Its not just what people write on social media about you, its even if you are "off the clock" and some twat always has a camera phone ready to film absolutely anything you do. This is true for anybody in the public eye and I can't imagine it is a particularly good for you mental health.
I personally would never "volunteer" myself for something like that.
Yes, true, but I wasn't referring only to nasty comments on social media. It gets beyond that, spilling over into actual physical threats or turning up at MPs' homes and intimidating the families.
Absolutely, JRM and Corybn's homes being targeted. Totally unacceptable.
When government fears the people, there is liberty. When the people fear the government, there is tyranny.
It is very wrong of me of course, but given the complete innocence of 99% of victims of crime, the thought of evil people posting dog poo through JRM's or Jezza's letterbox leaves me strangely unmoved.
The government should fear the voice of the people through the the ballot box, not by more direct means.
We are sadly seeing a by-election today, because of a breakdown in this relationship.
There were 600 odd homicides in E and W in 2021, nearly two a day. I am really hard pushed to whip up any more sadness for any one instance than the other 599.
I’m hoping that in the downing st flat right now Carrie has laid out all the newspaper cuttings about Spotify paying Harry and Meghan 18m to do nothing and Joe Rogan 100m to be a bit of an arse and saying “Boris darling, we cover both bases - just think what we can earn”…..
Yep.
And if they cross the pond, as is his birthright, then he could earn a fortune over there. He'll be able to churn out pieces for Charles Moore (Letter from America, anyone?), speaking engagements too, alongside all the other things you mention.
Thinking about it vaguely seriously he could earn a fortune - Spotify would take a regular podcast from him at the drop of a hat (whatever you think of him he’s infinitely more interesting than the Sussexes), Carrie could be the new Lawrence Llewelyn-Bowen of You-tube with guest appearances by Lulu Little, GB news (if they have the money) would take him to do a weekly phone in with Boris (like Frasier but not funny), rugby and finance dinners up and down the country would be paying for after dinner speaches, Chinese TV might mistake him for Chris Patten and hire him.
On another note I’m very happy that you and Sean T have called a truce - this site is so much better with a breadth of personality and experience and I felt for you with what you shared today as it shouldn’t happen to anyone and was brave of you to bring it up in what can be a knockabout place.
Very true. He could make tens of millions from a podcast alone
The whips office have been neutralised, the No.10 communications office is paralysed, Red-Wallers, Spartans, Grandees, One-Nation Group are mobilising, and the cabinet are publicly cutting the PM loose. Apart from that Operation Save Big Dog is going swimmingly.
Oh gosh. She'll double down. She'll be suggesting that it wasn't actually Savile doing all that abuse, it was somebody else whose surname also starts with S.
I watched on iPlayer a doc about the Blair and Brown years and was struck by the mutual admiration between them despite the clear antagonism between them at the changeover time.
I cannot wait however, if Rishi replaces Boris, for a repeat documentary in 10 years time as I don’t think there will be much love lost - will be suitably brutal I imagine…..
I'm toying with doing a thread on Sunday where I predict if Boris goes soon he will undermine his successor in the way Thatcher did to Major and take the Incredible Sulk title from Ted Heath.
Unlikely. Boris has many flaws but he’s not the type to stew in a futile sulk.
For a start he will want to make TONS of money. Sitting in the Commons sniping at Sunak (or whoever) does not serve that purpose. He will want to turn the page and do something unexpected (along with the memoirs)
He is still a man with exceptional political talents, and he is a good writer, and he has amazing contacts. How does he use all this?
If he had the concentration span and work ethic, he should get himself a gig writing fiction for Netflix.
Genius insight. That is exactly what he'll do, and be author of an updated House of Cards about a fat immoral slob who makes it to the top in English politics. If they can pay the Sussexes $18m for hebephrenic wibble, they can pay him twice that, and he can shell out a tiny fraction of it to an impoverished ghostwriter to do the actual work
Oh gosh. She'll double down. She'll be suggesting that it wasn't actually Savile doing all that abuse, it was somebody else whose surname also starts with S.
Its not just what people write on social media about you, its even if you are "off the clock" and some twat always has a camera phone ready to film absolutely anything you do. This is true for anybody in the public eye and I can't imagine it is a particularly good for you mental health.
I personally would never "volunteer" myself for something like that.
Yes, true, but I wasn't referring only to nasty comments on social media. It gets beyond that, spilling over into actual physical threats or turning up at MPs' homes and intimidating the families.
Absolutely, JRM and Corybn's homes being targeted. Totally unacceptable.
When government fears the people, there is liberty. When the people fear the government, there is tyranny.
It is very wrong of me of course, but given the complete innocence of 99% of victims of crime, the thought of evil people posting dog poo through JRM's or Jezza's letterbox leaves me strangely unmoved.
Politically motivated crimes, including harassment and violence, are corrosive for democracy. It's not because politicians are inherently more worth as people -- they aren't -- but because to defend politicians robustly from targeted crimes is to defend democracy itself.
We expect higher standards from politicians because of their position. We should also expect them to get the best level of protection anyone can have.
I completely understand why politicians retreat behind guards and walls, but it is an unhealthy distance from the real lives of people.
I heard it suggested by a politician that the only cure for the doorstepping aggression etc. will be when a suitably skilled politician delivers a physical beating on one such attacker. On camera.
Its not just what people write on social media about you, its even if you are "off the clock" and some twat always has a camera phone ready to film absolutely anything you do. This is true for anybody in the public eye and I can't imagine it is a particularly good for you mental health.
I personally would never "volunteer" myself for something like that.
Yes, true, but I wasn't referring only to nasty comments on social media. It gets beyond that, spilling over into actual physical threats or turning up at MPs' homes and intimidating the families.
Absolutely, JRM and Corybn's homes being targeted. Totally unacceptable.
When government fears the people, there is liberty. When the people fear the government, there is tyranny.
It is very wrong of me of course, but given the complete innocence of 99% of victims of crime, the thought of evil people posting dog poo through JRM's or Jezza's letterbox leaves me strangely unmoved.
The government should fear the voice of the people through the the ballot box, not by more direct means.
We are sadly seeing a by-election today, because of a breakdown in this relationship.
There were 600 odd homicides in E and W in 2021, nearly two a day. I am really hard pushed to whip up any more sadness for any one instance than the other 599.
Ooh, I am. This was a man killed doing what was necessary for our lifestyle to function. He didn't work for me directly - I don't live in Southend - but I do feel a sense of ownership. I may not advocate his views, but I believe very strongly in the principle of representative democracy. He's basically employed by me doing something I paid him to do. Of course I feel more strongly. As I would over, say, a policeman or a teacher killed while doing their jobs.
It’s worth noting that whatever the question about Britain’s state, Rishi is not the answer.
He’s a fully paid up Treasury stooge who thinks levelling up is a waste of time.
But he’s more impressive than Boris. If I was Keir I’d be a bit concerned.
there isn't any Tory that is going to spend money levelling up - that's the problem. It's going to take a Labour party willing to look at Treasury models and destroy the appalling foundations they are built on.
Unfortunately the people who understand that earn £100,000+ way more than the Treasury fools you currently use the models and don't see the flaws or missing factors.
Hint for anyone reading infrastructure sometimes needs to be built because it solves problems.
Funny how we agree violently on this but (IIRC) disagree equally violently on immigration.
Don't think I've ever commented on immigration that much.
Were I to do so my only comment would be you allow skilled workers into the country (using a sane minimum pay level well above the average wage) and ensure that you don't allow unskilled / low paid workers in.
Sadly we can't use the tricks other European countries could use (native language tests) because everyone speaks English better than you typical English native.
It is worth noting that the most successful economies in the world - places like Switzerland and Singapore - have done such a good job upskilling their own citizens, that it is unskilled labour that their economies demand.
Both also have populations of less than 5% and have low tax so long attracted high net worth residents and financial services.
Both are also expensive to live in, so also limiting the attraction for the non high skilled and non high paid
Wait: the UK has a population of more than 172 million people???
Wow.
More seriously, let me turn the question around. Would you rather your child was educated to the level where they could be a well paid software engineer? Or would you rather they decided that we needed to have more people who were only skilled to clean toilets?
In 95% of countries the average citizen is not going to be able to be educated to be a well paid software engineer. For starters as there are only so many well paid software engineer jobs to go round globally.
We will also still need some people to clean the toilets
We also need for toilet cleaners to get enough pay and respect in society to be able to live a good life, with home and family.
Have you heard of these things called “robots”?
There really won’t be a need for toilet cleaners, very soon . And that is a good thing, it is not a nice job
Its not just what people write on social media about you, its even if you are "off the clock" and some twat always has a camera phone ready to film absolutely anything you do. This is true for anybody in the public eye and I can't imagine it is a particularly good for you mental health.
I personally would never "volunteer" myself for something like that.
Yes, true, but I wasn't referring only to nasty comments on social media. It gets beyond that, spilling over into actual physical threats or turning up at MPs' homes and intimidating the families.
Absolutely, JRM and Corybn's homes being targeted. Totally unacceptable.
When government fears the people, there is liberty. When the people fear the government, there is tyranny.
It is very wrong of me of course, but given the complete innocence of 99% of victims of crime, the thought of evil people posting dog poo through JRM's or Jezza's letterbox leaves me strangely unmoved.
Politically motivated crimes, including harassment and violence, are corrosive for democracy. It's not because politicians are inherently more worth as people -- they aren't -- but because to defend politicians robustly from targeted crimes is to defend democracy itself.
We expect higher standards from politicians because of their position. We should also expect them to get the best level of protection anyone can have.
I completely understand why politicians retreat behind guards and walls, but it is an unhealthy distance from the real lives of people.
I heard it suggested by a politician that the only cure for the doorstepping aggression etc. will be when a suitably skilled politician delivers a physical beating on one such attacker. On camera.
Surely John Prescott did that, many years ago?
We were talking about that incident - the politician in question thought that it would take putting an assailant into hospital, with a trial and acquittal before the doorstoppers would get frightened off.
I watched on iPlayer a doc about the Blair and Brown years and was struck by the mutual admiration between them despite the clear antagonism between them at the changeover time.
I cannot wait however, if Rishi replaces Boris, for a repeat documentary in 10 years time as I don’t think there will be much love lost - will be suitably brutal I imagine…..
I'm toying with doing a thread on Sunday where I predict if Boris goes soon he will undermine his successor in the way Thatcher did to Major and take the Incredible Sulk title from Ted Heath.
Unlikely. Boris has many flaws but he’s not the type to stew in a futile sulk.
For a start he will want to make TONS of money. Sitting in the Commons sniping at Sunak (or whoever) does not serve that purpose. He will want to turn the page and do something unexpected (along with the memoirs)
He is still a man with exceptional political talents, and he is a good writer, and he has amazing contacts. How does he use all this?
In our dotage we’ll probably find ourselves on some Saga cruise to who knows where and he’ll be giving a lecture talk in the main lounge.
Lol. And you know what? We will both go along and listen. Who wouldn’t?
That’s why I am sure he will make bazillions. He is witty and clever and has a unique, remarkable story to tell, and 40 years of anecdotes
OTOH I can see you storming out halfway through in anger (when he gets to Brexit) then I will run after you and try and placate you with free blancmange, as that is all that we will be capable of eating
Then we will play cribbage
Leon I didn't want to leave our earlier interaction without acknowledging what you said about suicide. I've been thinking about it ever since and I'm really sorry you went through that. I feel terrible for my tetchy and downright nasty remarks about you posting from around the globe. If this is a place you feel able to share, shout, sing and any other s's that keep up the alliteration then who the hell am I to diss it? No one, that's who. And I've plunged into deep dark places myself.
I too am glad we've made peace.
So I look forward to those cooking and, yes, travel tips and the occasional vent about wokeness
There’s something in my eye… Lovely post. We’re all guilty of being snarky bastards sometimes, don’t beat yourself up.
This is a wonderful site and brings together interesting people who would otherwise never meet and interact. It makes you think. But it does, sadly, like much of the internet, suffer for not being face to face, missing tone of voice, facial expressions, body language, etc, etc. I suppose we could start a zoom call for each thread. But on a seconds reflection, perhaps not! No-one wants to see my ugly mug.
Its not just what people write on social media about you, its even if you are "off the clock" and some twat always has a camera phone ready to film absolutely anything you do. This is true for anybody in the public eye and I can't imagine it is a particularly good for you mental health.
I personally would never "volunteer" myself for something like that.
Yes, true, but I wasn't referring only to nasty comments on social media. It gets beyond that, spilling over into actual physical threats or turning up at MPs' homes and intimidating the families.
