https://twitter.com/ThomasPride/status/1519898855927603201 “If I am ever asked to produce my ID card as evidence that I am who I say I am I will take that card out of my wallet and physically eat it in the presence of whatever emanation of the state has demanded that I produce it.” @BorisJohnson 2004.
Yesterday Johnson passed a law ...
... making it compulsory for voters to produce photo ID when voting.
Isn’t that opposition to ID cards rather than opposition to photo ID? Otherwise he’d have to eat his passport every time he came back from abroad.
https://twitter.com/ThomasPride/status/1519898855927603201 “If I am ever asked to produce my ID card as evidence that I am who I say I am I will take that card out of my wallet and physically eat it in the presence of whatever emanation of the state has demanded that I produce it.” @BorisJohnson 2004.
Yesterday Johnson passed a law ...
... making it compulsory for voters to produce photo ID when voting.
Proof of identity for voting is not the same as proof of identity for living, of course.
It’s not just about nerve Mike, it’s about the replacement. I think Truss just blew it.
How did Truss blow it exactly?
By being on the same page as Joe Biden that we need to do more to support Ukraine?
That might upset a few who want Britain to be appeasers of Russia but I don't think many of those will have a say in the next Tory leadership race or be able to get one of their own to be Prime Minister - I'd certainly hope not.
The Truss story prompted R4 Today to report on the UK’s “war aims” (sic). War aims? WAR AIMS?? The UK has war aims? That will be news to most folk. When did the UK declare war?
Truss just blew it.
You're mental.
Yes the UK has war aims. That won't be news to anyone who isn't wanting Putin to win the war.
Them bastard Commie perverts, eh?
Posts like this make me think maybe get your blood pressure checked out.
Volodymyr Zelensky refused to be evacuated from his compound in Kyiv even as Russian assassination squads parachuted into the capital and tried to storm the building to kill him.
At the start of the invasion on Feb 24 those inside defended themselves with automatic weapons and erected defences as the Russians twice tried to storm them at night.
A back gate was blocked with only plywood boards and police barricades.
According to an account of the crisis given by presidential adviser Oleksiy Arestovych to TIME, Mr Zelensky was urged to leave and go to a secure facility away from Kyiv.
Both British and US forces offered to evacuate Mr Zelensky and allow him to set up a government in exile, probably in Poland, but he never seriously thought about it.
https://twitter.com/ThomasPride/status/1519898855927603201 “If I am ever asked to produce my ID card as evidence that I am who I say I am I will take that card out of my wallet and physically eat it in the presence of whatever emanation of the state has demanded that I produce it.” @BorisJohnson 2004.
Yesterday Johnson passed a law ...
... making it compulsory for voters to produce photo ID when voting.
Isn’t that opposition to ID cards rather than opposition to photo ID? Otherwise he’d have to eat his passport every time he came back from abroad.
Exactly. I'm yet to hear any justification from opponents of this change why voting should be less secure than picking up a parcel from the sorting office.
Apparently it was an 'honest mistake' when they said Ms. Rayner wasn't there....
Oh, what a surprise.
If you’re going to go in really hard on your political opponents, for relative trivialities from two years ago, then you’d better be sure that you’re whiter than white yourself.
Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
The Durham police not going after Starmer as it would be selective, as would have been Cummings case, is problematic. How many parties/events from 2020 are the met investigating?
I really do not know but this has the potential to become a story of one rule for the PM and another for the leader and deputy leader of the labour party
It does. But the problem the Tories have here is that Johnson broke the rules he imposed on everyone else and Starmer didn’t. However much the Mail might dissemble in seeking to show otherwise, that’s the bottom line.
Do you really believe that
Starmer backed the law and indeed wanted stronger restrictions and this event does seem to breach the rules at the time but Durham Police have effectively called it a timed out event when the Met Police correctly hand Boris a FPN
Even if Durham Police behaved correctly (does that imply the Med did not?), the whole thing looks highly dodgy.
Starmer's main selling point is that he is not a clown, but a highly-experienced, highly-competent lawyer. It's fair enough saying that Johnson should have known the law because he drafted it; Starmer should have known because that's his USP.
Starmer did know the law - because Durham Police investigated and found nothing wrong first time round nor are they investigating it a second time regardless of what Guido read into that FOI request
All I'm seeing with the continual focus on this non-event is that the Tories are desperate to deflect the blame and don't have anything to work with..
That’s not really the point. Look at Big_G - he doesn’t want BJ as PM (I think) but he obviously thinks this should be investigated further. There are going to be a fair few people who look at this and think SKS’s a sanctimonious hypocrite. Given Labour already has a certain branding problem in that department, it’s not helpful.
Yes, a few Tories will pretend they are worried about justice not being done. The vast majority of people will see the Mail campaign for what it is: a desperate attempt to negate the very damaging fact that the vast majority of the electorate believe the leader of the Conservative party is a grifting liar.
But the Tories won't go into the next election with their "grifting liar".
Labour will go into it with their sanctimonious hypocrite of a leader and his "hmmmmm....." deputy.
We'll see. But I do agree that dyed-in-the-wool Tories hate Starmer in a way they have not hated a Labour leader for a long time.
Absurd. I’m not a Tory. Yet I revile the left pretty much in its entirety - certainly the elite. So you could say I’m definitely on the right (whatever these terms mean any more, increasingly very little)
I loathed Corbyn, and I mean LOATHED. His election would have filled me with fear and anger
If Starmer, his immediate successor, is elected, I will sigh and feel a little gloomy but get on with my life 10 minutes later
That's a strange comment from @SouthamObserver which is plainly completely misguided.
Tories loathe Starmer more than Corbyn? Weird.
They may not much like Starmer - as he's Labour - but he's not the existential threat to our values that Corbyn appeared to be. For instance, Sir Keir has been pretty solid on Ukraine. Nah, from a dyed-in-the-wool Tory perspective Labour could have done a lot worse.
@SouthamObserver is one of those strange people who puts party loyalty above country. He hates all Tories and he hates, especially, popular Tories that win elections (like Thatcher or Boris). He presumes others are as deviant as him. We are not
The Tories are tired, corrupt and they’ve run out of ideas. It is time for someone else. I really really wish the alternative was more inspiring than Kir Royale Starmer but he’s orders of magnitude preferable to Corbyn.
That said, I can still see Boris sneaking a win in 2024. Partly because Starmer is so dreary. Also because the times are so strange. We could be deeply immersed in ongoing cold/hot war in 2024
At least be doesn’t pretend. You’re one of the biggest Tories on this site
In my life I’ve voted
Tory Green Lib Dem English Democrat Mebyon Kernow UKIP And Binface
I’ve also abstained several times, on principle. And I’ve never been a member of ANY party
If that makes me ‘a Tory’ then you’re just being juvenile and tiresome in defining anyone who ‘doesn’t support Labour’ as ‘Tory’
Incidentally I do believe we are fast approaching the time when the terms ‘left’ and ‘right’ must be retired. They date from the French Revolution. What do they even mean any more?
eg take me
I’m an old school feminist. I’m quite environmentalist (save our rivers!). I’m highly relaxed about ‘most’ immigration. I regret the loss of EU Freedom of Movement. I dislike private education and would take away the charitable status of public schools - let ‘em sink or swim. I despise the way the poshos are dominating the arts, I’d abolish unpaid internships. I want more social mobility. So I’m on the left?
And yet I also favour lower taxes, and I approve of capitalism, and I’m patriotic, pro-western, and quite libertarian… yet I would shoot - metaphorically - people that litter our streets, graffiti our walls, and build horrible buildings. And I sincerely believe Wokery is an intense, mortal threat to the Enlightenment, and that most people are just too dumb or lazy to realise this, yet
I also wonder if we are being visited by aliens
In short I’m an absurd mix of beliefs, on a traditional left/right spectrum, with notions that could have been plucked from Jeremy Corbyn to David Icke, and all stations between. I bet most people are like me. A total mix that makes a left/right dichotomy old fashioned to the point of idiocy
News just in that you lose your bet, most people are not like you.....
I hope not, for their sake
But my point is good. Drill down into people and you mostly get a huge variety of opinions that cannot easily be slotted into ‘left’ or ‘right’
Look at the recent French elex. They were presented as ‘centre left’ v ‘hard right’ but by many traditional definitions Le Pen is to the left of Macron
This left-right shit is boring and old and needs to go
It is still relevant in economic terms, just at the moment so much if western politics is focused on cultural and social divisions more than the economic divisions which dominated 20th century politics.
Hence Putney and Richmond Park do not have Conservative MPs now but Burnley and Stoke do, which would have been unthinkable 50 years ago
While driving here in the USA I’ve been listening to ‘Undaunted Courage’, the biography of the great American explorer Meriwether Lewis. By Stephen ‘band of brothers’ Ambrose. Absolutely fascinating
It’s taught me much, not least that the division between Democrats and Republicans date from quite arcane Revolutionary views of the future USA, which bear no resemblance whatsoever to the present left/right Dem/GOP ideological battle
Lewis, by the way, committed violent suicide on the Natchez Trace at the age of 35, first using pistols then trying to cut himself to ribbons with a razor. Despite immense early achievement. I didn’t know that, either
The Republicans didn't exist at that time. They were a northern anti-slavery party ("party of Lincoln") that came into existence in the years running up to the Civil War. The party moved to the right of the Democrats in response to the Democrats adopting more left wing policies under FDR and then civil rights policies, which saw the Southern Democrats (Dixiecrats) split with Northern Democrats, and the Republicans hoovered up their voters (no pun intended) under Nixon's "Southern strategy", continued under Reagan and subsequently.
Yet the Dems do go back to the Revolution (albeit in a highly confusing, unexpected way)
“Using these issues, as well as the power swung his way by his vice president, Aaron Burr, Republican leader Thomas Jefferson won election to the presidency in 1800. This Republican party, which would hold power until 1825, is the direct ancestor of today's Democratic Party.”
https://twitter.com/ThomasPride/status/1519898855927603201 “If I am ever asked to produce my ID card as evidence that I am who I say I am I will take that card out of my wallet and physically eat it in the presence of whatever emanation of the state has demanded that I produce it.” @BorisJohnson 2004.
Yesterday Johnson passed a law ...
... making it compulsory for voters to produce photo ID when voting.
Surprised he managed to travel abroad with that approach.
In making the case for selling Channel 4, Nadine Dorries points to the success of Channel 5's privatisation, not once, but twice. Channel 5 has never been owned by the government. https://t.co/Ru927I9dO7
It's an exact mirror image of the amusing spectacle on here the other day when one PBer used a nationalised railway as a poster child for the safety benefits of rail privatisation.
Dorries is an expert at being totally wrong on everything
https://twitter.com/ThomasPride/status/1519898855927603201 “If I am ever asked to produce my ID card as evidence that I am who I say I am I will take that card out of my wallet and physically eat it in the presence of whatever emanation of the state has demanded that I produce it.” @BorisJohnson 2004.
Yesterday Johnson passed a law ...
... making it compulsory for voters to produce photo ID when voting.
Proof of identity for voting is not the same as proof of identity for living, of course.
"If I am ever asked to produce my ID card as evidence that I am who I say I am..." that is exactly what the voting ID law requires people to do.
Apparently it was an 'honest mistake' when they said Ms. Rayner wasn't there....
Oh, what a surprise.
If you’re going to go in really hard on your political opponents, for relative trivialities from two years ago, then you’d better be sure that you’re whiter than white yourself.
Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
The Durham police not going after Starmer as it would be selective, as would have been Cummings case, is problematic. How many parties/events from 2020 are the met investigating?
I really do not know but this has the potential to become a story of one rule for the PM and another for the leader and deputy leader of the labour party
It does. But the problem the Tories have here is that Johnson broke the rules he imposed on everyone else and Starmer didn’t. However much the Mail might dissemble in seeking to show otherwise, that’s the bottom line.
Do you really believe that
Starmer backed the law and indeed wanted stronger restrictions and this event does seem to breach the rules at the time but Durham Police have effectively called it a timed out event when the Met Police correctly hand Boris a FPN
Even if Durham Police behaved correctly (does that imply the Med did not?), the whole thing looks highly dodgy.
Starmer's main selling point is that he is not a clown, but a highly-experienced, highly-competent lawyer. It's fair enough saying that Johnson should have known the law because he drafted it; Starmer should have known because that's his USP.
Starmer did know the law - because Durham Police investigated and found nothing wrong first time round nor are they investigating it a second time regardless of what Guido read into that FOI request
All I'm seeing with the continual focus on this non-event is that the Tories are desperate to deflect the blame and don't have anything to work with..
That’s not really the point. Look at Big_G - he doesn’t want BJ as PM (I think) but he obviously thinks this should be investigated further. There are going to be a fair few people who look at this and think SKS’s a sanctimonious hypocrite. Given Labour already has a certain branding problem in that department, it’s not helpful.
Yes, a few Tories will pretend they are worried about justice not being done. The vast majority of people will see the Mail campaign for what it is: a desperate attempt to negate the very damaging fact that the vast majority of the electorate believe the leader of the Conservative party is a grifting liar.
But the Tories won't go into the next election with their "grifting liar".
Labour will go into it with their sanctimonious hypocrite of a leader and his "hmmmmm....." deputy.
We'll see. But I do agree that dyed-in-the-wool Tories hate Starmer in a way they have not hated a Labour leader for a long time.
Absurd. I’m not a Tory. Yet I revile the left pretty much in its entirety - certainly the elite. So you could say I’m definitely on the right (whatever these terms mean any more, increasingly very little)
I loathed Corbyn, and I mean LOATHED. His election would have filled me with fear and anger
If Starmer, his immediate successor, is elected, I will sigh and feel a little gloomy but get on with my life 10 minutes later
That's a strange comment from @SouthamObserver which is plainly completely misguided.
Tories loathe Starmer more than Corbyn? Weird.
They may not much like Starmer - as he's Labour - but he's not the existential threat to our values that Corbyn appeared to be. For instance, Sir Keir has been pretty solid on Ukraine. Nah, from a dyed-in-the-wool Tory perspective Labour could have done a lot worse.
@SouthamObserver is one of those strange people who puts party loyalty above country. He hates all Tories and he hates, especially, popular Tories that win elections (like Thatcher or Boris). He presumes others are as deviant as him. We are not
The Tories are tired, corrupt and they’ve run out of ideas. It is time for someone else. I really really wish the alternative was more inspiring than Kir Royale Starmer but he’s orders of magnitude preferable to Corbyn.
That said, I can still see Boris sneaking a win in 2024. Partly because Starmer is so dreary. Also because the times are so strange. We could be deeply immersed in ongoing cold/hot war in 2024
At least be doesn’t pretend. You’re one of the biggest Tories on this site
In my life I’ve voted
Tory Green Lib Dem English Democrat Mebyon Kernow UKIP And Binface
I’ve also abstained several times, on principle. And I’ve never been a member of ANY party
If that makes me ‘a Tory’ then you’re just being juvenile and tiresome in defining anyone who ‘doesn’t support Labour’ as ‘Tory’
Incidentally I do believe we are fast approaching the time when the terms ‘left’ and ‘right’ must be retired. They date from the French Revolution. What do they even mean any more?
eg take me
I’m an old school feminist. I’m quite environmentalist (save our rivers!). I’m highly relaxed about ‘most’ immigration. I regret the loss of EU Freedom of Movement. I dislike private education and would take away the charitable status of public schools - let ‘em sink or swim. I despise the way the poshos are dominating the arts, I’d abolish unpaid internships. I want more social mobility. So I’m on the left?
And yet I also favour lower taxes, and I approve of capitalism, and I’m patriotic, pro-western, and quite libertarian… yet I would shoot - metaphorically - people that litter our streets, graffiti our walls, and build horrible buildings. And I sincerely believe Wokery is an intense, mortal threat to the Enlightenment, and that most people are just too dumb or lazy to realise this, yet
I also wonder if we are being visited by aliens
In short I’m an absurd mix of beliefs, on a traditional left/right spectrum, with notions that could have been plucked from Jeremy Corbyn to David Icke, and all stations between. I bet most people are like me. A total mix that makes a left/right dichotomy old fashioned to the point of idiocy
News just in that you lose your bet, most people are not like you.....
I hope not, for their sake
But my point is good. Drill down into people and you mostly get a huge variety of opinions that cannot easily be slotted into ‘left’ or ‘right’
Look at the recent French elex. They were presented as ‘centre left’ v ‘hard right’ but by many traditional definitions Le Pen is to the left of Macron
This left-right shit is boring and old and needs to go
It is still relevant in economic terms, just at the moment so much if western politics is focused on cultural and social divisions more than the economic divisions which dominated 20th century politics.
Hence Putney and Richmond Park do not have Conservative MPs now but Burnley and Stoke do, which would have been unthinkable 50 years ago
While driving here in the USA I’ve been listening to ‘Undaunted Courage’, the biography of the great American explorer Meriwether Lewis. By Stephen ‘band of brothers’ Ambrose. Absolutely fascinating
It’s taught me much, not least that the division between Democrats and Republicans date from quite arcane Revolutionary views of the future USA, which bear no resemblance whatsoever to the present left/right Dem/GOP ideological battle
Lewis, by the way, committed violent suicide on the Natchez Trace at the age of 35, first using pistols then trying to cut himself to ribbons with a razor. Despite immense early achievement. I didn’t know that, either
The Republicans didn't exist at that time. They were a northern anti-slavery party ("party of Lincoln") that came into existence in the years running up to the Civil War. The party moved to the right of the Democrats in response to the Democrats adopting more left wing policies under FDR and then civil rights policies, which saw the Southern Democrats (Dixiecrats) split with Northern Democrats, and the Republicans hoovered up their voters (no pun intended) under Nixon's "Southern strategy", continued under Reagan and subsequently.
