Starmer having to resign would have nothing to do with him being so principled. It would have everything to do with bumping his gums about Boris and especially Cummings, for what he thought were political free hits but turned out to be heavily loaded with hypocrisy.
No doubt if she has to resign too, Rayner will again be "crestfallen".
So @thetimes reporting Liz Truss to scrap Northern Ireland protocol - or at least parts of it - next week. This will trigger retaliation from EU which could make relations v difficult. EU likely to launch legal action against and suspend co-operation with UK on most issues .. https://twitter.com/sima_kotecha/status/1523930984261033985
Of course - got to respond to the drubbing in the locals somehow, time to break out the Brexit greatest hits.
Boris Johnson: omg we've lost hundreds of wards in our southern heartlands to the Liberal Democrats, what can we do
DAVID CANZINI, ELECTORAL GENIUS™: I know, let's start banging on about Brexit again, they'll love that!
At the time of this dinner England was under restrictions which limited meetings with people inside (other than members of your household bubble) other than for exceptions, one of which was meetings reasonably necessary for work.
What the police will have to decide, I think, is whether all the meetings Starmer and others were having on that day in Durham were all reasonably necessary for work, including dinner in the evening. Work matters can after all be discussed over dinner. And even if they are not, if you are working in a long meeting and then stop to have something to eat, it would be curious to say that a meeting where you open your mouth to speak is legal but the moment you open it to eat a sandwich it becomes illegal.
Note: it could be curious but might still be the correct legal interpretation. That might be the legal basis on which the Met issued the FPN against the PM re the cake he ate in his office. We just don't know. The fact that we still don't know is itself pretty worrying and unacceptable.
Or is the proper analysis to look at each individual meeting during the day and assess whether each of them was reasonably necessary for work. So all the work meetings before dinner were OK and work meetings after the dinner were also OK but the actual dinner was not because it was not reasonably necessary for work.
Also a curious interpretation. Starmer's team - judging by what they are saying today - seem to be taking the view that you should look at the totality of the day as a whole not chop it up into bite- sized events (sorry!).
Also what does "reasonably" mean?
Conclusions:-
1. Those regulations were a mess. 2. Who is giving legal advice to the Met and the Durham police? 3. Are they getting the same legal advice on how to interpret the regulations and apply it to the facts they gather? 4. Are they going to publish what that legal advice is? 5. Is that legal advice correct?
You see, if Durham police do not fine Starmer on the basis that it was reasonable of him to eat with people he had been working with all day, especially if he continued to work afterwards, then I find it hard to see how the PM and Sunak were fined for working in the Cabinet Office and stopping briefly to have a cake. They could have argued that they were there to work for a number of hours and a brief pause to eat or drink did not undermine the fact that they were at a work meeting during those hours.
The irony, in what is turning out to be the 2020s version of Jarndyce v Jarndyce, would be if Starmer avoids an FPN on legal grounds which could have helped Johnson and Sunak avoid theirs.
I will now go and get a life .....
Loads of FPNs are issued incorrectly. Surely part of the process is whether an individual chooses to accept one or not. If they are unreasonable, challenge them!
I haven’t! Quite keen to go, actually (despite mixed reports from well traveled friends)
The last big holes on my global travel bucket list are Central Asia, Central America, and the pacific islands. And several big chunks of Africa like this
Been almost everywhere else
I always think Pakistan looks like a T-Rex and GB could morph into one half of the crap London 2012 mascot (maybe that was the idea behind it)
You'd pick it up in much less time with a little effort. Months.
You'd pick up the utilitarian basics in months (say A1, A2 if you worked at it a bit) but getting the stage where you can have casual social interactions with people you don't know or lucidly converse on unfamiliar and unprepared topics (B2) takes years of immersion and formal study for most people.
When Mrs DA went to university in Russia she had 12 months of 40 hours/week classroom instruction plus self directed study plus immersion to get to B2 in year. Very few people have the motivation and time to devote to that.
"Picking Up" languages by just living among the native speaking community is not very effective for most people. An important concept in language teaching is "intervention". That is, we identify a student's slip and correct it. Now a random interlocutor in France doesn't know or care about this and so isn't going to explain that when using le participe passé and the object procedes the verb, the participle agrees, in number and gender, with the object not the subject. Contrast with the case where the participle precedes the object and is therefore invariant.
It is like some production from the Theatre of the Absurd, reflecting on the pointlessness of it all.
Almost everyone sane has concluded that the Tories are much better off with Boris (serial liar) and Labour are much better off without Keir (a very limited politician).
But, the last of the Boris Loyalists are fighting it out to the death with the bedraggled remains of the Keir yeomanry over 'beer and curry' gate and 'cheese and wine' gate.
Haven't these people understood what everyone else knows?
The first party that changes its leader wins the next election.
It’s not that simple. Who the party chooses matters. Switching to Truss for example, is not a sure fire route to victory. The Tories have no clear winners.
Meanwhile for Labour, the the controversy around Corbyn bring risks for the campaign. The first question of the campaign will be, should Corbyn have the whip.
At least a dozen lashes!
What's the new controversy around Corbyn? Is there more?
I thought he was now firmly in the dustbin of history now.
As a Conservative I am very ambivalent about a Starmer resignation. On the one hand it is useful to have somebody as useless as him leading the main opposition party but on the other it is more than possible that he may become Prime Minister one day and that is not something I think would be good for my country.
My solution to solve the Northern Ireland protocol.
A plebiscite in Britain on whether we want to keep Northern Ireland or not.
I mean what has Northern Ireland ever given us except bigotry and terrorism?
#WillOfThePeople
Taking away instinctive unionists like HYFUD and those with family links to Northern Ireland, it’s not clear that anyone in England would much care either way if it stayed in the union or not. More complex in Scotland I guess, a 52-48 outcome in such a vote there?
2019
Nothing is sacred now as the Conservative Party membership seeks to secure Brexit – except keeping Jeremy Corbyn out of Number 10
Over the last three years Brexit has turned British politics upside down, and perhaps no institution has been hit harder than the Conservative Party. The issue has forced two successive Tory Prime Ministers out of office and spurred the creation of a new party of the right which is currently beating the Conservatives in the polls.
Now a new YouGov survey of Conservative Party members reveals just how much Brexit has changed the mood of the membership, subverting traditional loyalties and reshaping political priorities.
So dedicated to accomplishing Brexit are Tory members that a majority (54%) would be willing to countenance the destruction of their own party if necessary. Only a third (36%) put the party’s preservation above steering Britain out of the EU.
Party members are also willing to sacrifice another fundamental tenet of Conservative belief in order to bring about Brexit: unionism.* Asked whether they would rather avert Brexit if it would lead to Scotland or Northern Ireland breaking away from the UK, respectively 63% and 59% of party members would be willing to pay for Brexit with the breakup of the United Kingdom.
As a Conservative I am very ambivalent about a Starmer resignation. On the one hand it is useful to have somebody as useless as him leading the main opposition party but on the other it is more than possible that he may become Prime Minister one day and that is not something I think would be good for my country.
When will the DUP and other associated so called "Loyalists" realise the world has seriously moved on and few people in England, Wales or Scotland would worry one way or the other if a border poll was held, even if Ireland was united.
I haven’t! Quite keen to go, actually (despite mixed reports from well traveled friends)
The last big holes on my global travel bucket list are Central Asia, Central America, and the pacific islands. And several big chunks of Africa like this
Been almost everywhere else
I always think Pakistan looks like a T-Rex and GB could morph into one half of the crap London 2012 mascot (maybe that was the idea behind it)
According to these fellas - who I think are the authority on this question - Pakistan looks like a duck, and the UK looks like an old witch sitting sideways on a pig: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mrNEVUuZdk
When will the DUP and other associated so called "Loyalists" realise the world has seriously moved on and few people in England, Wales or Scotland would worry one way or the other if a border poll was held, even if Ireland was united.
I think they know that full well.
Which is why they're so passionate themselves in preventing it - because they know nobody else is going to do so for them.
So @thetimes reporting Liz Truss to scrap Northern Ireland protocol - or at least parts of it - next week. This will trigger retaliation from EU which could make relations v difficult. EU likely to launch legal action against and suspend co-operation with UK on most issues .. https://twitter.com/sima_kotecha/status/1523930984261033985
What a fucking idiot.
We are in the middle of a cost of living crisis. We signed up to this. We agreed to it. It’s beyond belief.
You'd pick it up in much less time with a little effort. Months.
You'd pick up the utilitarian basics in months (say A1, A2 if you worked at it a bit) but getting the stage where you can have casual social interactions with people you don't know or lucidly converse on unfamiliar and unprepared topics (B2) takes years of immersion and formal study for most people.
When Mrs DA went to university in Russia she had 12 months of 40 hours/week classroom instruction plus self directed study plus immersion to get to B2 in year. Very few people have the motivation and time to devote to that.
"Picking Up" languages by just living among the native speaking community is not very effective for most people. An important concept in language teaching is "intervention". That is, we identify a student's slip and correct it. Now a random interlocutor in France doesn't know or care about this and so isn't going to explain that when using le participe passé and the object procedes the verb, the participle agrees, in number and gender, with the object not the subject. Contrast with the case where the participle precedes the object and is therefore invariant.
Yes to all that. Which is why I said Chinese is much easier. It doesn't have the complexity of tense, gender or inflection. And is SVO, so comes out instinctively in the right order to an English speaker. As well as a tiny vocabulary. And that most people were taught it not as a first language. So are able to correct you. And do. Repeatedly. Learning to read is a whole other level. And writing a lifelong prospect for most.
When will the DUP and other associated so called "Loyalists" realise the world has seriously moved on and few people in England, Wales or Scotland would worry one way or the other if a border poll was held, even if Ireland was united.
I certainly would and I am English and British.
This Tory government has also made clear it will not allow a border poll as long as it is in power.
I also as a Tory have made clear I would back Antrim and East Londonderry and maybe Lagan Valley at least staying part of the UK even if a border poll was allowed and voted for a majority to join the Republic, though most present polls show staying in the UK ahead still
I haven’t! Quite keen to go, actually (despite mixed reports from well traveled friends)
The last big holes on my global travel bucket list are Central Asia, Central America, and the pacific islands. And several big chunks of Africa like this
Been almost everywhere else
Check out Kiribati. It's stunning, although the food is terrible.
My solution to solve the Northern Ireland protocol.
A plebiscite in Britain on whether we want to keep Northern Ireland or not.
I mean what has Northern Ireland ever given us except bigotry and terrorism?
#WillOfThePeople
Taking away instinctive unionists like HYFUD and those with family links to Northern Ireland, it’s not clear that anyone in England would much care either way if it stayed in the union or not. More complex in Scotland I guess, a 52-48 outcome in such a vote there?
2019
Nothing is sacred now as the Conservative Party membership seeks to secure Brexit – except keeping Jeremy Corbyn out of Number 10
Over the last three years Brexit has turned British politics upside down, and perhaps no institution has been hit harder than the Conservative Party. The issue has forced two successive Tory Prime Ministers out of office and spurred the creation of a new party of the right which is currently beating the Conservatives in the polls.
Now a new YouGov survey of Conservative Party members reveals just how much Brexit has changed the mood of the membership, subverting traditional loyalties and reshaping political priorities.
So dedicated to accomplishing Brexit are Tory members that a majority (54%) would be willing to countenance the destruction of their own party if necessary. Only a third (36%) put the party’s preservation above steering Britain out of the EU.
Party members are also willing to sacrifice another fundamental tenet of Conservative belief in order to bring about Brexit: unionism.* Asked whether they would rather avert Brexit if it would lead to Scotland or Northern Ireland breaking away from the UK, respectively 63% and 59% of party members would be willing to pay for Brexit with the breakup of the United Kingdom.
(((Dan Hodges))) @DPJHodges Keir Cultists - trigger warning. Better look away from this one...so Keir's main line is "Boris is a serial rule breaker. I'm only being investigated for this one incident". Fine. But up until Friday his main defence was that "dinners" of the sort he had in Durham were common..
...during that election campaign. I think he said "that's what we did". In fact, he's gone further. His argument is those "dinners" weren't just a nice to have, but "necessary for campaign purposes". So my question is this. How many other events did Keir attend that were...
So @thetimes reporting Liz Truss to scrap Northern Ireland protocol - or at least parts of it - next week. This will trigger retaliation from EU which could make relations v difficult. EU likely to launch legal action against and suspend co-operation with UK on most issues .. https://twitter.com/sima_kotecha/status/1523930984261033985
What a fucking idiot.
We are in the middle of a cost of living crisis. We signed up to this. We agreed to it. It’s beyond belief.
If the EU didn't want Article 16 to be invoked, they shouldn't have signed up to it. They signed up to it, they agreed to it. We're perfectly 100% within our rights to invoke any provisions of the Protocol we choose to invoke.
At the time of this dinner England was under restrictions which limited meetings with people inside (other than members of your household bubble) other than for exceptions, one of which was meetings reasonably necessary for work.
What the police will have to decide, I think, is whether all the meetings Starmer and others were having on that day in Durham were all reasonably necessary for work, including dinner in the evening. Work matters can after all be discussed over dinner. And even if they are not, if you are working in a long meeting and then stop to have something to eat, it would be curious to say that a meeting where you open your mouth to speak is legal but the moment you open it to eat a sandwich it becomes illegal.
Note: it could be curious but might still be the correct legal interpretation. That might be the legal basis on which the Met issued the FPN against the PM re the cake he ate in his office. We just don't know. The fact that we still don't know is itself pretty worrying and unacceptable.
Or is the proper analysis to look at each individual meeting during the day and assess whether each of them was reasonably necessary for work. So all the work meetings before dinner were OK and work meetings after the dinner were also OK but the actual dinner was not because it was not reasonably necessary for work.