Absolutely, JRM and Corybn's homes being targeted. Totally unacceptable.
When government fears the people, there is liberty. When the people fear the government, there is tyranny.
It is very wrong of me of course, but given the complete innocence of 99% of victims of crime, the thought of evil people posting dog poo through JRM's or Jezza's letterbox leaves me strangely unmoved.
The government should fear the voice of the people through the the ballot box, not by more direct means.
We are sadly seeing a by-election today, because of a breakdown in this relationship.
There were 600 odd homicides in E and W in 2021, nearly two a day. I am really hard pushed to whip up any more sadness for any one instance than the other 599.
Ooh, I am. This was a man killed doing what was necessary for our lifestyle to function. He didn't work for me directly - I don't live in Southend - but I do feel a sense of ownership. I may not advocate his views, but I believe very strongly in the principle of representative democracy. He's basically employed by me doing something I paid him to do. Of course I feel more strongly. As I would over, say, a policeman or a teacher killed while doing their jobs.
No he wasn't, no more than a nurse or a butcher or a bus driver is. Less, actually, because it takes years of training to become any of those things. so your point about representative democracy is precisely back to front: if some bugger gets stiffed you elect some other bugger. Life goes on.
I watched on iPlayer a doc about the Blair and Brown years and was struck by the mutual admiration between them despite the clear antagonism between them at the changeover time.
I cannot wait however, if Rishi replaces Boris, for a repeat documentary in 10 years time as I don’t think there will be much love lost - will be suitably brutal I imagine…..
I'm toying with doing a thread on Sunday where I predict if Boris goes soon he will undermine his successor in the way Thatcher did to Major and take the Incredible Sulk title from Ted Heath.
Unlikely. Boris has many flaws but he’s not the type to stew in a futile sulk.
For a start he will want to make TONS of money. Sitting in the Commons sniping at Sunak (or whoever) does not serve that purpose. He will want to turn the page and do something unexpected (along with the memoirs)
He is still a man with exceptional political talents, and he is a good writer, and he has amazing contacts. How does he use all this?
If he had the concentration span and work ethic, he should get himself a gig writing fiction for Netflix.
Genius insight. That is exactly what he'll do, and be author of an updated House of Cards about a fat immoral slob who makes it to the top in English politics. If they can pay the Sussexes $18m for hebephrenic wibble, they can pay him twice that, and he can shell out a tiny fraction of it to an impoverished ghostwriter to do the actual work
Surely it has to be called "The Clown"??
Line of fruity
A loveable rogue saucy detective, men want to be him, women want to be with him, fearlessly goes after a corrupt chief prosecutor.
There is nothing our hero will not do to uncover the truth. Forcing himself to attend establishment parties, faking a persona of a fat useless journalist, losing contact with his children.
I watched on iPlayer a doc about the Blair and Brown years and was struck by the mutual admiration between them despite the clear antagonism between them at the changeover time.
I cannot wait however, if Rishi replaces Boris, for a repeat documentary in 10 years time as I don’t think there will be much love lost - will be suitably brutal I imagine…..
I'm toying with doing a thread on Sunday where I predict if Boris goes soon he will undermine his successor in the way Thatcher did to Major and take the Incredible Sulk title from Ted Heath.
Unlikely. Boris has many flaws but he’s not the type to stew in a futile sulk.
For a start he will want to make TONS of money. Sitting in the Commons sniping at Sunak (or whoever) does not serve that purpose. He will want to turn the page and do something unexpected (along with the memoirs)
He is still a man with exceptional political talents, and he is a good writer, and he has amazing contacts. How does he use all this?
In our dotage we’ll probably find ourselves on some Saga cruise to who knows where and he’ll be giving a lecture talk in the main lounge.
Lol. And you know what? We will both go along and listen. Who wouldn’t?
That’s why I am sure he will make bazillions. He is witty and clever and has a unique, remarkable story to tell, and 40 years of anecdotes
OTOH I can see you storming out halfway through in anger (when he gets to Brexit) then I will run after you and try and placate you with free blancmange, as that is all that we will be capable of eating
Then we will play cribbage
Can you not let Brexit drop. Every bloody post regardless of the topic.
Oh gosh. She'll double down. She'll be suggesting that it wasn't actually Savile doing all that abuse, it was somebody else whose surname also starts with S.
You simply don't send Dorries in to bat as a first choice.
It’s worth noting that whatever the question about Britain’s state, Rishi is not the answer.
He’s a fully paid up Treasury stooge who thinks levelling up is a waste of time.
But he’s more impressive than Boris. If I was Keir I’d be a bit concerned.
there isn't any Tory that is going to spend money levelling up - that's the problem. It's going to take a Labour party willing to look at Treasury models and destroy the appalling foundations they are built on.
Unfortunately the people who understand that earn £100,000+ way more than the Treasury fools you currently use the models and don't see the flaws or missing factors.
Hint for anyone reading infrastructure sometimes needs to be built because it solves problems.
Funny how we agree violently on this but (IIRC) disagree equally violently on immigration.
Don't think I've ever commented on immigration that much.
Were I to do so my only comment would be you allow skilled workers into the country (using a sane minimum pay level well above the average wage) and ensure that you don't allow unskilled / low paid workers in.
Sadly we can't use the tricks other European countries could use (native language tests) because everyone speaks English better than you typical English native.
It is worth noting that the most successful economies in the world - places like Switzerland and Singapore - have done such a good job upskilling their own citizens, that it is unskilled labour that their economies demand.
Both also have populations of less than 5% and have low tax so long attracted high net worth residents and financial services.
Both are also expensive to live in, so also limiting the attraction for the non high skilled and non high paid
Wait: the UK has a population of more than 172 million people???
Wow.
More seriously, let me turn the question around. Would you rather your child was educated to the level where they could be a well paid software engineer? Or would you rather they decided that we needed to have more people who were only skilled to clean toilets?
In 95% of countries the average citizen is not going to be able to be educated to be a well paid software engineer. For starters as there are only so many well paid software engineer jobs to go round globally.
We will also still need some people to clean the toilets
Show me someone who can think logically through a problem (yes, I know that automatically excludes you) and I will be able to find them a job paying more well above the average wage tomorrow and after a bit of time and experience easily £60k+
The world doesn't have a shortage of well paid software engineer jobs, there is insatiable demand for software engineers, the world has a shorter of people able to write software.
Oh gosh. She'll double down. She'll be suggesting that it wasn't actually Savile doing all that abuse, it was somebody else whose surname also starts with S.
You simply don't send Dorries in to bat as a first choice.
It’s easy to watch from afar and criticise the lack of quality among MPs - but there’s an increasingly small number of people willing to put themselves up for such public scrutiny, especially given that most of them can lead equally lucrative and private lives away from the spotlight.
You have to be politically motivated, in which case it's mostly water off a duck's back. I had lots of friendly posts, a moderate amount of abuse, a small amount of obscene abuse and a single death threat - overall it was fine, and the nasty bits were a minor price for the chance to influence national policy in what I felt to be a positive direction. But if it had just been a way of earning a living? Hell no.
The people who get put off - and this is a serious loss - are the "public servant" types, who don't have strong opinions, but would like to help run the country well. The traditional Conservative Party was particularly strong in those, but Labour and LibDems had a good many too - typically from local council backgrounds. If you populate Parliament exclusively with people (like me) who have strong views and want radical change, you turn up the temperature of politics and risk getting characters who hate the other side (unlike me). You need a mixture of passionate reformers and steady public servants. You don't IMO really need anyone who just thinks it's a job like any other.
I think it has got a lot worse since you left parliament, though, not least because of the effect of social media and the general increase in polarisation of politics. The problem is especially bad for women MPs, and even worse for ethnic minority women MPs, but it's bad for all MPs now.
Its not just what people write on social media about you, its even if you are "off the clock" and some twat always has a camera phone ready to film absolutely anything you do. This is true for anybody in the public eye and I can't imagine it is a particularly good for you mental health.
I personally would never "volunteer" myself for something like that.
I remember once riffling through the papers in a newsagent in central Nottingham (miles away from my constituency) and my eye being caught by some sex story in the Sun. The man standing next to me guffawed and said "Ha, that's what our MP reads, eh?" I smiled vaguely and turned away but yes, it was a goldfish bowl moment. Another time a woman leant over when I was sitting on the bus and said "You're one of those dirty bastards in Parliament, aren't you?"
Social media was warming up then too, and I got 100+ emails a day, some of them nasty. But the overwhelming majority were warm, friendly and/or interesting, and I lost count of the number of times that people came up in the street or the supermarket to thank me for something - even after I'd left Parliament. I don't think it's changed all that much, judging by the local social media and by what MPs who I know tell me.
I'm sure that Richard is right about disgusting abuse to women MPs and minorities in particular, and social media does empower the misogynists and racists out there to get in one's face. But it's just a mistake to think that it's not a rewarding job. 4 days a week you're in with a chance to influence the future of 70 million people. 3 days a week you're able to help individuals and often make a visible difference to their lives. How many MPs stand down voluntarily before they reach 70 or so? Not many. It's still a hugely satisfying way to spend your time.
Interesting, eloquent and enlightening
My god, what is happening to PB? The imminent fall of Boris is turning us all into pathetic, amiable weeds
I hope the normal service of vituperative and unnecessary nastiness returns soon
Oh gosh. She'll double down. She'll be suggesting that it wasn't actually Savile doing all that abuse, it was somebody else whose surname also starts with S.
You simply don't send Dorries in to bat as a first choice.
or second choice, or third choice. It's the real scrapping of the barrel choice albeit possibly better than no-one at all
In fact given today's news you would be expect Sunak or the Business Secretary to do tomorrow's media rounds so it's curious that it's the Culture secretary doing it.
It’s easy to watch from afar and criticise the lack of quality among MPs - but there’s an increasingly small number of people willing to put themselves up for such public scrutiny, especially given that most of them can lead equally lucrative and private lives away from the spotlight.
You have to be politically motivated, in which case it's mostly water off a duck's back. I had lots of friendly posts, a moderate amount of abuse, a small amount of obscene abuse and a single death threat - overall it was fine, and the nasty bits were a minor price for the chance to influence national policy in what I felt to be a positive direction. But if it had just been a way of earning a living? Hell no.
The people who get put off - and this is a serious loss - are the "public servant" types, who don't have strong opinions, but would like to help run the country well. The traditional Conservative Party was particularly strong in those, but Labour and LibDems had a good many too - typically from local council backgrounds. If you populate Parliament exclusively with people (like me) who have strong views and want radical change, you turn up the temperature of politics and risk getting characters who hate the other side (unlike me). You need a mixture of passionate reformers and steady public servants. You don't IMO really need anyone who just thinks it's a job like any other.
I think it has got a lot worse since you left parliament, though, not least because of the effect of social media and the general increase in polarisation of politics. The problem is especially bad for women MPs, and even worse for ethnic minority women MPs, but it's bad for all MPs now.
Its not just what people write on social media about you, its even if you are "off the clock" and some twat always has a camera phone ready to film absolutely anything you do. This is true for anybody in the public eye and I can't imagine it is a particularly good for you mental health.
I personally would never "volunteer" myself for something like that.
I remember once riffling through the papers in a newsagent in central Nottingham (miles away from my constituency) and my eye being caught by some sex story in the Sun. The man standing next to me guffawed and said "Ha, that's what our MP reads, eh?" I smiled vaguely and turned away but yes, it was a goldfish bowl moment. Another time a woman leant over when I was sitting on the bus and said "You're one of those dirty bastards in Parliament, aren't you?"
Social media was warming up then too, and I got 100+ emails a day, some of them nasty. But the overwhelming majority were warm, friendly and/or interesting, and I lost count of the number of times that people came up in the street or the supermarket to thank me for something - even after I'd left Parliament. I don't think it's changed all that much, judging by the local social media and by what MPs who I know tell me.
I'm sure that Richard is right about disgusting abuse to women MPs and minorities in particular, and social media does empower the misogynists and racists out there to get in one's face. But it's just a mistake to think that it's not a rewarding job. 4 days a week you're in with a chance to influence the future of 70 million people. 3 days a week you're able to help individuals and often make a visible difference to their lives. How many MPs stand down voluntarily before they reach 70 or so? Not many. It's still a hugely satisfying way to spend your time.
Interesting, eloquent and enlightening
My god, what is happening to PB? The imminent fall of Boris is turning us all into pathetic, amiable weeds
I hope the normal service of vituperative and unnecessary nastiness returns soon
Sorry to hear about the tough time you’ve been through mate. Chin up fella you’ll be fine. You’ll find some crazy woman who sorts you out. I managed it and if an emotionally stunted idiot like me can pull it off it’ll be a piece of piss for you.