Lincoln came from the more Federalist northern Whigs (formerly the National Republicans), while the Democrats were originally a Southern, more States rights party.
Now the Democrats are closer to the Whigs and Lincoln's Republicans with the GOP closer to the Andrew Jackson Democrats
https://twitter.com/ThomasPride/status/1519898855927603201 “If I am ever asked to produce my ID card as evidence that I am who I say I am I will take that card out of my wallet and physically eat it in the presence of whatever emanation of the state has demanded that I produce it.” @BorisJohnson 2004.
Yesterday Johnson passed a law ...
... making it compulsory for voters to produce photo ID when voting.
Isn’t that opposition to ID cards rather than opposition to photo ID? Otherwise he’d have to eat his passport every time he came back from abroad.
Exactly. I'm yet to hear any justification from opponents of this change why voting should be less secure than picking up a parcel from the sorting office.
https://twitter.com/ThomasPride/status/1519898855927603201 “If I am ever asked to produce my ID card as evidence that I am who I say I am I will take that card out of my wallet and physically eat it in the presence of whatever emanation of the state has demanded that I produce it.” @BorisJohnson 2004.
Yesterday Johnson passed a law ...
... making it compulsory for voters to produce photo ID when voting.
Isn’t that opposition to ID cards rather than opposition to photo ID? Otherwise he’d have to eat his passport every time he came back from abroad.
Also worth pointing out the opposition to ID cards, wasn't the card itself, it was the proposed database that would be accessible across government, emergency services, NHS, etc. There was a a lot of concern that despite claims the data would be secure and only subsets of it would be available to the relevant authorities, people quite rightly were rather sceptical (especially at the time the NHS computer system project was an absolute disaster).
Blair was trying to sell it as really just a better version of your passport or driving licence, but actually it was much more wide ranging than that.
So there isn't really any inconsistency in Boris position here...first time for everything.
Volodymyr Zelensky refused to be evacuated from his compound in Kyiv even as Russian assassination squads parachuted into the capital and tried to storm the building to kill him.
At the start of the invasion on Feb 24 those inside defended themselves with automatic weapons and erected defences as the Russians twice tried to storm them at night.
A back gate was blocked with only plywood boards and police barricades.
According to an account of the crisis given by presidential adviser Oleksiy Arestovych to TIME, Mr Zelensky was urged to leave and go to a secure facility away from Kyiv.
Both British and US forces offered to evacuate Mr Zelensky and allow him to set up a government in exile, probably in Poland, but he never seriously thought about it.
https://twitter.com/ThomasPride/status/1519898855927603201 “If I am ever asked to produce my ID card as evidence that I am who I say I am I will take that card out of my wallet and physically eat it in the presence of whatever emanation of the state has demanded that I produce it.” @BorisJohnson 2004.
Yesterday Johnson passed a law ...
... making it compulsory for voters to produce photo ID when voting.
Proof of identity for voting is not the same as proof of identity for living, of course.
"If I am ever asked to produce my ID card as evidence that I am who I say I am..." that is exactly what the voting ID law requires people to do.
It doesn't *require* an ID card, though, and even the free voter ID that is part of the new system doesn't qualify as an ID card in the sense of the 2004 proposal.
Wow. The PB Tory Frat Boys have been frotting themselves crazy this morning.
Desperate, desperate stuff.
"Desperate stuff" - translation, "I'm worried this will have cut through"?
No, I don't think it will.
I fear it will cut through in a big way to be honest, my reasoning is the labour rebuttal seems solely based around this is not remotely the same as Partygate and the industrial style partying, karaoke machines, getting suitcased etc. this was different, this was a work event.
Yes all true. But it still was a breach of the guidelines at the time.
If Starmer and those present get a vpn it’s not for industrial partying, it’s for a different thing, a genuine work event, but the Tory’s will be delighted because at first glance it looks just like same thing + with added hypocrisy.
Genuinely don't know where my vote is going next Thursday.
There's only so many times Labour, in terms of leadership and organisational culture, can make it obvious that it doesn't care about institutional racism against black people before I go 'you know what, screw this.'
Apparently it was an 'honest mistake' when they said Ms. Rayner wasn't there....
Oh, what a surprise.
If you’re going to go in really hard on your political opponents, for relative trivialities from two years ago, then you’d better be sure that you’re whiter than white yourself.
Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
The Durham police not going after Starmer as it would be selective, as would have been Cummings case, is problematic. How many parties/events from 2020 are the met investigating?
I really do not know but this has the potential to become a story of one rule for the PM and another for the leader and deputy leader of the labour party
It does. But the problem the Tories have here is that Johnson broke the rules he imposed on everyone else and Starmer didn’t. However much the Mail might dissemble in seeking to show otherwise, that’s the bottom line.
Do you really believe that
Starmer backed the law and indeed wanted stronger restrictions and this event does seem to breach the rules at the time but Durham Police have effectively called it a timed out event when the Met Police correctly hand Boris a FPN
Even if Durham Police behaved correctly (does that imply the Med did not?), the whole thing looks highly dodgy.
Starmer's main selling point is that he is not a clown, but a highly-experienced, highly-competent lawyer. It's fair enough saying that Johnson should have known the law because he drafted it; Starmer should have known because that's his USP.
Starmer did know the law - because Durham Police investigated and found nothing wrong first time round nor are they investigating it a second time regardless of what Guido read into that FOI request
All I'm seeing with the continual focus on this non-event is that the Tories are desperate to deflect the blame and don't have anything to work with..
That’s not really the point. Look at Big_G - he doesn’t want BJ as PM (I think) but he obviously thinks this should be investigated further. There are going to be a fair few people who look at this and think SKS’s a sanctimonious hypocrite. Given Labour already has a certain branding problem in that department, it’s not helpful.
Yes, a few Tories will pretend they are worried about justice not being done. The vast majority of people will see the Mail campaign for what it is: a desperate attempt to negate the very damaging fact that the vast majority of the electorate believe the leader of the Conservative party is a grifting liar.
But the Tories won't go into the next election with their "grifting liar".
Labour will go into it with their sanctimonious hypocrite of a leader and his "hmmmmm....." deputy.
We'll see. But I do agree that dyed-in-the-wool Tories hate Starmer in a way they have not hated a Labour leader for a long time.
Absurd. I’m not a Tory. Yet I revile the left pretty much in its entirety - certainly the elite. So you could say I’m definitely on the right (whatever these terms mean any more, increasingly very little)
I loathed Corbyn, and I mean LOATHED. His election would have filled me with fear and anger
If Starmer, his immediate successor, is elected, I will sigh and feel a little gloomy but get on with my life 10 minutes later
That's a strange comment from @SouthamObserver which is plainly completely misguided.
Tories loathe Starmer more than Corbyn? Weird.
They may not much like Starmer - as he's Labour - but he's not the existential threat to our values that Corbyn appeared to be. For instance, Sir Keir has been pretty solid on Ukraine. Nah, from a dyed-in-the-wool Tory perspective Labour could have done a lot worse.
@SouthamObserver is one of those strange people who puts party loyalty above country. He hates all Tories and he hates, especially, popular Tories that win elections (like Thatcher or Boris). He presumes others are as deviant as him. We are not
The Tories are tired, corrupt and they’ve run out of ideas. It is time for someone else. I really really wish the alternative was more inspiring than Kir Royale Starmer but he’s orders of magnitude preferable to Corbyn.
That said, I can still see Boris sneaking a win in 2024. Partly because Starmer is so dreary. Also because the times are so strange. We could be deeply immersed in ongoing cold/hot war in 2024
At least be doesn’t pretend. You’re one of the biggest Tories on this site
In my life I’ve voted
Tory Green Lib Dem English Democrat Mebyon Kernow UKIP And Binface
I’ve also abstained several times, on principle. And I’ve never been a member of ANY party
If that makes me ‘a Tory’ then you’re just being juvenile and tiresome in defining anyone who ‘doesn’t support Labour’ as ‘Tory’
Incidentally I do believe we are fast approaching the time when the terms ‘left’ and ‘right’ must be retired. They date from the French Revolution. What do they even mean any more?
eg take me
I’m an old school feminist. I’m quite environmentalist (save our rivers!). I’m highly relaxed about ‘most’ immigration. I regret the loss of EU Freedom of Movement. I dislike private education and would take away the charitable status of public schools - let ‘em sink or swim. I despise the way the poshos are dominating the arts, I’d abolish unpaid internships. I want more social mobility. So I’m on the left?
And yet I also favour lower taxes, and I approve of capitalism, and I’m patriotic, pro-western, and quite libertarian… yet I would shoot - metaphorically - people that litter our streets, graffiti our walls, and build horrible buildings. And I sincerely believe Wokery is an intense, mortal threat to the Enlightenment, and that most people are just too dumb or lazy to realise this, yet
I also wonder if we are being visited by aliens
In short I’m an absurd mix of beliefs, on a traditional left/right spectrum, with notions that could have been plucked from Jeremy Corbyn to David Icke, and all stations between. I bet most people are like me. A total mix that makes a left/right dichotomy old fashioned to the point of idiocy
News just in that you lose your bet, most people are not like you.....
I hope not, for their sake
But my point is good. Drill down into people and you mostly get a huge variety of opinions that cannot easily be slotted into ‘left’ or ‘right’
Look at the recent French elex. They were presented as ‘centre left’ v ‘hard right’ but by many traditional definitions Le Pen is to the left of Macron
This left-right shit is boring and old and needs to go
The more interesting one is authoritarian vs liberal democracy. With social media we probably also need to add in whether people want to live in reality or the story of their choice.
Cognitive elite V uneducated hoi polloi is another one. As predicted by Charles Murray
And HG Wells.
HG Wells took a great deal of pleasure in depicting the lower classes harvesting the upper classes for food, just as he enjoyed having the Martians killing off his neighbours.
https://twitter.com/ThomasPride/status/1519898855927603201 “If I am ever asked to produce my ID card as evidence that I am who I say I am I will take that card out of my wallet and physically eat it in the presence of whatever emanation of the state has demanded that I produce it.” @BorisJohnson 2004.
Yesterday Johnson passed a law ...
... making it compulsory for voters to produce photo ID when voting.
Isn’t that opposition to ID cards rather than opposition to photo ID? Otherwise he’d have to eat his passport every time he came back from abroad.
Exactly. I'm yet to hear any justification from opponents of this change why voting should be less secure than picking up a parcel from the sorting office.
You don't need photo ID to pick up a parcel.
I have for at least the last decade - Royal Mail, Parcelforce, DPD and TNT. Possibly others, those are just the ones I can remember.
Volodymyr Zelensky refused to be evacuated from his compound in Kyiv even as Russian assassination squads parachuted into the capital and tried to storm the building to kill him.
At the start of the invasion on Feb 24 those inside defended themselves with automatic weapons and erected defences as the Russians twice tried to storm them at night.
A back gate was blocked with only plywood boards and police barricades.
According to an account of the crisis given by presidential adviser Oleksiy Arestovych to TIME, Mr Zelensky was urged to leave and go to a secure facility away from Kyiv.
Both British and US forces offered to evacuate Mr Zelensky and allow him to set up a government in exile, probably in Poland, but he never seriously thought about it.
Lumme
With that brave decision, Zelensky probably - single-handedly - saved Ukraine from swift collapse.
Genuinely don't know where my vote is going next Thursday.
There's only so many times Labour, in terms of leadership and organisational culture, can make it obvious that it doesn't care about institutional racism against black people before I go 'you know what, screw this.'
I have no problem with ID cards . In most EU countries you have show them when you vote . The difference is there is no GB ID card . The governments ID requirements to vote are not about fraud but voter suppression in groups that normally do not vote Tory .
https://twitter.com/ThomasPride/status/1519898855927603201 “If I am ever asked to produce my ID card as evidence that I am who I say I am I will take that card out of my wallet and physically eat it in the presence of whatever emanation of the state has demanded that I produce it.” @BorisJohnson 2004.
Yesterday Johnson passed a law ...
... making it compulsory for voters to produce photo ID when voting.
Isn’t that opposition to ID cards rather than opposition to photo ID? Otherwise he’d have to eat his passport every time he came back from abroad.
Also worth pointing out the opposition to ID cards, wasn't the card itself, it was the proposed database that would be accessible across government, emergency services, NHS, etc. There was a a lot of concern that despite claims the data would be secure and only subsets of it would be available to the relevant authorities, people quite rightly were rather sceptical (especially at the time the NHS computer system project was an absolute disaster).
Blair was trying to sell it as really just a better version of your passport or driving licence, but actually it was much more wide ranging than that.
So there isn't really any inconsistency in Boris position here...first time for everything.
The ‘tell’ was that the Blair ID cards bill contained provision for a separate database for MPs, their immediate families and other ‘VIPs’, with much tighter restrictions on access.
I have no problem with ID cards . In most EU countries you have show them when you vote . The difference is there is no GB ID card . The governments ID requirements to vote are not about fraud but voter suppression in groups that normally do not vote Tory .
Apparently it was an 'honest mistake' when they said Ms. Rayner wasn't there....
Oh, what a surprise.
If you’re going to go in really hard on your political opponents, for relative trivialities from two years ago, then you’d better be sure that you’re whiter than white yourself.
Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
The Durham police not going after Starmer as it would be selective, as would have been Cummings case, is problematic. How many parties/events from 2020 are the met investigating?
I really do not know but this has the potential to become a story of one rule for the PM and another for the leader and deputy leader of the labour party
It does. But the problem the Tories have here is that Johnson broke the rules he imposed on everyone else and Starmer didn’t. However much the Mail might dissemble in seeking to show otherwise, that’s the bottom line.
Do you really believe that
Starmer backed the law and indeed wanted stronger restrictions and this event does seem to breach the rules at the time but Durham Police have effectively called it a timed out event when the Met Police correctly hand Boris a FPN
Even if Durham Police behaved correctly (does that imply the Med did not?), the whole thing looks highly dodgy.
Starmer's main selling point is that he is not a clown, but a highly-experienced, highly-competent lawyer. It's fair enough saying that Johnson should have known the law because he drafted it; Starmer should have known because that's his USP.
Starmer did know the law - because Durham Police investigated and found nothing wrong first time round nor are they investigating it a second time regardless of what Guido read into that FOI request
All I'm seeing with the continual focus on this non-event is that the Tories are desperate to deflect the blame and don't have anything to work with..
That’s not really the point. Look at Big_G - he doesn’t want BJ as PM (I think) but he obviously thinks this should be investigated further. There are going to be a fair few people who look at this and think SKS’s a sanctimonious hypocrite. Given Labour already has a certain branding problem in that department, it’s not helpful.
Yes, a few Tories will pretend they are worried about justice not being done. The vast majority of people will see the Mail campaign for what it is: a desperate attempt to negate the very damaging fact that the vast majority of the electorate believe the leader of the Conservative party is a grifting liar.
But the Tories won't go into the next election with their "grifting liar".
Labour will go into it with their sanctimonious hypocrite of a leader and his "hmmmmm....." deputy.
We'll see. But I do agree that dyed-in-the-wool Tories hate Starmer in a way they have not hated a Labour leader for a long time.
Absurd. I’m not a Tory. Yet I revile the left pretty much in its entirety - certainly the elite. So you could say I’m definitely on the right (whatever these terms mean any more, increasingly very little)
I loathed Corbyn, and I mean LOATHED. His election would have filled me with fear and anger
If Starmer, his immediate successor, is elected, I will sigh and feel a little gloomy but get on with my life 10 minutes later
That's a strange comment from @SouthamObserver which is plainly completely misguided.
Tories loathe Starmer more than Corbyn? Weird.
They may not much like Starmer - as he's Labour - but he's not the existential threat to our values that Corbyn appeared to be. For instance, Sir Keir has been pretty solid on Ukraine. Nah, from a dyed-in-the-wool Tory perspective Labour could have done a lot worse.
@SouthamObserver is one of those strange people who puts party loyalty above country. He hates all Tories and he hates, especially, popular Tories that win elections (like Thatcher or Boris). He presumes others are as deviant as him. We are not
The Tories are tired, corrupt and they’ve run out of ideas. It is time for someone else. I really really wish the alternative was more inspiring than Kir Royale Starmer but he’s orders of magnitude preferable to Corbyn.
That said, I can still see Boris sneaking a win in 2024. Partly because Starmer is so dreary. Also because the times are so strange. We could be deeply immersed in ongoing cold/hot war in 2024
At least be doesn’t pretend. You’re one of the biggest Tories on this site
In my life I’ve voted
Tory Green Lib Dem English Democrat Mebyon Kernow UKIP And Binface
I’ve also abstained several times, on principle. And I’ve never been a member of ANY party
If that makes me ‘a Tory’ then you’re just being juvenile and tiresome in defining anyone who ‘doesn’t support Labour’ as ‘Tory’
Incidentally I do believe we are fast approaching the time when the terms ‘left’ and ‘right’ must be retired. They date from the French Revolution. What do they even mean any more?
eg take me
I’m an old school feminist. I’m quite environmentalist (save our rivers!). I’m highly relaxed about ‘most’ immigration. I regret the loss of EU Freedom of Movement. I dislike private education and would take away the charitable status of public schools - let ‘em sink or swim. I despise the way the poshos are dominating the arts, I’d abolish unpaid internships. I want more social mobility. So I’m on the left?