Also a curious interpretation. Starmer's team - judging by what they are saying today - seem to be taking the view that you should look at the totality of the day as a whole not chop it up into bite- sized events (sorry!).
Also what does "reasonably" mean?
Conclusions:-
1. Those regulations were a mess. 2. Who is giving legal advice to the Met and the Durham police? 3. Are they getting the same legal advice on how to interpret the regulations and apply it to the facts they gather? 4. Are they going to publish what that legal advice is? 5. Is that legal advice correct?
You see, if Durham police do not fine Starmer on the basis that it was reasonable of him to eat with people he had been working with all day, especially if he continued to work afterwards, then I find it hard to see how the PM and Sunak were fined for working in the Cabinet Office and stopping briefly to have a cake. They could have argued that they were there to work for a number of hours and a brief pause to eat or drink did not undermine the fact that they were at a work meeting during those hours.
The irony, in what is turning out to be the 2020s version of Jarndyce v Jarndyce, would be if Starmer avoids an FPN on legal grounds which could have helped Johnson and Sunak avoid theirs.
I will now go and get a life .....
Loads of FPNs are issued incorrectly. Surely part of the process is whether an individual chooses to accept one or not. If they are unreasonable, challenge them!
But that is my point. You cannot have the law being applied inconsistently or what is lawful being determined by whether someone chooses to accept an FPN because (a) they don't realise it was given to them wrongly (b) they can't afford to challenge it or (c) they just want to get on with it.
If the police are going to investigate these events and fine people with all the consequences which flow from that, they should spell out in detail the legal basis on which they state that a breach of the regulations occurred.
At the moment we have incomprehensible regulations being, for all we know, incorrectly interpreted and arbitrarily applied.
That's just wrong. Covid may be in the past but this is no way to make law, interpret law or enforce law.
As a Conservative I am very ambivalent about a Starmer resignation. On the one hand it is useful to have somebody as useless as him leading the main opposition party but on the other it is more than possible that he may become Prime Minister one day and that is not something I think would be good for my country.
Whereas Boris is ok?
Nah, but a necessary transition as we wait for Dorries.
You'd pick it up in much less time with a little effort. Months.
You'd pick up the utilitarian basics in months (say A1, A2 if you worked at it a bit) but getting the stage where you can have casual social interactions with people you don't know or lucidly converse on unfamiliar and unprepared topics (B2) takes years of immersion and formal study for most people.
When Mrs DA went to university in Russia she had 12 months of 40 hours/week classroom instruction plus self directed study plus immersion to get to B2 in year. Very few people have the motivation and time to devote to that.
"Picking Up" languages by just living among the native speaking community is not very effective for most people. An important concept in language teaching is "intervention". That is, we identify a student's slip and correct it. Now a random interlocutor in France doesn't know or care about this and so isn't going to explain that when using le participe passé and the object procedes the verb, the participle agrees, in number and gender, with the object not the subject. Contrast with the case where the participle precedes the object and is therefore invariant.
Yes to all that. Which is why I said Chinese is much easier. It doesn't have the complexity of tense, gender or inflection. And is SVO, so comes out instinctively in the right order to an English speaker. As well as a tiny vocabulary. And that most people were taught it not as a first language. So are able to correct you. And do. Repeatedly. Learning to read is a whole other level. And writing a lifelong prospect for most.
I lived in Kyoto for a few months, and picked up about 3 words, but I did not try very hard at all
I was staying with a friend who was a lecturer at Kyoto Uni (= smart) he was there for years and got to pretty good conversational Japanese. However he never got anywhere with written Japanese and, moreover, he told me his Japanese students (some of the brightest Japanese kids in Japan) struggled to master the written form: of their own tongue
I don't get the FT's logic. Starmer only gets to look like a "man of principle" if he gets fined, and resigns as a result. In which case who cares what his ratings are? Who's going to enhance their opinion of him just because he promised to do something if X happened, and then X didn't happen?
My solution to solve the Northern Ireland protocol.
A plebiscite in Britain on whether we want to keep Northern Ireland or not.
I mean what has Northern Ireland ever given us except bigotry and terrorism?
#WillOfThePeople
Taking away instinctive unionists like HYFUD and those with family links to Northern Ireland, it’s not clear that anyone in England would much care either way if it stayed in the union or not. More complex in Scotland I guess, a 52-48 outcome in such a vote there?
2019
Nothing is sacred now as the Conservative Party membership seeks to secure Brexit – except keeping Jeremy Corbyn out of Number 10
Over the last three years Brexit has turned British politics upside down, and perhaps no institution has been hit harder than the Conservative Party. The issue has forced two successive Tory Prime Ministers out of office and spurred the creation of a new party of the right which is currently beating the Conservatives in the polls.
Now a new YouGov survey of Conservative Party members reveals just how much Brexit has changed the mood of the membership, subverting traditional loyalties and reshaping political priorities.
So dedicated to accomplishing Brexit are Tory members that a majority (54%) would be willing to countenance the destruction of their own party if necessary. Only a third (36%) put the party’s preservation above steering Britain out of the EU.
Party members are also willing to sacrifice another fundamental tenet of Conservative belief in order to bring about Brexit: unionism.* Asked whether they would rather avert Brexit if it would lead to Scotland or Northern Ireland breaking away from the UK, respectively 63% and 59% of party members would be willing to pay for Brexit with the breakup of the United Kingdom.
I haven’t! Quite keen to go, actually (despite mixed reports from well traveled friends)
The last big holes on my global travel bucket list are Central Asia, Central America, and the pacific islands. And several big chunks of Africa like this
Been almost everywhere else
But have you ever been to you?
Yes. On ayahuasca
Turns out ME is quite a nice place to be. Unexpected
Surely we’ll see some domestic energy fixes cheaper than the cap being offered fairly soon….
Well that sounds good news. But why? What's driving that? Is it just lower demand in summer, or was the spike in prices and overreaction, or is it a reaction to changing patterns of consumption, or something else?
At the time of this dinner England was under restrictions which limited meetings with people inside (other than members of your household bubble) other than for exceptions, one of which was meetings reasonably necessary for work.
What the police will have to decide, I think, is whether all the meetings Starmer and others were having on that day in Durham were all reasonably necessary for work, including dinner in the evening. Work matters can after all be discussed over dinner. And even if they are not, if you are working in a long meeting and then stop to have something to eat, it would be curious to say that a meeting where you open your mouth to speak is legal but the moment you open it to eat a sandwich it becomes illegal.
Note: it could be curious but might still be the correct legal interpretation. That might be the legal basis on which the Met issued the FPN against the PM re the cake he ate in his office. We just don't know. The fact that we still don't know is itself pretty worrying and unacceptable.
Or is the proper analysis to look at each individual meeting during the day and assess whether each of them was reasonably necessary for work. So all the work meetings before dinner were OK and work meetings after the dinner were also OK but the actual dinner was not because it was not reasonably necessary for work.
Also a curious interpretation. Starmer's team - judging by what they are saying today - seem to be taking the view that you should look at the totality of the day as a whole not chop it up into bite- sized events (sorry!).
Also what does "reasonably" mean?
Conclusions:-
1. Those regulations were a mess. 2. Who is giving legal advice to the Met and the Durham police? 3. Are they getting the same legal advice on how to interpret the regulations and apply it to the facts they gather? 4. Are they going to publish what that legal advice is? 5. Is that legal advice correct?
You see, if Durham police do not fine Starmer on the basis that it was reasonable of him to eat with people he had been working with all day, especially if he continued to work afterwards, then I find it hard to see how the PM and Sunak were fined for working in the Cabinet Office and stopping briefly to have a cake. They could have argued that they were there to work for a number of hours and a brief pause to eat or drink did not undermine the fact that they were at a work meeting during those hours.
The irony, in what is turning out to be the 2020s version of Jarndyce v Jarndyce, would be if Starmer avoids an FPN on legal grounds which could have helped Johnson and Sunak avoid theirs.
All this stuff about Starmer being “principled” makes me want to be sick in my mouth. This is the guy who more than anyone else tried to overturn a democratic vote because he thought be was better than the voters. When it came to the pandemic, all he wanted to do was make political capital by calling the government reckless for not locking down harder and longer. And all the while he too was floating the rules. He’s a sanctimonious expletive.
Come on, fess up, what's really making you sick is that this no longer looks like playing out well for the Conservatives, whether or not Starmer goes or more likely stays, when a couple of days back you were enjoying the spectacle. Now the tables have been turned.
My solution to solve the Northern Ireland protocol.
A plebiscite in Britain on whether we want to keep Northern Ireland or not.
I mean what has Northern Ireland ever given us except bigotry and terrorism?
#WillOfThePeople
Taking away instinctive unionists like HYFUD and those with family links to Northern Ireland, it’s not clear that anyone in England would much care either way if it stayed in the union or not. More complex in Scotland I guess, a 52-48 outcome in such a vote there?
2019
Nothing is sacred now as the Conservative Party membership seeks to secure Brexit – except keeping Jeremy Corbyn out of Number 10
Over the last three years Brexit has turned British politics upside down, and perhaps no institution has been hit harder than the Conservative Party. The issue has forced two successive Tory Prime Ministers out of office and spurred the creation of a new party of the right which is currently beating the Conservatives in the polls.
Now a new YouGov survey of Conservative Party members reveals just how much Brexit has changed the mood of the membership, subverting traditional loyalties and reshaping political priorities.
So dedicated to accomplishing Brexit are Tory members that a majority (54%) would be willing to countenance the destruction of their own party if necessary. Only a third (36%) put the party’s preservation above steering Britain out of the EU.
Party members are also willing to sacrifice another fundamental tenet of Conservative belief in order to bring about Brexit: unionism.* Asked whether they would rather avert Brexit if it would lead to Scotland or Northern Ireland breaking away from the UK, respectively 63% and 59% of party members would be willing to pay for Brexit with the breakup of the United Kingdom.
Not sure this is news about the ultra brexit obsessed views of the dwindling tory membership? I seem to recall similar pollings before? Certainly the couldn't care two hoots about the union over brexit is not news.
You'd pick it up in much less time with a little effort. Months.
You'd pick up the utilitarian basics in months (say A1, A2 if you worked at it a bit) but getting the stage where you can have casual social interactions with people you don't know or lucidly converse on unfamiliar and unprepared topics (B2) takes years of immersion and formal study for most people.
When Mrs DA went to university in Russia she had 12 months of 40 hours/week classroom instruction plus self directed study plus immersion to get to B2 in year. Very few people have the motivation and time to devote to that.
"Picking Up" languages by just living among the native speaking community is not very effective for most people. An important concept in language teaching is "intervention". That is, we identify a student's slip and correct it. Now a random interlocutor in France doesn't know or care about this and so isn't going to explain that when using le participe passé and the object procedes the verb, the participle agrees, in number and gender, with the object not the subject. Contrast with the case where the participle precedes the object and is therefore invariant.
Surely we’ll see some domestic energy fixes cheaper than the cap being offered fairly soon….
when do we get the £150 rebate ? (genuine question)
The council tax rebate? Whenever your council gets round to it; you might already have had it if you are on direct debit. If you are not, life gets a bit more complicated.
Surely we’ll see some domestic energy fixes cheaper than the cap being offered fairly soon….
when do we get the £150 rebate ? (genuine question)
If you pay council tax via dd, you should get it pretty soon, automatically.
If you pay annually, it depends on when your council can be arsed. I got a letter from some third party company with loads of codes on it, directing me to a shady looking website, with loads of “don’t you dare defraud us” warnings. They took my bank details and I got the payment last week (a few days later). Others in my council area are still waiting for the letter, so it seems to be a bit pot luck.
Antrim and East Londonderry and maybe Lagan Valley
That 'region' would be an unsustainable economic basket case.
Not as part of the UK it would not and it has a strong whisky industry at Bushmills etc as well as agriculture. Plus why would we care what a nationalist like you thinks about it?
At the time of this dinner England was under restrictions which limited meetings with people inside (other than members of your household bubble) other than for exceptions, one of which was meetings reasonably necessary for work.
What the police will have to decide, I think, is whether all the meetings Starmer and others were having on that day in Durham were all reasonably necessary for work, including dinner in the evening. Work matters can after all be discussed over dinner. And even if they are not, if you are working in a long meeting and then stop to have something to eat, it would be curious to say that a meeting where you open your mouth to speak is legal but the moment you open it to eat a sandwich it becomes illegal.
Note: it could be curious but might still be the correct legal interpretation. That might be the legal basis on which the Met issued the FPN against the PM re the cake he ate in his office. We just don't know. The fact that we still don't know is itself pretty worrying and unacceptable.
Or is the proper analysis to look at each individual meeting during the day and assess whether each of them was reasonably necessary for work. So all the work meetings before dinner were OK and work meetings after the dinner were also OK but the actual dinner was not because it was not reasonably necessary for work.
Also a curious interpretation. Starmer's team - judging by what they are saying today - seem to be taking the view that you should look at the totality of the day as a whole not chop it up into bite- sized events (sorry!).
Also what does "reasonably" mean?
Conclusions:-
1. Those regulations were a mess. 2. Who is giving legal advice to the Met and the Durham police? 3. Are they getting the same legal advice on how to interpret the regulations and apply it to the facts they gather? 4. Are they going to publish what that legal advice is? 5. Is that legal advice correct?
You see, if Durham police do not fine Starmer on the basis that it was reasonable of him to eat with people he had been working with all day, especially if he continued to work afterwards, then I find it hard to see how the PM and Sunak were fined for working in the Cabinet Office and stopping briefly to have a cake. They could have argued that they were there to work for a number of hours and a brief pause to eat or drink did not undermine the fact that they were at a work meeting during those hours.
The irony, in what is turning out to be the 2020s version of Jarndyce v Jarndyce, would be if Starmer avoids an FPN on legal grounds which could have helped Johnson and Sunak avoid theirs.
I will now go and get a life .....