It’s worth noting that whatever the question about Britain’s state, Rishi is not the answer.
He’s a fully paid up Treasury stooge who thinks levelling up is a waste of time.
But he’s more impressive than Boris. If I was Keir I’d be a bit concerned.
there isn't any Tory that is going to spend money levelling up - that's the problem. It's going to take a Labour party willing to look at Treasury models and destroy the appalling foundations they are built on.
Unfortunately the people who understand that earn £100,000+ way more than the Treasury fools you currently use the models and don't see the flaws or missing factors.
Hint for anyone reading infrastructure sometimes needs to be built because it solves problems.
Funny how we agree violently on this but (IIRC) disagree equally violently on immigration.
Don't think I've ever commented on immigration that much.
Were I to do so my only comment would be you allow skilled workers into the country (using a sane minimum pay level well above the average wage) and ensure that you don't allow unskilled / low paid workers in.
Sadly we can't use the tricks other European countries could use (native language tests) because everyone speaks English better than you typical English native.
It is worth noting that the most successful economies in the world - places like Switzerland and Singapore - have done such a good job upskilling their own citizens, that it is unskilled labour that their economies demand.
Both also have populations of less than 5% and have low tax so long attracted high net worth residents and financial services.
Both are also expensive to live in, so also limiting the attraction for the non high skilled and non high paid
Wait: the UK has a population of more than 172 million people???
Wow.
More seriously, let me turn the question around. Would you rather your child was educated to the level where they could be a well paid software engineer? Or would you rather they decided that we needed to have more people who were only skilled to clean toilets?
In 95% of countries the average citizen is not going to be able to be educated to be a well paid software engineer. For starters as there are only so many well paid software engineer jobs to go round globally.
We will also still need some people to clean the toilets
Show me someone who can think logically through a problem (yes, I know that automatically excludes you) and I will be able to find them a job paying more well above the average wage tomorrow and after a bit of time and experience easily £60k+
The world doesn't have a shortage of well paid software engineer jobs, there is insatiable demand for software engineers, the world has a shorter of people able to write software.
There are 7.9 billion people on earth, there are not enough software engineer or writing software jobs for the 3.95 billion who constitute half of the global population let alone all of them
Some encouraging polling news for @HYUFD under the heading "the pendulum soon swings back".
In three countries where the centre right was defeated, polling suggests they are on the way back. In Norway, where a Labour-Centre Coalition (supported by the Socialist Left) took over from the Conservatives in September, the latest Norstat poll shows the Conservatives on 26.2% with Labour on 20%, converting a 5.9% GE deficit to a 6.2% lead in less than five months.
The combined Labour-Centre poll share was 39.8% in the election but is now 28.7%. They have until 2025 to turn it around.
In Germany, we're now seeing the Union back in the lead in polls - the latest Forsa poll has a 4-point lead (27-23) indicating a 3% swing to the CDU/CSU since last September. The combined share of the three coalition parties has fallen below 50% for the first time.
I can't let the latest NZ poll go unremarked. Kantar have taken over Colmar Brunton (I believe) so they are now the main NZ pollsters. The latest Kantar poll has Labour on 40% and National on 32% (this compares with 50-24.5 in September 2020) ACT are on 11% and Greens on 8%.
That translates to 51 seats (-14) for labour and 12 (+2) for the Greens making the existing coalition viable while National would win 41 (+8) and ACT 14 (+4). Add the two Maori Party seats for the 120 seat Parliament.
The previous Roy Morgan poll looks a bit of an outlier but we'll see how it moves - the next election is in September 2023.
They also voted in Czechia last October and there's been little change since the election. The coalition of the three SPOLU parties and the Mayors & Independents plus Pirates have a small but solid majority (108-92) in the Chamber of Deputies. The main opposition party of the former Prime Minister, Andrej Babis, still leads the polls with 29% but the vote share of the coalition has only dropped a little.
I watched on iPlayer a doc about the Blair and Brown years and was struck by the mutual admiration between them despite the clear antagonism between them at the changeover time.
I cannot wait however, if Rishi replaces Boris, for a repeat documentary in 10 years time as I don’t think there will be much love lost - will be suitably brutal I imagine…..
I'm toying with doing a thread on Sunday where I predict if Boris goes soon he will undermine his successor in the way Thatcher did to Major and take the Incredible Sulk title from Ted Heath.
Unlikely. Boris has many flaws but he’s not the type to stew in a futile sulk.
For a start he will want to make TONS of money. Sitting in the Commons sniping at Sunak (or whoever) does not serve that purpose. He will want to turn the page and do something unexpected (along with the memoirs)
He is still a man with exceptional political talents, and he is a good writer, and he has amazing contacts. How does he use all this?
He is in fact a 10 lb bag of ordure in a 5lb bag, good for nothing a chancer , law breaker , liar , etc. Only a fool would be interested in any guff that comes out of his pie hole.
I watched on iPlayer a doc about the Blair and Brown years and was struck by the mutual admiration between them despite the clear antagonism between them at the changeover time.
I cannot wait however, if Rishi replaces Boris, for a repeat documentary in 10 years time as I don’t think there will be much love lost - will be suitably brutal I imagine…..
I'm toying with doing a thread on Sunday where I predict if Boris goes soon he will undermine his successor in the way Thatcher did to Major and take the Incredible Sulk title from Ted Heath.
Unlikely. Boris has many flaws but he’s not the type to stew in a futile sulk.
For a start he will want to make TONS of money. Sitting in the Commons sniping at Sunak (or whoever) does not serve that purpose. He will want to turn the page and do something unexpected (along with the memoirs)
He is still a man with exceptional political talents, and he is a good writer, and he has amazing contacts. How does he use all this?
If he had the concentration span and work ethic, he should get himself a gig writing fiction for Netflix.
Genius insight. That is exactly what he'll do, and be author of an updated House of Cards about a fat immoral slob who makes it to the top in English politics. If they can pay the Sussexes $18m for hebephrenic wibble, they can pay him twice that, and he can shell out a tiny fraction of it to an impoverished ghostwriter to do the actual work
Surely it has to be called "The Clown"??
Line of fruity
A loveable rogue saucy detective, men want to be him, women want to be with him, fearlessly goes after a corrupt chief prosecutor.
There is nothing our hero will not do to uncover the truth. Forcing himself to attend establishment parties, faking a persona of a fat useless journalist, losing contact with his children.
IPlayer Wednesdays at 12pm.
This week. Our hero may have gone too far with his allegations. His associates desert him. He has just 48 hours to make his charges stick or face being taken off the case, by an ambitious younger rival who speaks in sentences. Meanwhile. His home life is still in turmoil. Will he pull through? Or will he get yet another extension for an even more improbable third series?
I watched on iPlayer a doc about the Blair and Brown years and was struck by the mutual admiration between them despite the clear antagonism between them at the changeover time.
I cannot wait however, if Rishi replaces Boris, for a repeat documentary in 10 years time as I don’t think there will be much love lost - will be suitably brutal I imagine…..
I'm toying with doing a thread on Sunday where I predict if Boris goes soon he will undermine his successor in the way Thatcher did to Major and take the Incredible Sulk title from Ted Heath.
Maybe but I don’t think Boris has any ideology apart from promote himself, earn money, try and be clever with words and chase women so I can’t see him hanging around - he would stay MP to draw salary until he has enough guaranteed earnings to drop that then be off.
I can’t see him holding his seat at next GE anyway so that choice won’t be in his hands.
Also not going to be harping on about his replacement as it will devalue him (yes it could even get lower) and remind everyone he was a loser.
He might be investigating if Albania is looking for a king or something…..
That rings a bell from a dinobook I read recently: not a happy precedent. Chappie called Baron Franz Nopcsa von Felső-Szilvás (also Baron Nopcsa von Felső-Szilvás, Baron Nopcsa, Ferenc Nopcsa, báró felsőszilvási Nopcsa Ferenc, Baron Franz Nopcsa, and Franz Baron Nopcsa.
"To cover his debts, he sold his fossil collection to the Natural History Museum in London.[...] . Finally, in 1933, he fatally shot first his partner, Bayazid Elmas Doda, after having slipped sleeping powder into his tea.[12][19] He then wrote a suicide note, where he states the reason for his actions a nervous breakdown, and shot himself.[1][9][...] In his suicide note, he describes his reasons for killing his lover:[1]
The reason that I shot my longtime friend and secretary, Mr Bayazid Elmas Doda, in his sleep without his suspecting at all is that I did not wish to leave him behind sick, in misery and without a penny, because he would have suffered too much.
Nopcsa left behind a considerable quantity of scientific publications and private diaries. The diaries paint a picture of a complex man with great intuition, but without the ability to understand the motives of others. His devotion to the cause of the Albanians was in contrast to his sociopathic insensitivity. In his diaries he nonchalantly wrote about his bid to become king of Albania:[20]
'Once a reigning European monarch, I would have no difficulty coming up with the further funds needed by marrying a wealthy American heiress aspiring to royalty, a step which under other circumstances I would have been loath to take."
The view from my hotel window in Colombo, Sri Lanka, this moment. And this is a poor, small country by Asian standards.
Asia is just leaping ahead. People who only know the West just don’t realise. Asia is Blade Runner. All the power and the future is here
Some of us have realised, though I'd suggest including China, Asia has already leapt ahead of the west economically. Culturally Japan and Korea are making leaps and bounds. Gaming going mainstream has propelled Japanese culture into the stratosphere.
It’s worth noting that whatever the question about Britain’s state, Rishi is not the answer.
He’s a fully paid up Treasury stooge who thinks levelling up is a waste of time.
But he’s more impressive than Boris. If I was Keir I’d be a bit concerned.
there isn't any Tory that is going to spend money levelling up - that's the problem. It's going to take a Labour party willing to look at Treasury models and destroy the appalling foundations they are built on.
Unfortunately the people who understand that earn £100,000+ way more than the Treasury fools you currently use the models and don't see the flaws or missing factors.
Hint for anyone reading infrastructure sometimes needs to be built because it solves problems.
Funny how we agree violently on this but (IIRC) disagree equally violently on immigration.
Don't think I've ever commented on immigration that much.
Were I to do so my only comment would be you allow skilled workers into the country (using a sane minimum pay level well above the average wage) and ensure that you don't allow unskilled / low paid workers in.
Sadly we can't use the tricks other European countries could use (native language tests) because everyone speaks English better than you typical English native.
It is worth noting that the most successful economies in the world - places like Switzerland and Singapore - have done such a good job upskilling their own citizens, that it is unskilled labour that their economies demand.
Both also have populations of less than 5% and have low tax so long attracted high net worth residents and financial services.
Both are also expensive to live in, so also limiting the attraction for the non high skilled and non high paid
Wait: the UK has a population of more than 172 million people???
Wow.
More seriously, let me turn the question around. Would you rather your child was educated to the level where they could be a well paid software engineer? Or would you rather they decided that we needed to have more people who were only skilled to clean toilets?
In 95% of countries the average citizen is not going to be able to be educated to be a well paid software engineer. For starters as there are only so many well paid software engineer jobs to go round globally.
We will also still need some people to clean the toilets
We also need for toilet cleaners to get enough pay and respect in society to be able to live a good life, with home and family.
Have you heard of these things called “robots”?
There really won’t be a need for toilet cleaners, very soon . And that is a good thing, it is not a nice job
It’s worth noting that whatever the question about Britain’s state, Rishi is not the answer.
He’s a fully paid up Treasury stooge who thinks levelling up is a waste of time.
But he’s more impressive than Boris. If I was Keir I’d be a bit concerned.
there isn't any Tory that is going to spend money levelling up - that's the problem. It's going to take a Labour party willing to look at Treasury models and destroy the appalling foundations they are built on.
Unfortunately the people who understand that earn £100,000+ way more than the Treasury fools you currently use the models and don't see the flaws or missing factors.
Hint for anyone reading infrastructure sometimes needs to be built because it solves problems.
Funny how we agree violently on this but (IIRC) disagree equally violently on immigration.
Don't think I've ever commented on immigration that much.
Were I to do so my only comment would be you allow skilled workers into the country (using a sane minimum pay level well above the average wage) and ensure that you don't allow unskilled / low paid workers in.
Sadly we can't use the tricks other European countries could use (native language tests) because everyone speaks English better than you typical English native.
It is worth noting that the most successful economies in the world - places like Switzerland and Singapore - have done such a good job upskilling their own citizens, that it is unskilled labour that their economies demand.