And yet I also favour lower taxes, and I approve of capitalism, and I’m patriotic, pro-western, and quite libertarian… yet I would shoot - metaphorically - people that litter our streets, graffiti our walls, and build horrible buildings. And I sincerely believe Wokery is an intense, mortal threat to the Enlightenment, and that most people are just too dumb or lazy to realise this, yet
I also wonder if we are being visited by aliens
In short I’m an absurd mix of beliefs, on a traditional left/right spectrum, with notions that could have been plucked from Jeremy Corbyn to David Icke, and all stations between. I bet most people are like me. A total mix that makes a left/right dichotomy old fashioned to the point of idiocy
News just in that you lose your bet, most people are not like you.....
I hope not, for their sake
But my point is good. Drill down into people and you mostly get a huge variety of opinions that cannot easily be slotted into ‘left’ or ‘right’
Look at the recent French elex. They were presented as ‘centre left’ v ‘hard right’ but by many traditional definitions Le Pen is to the left of Macron
This left-right shit is boring and old and needs to go
It is still relevant in economic terms, just at the moment so much if western politics is focused on cultural and social divisions more than the economic divisions which dominated 20th century politics.
Hence Putney and Richmond Park do not have Conservative MPs now but Burnley and Stoke do, which would have been unthinkable 50 years ago
While driving here in the USA I’ve been listening to ‘Undaunted Courage’, the biography of the great American explorer Meriwether Lewis. By Stephen ‘band of brothers’ Ambrose. Absolutely fascinating
It’s taught me much, not least that the division between Democrats and Republicans date from quite arcane Revolutionary views of the future USA, which bear no resemblance whatsoever to the present left/right Dem/GOP ideological battle
Lewis, by the way, committed violent suicide on the Natchez Trace at the age of 35, first using pistols then trying to cut himself to ribbons with a razor. Despite immense early achievement. I didn’t know that, either
The Republicans didn't exist at that time. They were a northern anti-slavery party ("party of Lincoln") that came into existence in the years running up to the Civil War. The party moved to the right of the Democrats in response to the Democrats adopting more left wing policies under FDR and then civil rights policies, which saw the Southern Democrats (Dixiecrats) split with Northern Democrats, and the Republicans hoovered up their voters (no pun intended) under Nixon's "Southern strategy", continued under Reagan and subsequently.
Yet the Dems do go back to the Revolution (albeit in a highly confusing, unexpected way)
“Using these issues, as well as the power swung his way by his vice president, Aaron Burr, Republican leader Thomas Jefferson won election to the presidency in 1800. This Republican party, which would hold power until 1825, is the direct ancestor of today's Democratic Party.”
Which was my point
Yes the Democrats are the older party. The Republicans didn't exist. IIRC Aaron Burr was part of a group that called themselves Democratic Republicans, which was even more confusing.
I have no problem with ID cards . In most EU countries you have show them when you vote . The difference is there is no GB ID card . The governments ID requirements to vote are not about fraud but voter suppression in groups that normally do not vote Tory .
That is the intent, although may backfire as one of the groups who are disproportionately unlikely to have the correct ID, and may not bother getting it are the older culturally conservative poor, who the Tories have put so much effort into winning over in their culture wars.
OT. If we still had them HYUFD would get my Tory poster of the year award by a distance.
1.His posts are unfailingly fact based. 2.They rarely contain tittle tattle. 3.They're better informed than any other Tory poster on here. 4.They present the full picture. 5.He is an encycopedia of political polls. 6.He presents polls without political slant. 7.His posts are always concise. 8.He never allows himself a flight of fancy
Just read the Mail story. Seems the new allegation is that a Labour Press Secretary was marginally inaccurate several month ago on the whereabouts of Angela Rayner. Turns out she was outside the building when the beer photo was taken.
What, just passing by? What are the odds? Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks past that one? OR she was outside it because she had just been or was about to be inside it?
As for "marginally inaccurate," bollocks. This was a big deal when the press sec said she wasn't there, not a routine court circular, and multiple people know exactly where Rayner is at all times when she's on the job - press secs, diary secs, grid planners, SKS, her.
You are doing a comical Ali. I want this to be a storm in a teacup as much as you do, but arguments which wouldn't get past a 5 year old don't help.
The press secretary said she wasn't at the meeting the photo was taken at. She wasn't. But it appears she was in the vicinity, Who's being the five year old?
She was at the meeting and this is the cause of this row
Labour have admitted she was present with Starmer, nothing to do with being outside
Oh for goodness sake Big G, having meeting was legal and so whether she was there or not is irrelevant. It is a smear to make all politicians look as bad as Boris.
The inference is the meeting had concluded and they should not have been socialising after
It does seem there is denial from Labour supporters that this event was in breach of covid regulations and if so a full investigation and review is something which they should not worry about
Good luck proving that. If they are still sitting around the table talking (and believe me the only topic will have been politics) they are in a meeting.
Wandsworth a Labour gain? We’re feeling good about this one?
That's what I'm looking for. It's iconic. Miss that and for me it can't be a good night.
It's a virtually certain Labour gain. Labour only just missed out in 2018, and the local Conservatives are in disarray. And, the borough shifted further towards Labour in 2019.
In making the case for selling Channel 4, Nadine Dorries points to the success of Channel 5's privatisation, not once, but twice. Channel 5 has never been owned by the government. https://t.co/Ru927I9dO7
It's an exact mirror image of the amusing spectacle on here the other day when one PBer used a nationalised railway as a poster child for the safety benefits of rail privatisation.
Dorries is an expert at being totally wrong on everything
I have no problem with ID cards . In most EU countries you have show them when you vote . The difference is there is no GB ID card . The governments ID requirements to vote are not about fraud but voter suppression in groups that normally do not vote Tory .
That is the intent, although may backfire as one of the groups who are disproportionately unlikely to have the correct ID, and may not bother getting it are the older culturally conservative poor, who the Tories have put so much effort into winning over in their culture wars.
Given that a free voter ID can be issued as part of the voter registration process (AIUI), how can any legitimate voter be disenfranchised?
Trying to think of a parallel period in British political history to where we are now in 2022.
1962.
Tories into their third term with their third consecutive PM - an Old Etonian actor manager.
Labour with a relatively new leader.
Two years later the actor-manager PM has been replaced by a new PM, who then loses, narrowly, to Labour in the 1964 General Election.
Anyone find a better match?
Agreed, the next general election will be more 1964 than 1997 if Labour do win.
2022 is unprecedented in multiple ways. We’re emerging (in’s’Allah) from an immense global plague. We face global Cold War, and European Hot War. We are on the cusp of Artificial Intelligence. Etc etc etc. The world is changing at enormous speed, possibly faster than at any time in human history
This is not ‘1964’. It is itself
1964 was just after the Cuban Missile Crisis at the height of the Cold War. There was also the growth of TV and the emergence of the computer and the Space race etc and the cultural revolution of the 1960s
Things moved quite quickly in the 1960s. That does not preclude them moving even faster now. Much faster
AI is much overblown.
This article in the Atlantic is quite interesting on Google Translate. Now don't get me wrong, Google Translate is a great tool, very useful etc. But it's a million miles away from human intelligence.
I have no problem with ID cards . In most EU countries you have show them when you vote . The difference is there is no GB ID card . The governments ID requirements to vote are not about fraud but voter suppression in groups that normally do not vote Tory .
I was amused by the responses to my post, given I hadn't expressed an opinion either way. Boris, of course, seems happily to have strenuously argued both sides, to suit himself at the given moment.
https://twitter.com/ThomasPride/status/1519898855927603201 “If I am ever asked to produce my ID card as evidence that I am who I say I am I will take that card out of my wallet and physically eat it in the presence of whatever emanation of the state has demanded that I produce it.” @BorisJohnson 2004.
Yesterday Johnson passed a law ...
... making it compulsory for voters to produce photo ID when voting.
Isn’t that opposition to ID cards rather than opposition to photo ID? Otherwise he’d have to eat his passport every time he came back from abroad.
Exactly. I'm yet to hear any justification from opponents of this change why voting should be less secure than picking up a parcel from the sorting office.
You don't need photo ID to pick up a parcel.
I have for at least the last decade - Royal Mail, Parcelforce, DPD and TNT. Possibly others, those are just the ones I can remember.
Never been asked for ID from either Royal Mail or Parcelforce, just the 'you were out' card was enough. Not had to collect from the other two.
I have no problem with ID cards . In most EU countries you have show them when you vote . The difference is there is no GB ID card . The governments ID requirements to vote are not about fraud but voter suppression in groups that normally do not vote Tory .
Often asserted, never proven.
Yes if only the bill had been called the Voter Suppression Bill, then we would have known for certain. As it is I suppose the government deserve the benefit of the doubt, given their consistent pattern of honest behaviour... Oh, wait.
OT. If we still had them HYUFD would get my Tory poster of the year award by a distance.
1.His posts are unfailingly fact based. 2.They rarely contain tittle tattle. 3.They're better informed than any other Tory poster on here. 4.They present the full picture. 5.He is an encycopedia of political polls. 6.He presents polls without political slant. 7.He interprets polls without a political slant and astutely 8.His posts are always concise. 9.He never allows himself a flight of fancy
10. He's a nice guy despite the constant bullying by a lot of people
Apparently it was an 'honest mistake' when they said Ms. Rayner wasn't there....
Oh, what a surprise.
If you’re going to go in really hard on your political opponents, for relative trivialities from two years ago, then you’d better be sure that you’re whiter than white yourself.
Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
The Durham police not going after Starmer as it would be selective, as would have been Cummings case, is problematic. How many parties/events from 2020 are the met investigating?
I really do not know but this has the potential to become a story of one rule for the PM and another for the leader and deputy leader of the labour party
It does. But the problem the Tories have here is that Johnson broke the rules he imposed on everyone else and Starmer didn’t. However much the Mail might dissemble in seeking to show otherwise, that’s the bottom line.
Do you really believe that
Starmer backed the law and indeed wanted stronger restrictions and this event does seem to breach the rules at the time but Durham Police have effectively called it a timed out event when the Met Police correctly hand Boris a FPN
Even if Durham Police behaved correctly (does that imply the Med did not?), the whole thing looks highly dodgy.
Starmer's main selling point is that he is not a clown, but a highly-experienced, highly-competent lawyer. It's fair enough saying that Johnson should have known the law because he drafted it; Starmer should have known because that's his USP.
Starmer did know the law - because Durham Police investigated and found nothing wrong first time round nor are they investigating it a second time regardless of what Guido read into that FOI request
All I'm seeing with the continual focus on this non-event is that the Tories are desperate to deflect the blame and don't have anything to work with..
That’s not really the point. Look at Big_G - he doesn’t want BJ as PM (I think) but he obviously thinks this should be investigated further. There are going to be a fair few people who look at this and think SKS’s a sanctimonious hypocrite. Given Labour already has a certain branding problem in that department, it’s not helpful.
Yes, a few Tories will pretend they are worried about justice not being done. The vast majority of people will see the Mail campaign for what it is: a desperate attempt to negate the very damaging fact that the vast majority of the electorate believe the leader of the Conservative party is a grifting liar.
But the Tories won't go into the next election with their "grifting liar".
Labour will go into it with their sanctimonious hypocrite of a leader and his "hmmmmm....." deputy.
We'll see. But I do agree that dyed-in-the-wool Tories hate Starmer in a way they have not hated a Labour leader for a long time.
Absurd. I’m not a Tory. Yet I revile the left pretty much in its entirety - certainly the elite. So you could say I’m definitely on the right (whatever these terms mean any more, increasingly very little)
I loathed Corbyn, and I mean LOATHED. His election would have filled me with fear and anger
If Starmer, his immediate successor, is elected, I will sigh and feel a little gloomy but get on with my life 10 minutes later
That's a strange comment from @SouthamObserver which is plainly completely misguided.
Tories loathe Starmer more than Corbyn? Weird.
They may not much like Starmer - as he's Labour - but he's not the existential threat to our values that Corbyn appeared to be. For instance, Sir Keir has been pretty solid on Ukraine. Nah, from a dyed-in-the-wool Tory perspective Labour could have done a lot worse.
@SouthamObserver is one of those strange people who puts party loyalty above country. He hates all Tories and he hates, especially, popular Tories that win elections (like Thatcher or Boris). He presumes others are as deviant as him. We are not
The Tories are tired, corrupt and they’ve run out of ideas. It is time for someone else. I really really wish the alternative was more inspiring than Kir Royale Starmer but he’s orders of magnitude preferable to Corbyn.
That said, I can still see Boris sneaking a win in 2024. Partly because Starmer is so dreary. Also because the times are so strange. We could be deeply immersed in ongoing cold/hot war in 2024
At least be doesn’t pretend. You’re one of the biggest Tories on this site
In my life I’ve voted
Tory Green Lib Dem English Democrat Mebyon Kernow UKIP And Binface
I’ve also abstained several times, on principle. And I’ve never been a member of ANY party
If that makes me ‘a Tory’ then you’re just being juvenile and tiresome in defining anyone who ‘doesn’t support Labour’ as ‘Tory’
Incidentally I do believe we are fast approaching the time when the terms ‘left’ and ‘right’ must be retired. They date from the French Revolution. What do they even mean any more?
eg take me
I’m an old school feminist. I’m quite environmentalist (save our rivers!). I’m highly relaxed about ‘most’ immigration. I regret the loss of EU Freedom of Movement. I dislike private education and would take away the charitable status of public schools - let ‘em sink or swim. I despise the way the poshos are dominating the arts, I’d abolish unpaid internships. I want more social mobility. So I’m on the left?
And yet I also favour lower taxes, and I approve of capitalism, and I’m patriotic, pro-western, and quite libertarian… yet I would shoot - metaphorically - people that litter our streets, graffiti our walls, and build horrible buildings. And I sincerely believe Wokery is an intense, mortal threat to the Enlightenment, and that most people are just too dumb or lazy to realise this, yet
I also wonder if we are being visited by aliens
In short I’m an absurd mix of beliefs, on a traditional left/right spectrum, with notions that could have been plucked from Jeremy Corbyn to David Icke, and all stations between. I bet most people are like me. A total mix that makes a left/right dichotomy old fashioned to the point of idiocy
News just in that you lose your bet, most people are not like you.....
I hope not, for their sake
But my point is good. Drill down into people and you mostly get a huge variety of opinions that cannot easily be slotted into ‘left’ or ‘right’
Look at the recent French elex. They were presented as ‘centre left’ v ‘hard right’ but by many traditional definitions Le Pen is to the left of Macron
This left-right shit is boring and old and needs to go
It is still relevant in economic terms, just at the moment so much if western politics is focused on cultural and social divisions more than the economic divisions which dominated 20th century politics.
Hence Putney and Richmond Park do not have Conservative MPs now but Burnley and Stoke do, which would have been unthinkable 50 years ago
While driving here in the USA I’ve been listening to ‘Undaunted Courage’, the biography of the great American explorer Meriwether Lewis. By Stephen ‘band of brothers’ Ambrose. Absolutely fascinating
It’s taught me much, not least that the division between Democrats and Republicans date from quite arcane Revolutionary views of the future USA, which bear no resemblance whatsoever to the present left/right Dem/GOP ideological battle
Lewis, by the way, committed violent suicide on the Natchez Trace at the age of 35, first using pistols then trying to cut himself to ribbons with a razor. Despite immense early achievement. I didn’t know that, either
The Republicans didn't exist at that time. They were a northern anti-slavery party ("party of Lincoln") that came into existence in the years running up to the Civil War. The party moved to the right of the Democrats in response to the Democrats adopting more left wing policies under FDR and then civil rights policies, which saw the Southern Democrats (Dixiecrats) split with Northern Democrats, and the Republicans hoovered up their voters (no pun intended) under Nixon's "Southern strategy", continued under Reagan and subsequently.
Indeed, while fictionalised it is interesting on shows like Boardwalk Empire to see portrayals of the quite close relationship between Republican politicians and black voters via characters like Chalky White. From memory one episode White threatens to withhold the African American vote from the upcoming election and Nucky Thompson says something along the lines of "they're not going to vote for the Democrats".
Once upon a time the idea of black voters voting for the Democrats would have been virtually unthinkable.
35% is what the Tories got on NEV in the 2018 local elections. Labour up 5% since then but the results may be better than expected for the Tories
Labour and Conservatives typically get a lower NEV figure at the locals than they are getting in national opinion polls, due to the higher share for odds and sods in local elections. I wouldn't expect a 35% NEV for the Tories based on that polling.
Trying to think of a parallel period in British political history to where we are now in 2022.
1962.
Tories into their third term with their third consecutive PM - an Old Etonian actor manager.
Labour with a relatively new leader.
Two years later the actor-manager PM has been replaced by a new PM, who then loses, narrowly, to Labour in the 1964 General Election.
Anyone find a better match?
Agreed, the next general election will be more 1964 than 1997 if Labour do win.
2022 is unprecedented in multiple ways. We’re emerging (in’s’Allah) from an immense global plague. We face global Cold War, and European Hot War. We are on the cusp of Artificial Intelligence. Etc etc etc. The world is changing at enormous speed, possibly faster than at any time in human history
This is not ‘1964’. It is itself
1964 was just after the Cuban Missile Crisis at the height of the Cold War. There was also the growth of TV and the emergence of the computer and the Space race etc and the cultural revolution of the 1960s
Things moved quite quickly in the 1960s. That does not preclude them moving even faster now. Much faster
AI is much overblown.
This article in the Atlantic is quite interesting on Google Translate. Now don't get me wrong, Google Translate is a great tool, very useful etc. But it's a million miles away from human intelligence.
I get quite funny about the casual throwing about of the term AI. Pretty much all of what is lazily deemed AI is far more accurately to describe as Machine Learning. The former implies that the machine has self thinking "intelligence", when 90%+ of the works are actually computer learning patterns based upon a human described cost function of what is "right" and "wrong" *. In some scenarios, doing so better than a human can, but there isn't "intelligence" there, it is rather learning pattern matching on a giant scale.