Loads of FPNs are issued incorrectly. Surely part of the process is whether an individual chooses to accept one or not. If they are unreasonable, challenge them!
Is it a case by not accepting one, like parking charges, you run the risk of it increasing as you usually have a discount on these sort of charges if you pay promptly.
At the time of this dinner England was under restrictions which limited meetings with people inside (other than members of your household bubble) other than for exceptions, one of which was meetings reasonably necessary for work.
What the police will have to decide, I think, is whether all the meetings Starmer and others were having on that day in Durham were all reasonably necessary for work, including dinner in the evening. Work matters can after all be discussed over dinner. And even if they are not, if you are working in a long meeting and then stop to have something to eat, it would be curious to say that a meeting where you open your mouth to speak is legal but the moment you open it to eat a sandwich it becomes illegal.
Note: it could be curious but might still be the correct legal interpretation. That might be the legal basis on which the Met issued the FPN against the PM re the cake he ate in his office. We just don't know. The fact that we still don't know is itself pretty worrying and unacceptable.
Or is the proper analysis to look at each individual meeting during the day and assess whether each of them was reasonably necessary for work. So all the work meetings before dinner were OK and work meetings after the dinner were also OK but the actual dinner was not because it was not reasonably necessary for work.
Also a curious interpretation. Starmer's team - judging by what they are saying today - seem to be taking the view that you should look at the totality of the day as a whole not chop it up into bite- sized events (sorry!).
Also what does "reasonably" mean?
Conclusions:-
1. Those regulations were a mess. 2. Who is giving legal advice to the Met and the Durham police? 3. Are they getting the same legal advice on how to interpret the regulations and apply it to the facts they gather? 4. Are they going to publish what that legal advice is? 5. Is that legal advice correct?
You see, if Durham police do not fine Starmer on the basis that it was reasonable of him to eat with people he had been working with all day, especially if he continued to work afterwards, then I find it hard to see how the PM and Sunak were fined for working in the Cabinet Office and stopping briefly to have a cake. They could have argued that they were there to work for a number of hours and a brief pause to eat or drink did not undermine the fact that they were at a work meeting during those hours.
The irony, in what is turning out to be the 2020s version of Jarndyce v Jarndyce, would be if Starmer avoids an FPN on legal grounds which could have helped Johnson and Sunak avoid theirs.
I will now go and get a life .....
Loads of FPNs are issued incorrectly. Surely part of the process is whether an individual chooses to accept one or not. If they are unreasonable, challenge them!
But that is my point. You cannot have the law being applied inconsistently or what is lawful being determined by whether someone chooses to accept an FPN because (a) they don't realise it was given to them wrongly (b) they can't afford to challenge it or (c) they just want to get on with it.
If the police are going to investigate these events and fine people with all the consequences which flow from that, they should spell out in detail the legal basis on which they state that a breach of the regulations occurred.
At the moment we have incomprehensible regulations being, for all we know, incorrectly interpreted and arbitrarily applied.
That's just wrong. Covid may be in the past but this is no way to make law, interpret law or enforce law.
Different forces have completely different thresholds for issuing FPN's for motoring offences and have done for decades. It is justice on the cheap and that is what we as a society have decided works vs what we can afford.
What one force decides does not create a binding precedent for other forces to follow, only courts or parliament can set the binding rules. And certainly the fact that some people choose to accept incorrect FPNs does not create a binding law on others.
The discussions in the political arena and media are wrong in assuming a national level of consistency that has never been the case.
Surely we’ll see some domestic energy fixes cheaper than the cap being offered fairly soon….
when do we get the £150 rebate ? (genuine question)
The council tax rebate? Whenever your council gets round to it; you might already have had it if you are on direct debit. If you are not, life gets a bit more complicated.
No sign of it in my neck of the woods and I am on DD.
iirc there was talk in newspapers of many councils not paying until autumn because 'the computer says no'.
All this stuff about Starmer being “principled” makes me want to be sick in my mouth. This is the guy who more than anyone else tried to overturn a democratic vote because he thought be was better than the voters. When it came to the pandemic, all he wanted to do was make political capital by calling the government reckless for not locking down harder and longer. And all the while he too was floating the rules. He’s a sanctimonious expletive.
Come on, fess up, what's really making you sick is that this no longer looks like playing out well for the Conservatives, whether or not Starmer goes or more likely stays, when a couple of days back you were enjoying the spectacle. Now the tables have been turned.
Not for those of us who don't want Boris as PM going into the next election.... 😉
So @thetimes reporting Liz Truss to scrap Northern Ireland protocol - or at least parts of it - next week. This will trigger retaliation from EU which could make relations v difficult. EU likely to launch legal action against and suspend co-operation with UK on most issues .. https://twitter.com/sima_kotecha/status/1523930984261033985
What a fucking idiot.
We are in the middle of a cost of living crisis. We signed up to this. We agreed to it. It’s beyond belief.
If the EU didn't want Article 16 to be invoked, they shouldn't have signed up to it. They signed up to it, they agreed to it. We're perfectly 100% within our rights to invoke any provisions of the Protocol we choose to invoke.
Yes but that does not mean it is a good idea, politically or otherwise.
Surely we’ll see some domestic energy fixes cheaper than the cap being offered fairly soon….
when do we get the £150 rebate ? (genuine question)
If you pay council tax via dd, you should get it pretty soon, automatically.
If you pay annually, it depends on when your council can be arsed. I got a letter with loads of codes on it, directing me to a shady looking website, with loads of “don’t you dare defraud us” warnings. They took my bank details and I got the payment last week (a few days later). Others in my council area are still waiting for the letter, so it seems to be a bit pot luck.
The bastards. How dare they be efficient for a change. Didn't get it for our holiday home. I was sure they would cock that up and give it to us.
Surely we’ll see some domestic energy fixes cheaper than the cap being offered fairly soon….
when do we get the £150 rebate ? (genuine question)
If you pay council tax via dd, you should get it pretty soon, automatically.
If you pay annually, it depends on when your council can be arsed. I got a letter from some third party company with loads of codes on it, directing me to a shady looking website, with loads of “don’t you dare defraud us” warnings. They took my bank details and I got the payment last week (a few days later). Others in my council area are still waiting for the letter, so it seems to be a bit pot luck.
No letter or hopes of any here any time soon. Nor has anyone on DD had a payment to the best of my knowledge.
At the time of this dinner England was under restrictions which limited meetings with people inside (other than members of your household bubble) other than for exceptions, one of which was meetings reasonably necessary for work.
What the police will have to decide, I think, is whether all the meetings Starmer and others were having on that day in Durham were all reasonably necessary for work, including dinner in the evening. Work matters can after all be discussed over dinner. And even if they are not, if you are working in a long meeting and then stop to have something to eat, it would be curious to say that a meeting where you open your mouth to speak is legal but the moment you open it to eat a sandwich it becomes illegal.
Note: it could be curious but might still be the correct legal interpretation. That might be the legal basis on which the Met issued the FPN against the PM re the cake he ate in his office. We just don't know. The fact that we still don't know is itself pretty worrying and unacceptable.
Or is the proper analysis to look at each individual meeting during the day and assess whether each of them was reasonably necessary for work. So all the work meetings before dinner were OK and work meetings after the dinner were also OK but the actual dinner was not because it was not reasonably necessary for work.
Also a curious interpretation. Starmer's team - judging by what they are saying today - seem to be taking the view that you should look at the totality of the day as a whole not chop it up into bite- sized events (sorry!).
Also what does "reasonably" mean?
Conclusions:-
1. Those regulations were a mess. 2. Who is giving legal advice to the Met and the Durham police? 3. Are they getting the same legal advice on how to interpret the regulations and apply it to the facts they gather? 4. Are they going to publish what that legal advice is? 5. Is that legal advice correct?
You see, if Durham police do not fine Starmer on the basis that it was reasonable of him to eat with people he had been working with all day, especially if he continued to work afterwards, then I find it hard to see how the PM and Sunak were fined for working in the Cabinet Office and stopping briefly to have a cake. They could have argued that they were there to work for a number of hours and a brief pause to eat or drink did not undermine the fact that they were at a work meeting during those hours.
The irony, in what is turning out to be the 2020s version of Jarndyce v Jarndyce, would be if Starmer avoids an FPN on legal grounds which could have helped Johnson and Sunak avoid theirs.
I will now go and get a life .....
Loads of FPNs are issued incorrectly. Surely part of the process is whether an individual chooses to accept one or not. If they are unreasonable, challenge them!
Is it a case by not accepting one, like parking charges, you run the risk of it increasing as you usually have a discount on these sort of charges if you pay promptly.
Absolutely, challenge and fail and I think you automatically get a criminal record. Which is why most people accept them without challenge.
All this stuff about Starmer being “principled” makes me want to be sick in my mouth. This is the guy who more than anyone else tried to overturn a democratic vote because he thought be was better than the voters. When it came to the pandemic, all he wanted to do was make political capital by calling the government reckless for not locking down harder and longer. And all the while he too was floating the rules. He’s a sanctimonious expletive.
Come on, fess up, what's really making you sick is that this no longer looks like playing out well for the Conservatives, whether or not Starmer goes or more likely stays, when a couple of days back you were enjoying the spectacle. Now the tables have been turned.
Indeed. The desperation shown on here by the Continuity PB Tories is quite something.
It reminds me of the old days when PB was all spin and no substance, but I am not sure that is a good thing.
Let's hope this blows over and we can continue to find common ground with our opponents, as many of us did over covid legislation and so forth.
At the time of this dinner England was under restrictions which limited meetings with people inside (other than members of your household bubble) other than for exceptions, one of which was meetings reasonably necessary for work.
What the police will have to decide, I think, is whether all the meetings Starmer and others were having on that day in Durham were all reasonably necessary for work, including dinner in the evening. Work matters can after all be discussed over dinner. And even if they are not, if you are working in a long meeting and then stop to have something to eat, it would be curious to say that a meeting where you open your mouth to speak is legal but the moment you open it to eat a sandwich it becomes illegal.
Note: it could be curious but might still be the correct legal interpretation. That might be the legal basis on which the Met issued the FPN against the PM re the cake he ate in his office. We just don't know. The fact that we still don't know is itself pretty worrying and unacceptable.
Or is the proper analysis to look at each individual meeting during the day and assess whether each of them was reasonably necessary for work. So all the work meetings before dinner were OK and work meetings after the dinner were also OK but the actual dinner was not because it was not reasonably necessary for work.
Also a curious interpretation. Starmer's team - judging by what they are saying today - seem to be taking the view that you should look at the totality of the day as a whole not chop it up into bite- sized events (sorry!).
Also what does "reasonably" mean?
Conclusions:-
1. Those regulations were a mess. 2. Who is giving legal advice to the Met and the Durham police? 3. Are they getting the same legal advice on how to interpret the regulations and apply it to the facts they gather? 4. Are they going to publish what that legal advice is? 5. Is that legal advice correct?
You see, if Durham police do not fine Starmer on the basis that it was reasonable of him to eat with people he had been working with all day, especially if he continued to work afterwards, then I find it hard to see how the PM and Sunak were fined for working in the Cabinet Office and stopping briefly to have a cake. They could have argued that they were there to work for a number of hours and a brief pause to eat or drink did not undermine the fact that they were at a work meeting during those hours.
The irony, in what is turning out to be the 2020s version of Jarndyce v Jarndyce, would be if Starmer avoids an FPN on legal grounds which could have helped Johnson and Sunak avoid theirs.
I will now go and get a life .....
Loads of FPNs are issued incorrectly. Surely part of the process is whether an individual chooses to accept one or not. If they are unreasonable, challenge them!
But that is my point. You cannot have the law being applied inconsistently or what is lawful being determined by whether someone chooses to accept an FPN because (a) they don't realise it was given to them wrongly (b) they can't afford to challenge it or (c) they just want to get on with it.
If the police are going to investigate these events and fine people with all the consequences which flow from that, they should spell out in detail the legal basis on which they state that a breach of the regulations occurred.
At the moment we have incomprehensible regulations being, for all we know, incorrectly interpreted and arbitrarily applied.
That's just wrong. Covid may be in the past but this is no way to make law, interpret law or enforce law.
All this stuff about Starmer being “principled” makes me want to be sick in my mouth. This is the guy who more than anyone else tried to overturn a democratic vote because he thought be was better than the voters. When it came to the pandemic, all he wanted to do was make political capital by calling the government reckless for not locking down harder and longer. And all the while he too was floating the rules. He’s a sanctimonious expletive.
Come on, fess up, what's really making you sick is that this no longer looks like playing out well for the Conservatives, whether or not Starmer goes or more likely stays, when a couple of days back you were enjoying the spectacle. Now the tables have been turned.
Mmmm, why didn't Starmer just say "I will resign if I am found guilty of breaking the rules, regardless of whether I am issued with a FPN or not?"
My solution to solve the Northern Ireland protocol.
A plebiscite in Britain on whether we want to keep Northern Ireland or not.
I mean what has Northern Ireland ever given us except bigotry and terrorism?
#WillOfThePeople
Taking away instinctive unionists like HYFUD and those with family links to Northern Ireland, it’s not clear that anyone in England would much care either way if it stayed in the union or not. More complex in Scotland I guess, a 52-48 outcome in such a vote there?
2019
Nothing is sacred now as the Conservative Party membership seeks to secure Brexit – except keeping Jeremy Corbyn out of Number 10
Over the last three years Brexit has turned British politics upside down, and perhaps no institution has been hit harder than the Conservative Party. The issue has forced two successive Tory Prime Ministers out of office and spurred the creation of a new party of the right which is currently beating the Conservatives in the polls.
Now a new YouGov survey of Conservative Party members reveals just how much Brexit has changed the mood of the membership, subverting traditional loyalties and reshaping political priorities.