Both also have populations of less than 5% and have low tax so long attracted high net worth residents and financial services.
Both are also expensive to live in, so also limiting the attraction for the non high skilled and non high paid
Wait: the UK has a population of more than 172 million people???
Wow.
More seriously, let me turn the question around. Would you rather your child was educated to the level where they could be a well paid software engineer? Or would you rather they decided that we needed to have more people who were only skilled to clean toilets?
In 95% of countries the average citizen is not going to be able to be educated to be a well paid software engineer. For starters as there are only so many well paid software engineer jobs to go round globally.
We will also still need some people to clean the toilets
Show me someone who can think logically through a problem (yes, I know that automatically excludes you) and I will be able to find them a job paying more well above the average wage tomorrow and after a bit of time and experience easily £60k+
The world doesn't have a shortage of well paid software engineer jobs, there is insatiable demand for software engineers, the world has a shorter of people able to write software.
It’s easy to watch from afar and criticise the lack of quality among MPs - but there’s an increasingly small number of people willing to put themselves up for such public scrutiny, especially given that most of them can lead equally lucrative and private lives away from the spotlight.
You have to be politically motivated, in which case it's mostly water off a duck's back. I had lots of friendly posts, a moderate amount of abuse, a small amount of obscene abuse and a single death threat - overall it was fine, and the nasty bits were a minor price for the chance to influence national policy in what I felt to be a positive direction. But if it had just been a way of earning a living? Hell no.
The people who get put off - and this is a serious loss - are the "public servant" types, who don't have strong opinions, but would like to help run the country well. The traditional Conservative Party was particularly strong in those, but Labour and LibDems had a good many too - typically from local council backgrounds. If you populate Parliament exclusively with people (like me) who have strong views and want radical change, you turn up the temperature of politics and risk getting characters who hate the other side (unlike me). You need a mixture of passionate reformers and steady public servants. You don't IMO really need anyone who just thinks it's a job like any other.
I think it has got a lot worse since you left parliament, though, not least because of the effect of social media and the general increase in polarisation of politics. The problem is especially bad for women MPs, and even worse for ethnic minority women MPs, but it's bad for all MPs now.
Its not just what people write on social media about you, its even if you are "off the clock" and some twat always has a camera phone ready to film absolutely anything you do. This is true for anybody in the public eye and I can't imagine it is a particularly good for you mental health.
I personally would never "volunteer" myself for something like that.
I remember once riffling through the papers in a newsagent in central Nottingham (miles away from my constituency) and my eye being caught by some sex story in the Sun. The man standing next to me guffawed and said "Ha, that's what our MP reads, eh?" I smiled vaguely and turned away but yes, it was a goldfish bowl moment. Another time a woman leant over when I was sitting on the bus and said "You're one of those dirty bastards in Parliament, aren't you?"
Social media was warming up then too, and I got 100+ emails a day, some of them nasty. But the overwhelming majority were warm, friendly and/or interesting, and I lost count of the number of times that people came up in the street or the supermarket to thank me for something - even after I'd left Parliament. I don't think it's changed all that much, judging by the local social media and by what MPs who I know tell me.
I'm sure that Richard is right about disgusting abuse to women MPs and minorities in particular, and social media does empower the misogynists and racists out there to get in one's face. But it's just a mistake to think that it's not a rewarding job. 4 days a week you're in with a chance to influence the future of 70 million people. 3 days a week you're able to help individuals and often make a visible difference to their lives. How many MPs stand down voluntarily before they reach 70 or so? Not many. It's still a hugely satisfying way to spend your time.
Interesting, eloquent and enlightening
My god, what is happening to PB? The imminent fall of Boris is turning us all into pathetic, amiable weeds
I hope the normal service of vituperative and unnecessary nastiness returns soon
Sorry to hear about the tough time you’ve been through mate. Chin up fella you’ll be fine. You’ll find some crazy woman who sorts you out. I managed it and if an emotionally stunted idiot like me can pull it off it’ll be a piece of piss for you.
Ach, thanks, but I’m pretty much fine now. I miss my ex, but I also miss really old fashioned bacon sandwiches on white bread with salty butter and white pepper and malt vinegar. I do not repine
I still have a lovely life and I am absurdly lucky in that, compared to 9999% of humanity; I have kids (troublesome but adored); I have good friends; I have interesting projects; I have a consoling if weird faith; amazingly, (touch wood, touch wood) despite my debauches, I also have health, for now
All I want is a regular squeeze. Some funny petite woman a bit nearer my age who likes wine and sun and cynical jokes
Its not just what people write on social media about you, its even if you are "off the clock" and some twat always has a camera phone ready to film absolutely anything you do. This is true for anybody in the public eye and I can't imagine it is a particularly good for you mental health.
I personally would never "volunteer" myself for something like that.
Yes, true, but I wasn't referring only to nasty comments on social media. It gets beyond that, spilling over into actual physical threats or turning up at MPs' homes and intimidating the families.
Absolutely, JRM and Corybn's homes being targeted. Totally unacceptable.
When government fears the people, there is liberty. When the people fear the government, there is tyranny.
It is very wrong of me of course, but given the complete innocence of 99% of victims of crime, the thought of evil people posting dog poo through JRM's or Jezza's letterbox leaves me strangely unmoved.
Politically motivated crimes, including harassment and violence, are corrosive for democracy. It's not because politicians are inherently more worth as people -- they aren't -- but because to defend politicians robustly from targeted crimes is to defend democracy itself.
We expect higher standards from politicians because of their position. We should also expect them to get the best level of protection anyone can have.
I completely understand why politicians retreat behind guards and walls, but it is an unhealthy distance from the real lives of people.
I heard it suggested by a politician that the only cure for the doorstepping aggression etc. will be when a suitably skilled politician delivers a physical beating on one such attacker. On camera.
Surely John Prescott did that, many years ago?
We were talking about that incident - the politician in question thought that it would take putting an assailant into hospital, with a trial and acquittal before the doorstoppers would get frightened off.
Your politician talks a good game of being well 'ard, so I don't understand why you don't name him so his 'ardness can get put to the test?
There is a curious convention here of pretending that MPs are saintly figures who work for practically the minimum wage, for pure love of their fellow man. In fact 85k is a fuck of a lot of money, that Duffield woman is topping it up with 230k expenses (presumably tax free as they are "expenses") and is not even the highest expense claimer in the HoC, that's before we get into the millions to be made from PPE fraud, and the job is, effectively, interfering in other peoples' lives. If you aren't a controlling narcissist you don't apply for the job anyway. If you are, why whine about people interfering in your life when you have made a career out of interfering in theirs? All murders are regrettable, but the murder of MPs is waaaay down the bottom of the regrettability index.
I watched on iPlayer a doc about the Blair and Brown years and was struck by the mutual admiration between them despite the clear antagonism between them at the changeover time.
I cannot wait however, if Rishi replaces Boris, for a repeat documentary in 10 years time as I don’t think there will be much love lost - will be suitably brutal I imagine…..
I'm toying with doing a thread on Sunday where I predict if Boris goes soon he will undermine his successor in the way Thatcher did to Major and take the Incredible Sulk title from Ted Heath.
Unlikely. Boris has many flaws but he’s not the type to stew in a futile sulk.
For a start he will want to make TONS of money. Sitting in the Commons sniping at Sunak (or whoever) does not serve that purpose. He will want to turn the page and do something unexpected (along with the memoirs)
He is still a man with exceptional political talents, and he is a good writer, and he has amazing contacts. How does he use all this?
If he had the concentration span and work ethic, he should get himself a gig writing fiction for Netflix.
Genius insight. That is exactly what he'll do, and be author of an updated House of Cards about a fat immoral slob who makes it to the top in English politics. If they can pay the Sussexes $18m for hebephrenic wibble, they can pay him twice that, and he can shell out a tiny fraction of it to an impoverished ghostwriter to do the actual work
Surely it has to be called "The Clown"??
Line of fruity
A loveable rogue saucy detective, men want to be him, women want to be with him, fearlessly goes after a corrupt chief prosecutor.
There is nothing our hero will not do to uncover the truth. Forcing himself to attend establishment parties, faking a persona of a fat useless journalist, losing contact with his children.
IPlayer Wednesdays at 12pm.
This week. Our hero may have gone too far with his allegations. His associates desert him. He has just 48 hours to make his charges stick or face being taken off the case, by an ambitious younger rival who speaks in sentences. Meanwhile. His home life is still in turmoil. Will he pull through? Or will he get yet another extension for an even more improbable third series?
And in an inspired bit of gender neutral casting the BBC choose the one actor who can articulate his intelligence and humanity.
It’s easy to watch from afar and criticise the lack of quality among MPs - but there’s an increasingly small number of people willing to put themselves up for such public scrutiny, especially given that most of them can lead equally lucrative and private lives away from the spotlight.
You have to be politically motivated, in which case it's mostly water off a duck's back. I had lots of friendly posts, a moderate amount of abuse, a small amount of obscene abuse and a single death threat - overall it was fine, and the nasty bits were a minor price for the chance to influence national policy in what I felt to be a positive direction. But if it had just been a way of earning a living? Hell no.
The people who get put off - and this is a serious loss - are the "public servant" types, who don't have strong opinions, but would like to help run the country well. The traditional Conservative Party was particularly strong in those, but Labour and LibDems had a good many too - typically from local council backgrounds. If you populate Parliament exclusively with people (like me) who have strong views and want radical change, you turn up the temperature of politics and risk getting characters who hate the other side (unlike me). You need a mixture of passionate reformers and steady public servants. You don't IMO really need anyone who just thinks it's a job like any other.
I think it has got a lot worse since you left parliament, though, not least because of the effect of social media and the general increase in polarisation of politics. The problem is especially bad for women MPs, and even worse for ethnic minority women MPs, but it's bad for all MPs now.
Its not just what people write on social media about you, its even if you are "off the clock" and some twat always has a camera phone ready to film absolutely anything you do. This is true for anybody in the public eye and I can't imagine it is a particularly good for you mental health.
I personally would never "volunteer" myself for something like that.
I remember once riffling through the papers in a newsagent in central Nottingham (miles away from my constituency) and my eye being caught by some sex story in the Sun. The man standing next to me guffawed and said "Ha, that's what our MP reads, eh?" I smiled vaguely and turned away but yes, it was a goldfish bowl moment. Another time a woman leant over when I was sitting on the bus and said "You're one of those dirty bastards in Parliament, aren't you?"
Social media was warming up then too, and I got 100+ emails a day, some of them nasty. But the overwhelming majority were warm, friendly and/or interesting, and I lost count of the number of times that people came up in the street or the supermarket to thank me for something - even after I'd left Parliament. I don't think it's changed all that much, judging by the local social media and by what MPs who I know tell me.
I'm sure that Richard is right about disgusting abuse to women MPs and minorities in particular, and social media does empower the misogynists and racists out there to get in one's face. But it's just a mistake to think that it's not a rewarding job. 4 days a week you're in with a chance to influence the future of 70 million people. 3 days a week you're able to help individuals and often make a visible difference to their lives. How many MPs stand down voluntarily before they reach 70 or so? Not many. It's still a hugely satisfying way to spend your time.
Interesting, eloquent and enlightening
My god, what is happening to PB? The imminent fall of Boris is turning us all into pathetic, amiable weeds
I hope the normal service of vituperative and unnecessary nastiness returns soon
Sorry to hear about the tough time you’ve been through mate. Chin up fella you’ll be fine. You’ll find some crazy woman who sorts you out. I managed it and if an emotionally stunted idiot like me can pull it off it’ll be a piece of piss for you.
Ach, thanks, but I’m pretty much fine now. I miss my ex, but I also miss really old fashioned bacon sandwiches on white bread with salty butter and white pepper and malt vinegar. I do not repine
I still have a lovely life and I am absurdly lucky in that, compared to 9999% of humanity; I have kids (troublesome but adored); I have good friends; I have interesting projects; I have a consoling if weird faith; amazingly, (touch wood, touch wood) despite my debauches, I also have health, for now
All I want is a regular squeeze. Some funny petite woman a bit nearer my age who likes wine and sun and cynical jokes
Why do you miss bacon sandwiches , plenty still available
I’m hoping that in the downing st flat right now Carrie has laid out all the newspaper cuttings about Spotify paying Harry and Meghan 18m to do nothing and Joe Rogan 100m to be a bit of an arse and saying “Boris darling, we cover both bases - just think what we can earn”…..
Yep.