* its a bit more complex than this, but sake of easy argument.
https://twitter.com/ThomasPride/status/1519898855927603201 “If I am ever asked to produce my ID card as evidence that I am who I say I am I will take that card out of my wallet and physically eat it in the presence of whatever emanation of the state has demanded that I produce it.” @BorisJohnson 2004.
Yesterday Johnson passed a law ...
... making it compulsory for voters to produce photo ID when voting.
Isn’t that opposition to ID cards rather than opposition to photo ID? Otherwise he’d have to eat his passport every time he came back from abroad.
Exactly. I'm yet to hear any justification from opponents of this change why voting should be less secure than picking up a parcel from the sorting office.
More people will be denied their vote due to the ID requirement than have lost their vote due to impersonation.
Trying to think of a parallel period in British political history to where we are now in 2022.
1962.
Tories into their third term with their third consecutive PM - an Old Etonian actor manager.
Labour with a relatively new leader.
Two years later the actor-manager PM has been replaced by a new PM, who then loses, narrowly, to Labour in the 1964 General Election.
Anyone find a better match?
Agreed, the next general election will be more 1964 than 1997 if Labour do win.
2022 is unprecedented in multiple ways. We’re emerging (in’s’Allah) from an immense global plague. We face global Cold War, and European Hot War. We are on the cusp of Artificial Intelligence. Etc etc etc. The world is changing at enormous speed, possibly faster than at any time in human history
This is not ‘1964’. It is itself
1964 was just after the Cuban Missile Crisis at the height of the Cold War. There was also the growth of TV and the emergence of the computer and the Space race etc and the cultural revolution of the 1960s
Things moved quite quickly in the 1960s. That does not preclude them moving even faster now. Much faster
AI is much overblown.
This article in the Atlantic is quite interesting on Google Translate. Now don't get me wrong, Google Translate is a great tool, very useful etc. But it's a million miles away from human intelligence.
OT. If we still had them HYUFD would get my Tory poster of the year award by a distance.
1.His posts are unfailingly fact based. 2.They rarely contain tittle tattle. 3.They're better informed than any other Tory poster on here. 4.They present the full picture. 5.He is an encycopedia of political polls. 6.He presents polls without political slant. 7.His posts are always concise. 8.He never allows himself a flight of fancy
Trying to think of a parallel period in British political history to where we are now in 2022.
1962.
Tories into their third term with their third consecutive PM - an Old Etonian actor manager.
Labour with a relatively new leader.
Two years later the actor-manager PM has been replaced by a new PM, who then loses, narrowly, to Labour in the 1964 General Election.
Anyone find a better match?
Agreed, the next general election will be more 1964 than 1997 if Labour do win.
2022 is unprecedented in multiple ways. We’re emerging (in’s’Allah) from an immense global plague. We face global Cold War, and European Hot War. We are on the cusp of Artificial Intelligence. Etc etc etc. The world is changing at enormous speed, possibly faster than at any time in human history
This is not ‘1964’. It is itself
1964 was just after the Cuban Missile Crisis at the height of the Cold War. There was also the growth of TV and the emergence of the computer and the Space race etc and the cultural revolution of the 1960s
Things moved quite quickly in the 1960s. That does not preclude them moving even faster now. Much faster
AI is much overblown.
This article in the Atlantic is quite interesting on Google Translate. Now don't get me wrong, Google Translate is a great tool, very useful etc. But it's a million miles away from human intelligence.
I get quite funny about the casual throwing about of the term AI. Pretty much all of what is lazily deemed AI is far more accurately to describe as Machine Learning. The former implies that the machine has "intelligence", when 90%+ of the works are actually computer learning patterns.
Moreover, if I wanted to understand the status of AI as of this moment, I wouldn’t look to an article on ‘Google translate’ written in… January 2018?!
In making the case for selling Channel 4, Nadine Dorries points to the success of Channel 5's privatisation, not once, but twice. Channel 5 has never been owned by the government. https://t.co/Ru927I9dO7
It's an exact mirror image of the amusing spectacle on here the other day when one PBer used a nationalised railway as a poster child for the safety benefits of rail privatisation.
What might have caused that / been causal factors? The biggest probability is that the root cause was the driver not realising the route he had been put into the station in (*). That would make it predominantly a driver error (**), which was a privatised aspect of the system (and still is for much of it via the concession system).
To repeat myself: accidents are not just caused by faulty infrastructure. The brilliant safety record that the railway system has had (bar the tragic accident in Scotland in 2020) is down to the entire system working well; nationalised network and privatised operators.
Unless you're saying that everything that went wrong on the railways over the last 25-30 years was down to it being a 'nationalised' railway?
(*) There will almost certainly be other minor causal factors. (**) There are other remote possibilities as well to do with infrastructure - as the 'very close call' section in teh following link shows; from the same location: http://www.traintesting.com/ic225_9.htm
https://twitter.com/ThomasPride/status/1519898855927603201 “If I am ever asked to produce my ID card as evidence that I am who I say I am I will take that card out of my wallet and physically eat it in the presence of whatever emanation of the state has demanded that I produce it.” @BorisJohnson 2004.
Yesterday Johnson passed a law ...
... making it compulsory for voters to produce photo ID when voting.
Isn’t that opposition to ID cards rather than opposition to photo ID? Otherwise he’d have to eat his passport every time he came back from abroad.
Exactly. I'm yet to hear any justification from opponents of this change why voting should be less secure than picking up a parcel from the sorting office.
More people will be denied their vote due to the ID requirement than have lost their vote due to impersonation.
I'm sceptical it will have any but the tiniest bearing on election results. The sort of people who go out to vote, are the sort of people who will get I/D.
I have no problem with ID cards . In most EU countries you have show them when you vote . The difference is there is no GB ID card . The governments ID requirements to vote are not about fraud but voter suppression in groups that normally do not vote Tory .
That is the intent, although may backfire as one of the groups who are disproportionately unlikely to have the correct ID, and may not bother getting it are the older culturally conservative poor, who the Tories have put so much effort into winning over in their culture wars.
Given that a free voter ID can be issued as part of the voter registration process (AIUI), how can any legitimate voter be disenfranchised?
Because not everyone will bother. Lots of groups will have their propensity to vote decline. It may not be disenfranchisement, just suppression. Some are fine with that, others think a democracy is stronger if such groups are encouraged to participate.
I have no problem with ID cards . In most EU countries you have show them when you vote . The difference is there is no GB ID card . The governments ID requirements to vote are not about fraud but voter suppression in groups that normally do not vote Tory .
Often asserted, never proven.
Yes if only the bill had been called the Voter Suppression Bill, then we would have known for certain. As it is I suppose the government deserve the benefit of the doubt, given their consistent pattern of honest behaviour... Oh, wait.
I mean, some evidence would be nice. Why do you think "groups that normally do not vote Tory" are too stupid to get a free voter ID even if they don't already have some sort of photo ID (which the vast majority of people do)?
https://twitter.com/ThomasPride/status/1519898855927603201 “If I am ever asked to produce my ID card as evidence that I am who I say I am I will take that card out of my wallet and physically eat it in the presence of whatever emanation of the state has demanded that I produce it.” @BorisJohnson 2004.
Yesterday Johnson passed a law ...
... making it compulsory for voters to produce photo ID when voting.
Isn’t that opposition to ID cards rather than opposition to photo ID? Otherwise he’d have to eat his passport every time he came back from abroad.
Exactly. I'm yet to hear any justification from opponents of this change why voting should be less secure than picking up a parcel from the sorting office.
If this law passes I expect labour to reciprocate. 'No donations larger than £1000 a year' 'No donations from companies' 'Use census data for divvying up constituently boundaries 'Automatic voter registration' 'Votes for 16 year olds' etc etc
If you want to Americanise the system fine. But in a decade when the electoral pendulum has swung...
I have no problem with ID cards . In most EU countries you have show them when you vote . The difference is there is no GB ID card . The governments ID requirements to vote are not about fraud but voter suppression in groups that normally do not vote Tory .
I was amused by the responses to my post, given I hadn't expressed an opinion either way. Boris, of course, seems happily to have strenuously argued both sides, to suit himself at the given moment.
The whole voter ID thing misses out the real option for misuse and abuse which is postal voting. Impersonation at a polling booth can only be done in real time, with real risk and one vote at a time. The risk is trivial. Postal voting can be organised and malevolently overseen without proper scrutiny. The secrecy of the polling booth, requiring minimal oversight, is the one big safeguard of one person one vote democracy.
https://twitter.com/ThomasPride/status/1519898855927603201 “If I am ever asked to produce my ID card as evidence that I am who I say I am I will take that card out of my wallet and physically eat it in the presence of whatever emanation of the state has demanded that I produce it.” @BorisJohnson 2004.
Yesterday Johnson passed a law ...
... making it compulsory for voters to produce photo ID when voting.
Isn’t that opposition to ID cards rather than opposition to photo ID? Otherwise he’d have to eat his passport every time he came back from abroad.
Exactly. I'm yet to hear any justification from opponents of this change why voting should be less secure than picking up a parcel from the sorting office.
More people will be denied their vote due to the ID requirement than have lost their vote due to impersonation.
https://twitter.com/ThomasPride/status/1519898855927603201 “If I am ever asked to produce my ID card as evidence that I am who I say I am I will take that card out of my wallet and physically eat it in the presence of whatever emanation of the state has demanded that I produce it.” @BorisJohnson 2004.
Yesterday Johnson passed a law ...
... making it compulsory for voters to produce photo ID when voting.
Isn’t that opposition to ID cards rather than opposition to photo ID? Otherwise he’d have to eat his passport every time he came back from abroad.
Exactly. I'm yet to hear any justification from opponents of this change why voting should be less secure than picking up a parcel from the sorting office.
You don't need photo ID to pick up a parcel.
I have for at least the last decade - Royal Mail, Parcelforce, DPD and TNT. Possibly others, those are just the ones I can remember.
I have no problem with ID cards . In most EU countries you have show them when you vote . The difference is there is no GB ID card . The governments ID requirements to vote are not about fraud but voter suppression in groups that normally do not vote Tory .
I was amused by the responses to my post, given I hadn't expressed an opinion either way. Boris, of course, seems happily to have strenuously argued both sides, to suit himself at the given moment.
The whole voter ID thing misses out the real option for misuse and abuse which is postal voting. Impersonation at a polling booth can only be done in real time, with real risk and one vote at a time. The risk is trivial. Postal voting can be organised and malevolently overseen without proper scrutiny. The secrecy of the polling booth, requiring minimal oversight, is the one big safeguard of one person one vote democracy.
Wholeheartedly agreed. Postal voting is ripe for abuse, but most especially intimidation.
If a misogynist who thinks he's the "head of the household" wants to control how his wife votes then he can't do that while she's alone in the ballot booth, he can if he's looking over her shoulder at home while the ballot is filled in.
https://twitter.com/ThomasPride/status/1519898855927603201 “If I am ever asked to produce my ID card as evidence that I am who I say I am I will take that card out of my wallet and physically eat it in the presence of whatever emanation of the state has demanded that I produce it.” @BorisJohnson 2004.
Yesterday Johnson passed a law ...
... making it compulsory for voters to produce photo ID when voting.
Isn’t that opposition to ID cards rather than opposition to photo ID? Otherwise he’d have to eat his passport every time he came back from abroad.
Exactly. I'm yet to hear any justification from opponents of this change why voting should be less secure than picking up a parcel from the sorting office.
If this law passes I expect labour to reciprocate. 'No donations larger than £1000 a year' 'No donations from companies' 'Use census data for divvying up constituently boundaries 'Automatic voter registration' 'Votes for 16 year olds' etc etc
If you want to Americanise the system fine. But in a decade when the electoral pendulum has swung...
Is the political system in Northern Ireland "Americanised"?
And if Labour want to go "no donations from companies", the Tories will just go "no donations from unions". But - again- I can't see why Labour would be "reciprocating" as there's no evidence that "their voters" would be disporportionately affected - not least because there's no reason why a single valid voter should lose their vote because of this rule.
Much of this ID will turn on the "free ID". Will it be easily available? Widely publicised? Or will it be a bureaucratic quagmire involving travel to Council HQ (more than 2 hours by public transport in much of Northumberland) with a stack of paperwork? I can guess.
I have no problem with ID cards . In most EU countries you have show them when you vote . The difference is there is no GB ID card . The governments ID requirements to vote are not about fraud but voter suppression in groups that normally do not vote Tory .
Often asserted, never proven.
Is it proven it works in the govts favour ? It could work against them.
https://twitter.com/ThomasPride/status/1519898855927603201 “If I am ever asked to produce my ID card as evidence that I am who I say I am I will take that card out of my wallet and physically eat it in the presence of whatever emanation of the state has demanded that I produce it.” @BorisJohnson 2004.
Yesterday Johnson passed a law ...
... making it compulsory for voters to produce photo ID when voting.
Isn’t that opposition to ID cards rather than opposition to photo ID? Otherwise he’d have to eat his passport every time he came back from abroad.
Exactly. I'm yet to hear any justification from opponents of this change why voting should be less secure than picking up a parcel from the sorting office.
More people will be denied their vote due to the ID requirement than have lost their vote due to impersonation.
Why will any valid voter be denied their vote?
Not having realised they needed to bring ID, and not having time to come back.
There were 2 convictions for personation in 2019, both in the European elections.
So if there are 3 or more cases of this unfortunate but fairly likely scenario, it is a net negative.
I have no problem with ID cards . In most EU countries you have show them when you vote . The difference is there is no GB ID card . The governments ID requirements to vote are not about fraud but voter suppression in groups that normally do not vote Tory .
I was amused by the responses to my post, given I hadn't expressed an opinion either way. Boris, of course, seems happily to have strenuously argued both sides, to suit himself at the given moment.
The whole voter ID thing misses out the real option for misuse and abuse which is postal voting. Impersonation at a polling booth can only be done in real time, with real risk and one vote at a time. The risk is trivial. Postal voting can be organised and malevolently overseen without proper scrutiny. The secrecy of the polling booth, requiring minimal oversight, is the one big safeguard of one person one vote democracy.
True, but addressing one shouldn't preclude addressing the other.
Much of this ID will turn on the "free ID". Will it be easily available? Widely publicised? Or will it be a bureaucratic quagmire involving travel to Council HQ (more than 2 hours by public transport in much of Northumberland) with a stack of paperwork? I can guess.
Easily available will be my guess.
This isn't America with their wretched DVLA, Council HQs hate seeing anyone in person and will do anything they can to ensure it can be done remotely.
https://twitter.com/ThomasPride/status/1519898855927603201 “If I am ever asked to produce my ID card as evidence that I am who I say I am I will take that card out of my wallet and physically eat it in the presence of whatever emanation of the state has demanded that I produce it.” @BorisJohnson 2004.
Yesterday Johnson passed a law ...
... making it compulsory for voters to produce photo ID when voting.
Isn’t that opposition to ID cards rather than opposition to photo ID? Otherwise he’d have to eat his passport every time he came back from abroad.
Exactly. I'm yet to hear any justification from opponents of this change why voting should be less secure than picking up a parcel from the sorting office.
You don't need photo ID to pick up a parcel.
I have for at least the last decade - Royal Mail, Parcelforce, DPD and TNT. Possibly others, those are just the ones I can remember.
Well that is weird because I never have for anything. You were out card is all I have needed. You must live in a dodgy area. In fact I have got stuff by just giving my name and address.
Much of this ID will turn on the "free ID". Will it be easily available? Widely publicised? Or will it be a bureaucratic quagmire involving travel to Council HQ (more than 2 hours by public transport in much of Northumberland) with a stack of paperwork? I can guess.
A passport was taking 10 weeks last November. Is there any guarantee of ID being sorted in the 5 weeks before an election is called and being held?
Much of this ID will turn on the "free ID". Will it be easily available? Widely publicised? Or will it be a bureaucratic quagmire involving travel to Council HQ (more than 2 hours by public transport in much of Northumberland) with a stack of paperwork? I can guess.
Apparently it was an 'honest mistake' when they said Ms. Rayner wasn't there....
Oh, what a surprise.
If you’re going to go in really hard on your political opponents, for relative trivialities from two years ago, then you’d better be sure that you’re whiter than white yourself.
Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
The Durham police not going after Starmer as it would be selective, as would have been Cummings case, is problematic. How many parties/events from 2020 are the met investigating?
I really do not know but this has the potential to become a story of one rule for the PM and another for the leader and deputy leader of the labour party
It does. But the problem the Tories have here is that Johnson broke the rules he imposed on everyone else and Starmer didn’t. However much the Mail might dissemble in seeking to show otherwise, that’s the bottom line.
Do you really believe that
Starmer backed the law and indeed wanted stronger restrictions and this event does seem to breach the rules at the time but Durham Police have effectively called it a timed out event when the Met Police correctly hand Boris a FPN
Even if Durham Police behaved correctly (does that imply the Med did not?), the whole thing looks highly dodgy.
Starmer's main selling point is that he is not a clown, but a highly-experienced, highly-competent lawyer. It's fair enough saying that Johnson should have known the law because he drafted it; Starmer should have known because that's his USP.
Starmer did know the law - because Durham Police investigated and found nothing wrong first time round nor are they investigating it a second time regardless of what Guido read into that FOI request
All I'm seeing with the continual focus on this non-event is that the Tories are desperate to deflect the blame and don't have anything to work with..
That’s not really the point. Look at Big_G - he doesn’t want BJ as PM (I think) but he obviously thinks this should be investigated further. There are going to be a fair few people who look at this and think SKS’s a sanctimonious hypocrite. Given Labour already has a certain branding problem in that department, it’s not helpful.