So dedicated to accomplishing Brexit are Tory members that a majority (54%) would be willing to countenance the destruction of their own party if necessary. Only a third (36%) put the party’s preservation above steering Britain out of the EU.
Party members are also willing to sacrifice another fundamental tenet of Conservative belief in order to bring about Brexit: unionism.* Asked whether they would rather avert Brexit if it would lead to Scotland or Northern Ireland breaking away from the UK, respectively 63% and 59% of party members would be willing to pay for Brexit with the breakup of the United Kingdom.
In the end it'll be English indifference rather than Irish militancy that delivers a united Ireland.
Not quite, because Southern Ireland may not be able to take on the financial burden caused by suddenly increasing its population by a third.
A more likely route would be for N Ireland to become independent and possibly federated with S Ireland within the EU.
What it would do to Stormont would be interesting - the Unionists kicked by the very Union they were advocating and Sinn Fein being kicked by the South saying "no, we are not uniting". Both of them with their Raison d'etres removed...
My solution to solve the Northern Ireland protocol.
A plebiscite in Britain on whether we want to keep Northern Ireland or not.
I mean what has Northern Ireland ever given us except bigotry and terrorism?
#WillOfThePeople
Taking away instinctive unionists like HYFUD and those with family links to Northern Ireland, it’s not clear that anyone in England would much care either way if it stayed in the union or not. More complex in Scotland I guess, a 52-48 outcome in such a vote there?
2019
Nothing is sacred now as the Conservative Party membership seeks to secure Brexit – except keeping Jeremy Corbyn out of Number 10
Over the last three years Brexit has turned British politics upside down, and perhaps no institution has been hit harder than the Conservative Party. The issue has forced two successive Tory Prime Ministers out of office and spurred the creation of a new party of the right which is currently beating the Conservatives in the polls.
Now a new YouGov survey of Conservative Party members reveals just how much Brexit has changed the mood of the membership, subverting traditional loyalties and reshaping political priorities.
So dedicated to accomplishing Brexit are Tory members that a majority (54%) would be willing to countenance the destruction of their own party if necessary. Only a third (36%) put the party’s preservation above steering Britain out of the EU.
Party members are also willing to sacrifice another fundamental tenet of Conservative belief in order to bring about Brexit: unionism.* Asked whether they would rather avert Brexit if it would lead to Scotland or Northern Ireland breaking away from the UK, respectively 63% and 59% of party members would be willing to pay for Brexit with the breakup of the United Kingdom.
Not sure this is news about the ultra brexit obsessed views of the dwindling tory membership? I seem to recall similar pollings before? Certainly the couldn't care two hoots about the union over brexit is not news.
I’m not a Tory and voted remain. I just would like to see Ireland united.
At the time of this dinner England was under restrictions which limited meetings with people inside (other than members of your household bubble) other than for exceptions, one of which was meetings reasonably necessary for work.
What the police will have to decide, I think, is whether all the meetings Starmer and others were having on that day in Durham were all reasonably necessary for work, including dinner in the evening. Work matters can after all be discussed over dinner. And even if they are not, if you are working in a long meeting and then stop to have something to eat, it would be curious to say that a meeting where you open your mouth to speak is legal but the moment you open it to eat a sandwich it becomes illegal.
Note: it could be curious but might still be the correct legal interpretation. That might be the legal basis on which the Met issued the FPN against the PM re the cake he ate in his office. We just don't know. The fact that we still don't know is itself pretty worrying and unacceptable.
Or is the proper analysis to look at each individual meeting during the day and assess whether each of them was reasonably necessary for work. So all the work meetings before dinner were OK and work meetings after the dinner were also OK but the actual dinner was not because it was not reasonably necessary for work.
Also a curious interpretation. Starmer's team - judging by what they are saying today - seem to be taking the view that you should look at the totality of the day as a whole not chop it up into bite- sized events (sorry!).
Also what does "reasonably" mean?
Conclusions:-
1. Those regulations were a mess. 2. Who is giving legal advice to the Met and the Durham police? 3. Are they getting the same legal advice on how to interpret the regulations and apply it to the facts they gather? 4. Are they going to publish what that legal advice is? 5. Is that legal advice correct?
You see, if Durham police do not fine Starmer on the basis that it was reasonable of him to eat with people he had been working with all day, especially if he continued to work afterwards, then I find it hard to see how the PM and Sunak were fined for working in the Cabinet Office and stopping briefly to have a cake. They could have argued that they were there to work for a number of hours and a brief pause to eat or drink did not undermine the fact that they were at a work meeting during those hours.
The irony, in what is turning out to be the 2020s version of Jarndyce v Jarndyce, would be if Starmer avoids an FPN on legal grounds which could have helped Johnson and Sunak avoid theirs.
I will now go and get a life .....
I hesitate ( a bit) to argue with, or even question, a distinguished lawyer, but wasn't there a difference in that in the 'cake incident' other people, who could not be said to be part of the work team, stopped to participate in the eating, and perchance drinking? Whereas its seems unlikely that the messenger from the curry house was more thanked, and perchance, tipped.
When will the DUP and other associated so called "Loyalists" realise the world has seriously moved on and few people in England, Wales or Scotland would worry one way or the other if a border poll was held, even if Ireland was united.
I think they know that full well.
Which is why they're so passionate themselves in preventing it - because they know nobody else is going to do so for them.
I was re-reading (don't ask) posts from a few years ago post-2016 when the great matter for debate was some of us saying there would never be an internal border on the island of Ireland and others (thinking you and @MarqueeMark here) saying the govt will call the EU's bluff, there won't be any checks anywhere and just let the EU try to police a border on the island.
Never in a million years did either side think that Boris would end up doing what no British PM could ever do and partition the UK, establish an internal border between GB and NI, and thereby set out a clear path for Irish independence.
But surely it depends on your circumstances and desires. What might be the perfect country/city when you are 20 will be very different to when you are 40 or 70.
If you are young and ambitious and smart I cannot see a better place to live than London. Arguably the greatest city on earth, for all its many flaws. Its only rival is NYC, and the problem with NYC is that you are in America, which is a great country but cannot be compared to the intense variation and historical and cultural riches that comprise Europe. And in London you have all of Europe as your backyard, it is also easier to get to Asia, Africa
As you grow older London loses its appeal for many, unless you are rich. If you are rich London is still hard to beat. And if you are rich you can afford to fly to warmer countries to avoid the worst of the weather
On the other hand as I grow older I do find myself drawn to the simpler easier sunnier beauties of the Mediterranean coast, or maybe the tropics (eg Thailand). Language is less of an issue than it was thanks to auto-translation, English is spoken everywhere, you can take PB with you: a portable local pub
When my kids are fully grown in a few years I might finally make that move
Blanket statements like "the Nordic countries and Netherlands are objectively better places to live" are nuts. They are fucking boring, for a start. Sweden. My god. Anyone with an ounce of intellectual curiosity would slit their wrists within weeks. And that's before winter
As I mentioned yesterday teatime, I went to watch a joint exercise with Llandudno lifeboats and the coastguard helicopter in Llandudno Bay as they simulated transferring casualties to the helicopter and between the lifeboats. It was fascinating as the inshore lifeboat crew communicated with the helicopter and made sure every protocol was in place before the inshore moved under the downdraft of the helicopter and backed away immediately after the transfer for safety from the downdraft.
It is amazing to think these RNLI crew members are volunteers dedicated their spare time to saving lives at sea while putting themselves in the line of danger and I know I have an interest as my son was part of the crew on the all-weather boat in the exercise, but we are very proud of him and all his colleagues
Turning to Starmer and ‘beergate’. I do not think he had any choice but offer to resign if he receives a FPN but of course he has opened himself to criticism that as a former head of the CPS he is putting Durham Police under unfair pressure. He maintains that he continued work post the curry and beer and has what’s app and other social media confirmation but frankly I do not see the difference between Boris attending a birthday party for 20 minutes or so in between working himself.
I would venture to suggest the problem is that a quiz took place earlier and that attendees allege excessive drinking took place and they say they were not working after 10.00pm
Durham Police must investigate this as the MET have with no favours and if they conclude a breach of covid rules took place then in fairness in law, FPN’s should be issued to all attendees. However, if they follow the ‘Cummings’ decision, then the pressure on Starmer will be immense to quit, not least because of his own demands on Cummings, but to try to stay in office on a technical point would not be acceptable to many of the public
The only hope for Starmer is Durham Police confirm the whole event complied with the covid regulations at the time, and of course social distancing was integral to that and mention of that is in labour’s own leaked memo, when it is clear from the video a group were standing up conversing and eating without social distancing and reminiscent of the Downing Street Garden event but at least that was outside
How this plays out time will tell and I want Boris out of office anyway and the sooner the better
At the time of this dinner England was under restrictions which limited meetings with people inside (other than members of your household bubble) other than for exceptions, one of which was meetings reasonably necessary for work.
What the police will have to decide, I think, is whether all the meetings Starmer and others were having on that day in Durham were all reasonably necessary for work, including dinner in the evening. Work matters can after all be discussed over dinner. And even if they are not, if you are working in a long meeting and then stop to have something to eat, it would be curious to say that a meeting where you open your mouth to speak is legal but the moment you open it to eat a sandwich it becomes illegal.
Note: it could be curious but might still be the correct legal interpretation. That might be the legal basis on which the Met issued the FPN against the PM re the cake he ate in his office. We just don't know. The fact that we still don't know is itself pretty worrying and unacceptable.
Or is the proper analysis to look at each individual meeting during the day and assess whether each of them was reasonably necessary for work. So all the work meetings before dinner were OK and work meetings after the dinner were also OK but the actual dinner was not because it was not reasonably necessary for work.
Also a curious interpretation. Starmer's team - judging by what they are saying today - seem to be taking the view that you should look at the totality of the day as a whole not chop it up into bite- sized events (sorry!).
Also what does "reasonably" mean?
Conclusions:-
1. Those regulations were a mess. 2. Who is giving legal advice to the Met and the Durham police? 3. Are they getting the same legal advice on how to interpret the regulations and apply it to the facts they gather? 4. Are they going to publish what that legal advice is? 5. Is that legal advice correct?
You see, if Durham police do not fine Starmer on the basis that it was reasonable of him to eat with people he had been working with all day, especially if he continued to work afterwards, then I find it hard to see how the PM and Sunak were fined for working in the Cabinet Office and stopping briefly to have a cake. They could have argued that they were there to work for a number of hours and a brief pause to eat or drink did not undermine the fact that they were at a work meeting during those hours.
The irony, in what is turning out to be the 2020s version of Jarndyce v Jarndyce, would be if Starmer avoids an FPN on legal grounds which could have helped Johnson and Sunak avoid theirs.
I will now go and get a life .....
Loads of FPNs are issued incorrectly. Surely part of the process is whether an individual chooses to accept one or not. If they are unreasonable, challenge them!
But that is my point. You cannot have the law being applied inconsistently or what is lawful being determined by whether someone chooses to accept an FPN because (a) they don't realise it was given to them wrongly (b) they can't afford to challenge it or (c) they just want to get on with it.
If the police are going to investigate these events and fine people with all the consequences which flow from that, they should spell out in detail the legal basis on which they state that a breach of the regulations occurred.
At the moment we have incomprehensible regulations being, for all we know, incorrectly interpreted and arbitrarily applied.
That's just wrong. Covid may be in the past but this is no way to make law, interpret law or enforce law.
All this stuff about Starmer being “principled” makes me want to be sick in my mouth. This is the guy who more than anyone else tried to overturn a democratic vote because he thought be was better than the voters. When it came to the pandemic, all he wanted to do was make political capital by calling the government reckless for not locking down harder and longer. And all the while he too was floating the rules. He’s a sanctimonious expletive.
Come on, fess up, what's really making you sick is that this no longer looks like playing out well for the Conservatives, whether or not Starmer goes or more likely stays, when a couple of days back you were enjoying the spectacle. Now the tables have been turned.
Mmmm, why didn't Starmer just say "I will resign if I am found guilty of breaking the rules, regardless of whether I am issued with a FPN or not?"
That is what a truly principled person would do.
Because then you would be complaining that he did not resign for being under investigation and is therefore a hypocrite. Lets face it some people just like complaining.
Surely we’ll see some domestic energy fixes cheaper than the cap being offered fairly soon….
when do we get the £150 rebate ? (genuine question)
If you pay council tax via dd, you should get it pretty soon, automatically.
If you pay annually, it depends on when your council can be arsed. I got a letter from some third party company with loads of codes on it, directing me to a shady looking website, with loads of “don’t you dare defraud us” warnings. They took my bank details and I got the payment last week (a few days later). Others in my council area are still waiting for the letter, so it seems to be a bit pot luck.
No letter or hopes of any here any time soon. Nor has anyone on DD had a payment to the best of my knowledge.
There a hundred better countries in which to live than Britain.
And I intend to do so.
Care to name them?
I know Vladimir Putin hates Britain with a passion now because of our ardent support of Ukraine, but what reason would you have to despise Britain so much that you'd think there are a hundred better countries to live in?
Surely we’ll see some domestic energy fixes cheaper than the cap being offered fairly soon….
when do we get the £150 rebate ? (genuine question)
If you pay council tax via dd, you should get it pretty soon, automatically.
If you pay annually, it depends on when your council can be arsed. I got a letter with loads of codes on it, directing me to a shady looking website, with loads of “don’t you dare defraud us” warnings. They took my bank details and I got the payment last week (a few days later). Others in my council area are still waiting for the letter, so it seems to be a bit pot luck.
The bastards. How dare they be efficient for a change. Didn't get it for our holiday home. I was sure they would cock that up and give it to us.
All this stuff about Starmer being “principled” makes me want to be sick in my mouth. This is the guy who more than anyone else tried to overturn a democratic vote because he thought be was better than the voters. When it came to the pandemic, all he wanted to do was make political capital by calling the government reckless for not locking down harder and longer. And all the while he too was floating the rules. He’s a sanctimonious expletive.