And if they cross the pond, as is his birthright, then he could earn a fortune over there. He'll be able to churn out pieces for Charles Moore (Letter from America, anyone?), speaking engagements too, alongside all the other things you mention.
My sense is that Boris Johnson could indeed make a lot of money in America post-PMship.
HOWEVER, his window for monitizing himself as former prime minister on the US rubber-chicken circuit will likely be quite limited.
For one thing, Boris's brand of "humor" is not exactly to our taste; he looks like Benny Hill, but his pratfalls are verbal and many beyond our feeble, colonial ken.
Plus the fact that most American's do NOT have (or don't have much) of a clue who or what he is. Certainly nowhere near the name ID of Tony Blair or Margaret Thatcher, perhaps on the same level as John Major during his days in power.
It’s worth noting that whatever the question about Britain’s state, Rishi is not the answer.
He’s a fully paid up Treasury stooge who thinks levelling up is a waste of time.
But he’s more impressive than Boris. If I was Keir I’d be a bit concerned.
there isn't any Tory that is going to spend money levelling up - that's the problem. It's going to take a Labour party willing to look at Treasury models and destroy the appalling foundations they are built on.
Unfortunately the people who understand that earn £100,000+ way more than the Treasury fools you currently use the models and don't see the flaws or missing factors.
Hint for anyone reading infrastructure sometimes needs to be built because it solves problems.
Funny how we agree violently on this but (IIRC) disagree equally violently on immigration.
Don't think I've ever commented on immigration that much.
Were I to do so my only comment would be you allow skilled workers into the country (using a sane minimum pay level well above the average wage) and ensure that you don't allow unskilled / low paid workers in.
Sadly we can't use the tricks other European countries could use (native language tests) because everyone speaks English better than you typical English native.
It is worth noting that the most successful economies in the world - places like Switzerland and Singapore - have done such a good job upskilling their own citizens, that it is unskilled labour that their economies demand.
Both also have populations of less than 5% and have low tax so long attracted high net worth residents and financial services.
Both are also expensive to live in, so also limiting the attraction for the non high skilled and non high paid
Wait: the UK has a population of more than 172 million people???
Wow.
More seriously, let me turn the question around. Would you rather your child was educated to the level where they could be a well paid software engineer? Or would you rather they decided that we needed to have more people who were only skilled to clean toilets?
In 95% of countries the average citizen is not going to be able to be educated to be a well paid software engineer. For starters as there are only so many well paid software engineer jobs to go round globally.
We will also still need some people to clean the toilets
Show me someone who can think logically through a problem (yes, I know that automatically excludes you) and I will be able to find them a job paying more well above the average wage tomorrow and after a bit of time and experience easily £60k+
The world doesn't have a shortage of well paid software engineer jobs, there is insatiable demand for software engineers, the world has a shorter of people able to write software.
There are 7.9 billion people on earth, there are not enough software engineer or writing software jobs for the 3.95 billion who constitute half of the global population let alone all of them
But as you said the acerage person can't do the job - however there are probably twice or three times as many software developers required as exist in the world.
My point is that the demand for software developers utterly swamps the supply of them and that isn't going to be solved because most people can't think through a problem logically enough to work out how to reimplement it.
The view from my hotel window in Colombo, Sri Lanka, this moment. And this is a poor, small country by Asian standards.
Asia is just leaping ahead. People who only know the West just don’t realise. Asia is Blade Runner. All the power and the future is here
Some of us have realised, though I'd suggest including China, Asia has already leapt ahead of the west economically. Culturally Japan and Korea are making leaps and bounds. Gaming going mainstream has propelled Japanese culture into the stratosphere.
Both my daughters look at anime and K-Pop the way MY parents would have looked to Hollywood and the Beatles
The shift in power, both soft and hard, from the West to the East is now overwhelmingly obvious and quite scarily quick. China is now a more puissant nation than the USA in every way apart from the military, and some tech. No one looks to America as a social model
But there are caveats. Demography is the biggest. Even as Korea assumes cultural superpower status, it is dying out. They are simply not having babies
Guardian: Sunak didn’t say much. He didn’t have to. The comments are bound to be read by some of his colleagues as the strongest signal yet he may believe it is now time to act.
It’s worth noting that whatever the question about Britain’s state, Rishi is not the answer.
He’s a fully paid up Treasury stooge who thinks levelling up is a waste of time.
But he’s more impressive than Boris. If I was Keir I’d be a bit concerned.
there isn't any Tory that is going to spend money levelling up - that's the problem. It's going to take a Labour party willing to look at Treasury models and destroy the appalling foundations they are built on.
Unfortunately the people who understand that earn £100,000+ way more than the Treasury fools you currently use the models and don't see the flaws or missing factors.
Hint for anyone reading infrastructure sometimes needs to be built because it solves problems.
Funny how we agree violently on this but (IIRC) disagree equally violently on immigration.
Don't think I've ever commented on immigration that much.
Were I to do so my only comment would be you allow skilled workers into the country (using a sane minimum pay level well above the average wage) and ensure that you don't allow unskilled / low paid workers in.
Sadly we can't use the tricks other European countries could use (native language tests) because everyone speaks English better than you typical English native.
It is worth noting that the most successful economies in the world - places like Switzerland and Singapore - have done such a good job upskilling their own citizens, that it is unskilled labour that their economies demand.
Both also have populations of less than 5% and have low tax so long attracted high net worth residents and financial services.
Both are also expensive to live in, so also limiting the attraction for the non high skilled and non high paid
Wait: the UK has a population of more than 172 million people???
Wow.
More seriously, let me turn the question around. Would you rather your child was educated to the level where they could be a well paid software engineer? Or would you rather they decided that we needed to have more people who were only skilled to clean toilets?
In 95% of countries the average citizen is not going to be able to be educated to be a well paid software engineer. For starters as there are only so many well paid software engineer jobs to go round globally.
We will also still need some people to clean the toilets
Show me someone who can think logically through a problem (yes, I know that automatically excludes you) and I will be able to find them a job paying more well above the average wage tomorrow and after a bit of time and experience easily £60k+
The world doesn't have a shortage of well paid software engineer jobs, there is insatiable demand for software engineers, the world has a shorter of people able to write software.
Why would I want a pay cut
To stop you pestering for a pension handout from rUK workers?
Sadly I think as long as county cricket is pushed to the margins by the hundred whoever replaces him will see no more success.
He did quite well for Essex Maybe if he got Sir A back to open, made sure Lawrence was in the side and picked our two fast bowlers (Little Chef and Porter) England would have done better.
It’s worth noting that whatever the question about Britain’s state, Rishi is not the answer.
He’s a fully paid up Treasury stooge who thinks levelling up is a waste of time.
But he’s more impressive than Boris. If I was Keir I’d be a bit concerned.
there isn't any Tory that is going to spend money levelling up - that's the problem. It's going to take a Labour party willing to look at Treasury models and destroy the appalling foundations they are built on.
Unfortunately the people who understand that earn £100,000+ way more than the Treasury fools you currently use the models and don't see the flaws or missing factors.
Hint for anyone reading infrastructure sometimes needs to be built because it solves problems.
Funny how we agree violently on this but (IIRC) disagree equally violently on immigration.
Don't think I've ever commented on immigration that much.
Were I to do so my only comment would be you allow skilled workers into the country (using a sane minimum pay level well above the average wage) and ensure that you don't allow unskilled / low paid workers in.
Sadly we can't use the tricks other European countries could use (native language tests) because everyone speaks English better than you typical English native.
It is worth noting that the most successful economies in the world - places like Switzerland and Singapore - have done such a good job upskilling their own citizens, that it is unskilled labour that their economies demand.
Both also have populations of less than 5% and have low tax so long attracted high net worth residents and financial services.
Both are also expensive to live in, so also limiting the attraction for the non high skilled and non high paid
Wait: the UK has a population of more than 172 million people???
Wow.
More seriously, let me turn the question around. Would you rather your child was educated to the level where they could be a well paid software engineer? Or would you rather they decided that we needed to have more people who were only skilled to clean toilets?
In 95% of countries the average citizen is not going to be able to be educated to be a well paid software engineer. For starters as there are only so many well paid software engineer jobs to go round globally.
We will also still need some people to clean the toilets
Show me someone who can think logically through a problem (yes, I know that automatically excludes you) and I will be able to find them a job paying more well above the average wage tomorrow and after a bit of time and experience easily £60k+
The world doesn't have a shortage of well paid software engineer jobs, there is insatiable demand for software engineers, the world has a shorter of people able to write software.
There are 7.9 billion people on earth, there are not enough software engineer or writing software jobs for the 3.95 billion who constitute half of the global population let alone all of them
But as you said the acerage person can't do the job - however there are probably twice or three times as many software developers required as exist in the world.
My point is that the demand for software developers utterly swamps the supply of them and that isn't going to be solved because most people can't think through a problem logically enough to work out how to reimplement it.
You also need the right temperament and motivation. I've seen quite few very capable people have to give up because it wasn't for them. Unfortunately there are some useless characters who do take to it and make a negative impact on any project they are involved with.
It’s worth noting that whatever the question about Britain’s state, Rishi is not the answer.
He’s a fully paid up Treasury stooge who thinks levelling up is a waste of time.
But he’s more impressive than Boris. If I was Keir I’d be a bit concerned.
there isn't any Tory that is going to spend money levelling up - that's the problem. It's going to take a Labour party willing to look at Treasury models and destroy the appalling foundations they are built on.
Unfortunately the people who understand that earn £100,000+ way more than the Treasury fools you currently use the models and don't see the flaws or missing factors.
Hint for anyone reading infrastructure sometimes needs to be built because it solves problems.
Funny how we agree violently on this but (IIRC) disagree equally violently on immigration.
Don't think I've ever commented on immigration that much.
Were I to do so my only comment would be you allow skilled workers into the country (using a sane minimum pay level well above the average wage) and ensure that you don't allow unskilled / low paid workers in.
Sadly we can't use the tricks other European countries could use (native language tests) because everyone speaks English better than you typical English native.
It is worth noting that the most successful economies in the world - places like Switzerland and Singapore - have done such a good job upskilling their own citizens, that it is unskilled labour that their economies demand.
Both also have populations of less than 5% and have low tax so long attracted high net worth residents and financial services.
Both are also expensive to live in, so also limiting the attraction for the non high skilled and non high paid
Wait: the UK has a population of more than 172 million people???
Wow.
More seriously, let me turn the question around. Would you rather your child was educated to the level where they could be a well paid software engineer? Or would you rather they decided that we needed to have more people who were only skilled to clean toilets?
In 95% of countries the average citizen is not going to be able to be educated to be a well paid software engineer. For starters as there are only so many well paid software engineer jobs to go round globally.
We will also still need some people to clean the toilets
Show me someone who can think logically through a problem (yes, I know that automatically excludes you) and I will be able to find them a job paying more well above the average wage tomorrow and after a bit of time and experience easily £60k+
The world doesn't have a shortage of well paid software engineer jobs, there is insatiable demand for software engineers, the world has a shorter of people able to write software.
There are 7.9 billion people on earth, there are not enough software engineer or writing software jobs for the 3.95 billion who constitute half of the global population let alone all of them
But as you said the acerage person can't do the job - however there are probably twice or three times as many software developers required as exist in the world.
My point is that the demand for software developers utterly swamps the supply of them and that isn't going to be solved because most people can't think through a problem logically enough to work out how to reimplement it.
Rubbish. 99.99% of people competently speak at least one human language, which is way more difficult than coding in C, and .0001% (enough) can code an AI which can code in C anyway.
The view from my hotel window in Colombo, Sri Lanka, this moment. And this is a poor, small country by Asian standards.
Asia is just leaping ahead. People who only know the West just don’t realise. Asia is Blade Runner. All the power and the future is here
Some of us have realised, though I'd suggest including China, Asia has already leapt ahead of the west economically. Culturally Japan and Korea are making leaps and bounds. Gaming going mainstream has propelled Japanese culture into the stratosphere.
And pop is going Korean. The interminable diet of successful super hero movies owes a great to Chinese Wuxia too.
Lucy Fisher @LOS_Fisher BREAKING: Four of Boris Johnson's most senior officials are now leaving No 10.
The PM's chief of staff Dan Rosenfeld & his PPS Martin Reynolds are both on way out, following partygate.
News of their exit comes after departure of PM's comms chief & head of policy.
Lucy Fisher @LOS_Fisher · 2m Replying to @LOS_Fisher Martin Reynolds is returning to the Foreign Office, but it's understood that Dan Rosenfeld is leaving Govt altogether.
