
Crudely, there are those who really want a lot more globalisation- to take their squillions wherever and however they like, for whom Europe is too small a stage. Set against them, there are those who want a lot less globalisation- fewer foreign faces and voices, bring all the factories back to Britain, preferably to Mytown. Somewhere in the middle, you have the Boris types- don't care what happens really, as long as they are unambiguously in charge.
Sunak and others in the super-rich appear in the first category. But there aren't many of them. To get anywhere near 52%, you need those who want to pull up the drawbridge. Only disadvantage of this approach is that you're stuffed when you try to chart a path afterwards.
The Brexit Rishi believes in isn't the same one Boris believes in. So who is the guardian of the True Brexit?
In terms of bang per buck, rewards received for effort made, the snorkeling is far superior. On a good reef you just have to dip your head in the water and you are surrounded by billions of fish. It is surreally good. The best snorkelling in the world? Certainly up there
Diving in the Maldives is good but not world class. And you have all the bloody effort that goes with diving
https://www.protocol.com/elon-musk-flight-tracker
If I were one of the junior staff, I would be consulting a lawyer or a Union rep before accepting an FPN, in the same way I would never accept a police caution.
It doesn't seem to fit the narrative that cases are now rising? @Leon
https://www.adecco-jobs.com/-/media/project/adeccogroup/articles/article-doc/tag-covid-19-government-response-outcomes-comparison-january-2022.pdf/
For a man worth seven trillion dollars, Musk is weirdly and easily annoyed by minor people on Twitter with 6 followers. Quite strange
The suggestion that nearly all who die of covid were in their last days is one of the most offensive of arguments, and actuarially innumerate.
I have no problem with libertarian and other arguments against lockdowns, but trivialising and dismissing covid deaths is horrible.
Firstly, and this is my view, the EU is not currently in breach of its treaty obligations. The current Northern Ireland arrangements are meant to be transitional, and to be replaced by a trusted trader scheme. There was some significant foot dragging by the EU prior to the middle of 2021, but they have since published their SmartBorder 2.0 proposal and the latest report from Parliament's Northern Ireland group reports "heartened by the increased level of engagement".
Now some people will say "ah but it should be done now"... but the reality is that the Trusted Trader scheme was never going to be up and running within 12 months of leaving the transition period. We still have - realistically - six to nine months before the EU and the UK's proposals are merged into one. And then a further 18 months for Accenture to repeatedly balls it up before it is live.
Secondly, you might think that the EU is in breach, but regard now as the wrong time to trigger Article 16. Given existing pressures on the cost of living, and the likelihood of the EU responding to its invocation with escalations of its own, you might think. "we shouldn't pull the trigger on this thing when we're out the wood with Omicron and are in a better position with our non-EU supply chains."
Thirdly, you might think that invoking Article 16 should be done with the consent of the people it affects: i.e. the population of Northern Ireland. And the polls suggest that while 80% of TUV/DUP voters support it, pretty much 100% of Alliance/SF/SDLP voters oppose it. In total, it's about 60/40 against its use.
The Fridman interview especially, is worth watching.
My nephew, a design engineer, works in his company and has had a few direct meetings - finds him reasonable enough, and not the weirdo that the media (and perhaps his own publicity machine) like to depict. Perhaps he varies, like most of us...
Truss will then turn a blind eye rather than actually invoking Art 16. As long as the Irish border continues to be open I expect most voters in NI bar SF hardliners would not be too bothered, even if the EU are not happy the UK Government can say take it up with the DUP, nothing to do with us guv!
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/brexit-checks-dup-liz-truss-b2002745.html
A family holiday in France or Spain for under £1000, for a fortnight, during the school hols? How? Surely impossible, unless you drive and camp or something, and do it mega cheap, buying all your food in the nearest Aldi
How many do that?
I guess for a week at a two star hotel, but even then you’d be hard pushed with a family
This is unacceptable
I have no doubt if you voted Labour, over time they would disappoint, however in the here and now you have to consider the best way to get back a Conservative Party you could comfortably support. Corbyn getting pasted in 2019 has left me with a Labour Party I am much more comfortable with in just two years, but it wasn't all about getting rid of just Corbyn, but also the hateful leeches backing him, and that is still very much work in progress. You still have, even with Johnson gone, a cabal of hateful, malevolent right wing populists who could easily retake control of your party, even after Johnson is deposed. These clowns needs their political teeth extracting too, before you once again have the Tory Party of Ted Heath or McMillan.
Just what exactly is going on ?
So far so good
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t705r8ICkRw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SA8ZBJWo73E
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Zlnbs-NBUI
The comments I've had from past colleagues who actually met him, is that there seem to be two Elon's. Bored Elon = Bad Elon. Better Elon is when he has something to do - preferably solving a numerical or physical problem.
That said, Sam Coates' comments suggests it is indeed just FPNs!
https://twitter.com/dgurdasani1
On one occasion we had one of the most famous academics in our field come for a visit as they were thinking of changing institutions and a personal friend of our supervisor, and the whole exercise was to butter him up with examples of the interesting work we had been doing.
Academic comes into our lab, asks mini Elon Musk what he had been working on, Mini Elon shows him, world famous academic says interesting, its a bit like my work on such and such, did you try this....Mini Elon sits there in silence for an uncomfortable long time, before telling him to his face his whole research was based upon a flawed premise.
This all stinks to high heaven, to me.
Deepti Gurdasani
@dgurdasani1
·
1h
Sorry, just deleted and repost this thread due to an important error- the frequency of omicron BA.2 in England as per the ONS report of 19th Jan was 5.5%, *not* 22%. The rest of the thread is the same.
But who is the guardian of the true EU, the one that won’t march on to ever closer union, slowly leeching powers from the member states?
No one, that’s who. Because it does not exist. The EU is inexorably federalizing, Cameron’s renegotiation failure proved this. We are better off out, because we would have been increasingly unhappy in a Federal EU, yet unable to stop it
https://www.tui.co.uk/destinations/bookaccommodation?productCode=059100&tab=overview&noOfAdults=2&noOfChildren=2&childrenAge=8,10&duration=14&flexibleDays=3&airports[]=LGW&flexibility=true&noOfSeniors=0&when=28-06-2022&pkg=148682084/3/543/14&tra_o=1173958575/3438194&tra_i=1173958675/3438195&units[]=000349:RESORT&packageId=059100ESCB004316563744000001656374400000TOM424616575840000001657584000000TOM4247TW02148682084/3/543/14&index=3&multiSelect=true&brandType=T&bb=HB&room=&isVilla=false&searchType=search&durationCode=1415&rmpc=1|2|0|2|0|10,8&rmtp=TW02&rmbb=HB&fc=n&greatDealDiscount=0&bb=HB&price=pp#page