Come on, fess up, what's really making you sick is that this no longer looks like playing out well for the Conservatives, whether or not Starmer goes or more likely stays, when a couple of days back you were enjoying the spectacle. Now the tables have been turned.
Bizarre post. I haven’t voted for the Conservative party since 2010. Last week I voted for the winning candidate in my ward, who replaced the Conservative.
Because then you would be complaining that he did not resign for being under investigation and is therefore a hypocrite. Lets face it some people just like complaining.
You'd pick it up in much less time with a little effort. Months.
You'd pick up the utilitarian basics in months (say A1, A2 if you worked at it a bit) but getting the stage where you can have casual social interactions with people you don't know or lucidly converse on unfamiliar and unprepared topics (B2) takes years of immersion and formal study for most people.
When Mrs DA went to university in Russia she had 12 months of 40 hours/week classroom instruction plus self directed study plus immersion to get to B2 in year. Very few people have the motivation and time to devote to that.
"Picking Up" languages by just living among the native speaking community is not very effective for most people. An important concept in language teaching is "intervention". That is, we identify a student's slip and correct it. Now a random interlocutor in France doesn't know or care about this and so isn't going to explain that when using le participe passé and the object procedes the verb, the participle agrees, in number and gender, with the object not the subject. Contrast with the case where the participle precedes the object and is therefore invariant.
Russian is a bloody difficult language to learn!
It can be for Anglophones. You've got a lot of grammar, different alphabet and precious little shared vocabulary. However, the spelling is very regular and the pronunciation is extremely predictable from the written form if the stress marks are present. Just remember to flatten your terminal 'O' sounds so you speak like an educated Muscovite not a Dagestani apricot farmer.
When will the DUP and other associated so called "Loyalists" realise the world has seriously moved on and few people in England, Wales or Scotland would worry one way or the other if a border poll was held, even if Ireland was united.
I think they know that full well.
Which is why they're so passionate themselves in preventing it - because they know nobody else is going to do so for them.
I was re-reading (don't ask) posts from a few years ago post-2016 when the great matter for debate was some of us saying there would never be an internal border on the island of Ireland and others (thinking you and @MarqueeMark here) saying the govt will call the EU's bluff, there won't be any checks anywhere and just let the EU try to police a border on the island.
Never in a million years did either side think that Boris would end up doing what no British PM could ever do and partition the UK, establish an internal border between GB and NI, and thereby set out a clear path for Irish independence.
Boris, eh.
Absolutely and I still 100% stand by that.
Theresa May screwed the pooch by agreeing to EU's sequencing in 2017, and the Remain Parliament left Boris no alternative but what was agreed in 2019, which at least kept Britain out of the EU's power and left both NI voters and the UK with the ability to remove NI from special arrangements too.
But absolutely, call the bluff, invoke Article 16 and dare the EU to put internal border on the island of Ireland. They're not going to. They're bluffing now, just as they were six years ago.
At the time of this dinner England was under restrictions which limited meetings with people inside (other than members of your household bubble) other than for exceptions, one of which was meetings reasonably necessary for work.
What the police will have to decide, I think, is whether all the meetings Starmer and others were having on that day in Durham were all reasonably necessary for work, including dinner in the evening. Work matters can after all be discussed over dinner. And even if they are not, if you are working in a long meeting and then stop to have something to eat, it would be curious to say that a meeting where you open your mouth to speak is legal but the moment you open it to eat a sandwich it becomes illegal.
Note: it could be curious but might still be the correct legal interpretation. That might be the legal basis on which the Met issued the FPN against the PM re the cake he ate in his office. We just don't know. The fact that we still don't know is itself pretty worrying and unacceptable.
Or is the proper analysis to look at each individual meeting during the day and assess whether each of them was reasonably necessary for work. So all the work meetings before dinner were OK and work meetings after the dinner were also OK but the actual dinner was not because it was not reasonably necessary for work.
Also a curious interpretation. Starmer's team - judging by what they are saying today - seem to be taking the view that you should look at the totality of the day as a whole not chop it up into bite- sized events (sorry!).
Also what does "reasonably" mean?
Conclusions:-
1. Those regulations were a mess. 2. Who is giving legal advice to the Met and the Durham police? 3. Are they getting the same legal advice on how to interpret the regulations and apply it to the facts they gather? 4. Are they going to publish what that legal advice is? 5. Is that legal advice correct?
You see, if Durham police do not fine Starmer on the basis that it was reasonable of him to eat with people he had been working with all day, especially if he continued to work afterwards, then I find it hard to see how the PM and Sunak were fined for working in the Cabinet Office and stopping briefly to have a cake. They could have argued that they were there to work for a number of hours and a brief pause to eat or drink did not undermine the fact that they were at a work meeting during those hours.
The irony, in what is turning out to be the 2020s version of Jarndyce v Jarndyce, would be if Starmer avoids an FPN on legal grounds which could have helped Johnson and Sunak avoid theirs.
I will now go and get a life .....
Loads of FPNs are issued incorrectly. Surely part of the process is whether an individual chooses to accept one or not. If they are unreasonable, challenge them!
But that is my point. You cannot have the law being applied inconsistently or what is lawful being determined by whether someone chooses to accept an FPN because (a) they don't realise it was given to them wrongly (b) they can't afford to challenge it or (c) they just want to get on with it.
If the police are going to investigate these events and fine people with all the consequences which flow from that, they should spell out in detail the legal basis on which they state that a breach of the regulations occurred.
At the moment we have incomprehensible regulations being, for all we know, incorrectly interpreted and arbitrarily applied.
That's just wrong. Covid may be in the past but this is no way to make law, interpret law or enforce law.
All this stuff about Starmer being “principled” makes me want to be sick in my mouth. This is the guy who more than anyone else tried to overturn a democratic vote because he thought be was better than the voters. When it came to the pandemic, all he wanted to do was make political capital by calling the government reckless for not locking down harder and longer. And all the while he too was floating the rules. He’s a sanctimonious expletive.
Come on, fess up, what's really making you sick is that this no longer looks like playing out well for the Conservatives, whether or not Starmer goes or more likely stays, when a couple of days back you were enjoying the spectacle. Now the tables have been turned.
Mmmm, why didn't Starmer just say "I will resign if I am found guilty of breaking the rules, regardless of whether I am issued with a FPN or not?"
That is what a truly principled person would do.
Because then you would be complaining that he did not resign for being under investigation and is therefore a hypocrite. Lets face it some people just like complaining.
And some people just like defending the indefensible
All this stuff about Starmer being “principled” makes me want to be sick in my mouth. This is the guy who more than anyone else tried to overturn a democratic vote because he thought be was better than the voters. When it came to the pandemic, all he wanted to do was make political capital by calling the government reckless for not locking down harder and longer. And all the while he too was floating the rules. He’s a sanctimonious expletive.
Come on, fess up, what's really making you sick is that this no longer looks like playing out well for the Conservatives, whether or not Starmer goes or more likely stays, when a couple of days back you were enjoying the spectacle. Now the tables have been turned.
What pitiful bollocks
Labour leader Keir Starmer being solemnly forced to promise his own resignation if he has, indeed, broken the lockdown laws he wanted to prolong and harden is not a good look for Labour. At all. And now he has to wait a month to find out, and he is - it seems - probably gonna b3 personally interviewed by the cops. And his Labour deputy has promised she will resign as well.
In what possible universe is this sequence of events bad for the Conservatives?
This is prolapsed nonsense on acid. Partygate was bad for the Tories. This is bad for Labour. Coda
Surely we’ll see some domestic energy fixes cheaper than the cap being offered fairly soon….
when do we get the £150 rebate ? (genuine question)
If you pay council tax via dd, you should get it pretty soon, automatically.
If you pay annually, it depends on when your council can be arsed. I got a letter from some third party company with loads of codes on it, directing me to a shady looking website, with loads of “don’t you dare defraud us” warnings. They took my bank details and I got the payment last week (a few days later). Others in my council area are still waiting for the letter, so it seems to be a bit pot luck.
No letter or hopes of any here any time soon. Nor has anyone on DD had a payment to the best of my knowledge.
Google (or bing) NameOfYourCouncil council tax rebate, and see what they say on the council's website.
Because then you would be complaining that he did not resign for being under investigation and is therefore a hypocrite. Lets face it some people just like complaining.
But surely it depends on your circumstances and desires. What might be the perfect country/city when you are 20 will be very different to when you are 40 or 70.
If you are young and ambitious and smart I cannot see a better place to live than London. Arguably the greatest city on earth, for all its many flaws. Its only rival is NYC, and the problem with NYC is that you are in America, which is a great country but cannot be compared to the intense variation and historical and cultural riches that comprise Europe. And in London you have all of Europe as your backyard, it is also easier to get to Asia, Africa
As you grow older London loses its appeal for many, unless you are rich. If you are rich London is still hard to beat. And if you are rich you can afford to fly to warmer countries to avoid the worst of the weather
On the other hand as I grow older I do find myself drawn to the simpler easier sunnier beauties of the Mediterranean coast, or maybe the tropics (eg Thailand). Language is less of an issue than it was thanks to auto-translation, English is spoken everywhere, you can take PB with you: a portable local pub
When my kids are fully grown in a few years I might finally make that move
Blanket statements like "the Nordic countries and Netherlands are objectively better places to live" are nuts. They are fucking boring, for a start. Sweden. My god. Anyone with an ounce of intellectual curiosity would slit their wrists within weeks. And that's before winter
Well mostly yes. (Except for me, the price of London would at any age put me off - an amazing city, certainly, but I could live in the best suburbs of any of the UK's other best cities for the price of living in London's most dispiriting and peripheral district). I'd also add that people are different - for some, the best place on earth to live is somewhere with hills and outdoor pursuits; for others the best place is cities and culture.
Personally, I think there is nowhere better to live than Northern England. But I am one of those people who values what he has higher than what he could have.
You'd pick it up in much less time with a little effort. Months.
You'd pick up the utilitarian basics in months (say A1, A2 if you worked at it a bit) but getting the stage where you can have casual social interactions with people you don't know or lucidly converse on unfamiliar and unprepared topics (B2) takes years of immersion and formal study for most people.
When Mrs DA went to university in Russia she had 12 months of 40 hours/week classroom instruction plus self directed study plus immersion to get to B2 in year. Very few people have the motivation and time to devote to that.
"Picking Up" languages by just living among the native speaking community is not very effective for most people. An important concept in language teaching is "intervention". That is, we identify a student's slip and correct it. Now a random interlocutor in France doesn't know or care about this and so isn't going to explain that when using le participe passé and the object procedes the verb, the participle agrees, in number and gender, with the object not the subject. Contrast with the case where the participle precedes the object and is therefore invariant.
Russian is a bloody difficult language to learn!
It's average I would say. It's not French or Spanish, but it's not Arabic or Chinese either.
The US State Department puts it in Category III (of IV).
Still no evidence Starmer said Johnson should resign prior to lying to the HoC but doesn't stop Tories repeating it anyway
What's that got to do with the price of fish? Starmer has said he'll resign if he is fined because he called for Johnson and Sunak to resign after they were fined. In fact, he called on PM to resign when they were under investigation...
When will the DUP and other associated so called "Loyalists" realise the world has seriously moved on and few people in England, Wales or Scotland would worry one way or the other if a border poll was held, even if Ireland was united.
I think they know that full well.
Which is why they're so passionate themselves in preventing it - because they know nobody else is going to do so for them.
I was re-reading (don't ask) posts from a few years ago post-2016 when the great matter for debate was some of us saying there would never be an internal border on the island of Ireland and others (thinking you and @MarqueeMark here) saying the govt will call the EU's bluff, there won't be any checks anywhere and just let the EU try to police a border on the island.
Never in a million years did either side think that Boris would end up doing what no British PM could ever do and partition the UK, establish an internal border between GB and NI, and thereby set out a clear path for Irish independence.
Boris, eh.
Absolutely and I still 100% stand by that.
Theresa May screwed the pooch by agreeing to EU's sequencing in 2017, and the Remain Parliament left Boris no alternative but what was agreed in 2019, which at least kept Britain out of the EU's power and left both NI voters and the UK with the ability to remove NI from special arrangements too.
But absolutely, call the bluff, invoke Article 16 and dare the EU to put internal border on the island of Ireland. They're not going to. They're bluffing now, just as they were six years ago.
To quote Theresa May "nothing has changed".
LOL. We have a country with an internal customs border. How does that sit with your vision of sovereignty.
In what possible universe is this sequence of events bad for the Conservatives?
'Nervy Tories now fear that they have overplayed their hand... That is why Jacob Rees-Mogg last night was so reluctant to press the issue when he appeared on Andrew Neil's Channel 4 show.'
Still no evidence Starmer said Johnson should resign prior to lying to the HoC but doesn't stop Tories repeating it anyway
What's that got to do with the price of fish? Starmer has said he'll resign if he is fined because he called for Johnson and Sunak to resign after they were fined. In fact, he called on PM to resign when they were under investigation...
Keir Starmer @Keir_Starmer Honesty and decency matter.
After months of denials the Prime Minister is now under criminal investigations for breaking his own lockdown laws.
He needs to do the decent thing and resign.
Tut tut @tlg86. How dare you bring SKS' past comments into play. It's all Daily Mail mudslinging, don't you know. We should all get away from this ridiculous non-story and focus on the real issues that matter.........
On topic. This is a good strong response by Keir Starmer, the best move in the circumstances, and I think it will work because having not broken the law he isn't going to be fined. Fines are for people who have broken the law not for people who haven't. That's the system we have. Bit boring but there you go.
But I can't quite stretch to it being a net boost for him. I see it more as damage limitation. It would have been better if he weren't being investigated by the police. Just that sentence "being investigated by the police" or (once cleared) "was investigated by the police" is not what you want in the vicinity of a LOTO looking to emphasize the difference between him and a sleazeball of a PM.