Back in the old days when men were men, women were women and @SeanT was interesting, there was an annual election for the leadership of the Conservative Party when the electorate was just the MPs (the members, like @HYUFD, had no say and were just told to go out, fund raise and knock on doors).
It was that election mechanism through which Thatcher was challenged first by Meyer in 1989 and then by Heseltine in 1990. The members of her Cabinet were loyal to Thatcher right up to the point when they individually told her she couldn't win at which point she quit and it was a free-for-all.
Presumably, a leader could be challenged any time - Redwood challenged Major in June 1995 as I recall but that was via Major himself resigning and putting himself up for re-election.
Was the notion of a "Vote of No Confidence" brought in by Hague? We then seemed to move to a system of a VoNC being required before a leadership election could take place - presumably there would have been an election had another candidate stood along with Howard in 2003 after IDS was defeated.
After that, Howard, Cameron and May all resigned to instigate leadership elections.
Do the No Confidence rules say for any vote of no confidence to be successful, it has to have the support of more than half the Parliamentary party or is it simply those having No Confidence being greater than those who do?
Would a 175-170 vote be adequate or does it have to be 180 (like darts)? In the first ballot in November 1990, 16 abstained out of 372 (then) Conservative MPs but that was under the more obscure rules of (I think) Humphrey Berkeley. Had five of them voted for Thatcher, she'd have been re-elected.
The second question (and I think this may have been raised on here this morning) is IF Boris Johnson loses a Vote of No Confidence, does that mean he can't run in the subsequent leadership election? Margaret Thatcher famously said it was her intention "to let her name go forward" for the second ballot (an adroit choice of words). Presumably, once the VoNC has happened, the payroll vote is no longer beholden to the Prime Minister and can move to Sunak, Truss or whoever.
It seems inconceivable Johnson could go on once defeated in a Confidence vote but is that clearly stated within the rules? Theoretically, in a leadership election you could have Johnson winning 130 votes, Sunak 120 and Truss 105 which would mean (presumably) Johnson vs Sunak to the membership. The Conservative Party members could then keep Johnson in post even when his MPs had voted him out - not sure about that.
Lucy Fisher @LOS_Fisher BREAKING: Four of Boris Johnson's most senior officials are now leaving No 10.
The PM's chief of staff Dan Rosenfeld & his PPS Martin Reynolds are both on way out, following partygate.
News of their exit comes after departure of PM's comms chief & head of policy.
Lucy Fisher @LOS_Fisher · 2m Replying to @LOS_Fisher Martin Reynolds is returning to the Foreign Office, but it's understood that Dan Rosenfeld is leaving Govt altogether.
Not enough lifeboats to get off the sinking ship now.
- Cases are flat(ish). R is clustered about 1. R remains lower for the older groups - Admissions down - MV beds down - In hospital down - Deaths down
Thanks Malmesbury. I'm glad we're able to give this less attention nowadays - it's an infinitely healthier position to be in. But I for one still enjoy getting your updates - not least from a point of general interest, but also as a marker point in the day.
I particularly wait for this summary post. The rest I really skim over now. But it is good to get your take on the overall direction of each metric without having to do the work myself
Some encouraging polling news for @HYUFD under the heading "the pendulum soon swings back".
In three countries where the centre right was defeated, polling suggests they are on the way back. In Norway, where a Labour-Centre Coalition (supported by the Socialist Left) took over from the Conservatives in September, the latest Norstat poll shows the Conservatives on 26.2% with Labour on 20%, converting a 5.9% GE deficit to a 6.2% lead in less than five months.
The combined Labour-Centre poll share was 39.8% in the election but is now 28.7%. They have until 2025 to turn it around.
In Germany, we're now seeing the Union back in the lead in polls - the latest Forsa poll has a 4-point lead (27-23) indicating a 3% swing to the CDU/CSU since last September. The combined share of the three coalition parties has fallen below 50% for the first time.
I can't let the latest NZ poll go unremarked. Kantar have taken over Colmar Brunton (I believe) so they are now the main NZ pollsters. The latest Kantar poll has Labour on 40% and National on 32% (this compares with 50-24.5 in September 2020) ACT are on 11% and Greens on 8%.
That translates to 51 seats (-14) for labour and 12 (+2) for the Greens making the existing coalition viable while National would win 41 (+8) and ACT 14 (+4). Add the two Maori Party seats for the 120 seat Parliament.
The previous Roy Morgan poll looks a bit of an outlier but we'll see how it moves - the next election is in September 2023.
They also voted in Czechia last October and there's been little change since the election. The coalition of the three SPOLU parties and the Mayors & Independents plus Pirates have a small but solid majority (108-92) in the Chamber of Deputies. The main opposition party of the former Prime Minister, Andrej Babis, still leads the polls with 29% but the vote share of the coalition has only dropped a little.
Interesting overview. In Norway, it seems a pretty clear anti-Government swing in both directions. The Social Democrat loss seems entirely due to a surge to the left - the Socialist Left (think Miliband) are up 2, and the Marxist Red List (left of Corbyn) are up 4 and have nearly doubled. But the Senterparti (liberal centrists with a rural base) have dropped 4.5%, all of it apparently going to the conservatives.
The view from my hotel window in Colombo, Sri Lanka, this moment. And this is a poor, small country by Asian standards.
Asia is just leaping ahead. People who only know the West just don’t realise. Asia is Blade Runner. All the power and the future is here
Some of us have realised, though I'd suggest including China, Asia has already leapt ahead of the west economically. Culturally Japan and Korea are making leaps and bounds. Gaming going mainstream has propelled Japanese culture into the stratosphere.
Both my daughters look at anime and K-Pop the way MY parents would have looked to Hollywood and the Beatles
The shift in power, both soft and hard, from the West to the East is now overwhelmingly obvious and quite scarily quick. China is now a more puissant nation than the USA in every way apart from the military, and some tech. No one looks to America as a social model
But there are caveats. Demography is the biggest. Even as Korea assumes cultural superpower status, it is dying out. They are simply not having babies
A paradox
Yes, part of the reason that Vietnam and other bits of SE Asia will progress. Indonesia and Phillipines too.
By the end of the century, Africa will have more people than Asia. If global warming doesn't force mass migration, that will be a major shift.
It’s worth noting that whatever the question about Britain’s state, Rishi is not the answer.
He’s a fully paid up Treasury stooge who thinks levelling up is a waste of time.
But he’s more impressive than Boris. If I was Keir I’d be a bit concerned.
there isn't any Tory that is going to spend money levelling up - that's the problem. It's going to take a Labour party willing to look at Treasury models and destroy the appalling foundations they are built on.
Unfortunately the people who understand that earn £100,000+ way more than the Treasury fools you currently use the models and don't see the flaws or missing factors.
Hint for anyone reading infrastructure sometimes needs to be built because it solves problems.
Funny how we agree violently on this but (IIRC) disagree equally violently on immigration.
Don't think I've ever commented on immigration that much.
Were I to do so my only comment would be you allow skilled workers into the country (using a sane minimum pay level well above the average wage) and ensure that you don't allow unskilled / low paid workers in.
Sadly we can't use the tricks other European countries could use (native language tests) because everyone speaks English better than you typical English native.
It is worth noting that the most successful economies in the world - places like Switzerland and Singapore - have done such a good job upskilling their own citizens, that it is unskilled labour that their economies demand.
Both also have populations of less than 5% and have low tax so long attracted high net worth residents and financial services.
Both are also expensive to live in, so also limiting the attraction for the non high skilled and non high paid
Wait: the UK has a population of more than 172 million people???
Wow.
More seriously, let me turn the question around. Would you rather your child was educated to the level where they could be a well paid software engineer? Or would you rather they decided that we needed to have more people who were only skilled to clean toilets?
In 95% of countries the average citizen is not going to be able to be educated to be a well paid software engineer. For starters as there are only so many well paid software engineer jobs to go round globally.
We will also still need some people to clean the toilets
Show me someone who can think logically through a problem (yes, I know that automatically excludes you) and I will be able to find them a job paying more well above the average wage tomorrow and after a bit of time and experience easily £60k+
The world doesn't have a shortage of well paid software engineer jobs, there is insatiable demand for software engineers, the world has a shorter of people able to write software.
There are 7.9 billion people on earth, there are not enough software engineer or writing software jobs for the 3.95 billion who constitute half of the global population let alone all of them
But as you said the acerage person can't do the job - however there are probably twice or three times as many software developers required as exist in the world.
My point is that the demand for software developers utterly swamps the supply of them and that isn't going to be solved because most people can't think through a problem logically enough to work out how to reimplement it.
Rubbish. 99.99% of people competently speak at least one human language, which is way more difficult than coding in C, and .0001% (enough) can code an AI which can code in C anyway.
Ummm: all you are doing is moving the problem. Someone has to talk to the AI in a language the AI understands, and make sure that the AI understands all the edge cases, and is aware that the following API breaks if handed Unicode text, and that AI writes the correct documentation in a format another AI at another company understands.
I’m not saying that the Johnson support club is now down to its irreducible core, but (per Sebastian Payne), Dorries is all they have for tomorrow’s broadcast round.
At this rate by next week it will be HYFUD that will be traipsing from The Today studios to Newsround.
I would like the ermine though Boris before you go. Lord HYUFD of Epping would be fine
It’s easy to watch from afar and criticise the lack of quality among MPs - but there’s an increasingly small number of people willing to put themselves up for such public scrutiny, especially given that most of them can lead equally lucrative and private lives away from the spotlight.
You have to be politically motivated, in which case it's mostly water off a duck's back. I had lots of friendly posts, a moderate amount of abuse, a small amount of obscene abuse and a single death threat - overall it was fine, and the nasty bits were a minor price for the chance to influence national policy in what I felt to be a positive direction. But if it had just been a way of earning a living? Hell no.
The people who get put off - and this is a serious loss - are the "public servant" types, who don't have strong opinions, but would like to help run the country well. The traditional Conservative Party was particularly strong in those, but Labour and LibDems had a good many too - typically from local council backgrounds. If you populate Parliament exclusively with people (like me) who have strong views and want radical change, you turn up the temperature of politics and risk getting characters who hate the other side (unlike me). You need a mixture of passionate reformers and steady public servants. You don't IMO really need anyone who just thinks it's a job like any other.
I think it has got a lot worse since you left parliament, though, not least because of the effect of social media and the general increase in polarisation of politics. The problem is especially bad for women MPs, and even worse for ethnic minority women MPs, but it's bad for all MPs now.
Its not just what people write on social media about you, its even if you are "off the clock" and some twat always has a camera phone ready to film absolutely anything you do. This is true for anybody in the public eye and I can't imagine it is a particularly good for you mental health.
I personally would never "volunteer" myself for something like that.
I remember once riffling through the papers in a newsagent in central Nottingham (miles away from my constituency) and my eye being caught by some sex story in the Sun. The man standing next to me guffawed and said "Ha, that's what our MP reads, eh?" I smiled vaguely and turned away but yes, it was a goldfish bowl moment. Another time a woman leant over when I was sitting on the bus and said "You're one of those dirty bastards in Parliament, aren't you?"
Social media was warming up then too, and I got 100+ emails a day, some of them nasty. But the overwhelming majority were warm, friendly and/or interesting, and I lost count of the number of times that people came up in the street or the supermarket to thank me for something - even after I'd left Parliament. I don't think it's changed all that much, judging by the local social media and by what MPs who I know tell me.
I'm sure that Richard is right about disgusting abuse to women MPs and minorities in particular, and social media does empower the misogynists and racists out there to get in one's face. But it's just a mistake to think that it's not a rewarding job. 4 days a week you're in with a chance to influence the future of 70 million people. 3 days a week you're able to help individuals and often make a visible difference to their lives. How many MPs stand down voluntarily before they reach 70 or so? Not many. It's still a hugely satisfying way to spend your time.
Interesting, eloquent and enlightening
My god, what is happening to PB? The imminent fall of Boris is turning us all into pathetic, amiable weeds
I hope the normal service of vituperative and unnecessary nastiness returns soon
Sorry to hear about the tough time you’ve been through mate. Chin up fella you’ll be fine. You’ll find some crazy woman who sorts you out. I managed it and if an emotionally stunted idiot like me can pull it off it’ll be a piece of piss for you.