Yes, a few Tories will pretend they are worried about justice not being done. The vast majority of people will see the Mail campaign for what it is: a desperate attempt to negate the very damaging fact that the vast majority of the electorate believe the leader of the Conservative party is a grifting liar.
But the Tories won't go into the next election with their "grifting liar".
Labour will go into it with their sanctimonious hypocrite of a leader and his "hmmmmm....." deputy.
We'll see. But I do agree that dyed-in-the-wool Tories hate Starmer in a way they have not hated a Labour leader for a long time.
Absurd. I’m not a Tory. Yet I revile the left pretty much in its entirety - certainly the elite. So you could say I’m definitely on the right (whatever these terms mean any more, increasingly very little)
I loathed Corbyn, and I mean LOATHED. His election would have filled me with fear and anger
If Starmer, his immediate successor, is elected, I will sigh and feel a little gloomy but get on with my life 10 minutes later
That's a strange comment from @SouthamObserver which is plainly completely misguided.
Tories loathe Starmer more than Corbyn? Weird.
They may not much like Starmer - as he's Labour - but he's not the existential threat to our values that Corbyn appeared to be. For instance, Sir Keir has been pretty solid on Ukraine. Nah, from a dyed-in-the-wool Tory perspective Labour could have done a lot worse.
@SouthamObserver is one of those strange people who puts party loyalty above country. He hates all Tories and he hates, especially, popular Tories that win elections (like Thatcher or Boris). He presumes others are as deviant as him. We are not
The Tories are tired, corrupt and they’ve run out of ideas. It is time for someone else. I really really wish the alternative was more inspiring than Kir Royale Starmer but he’s orders of magnitude preferable to Corbyn.
That said, I can still see Boris sneaking a win in 2024. Partly because Starmer is so dreary. Also because the times are so strange. We could be deeply immersed in ongoing cold/hot war in 2024
At least be doesn’t pretend. You’re one of the biggest Tories on this site
In my life I’ve voted
Tory Green Lib Dem English Democrat Mebyon Kernow UKIP And Binface
I’ve also abstained several times, on principle. And I’ve never been a member of ANY party
If that makes me ‘a Tory’ then you’re just being juvenile and tiresome in defining anyone who ‘doesn’t support Labour’ as ‘Tory’
Incidentally I do believe we are fast approaching the time when the terms ‘left’ and ‘right’ must be retired. They date from the French Revolution. What do they even mean any more?
eg take me
I’m an old school feminist. I’m quite environmentalist (save our rivers!). I’m highly relaxed about ‘most’ immigration. I regret the loss of EU Freedom of Movement. I dislike private education and would take away the charitable status of public schools - let ‘em sink or swim. I despise the way the poshos are dominating the arts, I’d abolish unpaid internships. I want more social mobility. So I’m on the left?
And yet I also favour lower taxes, and I approve of capitalism, and I’m patriotic, pro-western, and quite libertarian… yet I would shoot - metaphorically - people that litter our streets, graffiti our walls, and build horrible buildings. And I sincerely believe Wokery is an intense, mortal threat to the Enlightenment, and that most people are just too dumb or lazy to realise this, yet
I also wonder if we are being visited by aliens
In short I’m an absurd mix of beliefs, on a traditional left/right spectrum, with notions that could have been plucked from Jeremy Corbyn to David Icke, and all stations between. I bet most people are like me. A total mix that makes a left/right dichotomy old fashioned to the point of idiocy
News just in that you lose your bet, most people are not like you.....
I hope not, for their sake
But my point is good. Drill down into people and you mostly get a huge variety of opinions that cannot easily be slotted into ‘left’ or ‘right’
Look at the recent French elex. They were presented as ‘centre left’ v ‘hard right’ but by many traditional definitions Le Pen is to the left of Macron
This left-right shit is boring and old and needs to go
It is still relevant in economic terms, just at the moment so much if western politics is focused on cultural and social divisions more than the economic divisions which dominated 20th century politics.
Hence Putney and Richmond Park do not have Conservative MPs now but Burnley and Stoke do, which would have been unthinkable 50 years ago
While driving here in the USA I’ve been listening to ‘Undaunted Courage’, the biography of the great American explorer Meriwether Lewis. By Stephen ‘band of brothers’ Ambrose. Absolutely fascinating
It’s taught me much, not least that the division between Democrats and Republicans date from quite arcane Revolutionary views of the future USA, which bear no resemblance whatsoever to the present left/right Dem/GOP ideological battle
Lewis, by the way, committed violent suicide on the Natchez Trace at the age of 35, first using pistols then trying to cut himself to ribbons with a razor. Despite immense early achievement. I didn’t know that, either
The Republicans didn't exist at that time. They were a northern anti-slavery party ("party of Lincoln") that came into existence in the years running up to the Civil War. The party moved to the right of the Democrats in response to the Democrats adopting more left wing policies under FDR and then civil rights policies, which saw the Southern Democrats (Dixiecrats) split with Northern Democrats, and the Republicans hoovered up their voters (no pun intended) under Nixon's "Southern strategy", continued under Reagan and subsequently.
Indeed, while fictionalised it is interesting on shows like Boardwalk Empire to see portrayals of the quite close relationship between Republican politicians and black voters via characters like Chalky White. From memory one episode White threatens to withhold the African American vote from the upcoming election and Nucky Thompson says something along the lines of "they're not going to vote for the Democrats".
Once upon a time the idea of black voters voting for the Democrats would have been virtually unthinkable.
In the southern states, certainly. And then LBJ managed to get his racist senators to vote for civil rights, and the Republicans decided to go south in search of votes.
Much of this ID will turn on the "free ID". Will it be easily available? Widely publicised? Or will it be a bureaucratic quagmire involving travel to Council HQ (more than 2 hours by public transport in much of Northumberland) with a stack of paperwork? I can guess.
A passport was taking 10 weeks last November. Is there any guarantee of ID being sorted in the 5 weeks before an election is called and being held?
They seem to handle voter registration quicker than that, so no reason why not.
The eminent economist Adam Posen this week estimated that 80% of UK inflation is attributable to Brexit…
…As Posen pungently expressed it, the UK is “running a natural experiment in what happens when you run a trade war on yourself”. The results so far, his data also suggest, show just how damaging it is…
… Thus, faced with a burgeoning economic crisis, this post-Brexit government is bereft of workable ideas. Its flagship policy has proved an economic dud, but it is inherent in the government’s very formation to be unable to admit that, or to produce any policies that might ameliorate it. Having smashed up the old order, all they can do is stare in slack-jawed bemusement at the rubble around them, like a convention of peculiarly vandalistic village idiots who accidentally got control of a wrecking-ball...
… Meanwhile, the astonishingly dangerous political trick the government used to ‘get Brexit done’ has blown up in its face. That, of course, was agreeing to the Northern Ireland Protocol (NIP) which it is clear the government never intended to honour, and which it sold to its MPs as a supposedly temporary measure. Yet, at the very same time, it was sold to the electorate as part of the ’oven-ready deal’ which would put an end to all the boring Brexit wrangling. Worse still, it was signed as an international treaty with the EU, which certainly didn’t regard it as temporary, any more than does the US.
This was done quite knowingly and entirely cynically, and it’s very difficult to think of any equivalent trickery in modern British political history in terms of that combination of national and international dishonesty. Not only was it dishonest, it was actually – I don’t use this word casually – wicked in that the patsy in this trick was, and is, the people of Northern Ireland and the fragile politics of their hard-won peace…
After savaging the NI shenanigans he concludes:
And so it goes on, year after year after wretched year. All the fantasies, lies and denials that permeated the dreadful referendum campaign six long years ago are still running into the rock of the realities of international trade and international relations. The government has no solutions because it has never been a government in any real sense of the term, just a vehicle for precisely the fantasies and denials of that campaign.
Sounds like a bitter Remoaner though, so all that can probably be safely ignored.
I have no problem with ID cards . In most EU countries you have show them when you vote . The difference is there is no GB ID card . The governments ID requirements to vote are not about fraud but voter suppression in groups that normally do not vote Tory .
Often asserted, never proven.
Yes if only the bill had been called the Voter Suppression Bill, then we would have known for certain. As it is I suppose the government deserve the benefit of the doubt, given their consistent pattern of honest behaviour... Oh, wait.
I mean, some evidence would be nice. Why do you think "groups that normally do not vote Tory" are too stupid to get a free voter ID even if they don't already have some sort of photo ID (which the vast majority of people do)?
Not a question of being stupid. A question of time, effort, organisation. The point is that younger voters and poorer voters are less likely to have either of the two forms of photo ID that most of us have, a passport or driving license, and so these are the people who will have to get a new ID just to be able to vote. Yet these are also the groups already least likely to vote, and so I would imagine that many won't have the motivation to get the ID, even if perhaps on the day they might have been persuaded to vote. Coincidentally they are also the groups least likely to vote Tory. Meanwhile, impersonation (pretending to be someone else when voting) is an almost non-existent problem. So you are creating a much bigger problem (preventing registered voters from voting on a technicality) to solve a much smaller problem, in a way that will advantage the party that is changing the law. It is voter suppression. It stinks.
Trying to think of a parallel period in British political history to where we are now in 2022.
1962.
Tories into their third term with their third consecutive PM - an Old Etonian actor manager.
Labour with a relatively new leader.
Two years later the actor-manager PM has been replaced by a new PM, who then loses, narrowly, to Labour in the 1964 General Election.
Anyone find a better match?
Agreed, the next general election will be more 1964 than 1997 if Labour do win.
2022 is unprecedented in multiple ways. We’re emerging (in’s’Allah) from an immense global plague. We face global Cold War, and European Hot War. We are on the cusp of Artificial Intelligence. Etc etc etc. The world is changing at enormous speed, possibly faster than at any time in human history
This is not ‘1964’. It is itself
1964 was just after the Cuban Missile Crisis at the height of the Cold War. There was also the growth of TV and the emergence of the computer and the Space race etc and the cultural revolution of the 1960s
Things moved quite quickly in the 1960s. That does not preclude them moving even faster now. Much faster
AI is much overblown.
This article in the Atlantic is quite interesting on Google Translate. Now don't get me wrong, Google Translate is a great tool, very useful etc. But it's a million miles away from human intelligence.
Which suggests we really are close to proper AI, if not there already
Anybody claiming GPT3 is "proper" AI, is quite frankly an idiot. Its highly impressive, as is DALLE-2, but its not intelligent. They are giant transformers. Yes that means they can create a sentence or a picture never been written or drawn before, but it has no concept of what that sentence means, if it actually makes sense, if it doesn't how to correct it, etc etc etc. They can't adapt to a changing world without total retraining of the whole giant network.
I have no problem with ID cards . In most EU countries you have show them when you vote . The difference is there is no GB ID card . The governments ID requirements to vote are not about fraud but voter suppression in groups that normally do not vote Tory .
Often asserted, never proven.
My concern (and the reason that there is a deep suspicion about this) is that there basically isn't *any* voter fraud of the kind protected by this measure.
https://twitter.com/ThomasPride/status/1519898855927603201 “If I am ever asked to produce my ID card as evidence that I am who I say I am I will take that card out of my wallet and physically eat it in the presence of whatever emanation of the state has demanded that I produce it.” @BorisJohnson 2004.
Yesterday Johnson passed a law ...
... making it compulsory for voters to produce photo ID when voting.
Isn’t that opposition to ID cards rather than opposition to photo ID? Otherwise he’d have to eat his passport every time he came back from abroad.
Exactly. I'm yet to hear any justification from opponents of this change why voting should be less secure than picking up a parcel from the sorting office.
If this law passes I expect labour to reciprocate. 'No donations larger than £1000 a year' 'No donations from companies' 'Use census data for divvying up constituently boundaries 'Automatic voter registration' 'Votes for 16 year olds' etc etc
If you want to Americanise the system fine. But in a decade when the electoral pendulum has swung...
Is the political system in Northern Ireland "Americanised"?
And if Labour want to go "no donations from companies", the Tories will just go "no donations from unions". But - again- I can't see why Labour would be "reciprocating" as there's no evidence that "their voters" would be disporportionately affected - not least because there's no reason why a single valid voter should lose their vote because of this rule.
They will and the electoral distortions will begin proper. This policy evidence free and partisan. Expect the equivalent.
Apparently it was an 'honest mistake' when they said Ms. Rayner wasn't there....
Oh, what a surprise.
If you’re going to go in really hard on your political opponents, for relative trivialities from two years ago, then you’d better be sure that you’re whiter than white yourself.
Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
The Durham police not going after Starmer as it would be selective, as would have been Cummings case, is problematic. How many parties/events from 2020 are the met investigating?
I really do not know but this has the potential to become a story of one rule for the PM and another for the leader and deputy leader of the labour party
It does. But the problem the Tories have here is that Johnson broke the rules he imposed on everyone else and Starmer didn’t. However much the Mail might dissemble in seeking to show otherwise, that’s the bottom line.
Do you really believe that
Starmer backed the law and indeed wanted stronger restrictions and this event does seem to breach the rules at the time but Durham Police have effectively called it a timed out event when the Met Police correctly hand Boris a FPN
Even if Durham Police behaved correctly (does that imply the Med did not?), the whole thing looks highly dodgy.
Starmer's main selling point is that he is not a clown, but a highly-experienced, highly-competent lawyer. It's fair enough saying that Johnson should have known the law because he drafted it; Starmer should have known because that's his USP.
Starmer did know the law - because Durham Police investigated and found nothing wrong first time round nor are they investigating it a second time regardless of what Guido read into that FOI request
All I'm seeing with the continual focus on this non-event is that the Tories are desperate to deflect the blame and don't have anything to work with..
That’s not really the point. Look at Big_G - he doesn’t want BJ as PM (I think) but he obviously thinks this should be investigated further. There are going to be a fair few people who look at this and think SKS’s a sanctimonious hypocrite. Given Labour already has a certain branding problem in that department, it’s not helpful.
Yes, a few Tories will pretend they are worried about justice not being done. The vast majority of people will see the Mail campaign for what it is: a desperate attempt to negate the very damaging fact that the vast majority of the electorate believe the leader of the Conservative party is a grifting liar.
But the Tories won't go into the next election with their "grifting liar".
Labour will go into it with their sanctimonious hypocrite of a leader and his "hmmmmm....." deputy.
We'll see. But I do agree that dyed-in-the-wool Tories hate Starmer in a way they have not hated a Labour leader for a long time.
Absurd. I’m not a Tory. Yet I revile the left pretty much in its entirety - certainly the elite. So you could say I’m definitely on the right (whatever these terms mean any more, increasingly very little)
I loathed Corbyn, and I mean LOATHED. His election would have filled me with fear and anger
If Starmer, his immediate successor, is elected, I will sigh and feel a little gloomy but get on with my life 10 minutes later
That's a strange comment from @SouthamObserver which is plainly completely misguided.
Tories loathe Starmer more than Corbyn? Weird.
They may not much like Starmer - as he's Labour - but he's not the existential threat to our values that Corbyn appeared to be. For instance, Sir Keir has been pretty solid on Ukraine. Nah, from a dyed-in-the-wool Tory perspective Labour could have done a lot worse.
@SouthamObserver is one of those strange people who puts party loyalty above country. He hates all Tories and he hates, especially, popular Tories that win elections (like Thatcher or Boris). He presumes others are as deviant as him. We are not
The Tories are tired, corrupt and they’ve run out of ideas. It is time for someone else. I really really wish the alternative was more inspiring than Kir Royale Starmer but he’s orders of magnitude preferable to Corbyn.
That said, I can still see Boris sneaking a win in 2024. Partly because Starmer is so dreary. Also because the times are so strange. We could be deeply immersed in ongoing cold/hot war in 2024
At least be doesn’t pretend. You’re one of the biggest Tories on this site
In my life I’ve voted
Tory Green Lib Dem English Democrat Mebyon Kernow UKIP And Binface
I’ve also abstained several times, on principle. And I’ve never been a member of ANY party
If that makes me ‘a Tory’ then you’re just being juvenile and tiresome in defining anyone who ‘doesn’t support Labour’ as ‘Tory’
Incidentally I do believe we are fast approaching the time when the terms ‘left’ and ‘right’ must be retired. They date from the French Revolution. What do they even mean any more?
eg take me
I’m an old school feminist. I’m quite environmentalist (save our rivers!). I’m highly relaxed about ‘most’ immigration. I regret the loss of EU Freedom of Movement. I dislike private education and would take away the charitable status of public schools - let ‘em sink or swim. I despise the way the poshos are dominating the arts, I’d abolish unpaid internships. I want more social mobility. So I’m on the left?
And yet I also favour lower taxes, and I approve of capitalism, and I’m patriotic, pro-western, and quite libertarian… yet I would shoot - metaphorically - people that litter our streets, graffiti our walls, and build horrible buildings. And I sincerely believe Wokery is an intense, mortal threat to the Enlightenment, and that most people are just too dumb or lazy to realise this, yet
I also wonder if we are being visited by aliens
In short I’m an absurd mix of beliefs, on a traditional left/right spectrum, with notions that could have been plucked from Jeremy Corbyn to David Icke, and all stations between. I bet most people are like me. A total mix that makes a left/right dichotomy old fashioned to the point of idiocy
News just in that you lose your bet, most people are not like you.....
I hope not, for their sake
But my point is good. Drill down into people and you mostly get a huge variety of opinions that cannot easily be slotted into ‘left’ or ‘right’
Look at the recent French elex. They were presented as ‘centre left’ v ‘hard right’ but by many traditional definitions Le Pen is to the left of Macron
This left-right shit is boring and old and needs to go
It is still relevant in economic terms, just at the moment so much if western politics is focused on cultural and social divisions more than the economic divisions which dominated 20th century politics.