But surely it depends on your circumstances and desires. What might be the perfect country/city when you are 20 will be very different to when you are 40 or 70.
If you are young and ambitious and smart I cannot see a better place to live than London. Arguably the greatest city on earth, for all its many flaws. Its only rival is NYC, and the problem with NYC is that you are in America, which is a great country but cannot be compared to the intense variation and historical and cultural riches that comprise Europe. And in London you have all of Europe as your backyard, it is also easier to get to Asia, Africa
As you grow older London loses its appeal for many, unless you are rich. If you are rich London is still hard to beat. And if you are rich you can afford to fly to warmer countries to avoid the worst of the weather
On the other hand as I grow older I do find myself drawn to the simpler easier sunnier beauties of the Mediterranean coast, or maybe the tropics (eg Thailand). Language is less of an issue than it was thanks to auto-translation, English is spoken everywhere, you can take PB with you: a portable local pub
When my kids are fully grown in a few years I might finally make that move
Blanket statements like "the Nordic countries and Netherlands are objectively better places to live" are nuts. They are fucking boring, for a start. Sweden. My god. Anyone with an ounce of intellectual curiosity would slit their wrists within weeks. And that's before winter
What do you class as rich? I earn a good income and consider London very hard to beat, for all the reasons you cite.
At the time of this dinner England was under restrictions which limited meetings with people inside (other than members of your household bubble) other than for exceptions, one of which was meetings reasonably necessary for work.
What the police will have to decide, I think, is whether all the meetings Starmer and others were having on that day in Durham were all reasonably necessary for work, including dinner in the evening. Work matters can after all be discussed over dinner. And even if they are not, if you are working in a long meeting and then stop to have something to eat, it would be curious to say that a meeting where you open your mouth to speak is legal but the moment you open it to eat a sandwich it becomes illegal.
Note: it could be curious but might still be the correct legal interpretation. That might be the legal basis on which the Met issued the FPN against the PM re the cake he ate in his office. We just don't know. The fact that we still don't know is itself pretty worrying and unacceptable.
Or is the proper analysis to look at each individual meeting during the day and assess whether each of them was reasonably necessary for work. So all the work meetings before dinner were OK and work meetings after the dinner were also OK but the actual dinner was not because it was not reasonably necessary for work.
Also a curious interpretation. Starmer's team - judging by what they are saying today - seem to be taking the view that you should look at the totality of the day as a whole not chop it up into bite- sized events (sorry!).
Also what does "reasonably" mean?
Conclusions:-
1. Those regulations were a mess. 2. Who is giving legal advice to the Met and the Durham police? 3. Are they getting the same legal advice on how to interpret the regulations and apply it to the facts they gather? 4. Are they going to publish what that legal advice is? 5. Is that legal advice correct?
You see, if Durham police do not fine Starmer on the basis that it was reasonable of him to eat with people he had been working with all day, especially if he continued to work afterwards, then I find it hard to see how the PM and Sunak were fined for working in the Cabinet Office and stopping briefly to have a cake. They could have argued that they were there to work for a number of hours and a brief pause to eat or drink did not undermine the fact that they were at a work meeting during those hours.
The irony, in what is turning out to be the 2020s version of Jarndyce v Jarndyce, would be if Starmer avoids an FPN on legal grounds which could have helped Johnson and Sunak avoid theirs.
I will now go and get a life .....
Loads of FPNs are issued incorrectly. Surely part of the process is whether an individual chooses to accept one or not. If they are unreasonable, challenge them!
But that is my point. You cannot have the law being applied inconsistently or what is lawful being determined by whether someone chooses to accept an FPN because (a) they don't realise it was given to them wrongly (b) they can't afford to challenge it or (c) they just want to get on with it.
If the police are going to investigate these events and fine people with all the consequences which flow from that, they should spell out in detail the legal basis on which they state that a breach of the regulations occurred.
At the moment we have incomprehensible regulations being, for all we know, incorrectly interpreted and arbitrarily applied.
That's just wrong. Covid may be in the past but this is no way to make law, interpret law or enforce law.
All this stuff about Starmer being “principled” makes me want to be sick in my mouth. This is the guy who more than anyone else tried to overturn a democratic vote because he thought be was better than the voters. When it came to the pandemic, all he wanted to do was make political capital by calling the government reckless for not locking down harder and longer. And all the while he too was floating the rules. He’s a sanctimonious expletive.
Come on, fess up, what's really making you sick is that this no longer looks like playing out well for the Conservatives, whether or not Starmer goes or more likely stays, when a couple of days back you were enjoying the spectacle. Now the tables have been turned.
Mmmm, why didn't Starmer just say "I will resign if I am found guilty of breaking the rules, regardless of whether I am issued with a FPN or not?"
That is what a truly principled person would do.
There is no such thing as the Police finding someone guilty.
The Police can say that the person MIGHT be guilty but the matter does not warrant further action (as they did with Cummings - they said the Barnard Castle trip MAY have been a breach, but the fact he didn't breach social distancing meant it was trivial in their view even if it was a breach). But it would only ever be a "maybe".
They can also issue an FPN, which is a stronger statement that they consider the evidence is there to give them a very good chance of conviction. The recipient then has the choice to spend quite a lot of money going to court and getting a criminal record (which an FPN doesn't give).
In neither case do the Police find the person "guilty". Only the courts can do that. But the latter is a FAR stronger statement - the former would never be more than a "perhaps".
You'd pick it up in much less time with a little effort. Months.
You'd pick up the utilitarian basics in months (say A1, A2 if you worked at it a bit) but getting the stage where you can have casual social interactions with people you don't know or lucidly converse on unfamiliar and unprepared topics (B2) takes years of immersion and formal study for most people.
When Mrs DA went to university in Russia she had 12 months of 40 hours/week classroom instruction plus self directed study plus immersion to get to B2 in year. Very few people have the motivation and time to devote to that.
"Picking Up" languages by just living among the native speaking community is not very effective for most people. An important concept in language teaching is "intervention". That is, we identify a student's slip and correct it. Now a random interlocutor in France doesn't know or care about this and so isn't going to explain that when using le participe passé and the object procedes the verb, the participle agrees, in number and gender, with the object not the subject. Contrast with the case where the participle precedes the object and is therefore invariant.
Russian is a bloody difficult language to learn!
It's average I would say. It's not French or Spanish, but it's not Arabic or Chinese either.
The US State Department puts it in Category III (of IV).
Chinese is easy peasy to learn. No grammar, tense, time-manner-place, the Romans having been about to attack, etc.
Just learn the vocab (which is pictorial) and you can speak the language.
But surely it depends on your circumstances and desires. What might be the perfect country/city when you are 20 will be very different to when you are 40 or 70.
If you are young and ambitious and smart I cannot see a better place to live than London. Arguably the greatest city on earth, for all its many flaws. Its only rival is NYC, and the problem with NYC is that you are in America, which is a great country but cannot be compared to the intense variation and historical and cultural riches that comprise Europe. And in London you have all of Europe as your backyard, it is also easier to get to Asia, Africa
As you grow older London loses its appeal for many, unless you are rich. If you are rich London is still hard to beat. And if you are rich you can afford to fly to warmer countries to avoid the worst of the weather
On the other hand as I grow older I do find myself drawn to the simpler easier sunnier beauties of the Mediterranean coast, or maybe the tropics (eg Thailand). Language is less of an issue than it was thanks to auto-translation, English is spoken everywhere, you can take PB with you: a portable local pub
When my kids are fully grown in a few years I might finally make that move
Blanket statements like "the Nordic countries and Netherlands are objectively better places to live" are nuts. They are fucking boring, for a start. Sweden. My god. Anyone with an ounce of intellectual curiosity would slit their wrists within weeks. And that's before winter
Well mostly yes. (Except for me, the price of London would at any age put me off - an amazing city, certainly, but I could live in the best suburbs of any of the UK's other best cities for the price of living in London's most dispiriting and peripheral district). I'd also add that people are different - for some, the best place on earth to live is somewhere with hills and outdoor pursuits; for others the best place is cities and culture.
Personally, I think there is nowhere better to live than Northern England. But I am one of those people who values what he has higher than what he could have.
Northern England is lovely in places (hideous in others), but I love sunshine and warm weather, it just makes me feel better. So not for me. London has so many advantages they outweigh the weather issue - for now - but then I am prosperous and get to travel a lot. I am writing this staring at the island of Samos across the beautiful clean sunny Med from Turkey - staring at Europe from Asia...
America would be a magnificent place to live.... if they could sort out healthcare/race/guns/crime/Trump. And destroy all the strip malls. And make the cities walkable. No biggie
Surely we’ll see some domestic energy fixes cheaper than the cap being offered fairly soon….
when do we get the £150 rebate ? (genuine question)
If you pay council tax via dd, you should get it pretty soon, automatically.
If you pay annually, it depends on when your council can be arsed. I got a letter with loads of codes on it, directing me to a shady looking website, with loads of “don’t you dare defraud us” warnings. They took my bank details and I got the payment last week (a few days later). Others in my council area are still waiting for the letter, so it seems to be a bit pot luck.
The bastards. How dare they be efficient for a change. Didn't get it for our holiday home. I was sure they would cock that up and give it to us.
Yes we chatted about that the other night. When I first saw it I had a little panic then you look at the detail and it is weird. It is only going to apply if not occupied or let out for less than 70 days (I can't see the article behind the paywall, but I assume that is what it says).
That hits practically nobody and is unenforceable.
So it is either nonsense or it is to hit the homes of people so rich they buy houses and leave them more or less abandoned. In which case it isn't a bad idea as it either makes the homes available to locals or puts them back on the market for people who will use them or let them out as holiday homes which adds to the local economy.
Wouldn't be surprised though if it is the former and a complete non runner. From a selfish point of view it doesn't impact me because we, or family members, are at ours for more than 70 days a year, although how you prove that goodness knows.
As I mentioned yesterday teatime, I went to watch a joint exercise with Llandudno lifeboats and the coastguard helicopter in Llandudno Bay as they simulated transferring casualties to the helicopter and between the lifeboats. It was fascinating as the inshore lifeboat crew communicated with the helicopter and made sure every protocol was in place before the inshore moved under the downdraft of the helicopter and backed away immediately after the transfer for safety from the downdraft.
It is amazing to think these RNLI crew members are volunteers dedicated their spare time to saving lives at sea while putting themselves in the line of danger and I know I have an interest as my son was part of the crew on the all-weather boat in the exercise, but we are very proud of him and all his colleagues
Turning to Starmer and ‘beergate’. I do not think he had any choice but offer to resign if he receives a FPN but of course he has opened himself to criticism that as a former head of the CPS he is putting Durham Police under unfair pressure. He maintains that he continued work post the curry and beer and has what’s app and other social media confirmation but frankly I do not see the difference between Boris attending a birthday party for 20 minutes or so in between working himself.
I would venture to suggest the problem is that a quiz took place earlier and that attendees allege excessive drinking took place and they say they were not working after 10.00pm
Durham Police must investigate this as the MET have with no favours and if they conclude a breach of covid rules took place then in fairness in law, FPN’s should be issued to all attendees. However, if they follow the ‘Cummings’ decision, then the pressure on Starmer will be immense to quit, not least because of his own demands on Cummings, but to try to stay in office on a technical point would not be acceptable to many of the public
The only hope for Starmer is Durham Police confirm the whole event complied with the covid regulations at the time, and of course social distancing was integral to that and mention of that is in labour’s own leaked memo, when it is clear from the video a group were standing up conversing and eating without social distancing and reminiscent of the Downing Street Garden event but at least that was outside
How this plays out time will tell and I want Boris out of office anyway and the sooner the better
Yes re RNLI. You compare Durham with the Downing Street garden event but iirc the Met have already cleared Boris (and the others) of that one. If you are right, Starmer will be cleared too.
The birthday cake ambush is different because it occurred between meetings and included family and friends, not just co-workers. If it turns out Mrs Starmer popped up to pour the drinks in Durham, that would be embarrassing.
In what possible universe is this sequence of events bad for the Conservatives?
'Nervy Tories now fear that they have overplayed their hand... That is why Jacob Rees-Mogg last night was so reluctant to press the issue when he appeared on Andrew Neil's Channel 4 show.'
I do wonder if it's much more likely that MPs are thinking through their own actions, and wondering if they might get caught out as well. I can imagine there are some worried MPs out there, of all parties.
There a hundred better countries in which to live than Britain.
And I intend to do so.
Care to name them?
I know Vladimir Putin hates Britain with a passion now because of our ardent support of Ukraine, but what reason would you have to despise Britain so much that you'd think there are a hundred better countries to live in?
The Nordics and the Netherlands are richer and have a better quality of life than we do. Ireland too. Among the larger European countries Germany certainly does too. I'd say France does too, certainly better work life balance and nicer weather too although the French don't seem very happy with it. Italy is messed up but the food and weather are a lot better. Switzerland has a lot going for it, as does Canada and New Zealand. I'm probably too invested here to move now, and there is still a lot I love about it despite the Tories' best efforts to ruin the place, but the idea that this is objectively the best country in the world to live in is laughable.
I'm not going to get into a pissing contest about ranking countries, which is subjective, but that's not remotely close to a hundred countries, so do you care to keep going or agree that "a hundred countries" better than the UK is ridiculous hyperbolic nonsense?
The UK is up there as one of the best, most developed countries to live in on almost any rational metric. As are most other west European nations, the USA, Canada, Australia, NZ and Japan depending upon what you prefer.
All have their strengths and foibles, some more than others, but to suggest there's a hundred nations better than any of them is just absurd nonsense.
Yes I wouldn't say 100. Maybe 10-20? The UN's Human Development Index ranks the UK at #13 which seems about right although their precise ranking wouldn't be exactly the same as mine.