Ach, thanks, but I’m pretty much fine now. I miss my ex, but I also miss really old fashioned bacon sandwiches on white bread with salty butter and white pepper and malt vinegar. I do not repine
I still have a lovely life and I am absurdly lucky in that, compared to 9999% of humanity; I have kids (troublesome but adored); I have good friends; I have interesting projects; I have a consoling if weird faith; amazingly, (touch wood, touch wood) despite my debauches, I also have health, for now
All I want is a regular squeeze. Some funny petite woman a bit nearer my age who likes wine and sun and cynical jokes
Why do you miss bacon sandwiches , plenty still available
The spineless Tory MPs who still haven’t put letters in will spin these departures as a reason to support the clown seeing as “ he has listened to us blah blah “ .
Lucy Fisher @LOS_Fisher BREAKING: Four of Boris Johnson's most senior officials are now leaving No 10.
The PM's chief of staff Dan Rosenfeld & his PPS Martin Reynolds are both on way out, following partygate.
News of their exit comes after departure of PM's comms chief & head of policy.
Lucy Fisher @LOS_Fisher · 2m Replying to @LOS_Fisher Martin Reynolds is returning to the Foreign Office, but it's understood that Dan Rosenfeld is leaving Govt altogether.
Not enough lifeboats to get off the sinking ship now.
Before we get too excited, let's not forget it was trailed that he was going to be ditching a number to save his skin anyway. So still a sign of desperation, but some of them are him 'getting a grip' and some are people telling him to do one.
Lucy Fisher @LOS_Fisher BREAKING: Four of Boris Johnson's most senior officials are now leaving No 10.
The PM's chief of staff Dan Rosenfeld & his PPS Martin Reynolds are both on way out, following partygate.
News of their exit comes after departure of PM's comms chief & head of policy.
Lucy Fisher @LOS_Fisher · 2m Replying to @LOS_Fisher Martin Reynolds is returning to the Foreign Office, but it's understood that Dan Rosenfeld is leaving Govt altogether.
Not enough lifeboats to get off the sinking ship now.
I watched on iPlayer a doc about the Blair and Brown years and was struck by the mutual admiration between them despite the clear antagonism between them at the changeover time.
I cannot wait however, if Rishi replaces Boris, for a repeat documentary in 10 years time as I don’t think there will be much love lost - will be suitably brutal I imagine…..
I'm toying with doing a thread on Sunday where I predict if Boris goes soon he will undermine his successor in the way Thatcher did to Major and take the Incredible Sulk title from Ted Heath.
Unlikely. Boris has many flaws but he’s not the type to stew in a futile sulk.
For a start he will want to make TONS of money. Sitting in the Commons sniping at Sunak (or whoever) does not serve that purpose. He will want to turn the page and do something unexpected (along with the memoirs)
He is still a man with exceptional political talents, and he is a good writer, and he has amazing contacts. How does he use all this?
Of course he'll want to stay in Parliament and become a Churchillian second split term Prime Minister, and in the meantime make barrow loads of cash.
I expect two LD holds in Dacorum, an LD gain from Con in Cotswold. A Labour hold in Manchester and a Con hold in Tamworth. There is also a by election on Leicester. I don't know how local issues and Claudia Webbe would affect things but still lean towards a Labour hold there.
BREAKING. Carrie Johnson has resigned as the prime minister's current wife. "This has nothing to do with PartyGate. God knows I never planned to do this job for ever", she was quoted as saying.
It’s worth noting that whatever the question about Britain’s state, Rishi is not the answer.
He’s a fully paid up Treasury stooge who thinks levelling up is a waste of time.
But he’s more impressive than Boris. If I was Keir I’d be a bit concerned.
there isn't any Tory that is going to spend money levelling up - that's the problem. It's going to take a Labour party willing to look at Treasury models and destroy the appalling foundations they are built on.
Unfortunately the people who understand that earn £100,000+ way more than the Treasury fools you currently use the models and don't see the flaws or missing factors.
Hint for anyone reading infrastructure sometimes needs to be built because it solves problems.
Funny how we agree violently on this but (IIRC) disagree equally violently on immigration.
Don't think I've ever commented on immigration that much.
Were I to do so my only comment would be you allow skilled workers into the country (using a sane minimum pay level well above the average wage) and ensure that you don't allow unskilled / low paid workers in.
Sadly we can't use the tricks other European countries could use (native language tests) because everyone speaks English better than you typical English native.
It is worth noting that the most successful economies in the world - places like Switzerland and Singapore - have done such a good job upskilling their own citizens, that it is unskilled labour that their economies demand.
Both also have populations of less than 5% and have low tax so long attracted high net worth residents and financial services.
Both are also expensive to live in, so also limiting the attraction for the non high skilled and non high paid
Wait: the UK has a population of more than 172 million people???
Wow.
More seriously, let me turn the question around. Would you rather your child was educated to the level where they could be a well paid software engineer? Or would you rather they decided that we needed to have more people who were only skilled to clean toilets?
In 95% of countries the average citizen is not going to be able to be educated to be a well paid software engineer. For starters as there are only so many well paid software engineer jobs to go round globally.
We will also still need some people to clean the toilets
Show me someone who can think logically through a problem (yes, I know that automatically excludes you) and I will be able to find them a job paying more well above the average wage tomorrow and after a bit of time and experience easily £60k+
The world doesn't have a shortage of well paid software engineer jobs, there is insatiable demand for software engineers, the world has a shorter of people able to write software.
There are 7.9 billion people on earth, there are not enough software engineer or writing software jobs for the 3.95 billion who constitute half of the global population let alone all of them
Software engineer, in my case, was a euphamism for 'job that requires above average skills on a global scale'.
But let me ask you a question.
Bob (17) of Ashford is capable of being trained to be an accountant or a solicitor or a web developer or whatever. Should we train him to do that job? Or would it be better to import someone high skilled to do it, and to get Bob to clean toilets?
This is the new levelling down agenda. To avoid any danger of the UK economy requiring lower skilled workers, we will avoid training people up to do jobs that might result in higher than average wages.
Unless Tom Harrison and frankly most of the staff of the ECB go too, it will make very little difference.
They don't make the DfE look competent, but that's only because some things are just impossible.
If Richard Dawson becomes head coach, that might be bad news for your health though, as he was James Bracey's coach for years and is a great admirer of his wicketkeeping...
It’s worth noting that whatever the question about Britain’s state, Rishi is not the answer.
He’s a fully paid up Treasury stooge who thinks levelling up is a waste of time.
But he’s more impressive than Boris. If I was Keir I’d be a bit concerned.
there isn't any Tory that is going to spend money levelling up - that's the problem. It's going to take a Labour party willing to look at Treasury models and destroy the appalling foundations they are built on.
Unfortunately the people who understand that earn £100,000+ way more than the Treasury fools you currently use the models and don't see the flaws or missing factors.
Hint for anyone reading infrastructure sometimes needs to be built because it solves problems.
Funny how we agree violently on this but (IIRC) disagree equally violently on immigration.
Don't think I've ever commented on immigration that much.
Were I to do so my only comment would be you allow skilled workers into the country (using a sane minimum pay level well above the average wage) and ensure that you don't allow unskilled / low paid workers in.
Sadly we can't use the tricks other European countries could use (native language tests) because everyone speaks English better than you typical English native.
It is worth noting that the most successful economies in the world - places like Switzerland and Singapore - have done such a good job upskilling their own citizens, that it is unskilled labour that their economies demand.
Both also have populations of less than 5% and have low tax so long attracted high net worth residents and financial services.
Both are also expensive to live in, so also limiting the attraction for the non high skilled and non high paid
Wait: the UK has a population of more than 172 million people???
Wow.
More seriously, let me turn the question around. Would you rather your child was educated to the level where they could be a well paid software engineer? Or would you rather they decided that we needed to have more people who were only skilled to clean toilets?
In 95% of countries the average citizen is not going to be able to be educated to be a well paid software engineer. For starters as there are only so many well paid software engineer jobs to go round globally.
We will also still need some people to clean the toilets
Show me someone who can think logically through a problem (yes, I know that automatically excludes you) and I will be able to find them a job paying more well above the average wage tomorrow and after a bit of time and experience easily £60k+
The world doesn't have a shortage of well paid software engineer jobs, there is insatiable demand for software engineers, the world has a shorter of people able to write software.
There are 7.9 billion people on earth, there are not enough software engineer or writing software jobs for the 3.95 billion who constitute half of the global population let alone all of them
But as you said the acerage person can't do the job - however there are probably twice or three times as many software developers required as exist in the world.
My point is that the demand for software developers utterly swamps the supply of them and that isn't going to be solved because most people can't think through a problem logically enough to work out how to reimplement it.
Rubbish. 99.99% of people competently speak at least one human language, which is way more difficult than coding in C, and .0001% (enough) can code an AI which can code in C anyway.
Ummm: all you are doing is moving the problem. Someone has to talk to the AI in a language the AI understands, and make sure that the AI understands all the edge cases, and is aware that the following API breaks if handed Unicode text, and that AI writes the correct documentation in a format another AI at another company understands.
But yes, other than that, spot on.
But it gets easier with every move of the problem. It is easier to tell a WYSIWYG editor to write you some html than it is to write the html. And so on.
Who on earth is going to want to work in No.10? Johnson will just throw you under the bus
I was fooled by the advert, which said that it offered exciting opportunities to see the inner workings of an iconic symbol of London, propelled by the Prime Minister.
I’m hoping that in the downing st flat right now Carrie has laid out all the newspaper cuttings about Spotify paying Harry and Meghan 18m to do nothing and Joe Rogan 100m to be a bit of an arse and saying “Boris darling, we cover both bases - just think what we can earn”…..
Yep.
And if they cross the pond, as is his birthright, then he could earn a fortune over there. He'll be able to churn out pieces for Charles Moore (Letter from America, anyone?), speaking engagements too, alongside all the other things you mention.
My sense is that Boris Johnson could indeed make a lot of money in America post-PMship.
HOWEVER, his window for monitizing himself as former prime minister on the US rubber-chicken circuit will likely be quite limited.
For one thing, Boris's brand of "humor" is not exactly to our taste; he looks like Benny Hill, but his pratfalls are verbal and many beyond our feeble, colonial ken.
Plus the fact that most American's do NOT have (or don't have much) of a clue who or what he is. Certainly nowhere near the name ID of Tony Blair or Margaret Thatcher, perhaps on the same level as John Major during his days in power.
Boris Johnson's shtick doesn't really work outside of England. Even the Scots think he's a pillock.
A reign that started with axeing large numbers of Ministers, moved on to expelling long standing MPs, and has since been going through senior officials at a rapid rate. Classic behaviour of an insecure leader who can only accept praise, and can't take responsibility.
I’m hoping that in the downing st flat right now Carrie has laid out all the newspaper cuttings about Spotify paying Harry and Meghan 18m to do nothing and Joe Rogan 100m to be a bit of an arse and saying “Boris darling, we cover both bases - just think what we can earn”…..
Yep.
And if they cross the pond, as is his birthright, then he could earn a fortune over there. He'll be able to churn out pieces for Charles Moore (Letter from America, anyone?), speaking engagements too, alongside all the other things you mention.
My sense is that Boris Johnson could indeed make a lot of money in America post-PMship.
HOWEVER, his window for monitizing himself as former prime minister on the US rubber-chicken circuit will likely be quite limited.
For one thing, Boris's brand of "humor" is not exactly to our taste; he looks like Benny Hill, but his pratfalls are verbal and many beyond our feeble, colonial ken.
Plus the fact that most American's do NOT have (or don't have much) of a clue who or what he is. Certainly nowhere near the name ID of Tony Blair or Margaret Thatcher, perhaps on the same level as John Major during his days in power.
Boris Johnson's shtick doesn't really work outside of England. Even the Scots think he's a pillock.
Lucy Fisher @LOS_Fisher BREAKING: Four of Boris Johnson's most senior officials are now leaving No 10.
The PM's chief of staff Dan Rosenfeld & his PPS Martin Reynolds are both on way out, following partygate.
News of their exit comes after departure of PM's comms chief & head of policy.
Lucy Fisher @LOS_Fisher · 2m Replying to @LOS_Fisher Martin Reynolds is returning to the Foreign Office, but it's understood that Dan Rosenfeld is leaving Govt altogether.
I did plead for the whole lot of them to go when I discovered Partygate.
I just need Boris, Carrie and Simon Case gone and I’ll be happy(ish).
Is the Bank really telling people not to ask for pay rises?
The Governor is, basically, yes.
The Governor can fuck off.
What's the quote or section in question, out of interest?
Repeated from down thread:
Workers must not ask for big pay rises to try and stop prices rising out of control, the Bank of England governor has told the BBC.
Andrew Bailey said the Bank raised rates to 0.5% from 0.25% to prevent rising prices becoming “ingrained”.