Hence Putney and Richmond Park do not have Conservative MPs now but Burnley and Stoke do, which would have been unthinkable 50 years ago
While driving here in the USA I’ve been listening to ‘Undaunted Courage’, the biography of the great American explorer Meriwether Lewis. By Stephen ‘band of brothers’ Ambrose. Absolutely fascinating
It’s taught me much, not least that the division between Democrats and Republicans date from quite arcane Revolutionary views of the future USA, which bear no resemblance whatsoever to the present left/right Dem/GOP ideological battle
Lewis, by the way, committed violent suicide on the Natchez Trace at the age of 35, first using pistols then trying to cut himself to ribbons with a razor. Despite immense early achievement. I didn’t know that, either
The Republicans didn't exist at that time. They were a northern anti-slavery party ("party of Lincoln") that came into existence in the years running up to the Civil War. The party moved to the right of the Democrats in response to the Democrats adopting more left wing policies under FDR and then civil rights policies, which saw the Southern Democrats (Dixiecrats) split with Northern Democrats, and the Republicans hoovered up their voters (no pun intended) under Nixon's "Southern strategy", continued under Reagan and subsequently.
Indeed, while fictionalised it is interesting on shows like Boardwalk Empire to see portrayals of the quite close relationship between Republican politicians and black voters via characters like Chalky White. From memory one episode White threatens to withhold the African American vote from the upcoming election and Nucky Thompson says something along the lines of "they're not going to vote for the Democrats".
Once upon a time the idea of black voters voting for the Democrats would have been virtually unthinkable.
I seem to remember something from 'Gone with the Wind', the book, where the parties and hence voting option for the freed slaves was 'The 'Publicans or the Sinners"...... and no freed slave was going to vote 'Sinner'. One of the early 'adult' books which I read; left me with a dislike of 'privilege'!
Much of this ID will turn on the "free ID". Will it be easily available? Widely publicised? Or will it be a bureaucratic quagmire involving travel to Council HQ (more than 2 hours by public transport in much of Northumberland) with a stack of paperwork? I can guess.
A passport was taking 10 weeks last November. Is there any guarantee of ID being sorted in the 5 weeks before an election is called and being held?
They seem to handle voter registration quicker than that, so no reason why not.
No reason why a passport application should take 10 weeks either, but shit happens. Regularly, if public services are underfunded and poorly managed by ministers who prefer to get favourable headlines today than plan how to improve things for the future.
The eminent economist Adam Posen this week estimated that 80% of UK inflation is attributable to Brexit…
…As Posen pungently expressed it, the UK is “running a natural experiment in what happens when you run a trade war on yourself”. The results so far, his data also suggest, show just how damaging it is…
… Thus, faced with a burgeoning economic crisis, this post-Brexit government is bereft of workable ideas. Its flagship policy has proved an economic dud, but it is inherent in the government’s very formation to be unable to admit that, or to produce any policies that might ameliorate it. Having smashed up the old order, all they can do is stare in slack-jawed bemusement at the rubble around them, like a convention of peculiarly vandalistic village idiots who accidentally got control of a wrecking-ball...
… Meanwhile, the astonishingly dangerous political trick the government used to ‘get Brexit done’ has blown up in its face. That, of course, was agreeing to the Northern Ireland Protocol (NIP) which it is clear the government never intended to honour, and which it sold to its MPs as a supposedly temporary measure. Yet, at the very same time, it was sold to the electorate as part of the ’oven-ready deal’ which would put an end to all the boring Brexit wrangling. Worse still, it was signed as an international treaty with the EU, which certainly didn’t regard it as temporary, any more than does the US.
This was done quite knowingly and entirely cynically, and it’s very difficult to think of any equivalent trickery in modern British political history in terms of that combination of national and international dishonesty. Not only was it dishonest, it was actually – I don’t use this word casually – wicked in that the patsy in this trick was, and is, the people of Northern Ireland and the fragile politics of their hard-won peace…
After savaging the NI shenanigans he concludes:
And so it goes on, year after year after wretched year. All the fantasies, lies and denials that permeated the dreadful referendum campaign six long years ago are still running into the rock of the realities of international trade and international relations. The government has no solutions because it has never been a government in any real sense of the term, just a vehicle for precisely the fantasies and denials of that campaign.
Sounds like a bitter Remoaner though, so all that can probably be safely ignored.
UK inflation rate 6.2%
If 80% of that is attributable to Brexit, then that means baseline inflation ought to be 1.2% with Brexit contributing 5.0% of inflation.
While its not a direct control group, its close enough to check against the Eurozone for comparison. Their current inflation rate is 7.5%
Is 7.5% considerably more or less than 1.2%? Is 7.5% considerably more or less than 6.2%?
No can't be safely ignored, should be roundly ridiculed instead.
I have no problem with ID cards . In most EU countries you have show them when you vote . The difference is there is no GB ID card . The governments ID requirements to vote are not about fraud but voter suppression in groups that normally do not vote Tory .
I was amused by the responses to my post, given I hadn't expressed an opinion either way. Boris, of course, seems happily to have strenuously argued both sides, to suit himself at the given moment.
The whole voter ID thing misses out the real option for misuse and abuse which is postal voting. Impersonation at a polling booth can only be done in real time, with real risk and one vote at a time. The risk is trivial. Postal voting can be organised and malevolently overseen without proper scrutiny. The secrecy of the polling booth, requiring minimal oversight, is the one big safeguard of one person one vote democracy.
Wholeheartedly agreed. Postal voting is ripe for abuse, but most especially intimidation.
If a misogynist who thinks he's the "head of the household" wants to control how his wife votes then he can't do that while she's alone in the ballot booth, he can if he's looking over her shoulder at home while the ballot is filled in.
Even more ripe for abuse is proxy voting, where someone can sign over their vote to you without any decision on who you will vote for. The proxy voter can then threaten local politicians with masses of votes they control.
What is worse is that there is active evidence of this being abused at scale, but like street grooming, it is only visible from minor, less publicized news stories. I am certain this is still going on as there have been no reforms, but the BBC is too woke to publish an update on this story:
OT. If we still had them HYUFD would get my Tory poster of the year award by a distance.
1.His posts are unfailingly fact based. 2.They rarely contain tittle tattle. 3.They're better informed than any other Tory poster on here. 4.They present the full picture. 5.He is an encycopedia of political polls. 6.He presents polls without political slant. 7.He interprets polls without a political slant and astutely 8.His posts are always concise. 9.He never allows himself a flight of fancy
10. He's a nice guy despite the constant bullying by a lot of people
He really isn't nice at all, and he's the only poster on here who has made me fear for my personal safety.
I have no problem with ID cards . In most EU countries you have show them when you vote . The difference is there is no GB ID card . The governments ID requirements to vote are not about fraud but voter suppression in groups that normally do not vote Tory .
Often asserted, never proven.
Yes if only the bill had been called the Voter Suppression Bill, then we would have known for certain. As it is I suppose the government deserve the benefit of the doubt, given their consistent pattern of honest behaviour... Oh, wait.
I mean, some evidence would be nice. Why do you think "groups that normally do not vote Tory" are too stupid to get a free voter ID even if they don't already have some sort of photo ID (which the vast majority of people do)?
Proof of pudding, perchance, next week. Sadly we don't have elections here so I can't go down with my poll card and argue the toss.
Which would, in any event be unfair on the staff, who are 'only carrying out orders".
I have no problem with ID cards . In most EU countries you have show them when you vote . The difference is there is no GB ID card . The governments ID requirements to vote are not about fraud but voter suppression in groups that normally do not vote Tory .
Often asserted, never proven.
Yes if only the bill had been called the Voter Suppression Bill, then we would have known for certain. As it is I suppose the government deserve the benefit of the doubt, given their consistent pattern of honest behaviour... Oh, wait.
I mean, some evidence would be nice. Why do you think "groups that normally do not vote Tory" are too stupid to get a free voter ID even if they don't already have some sort of photo ID (which the vast majority of people do)?
Not a question of being stupid. A question of time, effort, organisation. The point is that younger voters and poorer voters are less likely to have either of the two forms of photo ID that most of us have, a passport or driving license, and so these are the people who will have to get a new ID just to be able to vote. Yet these are also the groups already least likely to vote, and so I would imagine that many won't have the motivation to get the ID, even if perhaps on the day they might have been persuaded to vote. Coincidentally they are also the groups least likely to vote Tory. Meanwhile, impersonation (pretending to be someone else when voting) is an almost non-existent problem. So you are creating a much bigger problem (preventing registered voters from voting on a technicality) to solve a much smaller problem, in a way that will advantage the party that is changing the law. It is voter suppression. It stinks.
I don't think younger voters are less likely to have a driving licence, are they? Certainly when I was that age it was standard for everyone to get their provisional licence as early as they could.
https://twitter.com/ThomasPride/status/1519898855927603201 “If I am ever asked to produce my ID card as evidence that I am who I say I am I will take that card out of my wallet and physically eat it in the presence of whatever emanation of the state has demanded that I produce it.” @BorisJohnson 2004.
Yesterday Johnson passed a law ...
... making it compulsory for voters to produce photo ID when voting.
Isn’t that opposition to ID cards rather than opposition to photo ID? Otherwise he’d have to eat his passport every time he came back from abroad.
Exactly. I'm yet to hear any justification from opponents of this change why voting should be less secure than picking up a parcel from the sorting office.
If this law passes I expect labour to reciprocate. 'No donations larger than £1000 a year' 'No donations from companies' 'Use census data for divvying up constituently boundaries 'Automatic voter registration' 'Votes for 16 year olds' etc etc
If you want to Americanise the system fine. But in a decade when the electoral pendulum has swung...
Is the political system in Northern Ireland "Americanised"?
And if Labour want to go "no donations from companies", the Tories will just go "no donations from unions". But - again- I can't see why Labour would be "reciprocating" as there's no evidence that "their voters" would be disporportionately affected - not least because there's no reason why a single valid voter should lose their vote because of this rule.
They will and the electoral distortions will begin proper. This policy evidence free and partisan. Expect the equivalent.
Again, the idea of it being partisan is often asserted but there's never been any evidence for it.
I have no problem with ID cards . In most EU countries you have show them when you vote . The difference is there is no GB ID card . The governments ID requirements to vote are not about fraud but voter suppression in groups that normally do not vote Tory .
Often asserted, never proven.
Yes if only the bill had been called the Voter Suppression Bill, then we would have known for certain. As it is I suppose the government deserve the benefit of the doubt, given their consistent pattern of honest behaviour... Oh, wait.
I mean, some evidence would be nice. Why do you think "groups that normally do not vote Tory" are too stupid to get a free voter ID even if they don't already have some sort of photo ID (which the vast majority of people do)?
Not a question of being stupid. A question of time, effort, organisation. The point is that younger voters and poorer voters are less likely to have either of the two forms of photo ID that most of us have, a passport or driving license, and so these are the people who will have to get a new ID just to be able to vote. Yet these are also the groups already least likely to vote, and so I would imagine that many won't have the motivation to get the ID, even if perhaps on the day they might have been persuaded to vote. Coincidentally they are also the groups least likely to vote Tory. Meanwhile, impersonation (pretending to be someone else when voting) is an almost non-existent problem. So you are creating a much bigger problem (preventing registered voters from voting on a technicality) to solve a much smaller problem, in a way that will advantage the party that is changing the law. It is voter suppression. It stinks.
I don't think younger voters are less likely to have a driving licence, are they? Certainly when I was that age it was standard for everyone to get their provisional licence as early as they could.
The eminent economist Adam Posen this week estimated that 80% of UK inflation is attributable to Brexit…
…As Posen pungently expressed it, the UK is “running a natural experiment in what happens when you run a trade war on yourself”. The results so far, his data also suggest, show just how damaging it is…
… Thus, faced with a burgeoning economic crisis, this post-Brexit government is bereft of workable ideas. Its flagship policy has proved an economic dud, but it is inherent in the government’s very formation to be unable to admit that, or to produce any policies that might ameliorate it. Having smashed up the old order, all they can do is stare in slack-jawed bemusement at the rubble around them, like a convention of peculiarly vandalistic village idiots who accidentally got control of a wrecking-ball...
… Meanwhile, the astonishingly dangerous political trick the government used to ‘get Brexit done’ has blown up in its face. That, of course, was agreeing to the Northern Ireland Protocol (NIP) which it is clear the government never intended to honour, and which it sold to its MPs as a supposedly temporary measure. Yet, at the very same time, it was sold to the electorate as part of the ’oven-ready deal’ which would put an end to all the boring Brexit wrangling. Worse still, it was signed as an international treaty with the EU, which certainly didn’t regard it as temporary, any more than does the US.
This was done quite knowingly and entirely cynically, and it’s very difficult to think of any equivalent trickery in modern British political history in terms of that combination of national and international dishonesty. Not only was it dishonest, it was actually – I don’t use this word casually – wicked in that the patsy in this trick was, and is, the people of Northern Ireland and the fragile politics of their hard-won peace…
After savaging the NI shenanigans he concludes:
And so it goes on, year after year after wretched year. All the fantasies, lies and denials that permeated the dreadful referendum campaign six long years ago are still running into the rock of the realities of international trade and international relations. The government has no solutions because it has never been a government in any real sense of the term, just a vehicle for precisely the fantasies and denials of that campaign.
Sounds like a bitter Remoaner though, so all that can probably be safely ignored.
UK inflation rate 6.2%
If 80% of that is attributable to Brexit, then that means baseline inflation ought to be 1.2% with Brexit contributing 5.0% of inflation.
While its not a direct control group, its close enough to check against the Eurozone for comparison. Their current inflation rate is 7.5%
Is 7.5% considerably more or less than 1.2%? Is 7.5% considerably more or less than 6.2%?
No can't be safely ignored, should be roundly ridiculed instead.
I wish I could pronounce so authoritatively on such a wide range of intricate specialisms as you do. I doff my cap to an intellectual titan.
https://twitter.com/ThomasPride/status/1519898855927603201 “If I am ever asked to produce my ID card as evidence that I am who I say I am I will take that card out of my wallet and physically eat it in the presence of whatever emanation of the state has demanded that I produce it.” @BorisJohnson 2004.
Yesterday Johnson passed a law ...
... making it compulsory for voters to produce photo ID when voting.
Isn’t that opposition to ID cards rather than opposition to photo ID? Otherwise he’d have to eat his passport every time he came back from abroad.
Exactly. I'm yet to hear any justification from opponents of this change why voting should be less secure than picking up a parcel from the sorting office.
More people will be denied their vote due to the ID requirement than have lost their vote due to impersonation.
Why will any valid voter be denied their vote?
Because they will have to apply in advance for the voter ID if they don't already have it.
I'm sure rcs1000 will have metrics about how many more people drop out of a sign-up process if it involves two steps rather than one.
It's a barrier to participation and people will fall foul of it.
The eminent economist Adam Posen this week estimated that 80% of UK inflation is attributable to Brexit…
…As Posen pungently expressed it, the UK is “running a natural experiment in what happens when you run a trade war on yourself”. The results so far, his data also suggest, show just how damaging it is…
… Thus, faced with a burgeoning economic crisis, this post-Brexit government is bereft of workable ideas. Its flagship policy has proved an economic dud, but it is inherent in the government’s very formation to be unable to admit that, or to produce any policies that might ameliorate it. Having smashed up the old order, all they can do is stare in slack-jawed bemusement at the rubble around them, like a convention of peculiarly vandalistic village idiots who accidentally got control of a wrecking-ball...
… Meanwhile, the astonishingly dangerous political trick the government used to ‘get Brexit done’ has blown up in its face. That, of course, was agreeing to the Northern Ireland Protocol (NIP) which it is clear the government never intended to honour, and which it sold to its MPs as a supposedly temporary measure. Yet, at the very same time, it was sold to the electorate as part of the ’oven-ready deal’ which would put an end to all the boring Brexit wrangling. Worse still, it was signed as an international treaty with the EU, which certainly didn’t regard it as temporary, any more than does the US.
This was done quite knowingly and entirely cynically, and it’s very difficult to think of any equivalent trickery in modern British political history in terms of that combination of national and international dishonesty. Not only was it dishonest, it was actually – I don’t use this word casually – wicked in that the patsy in this trick was, and is, the people of Northern Ireland and the fragile politics of their hard-won peace…
After savaging the NI shenanigans he concludes:
And so it goes on, year after year after wretched year. All the fantasies, lies and denials that permeated the dreadful referendum campaign six long years ago are still running into the rock of the realities of international trade and international relations. The government has no solutions because it has never been a government in any real sense of the term, just a vehicle for precisely the fantasies and denials of that campaign.
Sounds like a bitter Remoaner though, so all that can probably be safely ignored.
UK inflation rate 6.2%
If 80% of that is attributable to Brexit, then that means baseline inflation ought to be 1.2% with Brexit contributing 5.0% of inflation.
While its not a direct control group, its close enough to check against the Eurozone for comparison. Their current inflation rate is 7.5%
Is 7.5% considerably more or less than 1.2%? Is 7.5% considerably more or less than 6.2%?
No can't be safely ignored, should be roundly ridiculed instead.
I wish I could pronounce so authoritatively on such a wide range of intricate specialisms as you do. I doff my cap to an intellectual titan.
If you're going to share an article suggesting that 80% of inflation is caused by Brexit, it might be worth thinking that through.
Do you really think that we would have an inflation rate of 1.2% were it not for Brexit? At a time when the Eurozone has inflation higher than our own, is 80% of our own really caused by Brexit?
Do you actually think that, or did you take him at his word and not think it through?
I have no problem with ID cards . In most EU countries you have show them when you vote . The difference is there is no GB ID card . The governments ID requirements to vote are not about fraud but voter suppression in groups that normally do not vote Tory .