Personally - I think it's difficult to live in a country where you don't speak the language/can't communicate comfortably with most people. Japan is I am sure lovely, but I can't imagine enjoying moving there and spending probably multiple years unable to speak with most people beyond pointing and gesturing.
You'd pick it up in much less time with a little effort. Months.
... Objectively, Scandianiavia is IMO a nicer place (higher standard of living and on the whole fewer social strains)...
But the weather!
Seven months of winter, more in the far north.
If I moved overseas it would have to be to somewhere with nicer weather.
But surely it depends on your circumstances and desires. What might be the perfect country/city when you are 20 will be very different to when you are 40 or 70.
If you are young and ambitious and smart I cannot see a better place to live than London. Arguably the greatest city on earth, for all its many flaws. Its only rival is NYC, and the problem with NYC is that you are in America, which is a great country but cannot be compared to the intense variation and historical and cultural riches that comprise Europe. And in London you have all of Europe as your backyard, it is also easier to get to Asia, Africa
As you grow older London loses its appeal for many, unless you are rich. If you are rich London is still hard to beat. And if you are rich you can afford to fly to warmer countries to avoid the worst of the weather
On the other hand as I grow older I do find myself drawn to the simpler easier sunnier beauties of the Mediterranean coast, or maybe the tropics (eg Thailand). Language is less of an issue than it was thanks to auto-translation, English is spoken everywhere, you can take PB with you: a portable local pub
When my kids are fully grown in a few years I might finally make that move
Blanket statements like "the Nordic countries and Netherlands are objectively better places to live" are nuts. They are fucking boring, for a start. Sweden. My god. Anyone with an ounce of intellectual curiosity would slit their wrists within weeks. And that's before winter
Well mostly yes. (Except for me, the price of London would at any age put me off - an amazing city, certainly, but I could live in the best suburbs of any of the UK's other best cities for the price of living in London's most dispiriting and peripheral district). I'd also add that people are different - for some, the best place on earth to live is somewhere with hills and outdoor pursuits; for others the best place is cities and culture.
Personally, I think there is nowhere better to live than Northern England. But I am one of those people who values what he has higher than what he could have.
Northern England is lovely in places (hideous in others), but I love sunshine and warm weather, it just makes me feel better. So not for me. London has so many advantages they outweigh the weather issue - for now - but then I am prosperous and get to travel a lot. I am writing this staring at the island of Samos across the beautiful clean sunny Med from Turkey - staring at Europe from Asia...
America would be a magnificent place to live.... if they could sort out healthcare/race/guns/crime/Trump. And destroy all the strip malls. And make the cities walkable. No biggie
London is great if you have money, as @Anabobazina said. If you don't, it can be very shit. I like living in London although it used to be a toss up with LA (those days are gone). When I'm 70, it would either be the south of France (weather, lifestyle) or Bologna (fantastic food, a beautiful place to walk around and a great base to explore Italy and, indeed, a lot of Southern Europe).
So @thetimes reporting Liz Truss to scrap Northern Ireland protocol - or at least parts of it - next week. This will trigger retaliation from EU which could make relations v difficult. EU likely to launch legal action against and suspend co-operation with UK on most issues .. https://twitter.com/sima_kotecha/status/1523930984261033985
What a fucking idiot.
We are in the middle of a cost of living crisis. We signed up to this. We agreed to it. It’s beyond belief.
If the EU didn't want Article 16 to be invoked, they shouldn't have signed up to it. They signed up to it, they agreed to it. We're perfectly 100% within our rights to invoke any provisions of the Protocol we choose to invoke.
The issue stems from the way the talks were sequenced, at the EU’s insistence.
The plan was to always to: 1.Agree the WA 2.Negotiate and sign the Trade Agreement, 3.Revisit the Protocol based on the exact TA and operational issues.
This was all discussed at the time.
Of course, it now suits the EU not to be bothered about that last bit - they’ve shown bad faith when it comes to the Trusted Trader scheme and computerised border system, and A16 is all we have left.
On topic. This is a good strong response by Keir Starmer, the best move in the circumstances, and I think it will work because having not broken the law he isn't going to be fined. Fines are for people who have broken the law not for people who haven't. That's the system we have. Bit boring but there you go.
But I can't quite stretch to it being a net boost for him. I see it more as damage limitation. It would have been better if he weren't being investigated by the police. Just that sentence "being investigated by the police" or (once cleared) "was investigated by the police" is not what you want in the vicinity of a LOTO looking to emphasize the difference between him and a sleazeball of a PM.
I can’t remember now. Was it you saying a week ago that Raynor only attended curry night over zoom?
By any sensible definition, an office birthday cake for the boss during the working day is not a bigger breach than curry and beers until 1am.
I just wish Johnson and Starmer would host a joint a press conference to apologise. For implementing such I’ll advised anti libertarian laws in the first place that set everyone up to break, purposely or inadvertently.
There a hundred better countries in which to live than Britain.
And I intend to do so.
Care to name them?
I know Vladimir Putin hates Britain with a passion now because of our ardent support of Ukraine, but what reason would you have to despise Britain so much that you'd think there are a hundred better countries to live in?
The Nordics and the Netherlands are richer and have a better quality of life than we do. Ireland too. Among the larger European countries Germany certainly does too. I'd say France does too, certainly better work life balance and nicer weather too although the French don't seem very happy with it. Italy is messed up but the food and weather are a lot better. Switzerland has a lot going for it, as does Canada and New Zealand. I'm probably too invested here to move now, and there is still a lot I love about it despite the Tories' best efforts to ruin the place, but the idea that this is objectively the best country in the world to live in is laughable.
I'm not going to get into a pissing contest about ranking countries, which is subjective, but that's not remotely close to a hundred countries, so do you care to keep going or agree that "a hundred countries" better than the UK is ridiculous hyperbolic nonsense?
The UK is up there as one of the best, most developed countries to live in on almost any rational metric. As are most other west European nations, the USA, Canada, Australia, NZ and Japan depending upon what you prefer.
All have their strengths and foibles, some more than others, but to suggest there's a hundred nations better than any of them is just absurd nonsense.
Yes I wouldn't say 100. Maybe 10-20? The UN's Human Development Index ranks the UK at #13 which seems about right although their precise ranking wouldn't be exactly the same as mine.
Personally - I think it's difficult to live in a country where you don't speak the language/can't communicate comfortably with most people. Japan is I am sure lovely, but I can't imagine enjoying moving there and spending probably multiple years unable to speak with most people beyond pointing and gesturing.
You'd pick it up in much less time with a little effort. Months.
... Objectively, Scandianiavia is IMO a nicer place (higher standard of living and on the whole fewer social strains)...
But the weather!
Seven months of winter, more in the far north.
If I moved overseas it would have to be to somewhere with nicer weather.
Agree. Most of the places with a higher standard of living are either too cold, dark or too crowded for me. I'm also not keen on too hot either. I was keen to move to France and I'm still considering it part time within the Brexit restrictions.
You'd pick it up in much less time with a little effort. Months.
You'd pick up the utilitarian basics in months (say A1, A2 if you worked at it a bit) but getting the stage where you can have casual social interactions with people you don't know or lucidly converse on unfamiliar and unprepared topics (B2) takes years of immersion and formal study for most people.
When Mrs DA went to university in Russia she had 12 months of 40 hours/week classroom instruction plus self directed study plus immersion to get to B2 in year. Very few people have the motivation and time to devote to that.
"Picking Up" languages by just living among the native speaking community is not very effective for most people. An important concept in language teaching is "intervention". That is, we identify a student's slip and correct it. Now a random interlocutor in France doesn't know or care about this and so isn't going to explain that when using le participe passé and the object procedes the verb, the participle agrees, in number and gender, with the object not the subject. Contrast with the case where the participle precedes the object and is therefore invariant.
Russian is a bloody difficult language to learn!
It's average I would say. It's not French or Spanish, but it's not Arabic or Chinese either.
The US State Department puts it in Category III (of IV).
Chinese is easy peasy to learn. No grammar, tense, time-manner-place, the Romans having been about to attack, etc.
Just learn the vocab (which is pictorial) and you can speak the language.
But an absurdly impratical writing system, tones and a completely alien vocabulary.
In what possible universe is this sequence of events bad for the Conservatives?
'Nervy Tories now fear that they have overplayed their hand... That is why Jacob Rees-Mogg last night was so reluctant to press the issue when he appeared on Andrew Neil's Channel 4 show.'
The paywall blocks me but I notice in the "most popular" sidebar, number 2 is a story by that plagiarist Sean Thomas who copied it almost word-for-word from the Flintknappers Gazette.
As I mentioned yesterday teatime, I went to watch a joint exercise with Llandudno lifeboats and the coastguard helicopter in Llandudno Bay as they simulated transferring casualties to the helicopter and between the lifeboats. It was fascinating as the inshore lifeboat crew communicated with the helicopter and made sure every protocol was in place before the inshore moved under the downdraft of the helicopter and backed away immediately after the transfer for safety from the downdraft.
It is amazing to think these RNLI crew members are volunteers dedicated their spare time to saving lives at sea while putting themselves in the line of danger and I know I have an interest as my son was part of the crew on the all-weather boat in the exercise, but we are very proud of him and all his colleagues
Turning to Starmer and ‘beergate’. I do not think he had any choice but offer to resign if he receives a FPN but of course he has opened himself to criticism that as a former head of the CPS he is putting Durham Police under unfair pressure. He maintains that he continued work post the curry and beer and has what’s app and other social media confirmation but frankly I do not see the difference between Boris attending a birthday party for 20 minutes or so in between working himself.
I would venture to suggest the problem is that a quiz took place earlier and that attendees allege excessive drinking took place and they say they were not working after 10.00pm
Durham Police must investigate this as the MET have with no favours and if they conclude a breach of covid rules took place then in fairness in law, FPN’s should be issued to all attendees. However, if they follow the ‘Cummings’ decision, then the pressure on Starmer will be immense to quit, not least because of his own demands on Cummings, but to try to stay in office on a technical point would not be acceptable to many of the public
The only hope for Starmer is Durham Police confirm the whole event complied with the covid regulations at the time, and of course social distancing was integral to that and mention of that is in labour’s own leaked memo, when it is clear from the video a group were standing up conversing and eating without social distancing and reminiscent of the Downing Street Garden event but at least that was outside
How this plays out time will tell and I want Boris out of office anyway and the sooner the better
Yes re RNLI. You compare Durham with the Downing Street garden event but iirc the Met have already cleared Boris (and the others) of that one. If you are right, Starmer will be cleared too.
The birthday cake ambush is different because it occurred between meetings and included family and friends, not just co-workers. If it turns out Mrs Starmer popped up to pour the drinks in Durham, that would be embarrassing.
The salient difference is Durham was indoors and against even labours own leaked memo
It will be interesting how those pictures of a group standing up eating and drinking ignoring social distancing is explained
- “Is the FT right about Beergate giving Starmer a boost?”
Yesterday’s Redfield & Wilton poll suggests that the FT might be wrong. In an otherwise good finding for Labour (headline VI 39%), there is a worrying detail: an appalling drop in motivation among 2019 Labour voters.
Certain to Vote (5/5) - by 2019 GE vote
SNP 65% Con 62% LD 57% Lab 46% DNV 12%
That is a big reversal in voter motivation for Labour: they are usually in a good 2nd place in these types of questions, behind the SNP.
(Redfield & Wilton Strategies; 8 May; 2,000)
(On the other hand, R&W failed to find a single respondent saying they were planning on voting SLD. Very odd, considering that Alex Cole-Hamilton’s team did very well on Thursday. Subsamples, subsamples…)
The trouble with Starmer's high-risk strategy is that he is not denying that curry was washed down with beer, merely that if you (and the Durham police) squint hard enough, this was within the letter of the law. The public might be judging against the spirit of the guidelines.
On the drop in motivation, the LibDems and Greens had a better night than Labour. This should worry Starmer because it had been predicted that Starmer's determinedly non-committal centrism risked driving voters from red to yellow and green, which does seem to be what happened on Thursday.
In terms of Scotland, the parties performed thus:
Greens excellent Lib Dems excellent SNP well Labour well Conservatives poorly
That just ain’t good enough for Sarwar and Starmer. At this stage in the electoral cycle they ought to be utterly thrashing both the SNP and the Tories. I can understand that their activists and voters are disenchanted. And that the Greens and Lib Dems are doing so well must really piss them off.
All this stuff about Starmer being “principled” makes me want to be sick in my mouth. This is the guy who more than anyone else tried to overturn a democratic vote because he thought be was better than the voters. When it came to the pandemic, all he wanted to do was make political capital by calling the government reckless for not locking down harder and longer. And all the while he too was floating the rules. He’s a sanctimonious expletive.
Come on, fess up, what's really making you sick is that this no longer looks like playing out well for the Conservatives, whether or not Starmer goes or more likely stays, when a couple of days back you were enjoying the spectacle. Now the tables have been turned.
Not for those of us who don't want Boris as PM going into the next election.... 😉
Fair point. That's also the one potential downside for Labour - that it'll increase the pressure for Johnson to go thus losing the person who has become their best electoral asset.
On the other side of the spectrum, the Corbyn ultras were also enjoying the spectacle of Starmer's difficulties, as exemplified by Dianne Abbott's haste to jump on the bandwagon. Now they'll also be feeling sick, and facing the prospect of: - Starmer actually emerging strengthened in the eyes of both the wider electorate and within the LP - or going but with Rayner also out of the equation and the humiliation of some obscure far left candidate losing another Labour leadership election even more badly than Long-Bailey did.
At the time of this dinner England was under restrictions which limited meetings with people inside (other than members of your household bubble) other than for exceptions, one of which was meetings reasonably necessary for work.