Asked if the Bank was also implicitly asking workers not to demand big pay rises, he said: “Broadly, yes”, the BBC reports.
Mr Bailey said that while it would be “painful” for workers to accept that prices would rise faster than their wages, he added that some “moderation of wage rises” was needed to prevent inflation becoming entrenched.
“In the sense of saying, we do need to see a moderation of wage rises, now that’s painful. I don’t want to in any sense sugar that, it is painful. But we need to see that in order to get through this problem more quickly.”
Comments
Chris Silverwood has gone.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/cricket/59754595
This was a man killed doing what was necessary for our lifestyle to function.
He didn't work for me directly - I don't live in Southend - but I do feel a sense of ownership. I may not advocate his views, but I believe very strongly in the principle of representative democracy. He's basically employed by me doing something I paid him to do. Of course I feel more strongly. As I would over, say, a policeman or a teacher killed while doing their jobs.
There really won’t be a need for toilet cleaners, very soon . And that is a good thing, it is not a nice job
One of the worst parts of the No.10 PartyGate saga? Being reminded that Boris Johnson calls Carrie "Little Otter".
This is a wonderful site and brings together interesting people who would otherwise never meet and interact. It makes you think. But it does, sadly, like much of the internet, suffer for not being face to face, missing tone of voice, facial expressions, body language, etc, etc. I suppose we could start a zoom call for each thread. But on a seconds reflection, perhaps not! No-one wants to see my ugly mug.
A loveable rogue saucy detective, men want to be him, women want to be with him, fearlessly goes after a corrupt chief prosecutor.
There is nothing our hero will not do to uncover the truth. Forcing himself to attend establishment parties, faking a persona of a fat useless journalist, losing contact with his children.
IPlayer Wednesdays at 12pm.
The world doesn't have a shortage of well paid software engineer jobs, there is insatiable demand for software engineers, the world has a shorter of people able to write software.
Asia is just leaping ahead. People who only know the West just don’t realise. Asia is Blade Runner. All the power and the future is here
However most of the global population live in Asia so it is hardly surprising it will hold the largest economies
In fact given today's news you would be expect Sunak or the Business Secretary to do tomorrow's media rounds so it's curious that it's the Culture secretary doing it.
Some encouraging polling news for @HYUFD under the heading "the pendulum soon swings back".
In three countries where the centre right was defeated, polling suggests they are on the way back. In Norway, where a Labour-Centre Coalition (supported by the Socialist Left) took over from the Conservatives in September, the latest Norstat poll shows the Conservatives on 26.2% with Labour on 20%, converting a 5.9% GE deficit to a 6.2% lead in less than five months.
The combined Labour-Centre poll share was 39.8% in the election but is now 28.7%. They have until 2025 to turn it around.
In Germany, we're now seeing the Union back in the lead in polls - the latest Forsa poll has a 4-point lead (27-23) indicating a 3% swing to the CDU/CSU since last September. The combined share of the three coalition parties has fallen below 50% for the first time.
I can't let the latest NZ poll go unremarked. Kantar have taken over Colmar Brunton (I believe) so they are now the main NZ pollsters. The latest Kantar poll has Labour on 40% and National on 32% (this compares with 50-24.5 in September 2020) ACT are on 11% and Greens on 8%.
That translates to 51 seats (-14) for labour and 12 (+2) for the Greens making the existing coalition viable while National would win 41 (+8) and ACT 14 (+4). Add the two Maori Party seats for the 120 seat Parliament.
The previous Roy Morgan poll looks a bit of an outlier but we'll see how it moves - the next election is in September 2023.
They also voted in Czechia last October and there's been little change since the election. The coalition of the three SPOLU parties and the Mayors & Independents plus Pirates have a small but solid majority (108-92) in the Chamber of Deputies. The main opposition party of the former Prime Minister, Andrej Babis, still leads the polls with 29% but the vote share of the coalition has only dropped a little.
Meanwhile. His home life is still in turmoil.
Will he pull through? Or will he get yet another extension for an even more improbable third series?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franz_Nopcsa_von_Felső-Szilvás
"To cover his debts, he sold his fossil collection to the Natural History Museum in London.[...] . Finally, in 1933, he fatally shot first his partner, Bayazid Elmas Doda, after having slipped sleeping powder into his tea.[12][19] He then wrote a suicide note, where he states the reason for his actions a nervous breakdown, and shot himself.[1][9][...] In his suicide note, he describes his reasons for killing his lover:[1]
The reason that I shot my longtime friend and secretary, Mr Bayazid Elmas Doda, in his sleep without his suspecting at all is that I did not wish to leave him behind sick, in misery and without a penny, because he would have suffered too much.
Nopcsa left behind a considerable quantity of scientific publications and private diaries. The diaries paint a picture of a complex man with great intuition, but without the ability to understand the motives of others. His devotion to the cause of the Albanians was in contrast to his sociopathic insensitivity. In his diaries he nonchalantly wrote about his bid to become king of Albania:[20]
'Once a reigning European monarch, I would have no difficulty coming up with the further funds needed by marrying a wealthy American heiress aspiring to royalty, a step which under other circumstances I would have been loath to take."
"They are not a matter for unjustified smears as part of the “cut and thrust of Parliamentary debates”. "
From Munira Mirza's resignation letter today -
"This was not the usual cut and thrust of politics; it was an inappropriate and partisan reference to a horrendous case of child sex abuse."
Arse-2-D2
Pee-Pee-8
I still have a lovely life and I am absurdly lucky in that, compared to 9999% of humanity; I have kids (troublesome but adored); I have good friends; I have interesting projects; I have a consoling if weird faith; amazingly, (touch wood, touch wood) despite my debauches, I also have health, for now
All I want is a regular squeeze. Some funny petite woman a bit nearer my age who likes wine and sun and cynical jokes
There is a curious convention here of pretending that MPs are saintly figures who work for practically the minimum wage, for pure love of their fellow man. In fact 85k is a fuck of a lot of money, that Duffield woman is topping it up with 230k expenses (presumably tax free as they are "expenses") and is not even the highest expense claimer in the HoC, that's before we get into the millions to be made from PPE fraud, and the job is, effectively, interfering in other peoples' lives. If you aren't a controlling narcissist you don't apply for the job anyway. If you are, why whine about people interfering in your life when you have made a career out of interfering in theirs? All murders are regrettable, but the murder of MPs is waaaay down the bottom of the regrettability index.
HOWEVER, his window for monitizing himself as former prime minister on the US rubber-chicken circuit will likely be quite limited.
For one thing, Boris's brand of "humor" is not exactly to our taste; he looks like Benny Hill, but his pratfalls are verbal and many beyond our feeble, colonial ken.
Plus the fact that most American's do NOT have (or don't have much) of a clue who or what he is. Certainly nowhere near the name ID of Tony Blair or Margaret Thatcher, perhaps on the same level as John Major during his days in power.
My point is that the demand for software developers utterly swamps the supply of them and that isn't going to be solved because most people can't think through a problem logically enough to work out how to reimplement it.
The shift in power, both soft and hard, from the West to the East is now overwhelmingly obvious and quite scarily quick. China is now a more puissant nation than the USA in every way apart from the military, and some tech. No one looks to America as a social model
But there are caveats. Demography is the biggest. Even as Korea assumes cultural superpower status, it is dying out. They are simply not having babies
A paradox
The interminable diet of successful super hero movies owes a great to Chinese Wuxia too.
@LOS_Fisher
BREAKING: Four of Boris Johnson's most senior officials are now leaving No 10.
The PM's chief of staff Dan Rosenfeld & his PPS Martin Reynolds are both on way out, following partygate.
News of their exit comes after departure of PM's comms chief & head of policy.
Lucy Fisher
@LOS_Fisher
·
2m
Replying to
@LOS_Fisher
Martin Reynolds is returning to the Foreign Office, but it's understood that Dan Rosenfeld is leaving Govt altogether.
Back in the old days when men were men, women were women and @SeanT was interesting, there was an annual election for the leadership of the Conservative Party when the electorate was just the MPs (the members, like @HYUFD, had no say and were just told to go out, fund raise and knock on doors).
It was that election mechanism through which Thatcher was challenged first by Meyer in 1989 and then by Heseltine in 1990. The members of her Cabinet were loyal to Thatcher right up to the point when they individually told her she couldn't win at which point she quit and it was a free-for-all.
Presumably, a leader could be challenged any time - Redwood challenged Major in June 1995 as I recall but that was via Major himself resigning and putting himself up for re-election.
Was the notion of a "Vote of No Confidence" brought in by Hague? We then seemed to move to a system of a VoNC being required before a leadership election could take place - presumably there would have been an election had another candidate stood along with Howard in 2003 after IDS was defeated.
After that, Howard, Cameron and May all resigned to instigate leadership elections.
Do the No Confidence rules say for any vote of no confidence to be successful, it has to have the support of more than half the Parliamentary party or is it simply those having No Confidence being greater than those who do?
Would a 175-170 vote be adequate or does it have to be 180 (like darts)? In the first ballot in November 1990, 16 abstained out of 372 (then) Conservative MPs but that was under the more obscure rules of (I think) Humphrey Berkeley. Had five of them voted for Thatcher, she'd have been re-elected.
The second question (and I think this may have been raised on here this morning) is IF Boris Johnson loses a Vote of No Confidence, does that mean he can't run in the subsequent leadership election? Margaret Thatcher famously said it was her intention "to let her name go forward" for the second ballot (an adroit choice of words). Presumably, once the VoNC has happened, the payroll vote is no longer beholden to the Prime Minister and can move to Sunak, Truss or whoever.
It seems inconceivable Johnson could go on once defeated in a Confidence vote but is that clearly stated within the rules? Theoretically, in a leadership election you could have Johnson winning 130 votes, Sunak 120 and Truss 105 which would mean (presumably) Johnson vs Sunak to the membership. The Conservative Party members could then keep Johnson in post even when his MPs had voted him out - not sure about that.
BJ gone by end March now in to 5 from 8 this afternoon
GOTTERDAMERUNG
By the end of the century, Africa will have more people than Asia. If global warming doesn't force mass migration, that will be a major shift.
But yes, other than that, spot on.
The Governor can fuck off.
Although the Baggies' last Newcastle reject but one was a spectacular disaster.
I bring order and discipline to the role.
I expect two LD holds in Dacorum, an LD gain from Con in Cotswold. A Labour hold in Manchester and a Con hold in
Tamworth. There is also a by election on Leicester. I don't know how local issues and Claudia Webbe would affect things but still lean towards a Labour hold there.
But let me ask you a question.
Bob (17) of Ashford is capable of being trained to be an accountant or a solicitor or a web developer or whatever. Should we train him to do that job? Or would it be better to import someone high skilled to do it, and to get Bob to clean toilets?
This is the new levelling down agenda. To avoid any danger of the UK economy requiring lower skilled workers, we will avoid training people up to do jobs that might result in higher than average wages.
They don't make the DfE look competent, but that's only because some things are just impossible.
If Richard Dawson becomes head coach, that might be bad news for your health though, as he was James Bracey's coach for years and is a great admirer of his wicketkeeping...
A reign that started with axeing large numbers of Ministers, moved on to expelling long standing MPs, and has since been going through senior officials at a rapid rate. Classic behaviour of an insecure leader who can only accept praise, and can't take responsibility.
I just need Boris, Carrie and Simon Case gone and I’ll be happy(ish).
Ah, "Changing picture: Greg Hands, energy minister, is doing the government's morning broadcast round.
Culture secretary Nadine Dorries lined up for Saturday."
https://twitter.com/SebastianEPayne/status/1489318291520774153?s=20&t=pOCvRrYM60RUKD0btJpqQw
Workers must not ask for big pay rises to try and stop prices rising out of control, the Bank of England governor has told the BBC.
Andrew Bailey said the Bank raised rates to 0.5% from 0.25% to prevent rising prices becoming “ingrained”.
Asked if the Bank was also implicitly asking workers not to demand big pay rises, he said: “Broadly, yes”, the BBC reports.
Mr Bailey said that while it would be “painful” for workers to accept that prices would rise faster than their wages, he added that some “moderation of wage rises” was needed to prevent inflation becoming entrenched.
“In the sense of saying, we do need to see a moderation of wage rises, now that’s painful. I don’t want to in any sense sugar that, it is painful. But we need to see that in order to get through this problem more quickly.”
https://www.theguardian.com/business/live/2022/feb/03/cost-of-living-crunch-energy-bills-price-cap-uk-interest-rates-bank-of-england-business-live
The median UK salary is about £31,000. The salary of the Governor of the Bank of England is £495,000.