Often asserted, never proven.
My concern (and the reason that there is a deep suspicion about this) is that there basically isn't *any* voter fraud of the kind protected by this measure.
So what is it for?
A chunk of the Conservative Party really wishes they were American, and American politics is largely about the elected choosing their voters, rather than the other way round.
I doubt that there is much voter fraud at the polling station, mostly because it would be really inefficient. So this plan just acts to stop the vaguely shambolic from voting, which is a shame since their voice also deserves to be heard.
https://twitter.com/ThomasPride/status/1519898855927603201 “If I am ever asked to produce my ID card as evidence that I am who I say I am I will take that card out of my wallet and physically eat it in the presence of whatever emanation of the state has demanded that I produce it.” @BorisJohnson 2004.
Yesterday Johnson passed a law ...
... making it compulsory for voters to produce photo ID when voting.
Isn’t that opposition to ID cards rather than opposition to photo ID? Otherwise he’d have to eat his passport every time he came back from abroad.
Exactly. I'm yet to hear any justification from opponents of this change why voting should be less secure than picking up a parcel from the sorting office.
If this law passes I expect labour to reciprocate. 'No donations larger than £1000 a year' 'No donations from companies' 'Use census data for divvying up constituently boundaries 'Automatic voter registration' 'Votes for 16 year olds' etc etc
If you want to Americanise the system fine. But in a decade when the electoral pendulum has swung...
Is the political system in Northern Ireland "Americanised"?
And if Labour want to go "no donations from companies", the Tories will just go "no donations from unions". But - again- I can't see why Labour would be "reciprocating" as there's no evidence that "their voters" would be disporportionately affected - not least because there's no reason why a single valid voter should lose their vote because of this rule.
Ban all political donations from groups, every donation must be from an identified individual and with a limit of say £1000 per year. Force political parties to appeal to wide groups of people, not small numbers of the rich and influential.
The “Americanization” would be to introduce mandatory ID, but then only allow applications for said ID one hour a fortnight, in person at a place with no public transport service. There’s no evidence of such skullduggery in the UK, where it’s been stated that ID will be easy to apply for online.
I have no problem with ID cards . In most EU countries you have show them when you vote . The difference is there is no GB ID card . The governments ID requirements to vote are not about fraud but voter suppression in groups that normally do not vote Tory .
Often asserted, never proven.
Yes if only the bill had been called the Voter Suppression Bill, then we would have known for certain. As it is I suppose the government deserve the benefit of the doubt, given their consistent pattern of honest behaviour... Oh, wait.
I mean, some evidence would be nice. Why do you think "groups that normally do not vote Tory" are too stupid to get a free voter ID even if they don't already have some sort of photo ID (which the vast majority of people do)?
Not a question of being stupid. A question of time, effort, organisation. The point is that younger voters and poorer voters are less likely to have either of the two forms of photo ID that most of us have, a passport or driving license, and so these are the people who will have to get a new ID just to be able to vote. Yet these are also the groups already least likely to vote, and so I would imagine that many won't have the motivation to get the ID, even if perhaps on the day they might have been persuaded to vote. Coincidentally they are also the groups least likely to vote Tory. Meanwhile, impersonation (pretending to be someone else when voting) is an almost non-existent problem. So you are creating a much bigger problem (preventing registered voters from voting on a technicality) to solve a much smaller problem, in a way that will advantage the party that is changing the law. It is voter suppression. It stinks.
I don't think younger voters are less likely to have a driving licence, are they? Certainly when I was that age it was standard for everyone to get their provisional licence as early as they could.
Apparently fewer young people, especially in cities, are learning to drive.
https://twitter.com/ThomasPride/status/1519898855927603201 “If I am ever asked to produce my ID card as evidence that I am who I say I am I will take that card out of my wallet and physically eat it in the presence of whatever emanation of the state has demanded that I produce it.” @BorisJohnson 2004.
Yesterday Johnson passed a law ...
... making it compulsory for voters to produce photo ID when voting.
Isn’t that opposition to ID cards rather than opposition to photo ID? Otherwise he’d have to eat his passport every time he came back from abroad.
Exactly. I'm yet to hear any justification from opponents of this change why voting should be less secure than picking up a parcel from the sorting office.
More people will be denied their vote due to the ID requirement than have lost their vote due to impersonation.
Why will any valid voter be denied their vote?
Because they will have to apply in advance for the voter ID if they don't already have it.
I'm sure rcs1000 will have metrics about how many more people drop out of a sign-up process if it involves two steps rather than one.
It's a barrier to participation and people will fall foul of it.
One wonders how they manage to register to vote in the first place.
I have no problem with ID cards . In most EU countries you have show them when you vote . The difference is there is no GB ID card . The governments ID requirements to vote are not about fraud but voter suppression in groups that normally do not vote Tory .
Often asserted, never proven.
Yes if only the bill had been called the Voter Suppression Bill, then we would have known for certain. As it is I suppose the government deserve the benefit of the doubt, given their consistent pattern of honest behaviour... Oh, wait.
I mean, some evidence would be nice. Why do you think "groups that normally do not vote Tory" are too stupid to get a free voter ID even if they don't already have some sort of photo ID (which the vast majority of people do)?
Not a question of being stupid. A question of time, effort, organisation. The point is that younger voters and poorer voters are less likely to have either of the two forms of photo ID that most of us have, a passport or driving license, and so these are the people who will have to get a new ID just to be able to vote. Yet these are also the groups already least likely to vote, and so I would imagine that many won't have the motivation to get the ID, even if perhaps on the day they might have been persuaded to vote. Coincidentally they are also the groups least likely to vote Tory. Meanwhile, impersonation (pretending to be someone else when voting) is an almost non-existent problem. So you are creating a much bigger problem (preventing registered voters from voting on a technicality) to solve a much smaller problem, in a way that will advantage the party that is changing the law. It is voter suppression. It stinks.
I don't think younger voters are less likely to have a driving licence, are they? Certainly when I was that age it was standard for everyone to get their provisional licence as early as they could.
We had this discussion a few weeks ago. This has changed dramatically. I got my licence asap. Not now. Lots of youngsters don't drive, particularly in town. My son is 26. He lives in Cambridge. He doesn't have a licence. Very common these days. He does have a passport however.
I have no problem with ID cards . In most EU countries you have show them when you vote . The difference is there is no GB ID card . The governments ID requirements to vote are not about fraud but voter suppression in groups that normally do not vote Tory .
Often asserted, never proven.
Yes if only the bill had been called the Voter Suppression Bill, then we would have known for certain. As it is I suppose the government deserve the benefit of the doubt, given their consistent pattern of honest behaviour... Oh, wait.
I mean, some evidence would be nice. Why do you think "groups that normally do not vote Tory" are too stupid to get a free voter ID even if they don't already have some sort of photo ID (which the vast majority of people do)?
Proof of pudding, perchance, next week. Sadly we don't have elections here so I can't go down with my poll card and argue the toss.
Which would, in any event be unfair on the staff, who are 'only carrying out orders".
Trying to think of a parallel period in British political history to where we are now in 2022.
1962.
Tories into their third term with their third consecutive PM - an Old Etonian actor manager.
Labour with a relatively new leader.
Two years later the actor-manager PM has been replaced by a new PM, who then loses, narrowly, to Labour in the 1964 General Election.
Anyone find a better match?
Agreed, the next general election will be more 1964 than 1997 if Labour do win.
2022 is unprecedented in multiple ways. We’re emerging (in’s’Allah) from an immense global plague. We face global Cold War, and European Hot War. We are on the cusp of Artificial Intelligence. Etc etc etc. The world is changing at enormous speed, possibly faster than at any time in human history
This is not ‘1964’. It is itself
1964 was just after the Cuban Missile Crisis at the height of the Cold War. There was also the growth of TV and the emergence of the computer and the Space race etc and the cultural revolution of the 1960s
Things moved quite quickly in the 1960s. That does not preclude them moving even faster now. Much faster
AI is much overblown.
This article in the Atlantic is quite interesting on Google Translate. Now don't get me wrong, Google Translate is a great tool, very useful etc. But it's a million miles away from human intelligence.
Which suggests we really are close to proper AI, if not there already
Anybody claiming GPT3 is "proper" AI, is quite frankly an idiot. Its highly impressive, as is DALLE-2, but its not intelligent. They are giant transformers. Yes that means they can create a sentence or a picture never been written or drawn before, but it has no concept of what that sentence means, if it actually makes sense, if it doesn't how to correct it, etc etc etc. They can't adapt to a changing world without total retraining of the whole giant network.
Hence, the Turing Test
You should know this. At some point (very soon, I suspect) the output of Neural Networks like GPT4 will be indistinguishable from human communication and creativity. At that juncture, the question as to whether they are actually ‘intelligent’ will become an abstruse debate for theologians and philosophers. They will appear, seem, act, speak, draw, sing, joke, create and behave as if they are humanly intelligent. They will then be, to all intents and purposes, intelligent
It will get REALLY spooky when they are obviously MORE ‘intelligent’. That’s coming, as well
https://twitter.com/ThomasPride/status/1519898855927603201 “If I am ever asked to produce my ID card as evidence that I am who I say I am I will take that card out of my wallet and physically eat it in the presence of whatever emanation of the state has demanded that I produce it.” @BorisJohnson 2004.
Yesterday Johnson passed a law ...
... making it compulsory for voters to produce photo ID when voting.
Isn’t that opposition to ID cards rather than opposition to photo ID? Otherwise he’d have to eat his passport every time he came back from abroad.
Exactly. I'm yet to hear any justification from opponents of this change why voting should be less secure than picking up a parcel from the sorting office.
If this law passes I expect labour to reciprocate. 'No donations larger than £1000 a year' 'No donations from companies' 'Use census data for divvying up constituently boundaries 'Automatic voter registration' 'Votes for 16 year olds' etc etc
If you want to Americanise the system fine. But in a decade when the electoral pendulum has swung...
Is the political system in Northern Ireland "Americanised"?
And if Labour want to go "no donations from companies", the Tories will just go "no donations from unions". But - again- I can't see why Labour would be "reciprocating" as there's no evidence that "their voters" would be disporportionately affected - not least because there's no reason why a single valid voter should lose their vote because of this rule.
Ban all political donations from groups, every donation must be from an identified individual and with a limit of say £1000 per year.
The “Americanization” would be to introduce mandatory ID, but then only allow applications for said ID one hour a fortnight, in person at a place with no public transport service. There’s no evidence of such skullduggery in the UK, where it’s been stated that ID will be easy to apply for online.
The people who have no ID often have no internet either. Agree with the donations part.
I have no problem with ID cards . In most EU countries you have show them when you vote . The difference is there is no GB ID card . The governments ID requirements to vote are not about fraud but voter suppression in groups that normally do not vote Tory .
Often asserted, never proven.
Yes if only the bill had been called the Voter Suppression Bill, then we would have known for certain. As it is I suppose the government deserve the benefit of the doubt, given their consistent pattern of honest behaviour... Oh, wait.
I mean, some evidence would be nice. Why do you think "groups that normally do not vote Tory" are too stupid to get a free voter ID even if they don't already have some sort of photo ID (which the vast majority of people do)?
Not a question of being stupid. A question of time, effort, organisation. The point is that younger voters and poorer voters are less likely to have either of the two forms of photo ID that most of us have, a passport or driving license, and so these are the people who will have to get a new ID just to be able to vote. Yet these are also the groups already least likely to vote, and so I would imagine that many won't have the motivation to get the ID, even if perhaps on the day they might have been persuaded to vote. Coincidentally they are also the groups least likely to vote Tory. Meanwhile, impersonation (pretending to be someone else when voting) is an almost non-existent problem. So you are creating a much bigger problem (preventing registered voters from voting on a technicality) to solve a much smaller problem, in a way that will advantage the party that is changing the law. It is voter suppression. It stinks.
I don't think younger voters are less likely to have a driving licence, are they? Certainly when I was that age it was standard for everyone to get their provisional licence as early as they could.
Apparently fewer young people, especially in cities, are learning to drive.
True, but it was a useful photo ID for other purposes.
I have no problem with ID cards . In most EU countries you have show them when you vote . The difference is there is no GB ID card . The governments ID requirements to vote are not about fraud but voter suppression in groups that normally do not vote Tory .
Often asserted, never proven.
Yes if only the bill had been called the Voter Suppression Bill, then we would have known for certain. As it is I suppose the government deserve the benefit of the doubt, given their consistent pattern of honest behaviour... Oh, wait.
I mean, some evidence would be nice. Why do you think "groups that normally do not vote Tory" are too stupid to get a free voter ID even if they don't already have some sort of photo ID (which the vast majority of people do)?
Not a question of being stupid. A question of time, effort, organisation. The point is that younger voters and poorer voters are less likely to have either of the two forms of photo ID that most of us have, a passport or driving license, and so these are the people who will have to get a new ID just to be able to vote. Yet these are also the groups already least likely to vote, and so I would imagine that many won't have the motivation to get the ID, even if perhaps on the day they might have been persuaded to vote. Coincidentally they are also the groups least likely to vote Tory. Meanwhile, impersonation (pretending to be someone else when voting) is an almost non-existent problem. So you are creating a much bigger problem (preventing registered voters from voting on a technicality) to solve a much smaller problem, in a way that will advantage the party that is changing the law. It is voter suppression. It stinks.
I don't think younger voters are less likely to have a driving licence, are they? Certainly when I was that age it was standard for everyone to get their provisional licence as early as they could.
Apparently fewer young people, especially in cities, are learning to drive.
Depends what you class as young people. We did this the other day. It isn't really true. 17-21 year olds yes, but that is a lot to do with going to university and you can't have a car. But record numbers by the time you get to late 20s.
But if one is concerned about students being disenfranchised from voting, universities these days do most of the leg work for students automatically and students are extremely well informed about elections by both the university and the SU. I am very confident that these changes to requiring ID will also be handled via big "marketing" pushes to get a free id card when you register each year.
I have no problem with ID cards . In most EU countries you have show them when you vote . The difference is there is no GB ID card . The governments ID requirements to vote are not about fraud but voter suppression in groups that normally do not vote Tory .
Often asserted, never proven.
Yes if only the bill had been called the Voter Suppression Bill, then we would have known for certain. As it is I suppose the government deserve the benefit of the doubt, given their consistent pattern of honest behaviour... Oh, wait.
I mean, some evidence would be nice. Why do you think "groups that normally do not vote Tory" are too stupid to get a free voter ID even if they don't already have some sort of photo ID (which the vast majority of people do)?
Not a question of being stupid. A question of time, effort, organisation. The point is that younger voters and poorer voters are less likely to have either of the two forms of photo ID that most of us have, a passport or driving license, and so these are the people who will have to get a new ID just to be able to vote. Yet these are also the groups already least likely to vote, and so I would imagine that many won't have the motivation to get the ID, even if perhaps on the day they might have been persuaded to vote. Coincidentally they are also the groups least likely to vote Tory. Meanwhile, impersonation (pretending to be someone else when voting) is an almost non-existent problem. So you are creating a much bigger problem (preventing registered voters from voting on a technicality) to solve a much smaller problem, in a way that will advantage the party that is changing the law. It is voter suppression. It stinks.
I don't think younger voters are less likely to have a driving licence, are they? Certainly when I was that age it was standard for everyone to get their provisional licence as early as they could.
I didn't get one until I was in my mid-20s.
According to the Internet, in 2019 35% of 17-20yo had a license, 62% of 21-29, 79% of 30-39, and 85-86% of 40-69yo. 67% of 70+ so that could hurt the Tories, although many (most?) of this age group vote by post. 17% of the population don't have a passport. Given that going abroad is expensive and getting a passport is expensive I would assume that the 17% will be more likely than the general population to be poor.
Trying to think of a parallel period in British political history to where we are now in 2022.
1962.
Tories into their third term with their third consecutive PM - an Old Etonian actor manager.
Labour with a relatively new leader.
Two years later the actor-manager PM has been replaced by a new PM, who then loses, narrowly, to Labour in the 1964 General Election.
Anyone find a better match?
Agreed, the next general election will be more 1964 than 1997 if Labour do win.
2022 is unprecedented in multiple ways. We’re emerging (in’s’Allah) from an immense global plague. We face global Cold War, and European Hot War. We are on the cusp of Artificial Intelligence. Etc etc etc. The world is changing at enormous speed, possibly faster than at any time in human history
This is not ‘1964’. It is itself
1964 was just after the Cuban Missile Crisis at the height of the Cold War. There was also the growth of TV and the emergence of the computer and the Space race etc and the cultural revolution of the 1960s
Things moved quite quickly in the 1960s. That does not preclude them moving even faster now. Much faster
AI is much overblown.
This article in the Atlantic is quite interesting on Google Translate. Now don't get me wrong, Google Translate is a great tool, very useful etc. But it's a million miles away from human intelligence.
Which suggests we really are close to proper AI, if not there already
Anybody claiming GPT3 is "proper" AI, is quite frankly an idiot. Its highly impressive, as is DALLE-2, but its not intelligent. They are giant transformers. Yes that means they can create a sentence or a picture never been written or drawn before, but it has no concept of what that sentence means, if it actually makes sense, if it doesn't how to correct it, etc etc etc. They can't adapt to a changing world without total retraining of the whole giant network.
You need to approach this question from both directions. You may think human intelligence is something other than applying some algorithms to a lot of data and spewing out the result, but you need to make the case. There's posters here who suggest otherwise. Your only evidence, I suspect, is that it feels to you like something else is going on. The deficiencies in introspective evidence are too obvious to be worth pointing out ( but for the hard of thinking, if you think your scales are inaccurate, take something which weighs a kilo and see what your scales say. When verifying that your kilo thing weighs a kilo, do not use the scales which you are testing).
The eminent economist Adam Posen this week estimated that 80% of UK inflation is attributable to Brexit…
…As Posen pungently expressed it, the UK is “running a natural experiment in what happens when you run a trade war on yourself”. The results so far, his data also suggest, show just how damaging it is…
… Thus, faced with a burgeoning economic crisis, this post-Brexit government is bereft of workable ideas. Its flagship policy has proved an economic dud, but it is inherent in the government’s very formation to be unable to admit that, or to produce any policies that might ameliorate it. Having smashed up the old order, all they can do is stare in slack-jawed bemusement at the rubble around them, like a convention of peculiarly vandalistic village idiots who accidentally got control of a wrecking-ball...
… Meanwhile, the astonishingly dangerous political trick the government used to ‘get Brexit done’ has blown up in its face. That, of course, was agreeing to the Northern Ireland Protocol (NIP) which it is clear the government never intended to honour, and which it sold to its MPs as a supposedly temporary measure. Yet, at the very same time, it was sold to the electorate as part of the ’oven-ready deal’ which would put an end to all the boring Brexit wrangling. Worse still, it was signed as an international treaty with the EU, which certainly didn’t regard it as temporary, any more than does the US.
This was done quite knowingly and entirely cynically, and it’s very difficult to think of any equivalent trickery in modern British political history in terms of that combination of national and international dishonesty. Not only was it dishonest, it was actually – I don’t use this word casually – wicked in that the patsy in this trick was, and is, the people of Northern Ireland and the fragile politics of their hard-won peace…
After savaging the NI shenanigans he concludes:
And so it goes on, year after year after wretched year. All the fantasies, lies and denials that permeated the dreadful referendum campaign six long years ago are still running into the rock of the realities of international trade and international relations. The government has no solutions because it has never been a government in any real sense of the term, just a vehicle for precisely the fantasies and denials of that campaign.
Sounds like a bitter Remoaner though, so all that can probably be safely ignored.
UK inflation rate 6.2%
If 80% of that is attributable to Brexit, then that means baseline inflation ought to be 1.2% with Brexit contributing 5.0% of inflation.
While its not a direct control group, its close enough to check against the Eurozone for comparison. Their current inflation rate is 7.5%
Is 7.5% considerably more or less than 1.2%? Is 7.5% considerably more or less than 6.2%?
No can't be safely ignored, should be roundly ridiculed instead.
One of the stupidest things I’ve ever seen. Stockholm Syndrome infects economics
I’m right now in the USA. The inflation rate here is 8.5% and everyone talks of it. I hear a lot of smarter people saying ‘thank God we didn’t do Amerexit or it would be 13.5%’
I have no problem with ID cards . In most EU countries you have show them when you vote . The difference is there is no GB ID card . The governments ID requirements to vote are not about fraud but voter suppression in groups that normally do not vote Tory .
Often asserted, never proven.
Yes if only the bill had been called the Voter Suppression Bill, then we would have known for certain. As it is I suppose the government deserve the benefit of the doubt, given their consistent pattern of honest behaviour... Oh, wait.
I mean, some evidence would be nice. Why do you think "groups that normally do not vote Tory" are too stupid to get a free voter ID even if they don't already have some sort of photo ID (which the vast majority of people do)?
Not a question of being stupid. A question of time, effort, organisation. The point is that younger voters and poorer voters are less likely to have either of the two forms of photo ID that most of us have, a passport or driving license, and so these are the people who will have to get a new ID just to be able to vote. Yet these are also the groups already least likely to vote, and so I would imagine that many won't have the motivation to get the ID, even if perhaps on the day they might have been persuaded to vote. Coincidentally they are also the groups least likely to vote Tory. Meanwhile, impersonation (pretending to be someone else when voting) is an almost non-existent problem. So you are creating a much bigger problem (preventing registered voters from voting on a technicality) to solve a much smaller problem, in a way that will advantage the party that is changing the law. It is voter suppression. It stinks.
I don't think younger voters are less likely to have a driving licence, are they? Certainly when I was that age it was standard for everyone to get their provisional licence as early as they could.
I didn't get one until I was in my mid-20s.
According to the Internet, in 2019 35% of 17-20yo had a license, 62% of 21-29, 79% of 30-39, and 85-86% of 40-69yo. 67% of 70+ so that could hurt the Tories, although many (most?) of this age group vote by post. 17% of the population don't have a passport. Given that going abroad is expensive and getting a passport is expensive I would assume that the 17% will be more likely than the general population to be poor.
That figure is for a full licence I believe. Many of the 65% of 17-20yo without a full licence are without a full licence because they're learning and so have their provisional instead.
https://twitter.com/ThomasPride/status/1519898855927603201 “If I am ever asked to produce my ID card as evidence that I am who I say I am I will take that card out of my wallet and physically eat it in the presence of whatever emanation of the state has demanded that I produce it.” @BorisJohnson 2004.
Yesterday Johnson passed a law ...
... making it compulsory for voters to produce photo ID when voting.
Isn’t that opposition to ID cards rather than opposition to photo ID? Otherwise he’d have to eat his passport every time he came back from abroad.
Exactly. I'm yet to hear any justification from opponents of this change why voting should be less secure than picking up a parcel from the sorting office.
If this law passes I expect labour to reciprocate. 'No donations larger than £1000 a year' 'No donations from companies' 'Use census data for divvying up constituently boundaries 'Automatic voter registration' 'Votes for 16 year olds' etc etc
If you want to Americanise the system fine. But in a decade when the electoral pendulum has swung...
Is the political system in Northern Ireland "Americanised"?
And if Labour want to go "no donations from companies", the Tories will just go "no donations from unions". But - again- I can't see why Labour would be "reciprocating" as there's no evidence that "their voters" would be disporportionately affected - not least because there's no reason why a single valid voter should lose their vote because of this rule.
Ban all political donations from groups, every donation must be from an identified individual and with a limit of say £1000 per year.
The “Americanization” would be to introduce mandatory ID, but then only allow applications for said ID one hour a fortnight, in person at a place with no public transport service. There’s no evidence of such skullduggery in the UK, where it’s been stated that ID will be easy to apply for online.
The people who have no ID often have no internet either. Agree with the donations part.
The "individual" should be limited to adult British citizens, but otherwise entirely agree. It would probably change my vote for whichever party proposed that.
Also voting should be limited to British citizens, at least in mainland GB. That we allow foreigners to have an equal say on who the British government is is insane.
I have no problem with ID cards . In most EU countries you have show them when you vote . The difference is there is no GB ID card . The governments ID requirements to vote are not about fraud but voter suppression in groups that normally do not vote Tory .
Often asserted, never proven.
Yes if only the bill had been called the Voter Suppression Bill, then we would have known for certain. As it is I suppose the government deserve the benefit of the doubt, given their consistent pattern of honest behaviour... Oh, wait.
I mean, some evidence would be nice. Why do you think "groups that normally do not vote Tory" are too stupid to get a free voter ID even if they don't already have some sort of photo ID (which the vast majority of people do)?
Proof of pudding, perchance, next week. Sadly we don't have elections here so I can't go down with my poll card and argue the toss.
Which would, in any event be unfair on the staff, who are 'only carrying out orders".
It doesn't apply to elections next week, surely.
I thought it did, but could well be wrong.
And I suggested that my bus pass wouldn't be enough; apparently it would, but my grandson's student railcard, which also has a picture isn't acceptable. In fact while I don't think he'd vote Tory, he's less unlikely to do so than me!
Comments
Posts like this make me think maybe get your blood pressure checked out.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2022/04/28/volodymyr-zelensky-refused-evacuated-kyiv-even-russian-hit-men/
Volodymyr Zelensky refused to be evacuated from his compound in Kyiv even as Russian assassination squads parachuted into the capital and tried to storm the building to kill him.
At the start of the invasion on Feb 24 those inside defended themselves with automatic weapons and erected defences as the Russians twice tried to storm them at night.
A back gate was blocked with only plywood boards and police barricades.
According to an account of the crisis given by presidential adviser Oleksiy Arestovych to TIME, Mr Zelensky was urged to leave and go to a secure facility away from Kyiv.
Both British and US forces offered to evacuate Mr Zelensky and allow him to set up a government in exile, probably in Poland, but he never seriously thought about it.
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/duel-federalist-and-republican-party/
“Using these issues, as well as the power swung his way by his vice president, Aaron Burr, Republican leader Thomas Jefferson won election to the presidency in 1800. This Republican party, which would hold power until 1825, is the direct ancestor of today's Democratic Party.”
Which was my point
Now the Democrats are closer to the Whigs and Lincoln's Republicans with the GOP closer to the Andrew Jackson Democrats
Blair was trying to sell it as really just a better version of your passport or driving licence, but actually it was much more wide ranging than that.
So there isn't really any inconsistency in Boris position here...first time for everything.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/apr/29/russian-forces-reportedly-came-close-to-capturing-zelenskiy-during-first-hours-of-invasion
Yes all true. But it still was a breach of the guidelines at the time.
If Starmer and those present get a vpn it’s not for industrial partying, it’s for a different thing, a genuine work event, but the Tory’s will be delighted because at first glance it looks just like same thing + with added hypocrisy.
There's only so many times Labour, in terms of leadership and organisational culture, can make it obvious that it doesn't care about institutional racism against black people before I go 'you know what, screw this.'
https://twitter.com/AyoCaesar/status/1519947294891778049
We don't want a Communist's vote.
And funny she cares about racism now.
With that brave decision, Zelensky probably - single-handedly - saved Ukraine from swift collapse.
They will make movies about him
1.His posts are unfailingly fact based.
2.They rarely contain tittle tattle.
3.They're better informed than any other Tory poster on here.
4.They present the full picture.
5.He is an encycopedia of political polls.
6.He presents polls without political slant.
7.His posts are always concise.
8.He never allows himself a flight of fancy
This article in the Atlantic is quite interesting on Google Translate. Now don't get me wrong, Google Translate is a great tool, very useful etc. But it's a million miles away from human intelligence.
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/01/the-shallowness-of-google-translate/551570/
Boris, of course, seems happily to have strenuously argued both sides, to suit himself at the given moment.
Once upon a time the idea of black voters voting for the Democrats would have been virtually unthinkable.
* its a bit more complex than this, but sake of easy argument.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/15/magazine/ai-language.html
Which suggests we really are close to proper AI, if not there already
Daily Quordle 95
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Okay, look at this recent incident, which from the sounds of it could very easily have been a serious crash: https://www.cambridge-news.co.uk/news/local-news/high-speed-train-forced-make-23723859
What might have caused that / been causal factors? The biggest probability is that the root cause was the driver not realising the route he had been put into the station in (*). That would make it predominantly a driver error (**), which was a privatised aspect of the system (and still is for much of it via the concession system).
To repeat myself: accidents are not just caused by faulty infrastructure. The brilliant safety record that the railway system has had (bar the tragic accident in Scotland in 2020) is down to the entire system working well; nationalised network and privatised operators.
Unless you're saying that everything that went wrong on the railways over the last 25-30 years was down to it being a 'nationalised' railway?
(*) There will almost certainly be other minor causal factors.
(**) There are other remote possibilities as well to do with infrastructure - as the 'very close call' section in teh following link shows; from the same location: http://www.traintesting.com/ic225_9.htm
If you want to Americanise the system fine. But in a decade when the electoral pendulum has swung...
https://personal.help.royalmail.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/146/~/how-to-collect-a-missed-delivery
I've not checked the rest.
If a misogynist who thinks he's the "head of the household" wants to control how his wife votes then he can't do that while she's alone in the ballot booth, he can if he's looking over her shoulder at home while the ballot is filled in.
And if Labour want to go "no donations from companies", the Tories will just go "no donations from unions". But - again- I can't see why Labour would be "reciprocating" as there's no evidence that "their voters" would be disporportionately affected - not least because there's no reason why a single valid voter should lose their vote because of this rule.
Will it be easily available? Widely publicised? Or will it be a bureaucratic quagmire involving travel to Council HQ (more than 2 hours by public transport in much of Northumberland) with a stack of paperwork?
I can guess.
There were 2 convictions for personation in 2019, both in the European elections.
So if there are 3 or more cases of this unfortunate but fairly likely scenario, it is a net negative.
This isn't America with their wretched DVLA, Council HQs hate seeing anyone in person and will do anything they can to ensure it can be done remotely.
And then LBJ managed to get his racist senators to vote for civil rights, and the Republicans decided to go south in search of votes.
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Link - long but worth a read: https://chrisgreybrexitblog.blogspot.com/2022/04/six-years-of-failure.html?m=1
Choice quotes:
The eminent economist Adam Posen this week estimated that 80% of UK inflation is attributable to Brexit…
…As Posen pungently expressed it, the UK is “running a natural experiment in what happens when you run a trade war on yourself”. The results so far, his data also suggest, show just how damaging it is…
… Thus, faced with a burgeoning economic crisis, this post-Brexit government is bereft of workable ideas. Its flagship policy has proved an economic dud, but it is inherent in the government’s very formation to be unable to admit that, or to produce any policies that might ameliorate it. Having smashed up the old order, all they can do is stare in slack-jawed bemusement at the rubble around them, like a convention of peculiarly vandalistic village idiots who accidentally got control of a wrecking-ball...
… Meanwhile, the astonishingly dangerous political trick the government used to ‘get Brexit done’ has blown up in its face. That, of course, was agreeing to the Northern Ireland Protocol (NIP) which it is clear the government never intended to honour, and which it sold to its MPs as a supposedly temporary measure. Yet, at the very same time, it was sold to the electorate as part of the ’oven-ready deal’ which would put an end to all the boring Brexit wrangling. Worse still, it was signed as an international treaty with the EU, which certainly didn’t regard it as temporary, any more than does the US.
This was done quite knowingly and entirely cynically, and it’s very difficult to think of any equivalent trickery in modern British political history in terms of that combination of national and international dishonesty. Not only was it dishonest, it was actually – I don’t use this word casually – wicked in that the patsy in this trick was, and is, the people of Northern Ireland and the fragile politics of their hard-won peace…
After savaging the NI shenanigans he concludes:
And so it goes on, year after year after wretched year. All the fantasies, lies and denials that permeated the dreadful referendum campaign six long years ago are still running into the rock of the realities of international trade and international relations. The government has no solutions because it has never been a government in any real sense of the term, just a vehicle for precisely the fantasies and denials of that campaign.
Sounds like a bitter Remoaner though, so all that can probably be safely ignored.
Meanwhile, impersonation (pretending to be someone else when voting) is an almost non-existent problem. So you are creating a much bigger problem (preventing registered voters from voting on a technicality) to solve a much smaller problem, in a way that will advantage the party that is changing the law. It is voter suppression. It stinks.
So what is it for?
One of the early 'adult' books which I read; left me with a dislike of 'privilege'!
If 80% of that is attributable to Brexit, then that means baseline inflation ought to be 1.2% with Brexit contributing 5.0% of inflation.
While its not a direct control group, its close enough to check against the Eurozone for comparison. Their current inflation rate is 7.5%
Is 7.5% considerably more or less than 1.2%?
Is 7.5% considerably more or less than 6.2%?
No can't be safely ignored, should be roundly ridiculed instead.
What is worse is that there is active evidence of this being abused at scale, but like street grooming, it is only visible from minor, less publicized news stories. I am certain this is still going on as there have been no reforms, but the BBC is too woke to publish an update on this story:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/8655697.stm
Which would, in any event be unfair on the staff, who are 'only carrying out orders".
I'm sure rcs1000 will have metrics about how many more people drop out of a sign-up process if it involves two steps rather than one.
It's a barrier to participation and people will fall foul of it.
Do you really think that we would have an inflation rate of 1.2% were it not for Brexit? At a time when the Eurozone has inflation higher than our own, is 80% of our own really caused by Brexit?
Do you actually think that, or did you take him at his word and not think it through?
I doubt that there is much voter fraud at the polling station, mostly because it would be really inefficient. So this plan just acts to stop the vaguely shambolic from voting, which is a shame since their voice also deserves to be heard.
The “Americanization” would be to introduce mandatory ID, but then only allow applications for said ID one hour a fortnight, in person at a place with no public transport service. There’s no evidence of such skullduggery in the UK, where it’s been stated that ID will be easy to apply for online.
You should know this. At some point (very soon, I suspect) the output of Neural Networks like GPT4 will be indistinguishable from human communication and creativity. At that juncture, the question as to whether they are actually ‘intelligent’ will become an abstruse debate for theologians and philosophers. They will appear, seem, act, speak, draw, sing, joke, create and behave as if they are humanly intelligent. They will then be, to all intents and purposes, intelligent
It will get REALLY spooky when they are obviously MORE ‘intelligent’. That’s coming, as well
But if one is concerned about students being disenfranchised from voting, universities these days do most of the leg work for students automatically and students are extremely well informed about elections by both the university and the SU. I am very confident that these changes to requiring ID will also be handled via big "marketing" pushes to get a free id card when you register each year.
17% of the population don't have a passport. Given that going abroad is expensive and getting a passport is expensive I would assume that the 17% will be more likely than the general population to be poor.
I can't imagine its a very high proportion at all that don't have any form of ID.
I’m right now in the USA. The inflation rate here is 8.5% and everyone talks of it. I hear a lot of smarter people saying ‘thank God we didn’t do Amerexit or it would be 13.5%’
Also voting should be limited to British citizens, at least in mainland GB. That we allow foreigners to have an equal say on who the British government is is insane.
And I suggested that my bus pass wouldn't be enough; apparently it would, but my grandson's student railcard, which also has a picture isn't acceptable.
In fact while I don't think he'd vote Tory, he's less unlikely to do so than me!