What the police will have to decide, I think, is whether all the meetings Starmer and others were having on that day in Durham were all reasonably necessary for work, including dinner in the evening. Work matters can after all be discussed over dinner. And even if they are not, if you are working in a long meeting and then stop to have something to eat, it would be curious to say that a meeting where you open your mouth to speak is legal but the moment you open it to eat a sandwich it becomes illegal.
Note: it could be curious but might still be the correct legal interpretation. That might be the legal basis on which the Met issued the FPN against the PM re the cake he ate in his office. We just don't know. The fact that we still don't know is itself pretty worrying and unacceptable.
Or is the proper analysis to look at each individual meeting during the day and assess whether each of them was reasonably necessary for work. So all the work meetings before dinner were OK and work meetings after the dinner were also OK but the actual dinner was not because it was not reasonably necessary for work.
Also a curious interpretation. Starmer's team - judging by what they are saying today - seem to be taking the view that you should look at the totality of the day as a whole not chop it up into bite- sized events (sorry!).
Also what does "reasonably" mean?
Conclusions:-
1. Those regulations were a mess. 2. Who is giving legal advice to the Met and the Durham police? 3. Are they getting the same legal advice on how to interpret the regulations and apply it to the facts they gather? 4. Are they going to publish what that legal advice is? 5. Is that legal advice correct?
You see, if Durham police do not fine Starmer on the basis that it was reasonable of him to eat with people he had been working with all day, especially if he continued to work afterwards, then I find it hard to see how the PM and Sunak were fined for working in the Cabinet Office and stopping briefly to have a cake. They could have argued that they were there to work for a number of hours and a brief pause to eat or drink did not undermine the fact that they were at a work meeting during those hours.
The irony, in what is turning out to be the 2020s version of Jarndyce v Jarndyce, would be if Starmer avoids an FPN on legal grounds which could have helped Johnson and Sunak avoid theirs.
I will now go and get a life .....
Loads of FPNs are issued incorrectly. Surely part of the process is whether an individual chooses to accept one or not. If they are unreasonable, challenge them!
But that is my point. You cannot have the law being applied inconsistently or what is lawful being determined by whether someone chooses to accept an FPN because (a) they don't realise it was given to them wrongly (b) they can't afford to challenge it or (c) they just want to get on with it.
If the police are going to investigate these events and fine people with all the consequences which flow from that, they should spell out in detail the legal basis on which they state that a breach of the regulations occurred.
At the moment we have incomprehensible regulations being, for all we know, incorrectly interpreted and arbitrarily applied.
That's just wrong. Covid may be in the past but this is no way to make law, interpret law or enforce law.
All this stuff about Starmer being “principled” makes me want to be sick in my mouth. This is the guy who more than anyone else tried to overturn a democratic vote because he thought be was better than the voters. When it came to the pandemic, all he wanted to do was make political capital by calling the government reckless for not locking down harder and longer. And all the while he too was floating the rules. He’s a sanctimonious expletive.
Come on, fess up, what's really making you sick is that this no longer looks like playing out well for the Conservatives, whether or not Starmer goes or more likely stays, when a couple of days back you were enjoying the spectacle. Now the tables have been turned.
Mmmm, why didn't Starmer just say "I will resign if I am found guilty of breaking the rules, regardless of whether I am issued with a FPN or not?"
That is what a truly principled person would do.
There is no such thing as the Police finding someone guilty.
The Police can say that the person MIGHT be guilty but the matter does not warrant further action (as they did with Cummings - they said the Barnard Castle trip MAY have been a breach, but the fact he didn't breach social distancing meant it was trivial in their view even if it was a breach). But it would only ever be a "maybe".
They can also issue an FPN, which is a stronger statement that they consider the evidence is there to give them a very good chance of conviction. The recipient then has the choice to spend quite a lot of money going to court and getting a criminal record (which an FPN doesn't give).
In neither case do the Police find the person "guilty". Only the courts can do that. But the latter is a FAR stronger statement - the former would never be more than a "perhaps".
Starmer's whole argument is that he is confident he didn't break the rules. In which case, if the Police says he might (I'll use your words) be guilty but refuse to issue a FPN, it still raises questions over his behaviour. Given he is doing this whole "man of principle" thing, a principled person would say "there is a question over my behaviour, I realise this is not in accordance with the standards I set myself and therefore I resign". He is dancing on a pinhead, trying to wriggle himself out of a situation by clinging to meanings.
Comments
No doubt if she has to resign too, Rayner will again be "crestfallen".
DAVID CANZINI, ELECTORAL GENIUS™: I know, let's start banging on about Brexit again, they'll love that!
When Mrs DA went to university in Russia she had 12 months of 40 hours/week classroom instruction plus self directed study plus immersion to get to B2 in year. Very few people have the motivation and time to devote to that.
"Picking Up" languages by just living among the native speaking community is not very effective for most people. An important concept in language teaching is "intervention". That is, we identify a student's slip and correct it. Now a random interlocutor in France doesn't know or care about this and so isn't going to explain that when using le participe passé and the object procedes the verb, the participle agrees, in number and gender, with the object not the subject. Contrast with the case where the participle precedes the object and is therefore invariant.
I thought he was now firmly in the dustbin of history now.
So given we still have a Tory government with Unionist parties having won more seats than Nationalists in NI too, no change
Currently trading at £1.19/therm
Down from all time highs of £6/therm
Surely we’ll see some domestic energy fixes cheaper than the cap being offered fairly soon….
Scans better, and does not sound like a chemical.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mrNEVUuZdk
Which is why they're so passionate themselves in preventing it - because they know nobody else is going to do so for them.
We are in the middle of a cost of living crisis. We signed up to this. We agreed to it. It’s beyond belief. Same here.
Which is why I said Chinese is much easier. It doesn't have the complexity of tense, gender or inflection. And is SVO, so comes out instinctively in the right order to an English speaker. As well as a tiny vocabulary. And that most people were taught it not as a first language. So are able to correct you. And do. Repeatedly.
Learning to read is a whole other level. And writing a lifelong prospect for most.
Dan Hodges.
That is
This Tory government has also made clear it will not allow a border poll as long as it is in power.
I also as a Tory have made clear I would back Antrim and East Londonderry and maybe Lagan Valley at least staying part of the UK even if a border poll was allowed and voted for a majority to join the Republic, though most present polls show staying in the UK ahead still
(((Dan Hodges)))
@DPJHodges
Keir Cultists - trigger warning. Better look away from this one...so Keir's main line is "Boris is a serial rule breaker. I'm only being investigated for this one incident". Fine. But up until Friday his main defence was that "dinners" of the sort he had in Durham were common..
...during that election campaign. I think he said "that's what we did". In fact, he's gone further. His argument is those "dinners" weren't just a nice to have, but "necessary for campaign purposes". So my question is this. How many other events did Keir attend that were...
https://twitter.com/DPJHodges/status/1523944433489752064
If the EU didn't want Article 16 to be invoked, they shouldn't have signed up to it. They signed up to it, they agreed to it. We're perfectly 100% within our rights to invoke any provisions of the Protocol we choose to invoke.
If the police are going to investigate these events and fine people with all the consequences which flow from that, they should spell out in detail the legal basis on which they state that a breach of the regulations occurred.
At the moment we have incomprehensible regulations being, for all we know, incorrectly interpreted and arbitrarily applied.
That's just wrong. Covid may be in the past but this is no way to make law, interpret law or enforce law.
I was staying with a friend who was a lecturer at Kyoto Uni (= smart) he was there for years and got to pretty good conversational Japanese. However he never got anywhere with written Japanese and, moreover, he told me his Japanese students (some of the brightest Japanese kids in Japan) struggled to master the written form: of their own tongue
THAT is a complicated language
Turns out ME is quite a nice place to be. Unexpected
Gets to the nub of it.
If you pay annually, it depends on when your council can be arsed. I got a letter from some third party company with loads of codes on it, directing me to a shady looking website, with loads of “don’t you dare defraud us” warnings. They took my bank details and I got the payment last week (a few days later). Others in my council area are still waiting for the letter, so it seems to be a bit pot luck.
What one force decides does not create a binding precedent for other forces to follow, only courts or parliament can set the binding rules. And certainly the fact that some people choose to accept incorrect FPNs does not create a binding law on others.
The discussions in the political arena and media are wrong in assuming a national level of consistency that has never been the case.
iirc there was talk in newspapers of many councils not paying until autumn because 'the computer says no'.
Nor has anyone on DD had a payment to the best of my knowledge.
It reminds me of the old days when PB was all spin and no substance, but I am not sure that is a good thing.
Let's hope this blows over and we can continue to find common ground with our opponents, as many of us did over covid legislation and so forth.
That is what a truly principled person would do.
A more likely route would be for N Ireland to become independent and possibly federated with S Ireland within the EU.
What it would do to Stormont would be interesting - the Unionists kicked by the very Union they were advocating and Sinn Fein being kicked by the South saying "no, we are not uniting". Both of them with their Raison d'etres removed...
Whereas its seems unlikely that the messenger from the curry house was more thanked, and perchance, tipped.
Never in a million years did either side think that Boris would end up doing what no British PM could ever do and partition the UK, establish an internal border between GB and NI, and thereby set out a clear path for Irish independence.
Boris, eh.
But surely it depends on your circumstances and desires. What might be the perfect country/city when you are 20 will be very different to when you are 40 or 70.
If you are young and ambitious and smart I cannot see a better place to live than London. Arguably the greatest city on earth, for all its many flaws. Its only rival is NYC, and the problem with NYC is that you are in America, which is a great country but cannot be compared to the intense variation and historical and cultural riches that comprise Europe. And in London you have all of Europe as your backyard, it is also easier to get to Asia, Africa
As you grow older London loses its appeal for many, unless you are rich. If you are rich London is still hard to beat. And if you are rich you can afford to fly to warmer countries to avoid the worst of the weather
On the other hand as I grow older I do find myself drawn to the simpler easier sunnier beauties of the Mediterranean coast, or maybe the tropics (eg Thailand). Language is less of an issue than it was thanks to auto-translation, English is spoken everywhere, you can take PB with you: a portable local pub
When my kids are fully grown in a few years I might finally make that move
Blanket statements like "the Nordic countries and Netherlands are objectively better places to live" are nuts. They are fucking boring, for a start. Sweden. My god. Anyone with an ounce of intellectual curiosity would slit their wrists within weeks. And that's before winter
As I mentioned yesterday teatime, I went to watch a joint exercise with Llandudno lifeboats and the coastguard helicopter in Llandudno Bay as they simulated transferring casualties to the helicopter and between the lifeboats. It was fascinating as the inshore lifeboat crew communicated with the helicopter and made sure every protocol was in place before the inshore moved under the downdraft of the helicopter and backed away immediately after the transfer for safety from the downdraft.
It is amazing to think these RNLI crew members are volunteers dedicated their spare time to saving lives at sea while putting themselves in the line of danger and I know I have an interest as my son was part of the crew on the all-weather boat in the exercise, but we are very proud of him and all his colleagues
Turning to Starmer and ‘beergate’. I do not think he had any choice but offer to resign if he receives a FPN but of course he has opened himself to criticism that as a former head of the CPS he is putting Durham Police under unfair pressure. He maintains that he continued work post the curry and beer and has what’s app and other social media confirmation but frankly I do not see the difference between Boris attending a birthday party for 20 minutes or so in between working himself.
I would venture to suggest the problem is that a quiz took place earlier and that attendees allege excessive drinking took place and they say they were not working after 10.00pm
Durham Police must investigate this as the MET have with no favours and if they conclude a breach of covid rules took place then in fairness in law, FPN’s should be issued to all attendees. However, if they follow the ‘Cummings’ decision, then the pressure on Starmer will be immense to quit, not least because of his own demands on Cummings, but to try to stay in office on a technical point would not be acceptable to many of the public
The only hope for Starmer is Durham Police confirm the whole event complied with the covid regulations at the time, and of course social distancing was integral to that and mention of that is in labour’s own leaked memo, when it is clear from the video a group were standing up conversing and eating without social distancing and reminiscent of the Downing Street Garden event but at least that was outside
How this plays out time will tell and I want Boris out of office anyway and the sooner the better
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/property/uk/second-home-tax-hit-house-prices-holiday-hotspots/
Starmer could donate a kidney to save a life and the Mail would scream he kept one for himself. https://twitter.com/Kevin_Maguire/status/1523883946106363904/photo/1
Theresa May screwed the pooch by agreeing to EU's sequencing in 2017, and the Remain Parliament left Boris no alternative but what was agreed in 2019, which at least kept Britain out of the EU's power and left both NI voters and the UK with the ability to remove NI from special arrangements too.
But absolutely, call the bluff, invoke Article 16 and dare the EU to put internal border on the island of Ireland. They're not going to. They're bluffing now, just as they were six years ago.
To quote Theresa May "nothing has changed".
Labour leader Keir Starmer being solemnly forced to promise his own resignation if he has, indeed, broken the lockdown laws he wanted to prolong and harden is not a good look for Labour. At all. And now he has to wait a month to find out, and he is - it seems - probably gonna b3 personally interviewed by the cops. And his Labour deputy has promised she will resign as well.
In what possible universe is this sequence of events bad for the Conservatives?
This is prolapsed nonsense on acid. Partygate was bad for the Tories. This is bad for Labour. Coda
Personally, I think there is nowhere better to live than Northern England. But I am one of those people who values what he has higher than what he could have.
The US State Department puts it in Category III (of IV).
https://twitter.com/Keir_Starmer/status/1488176626642923521
Keir Starmer
@Keir_Starmer
Honesty and decency matter.
After months of denials the Prime Minister is now under criminal investigations for breaking his own lockdown laws.
He needs to do the decent thing and resign.
✍️ Steerpike
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/starmer-i-ll-quit-if-i-m-guilty
To the small extent that they understand it, the people of Hartlepool will love it as if it were a giro wrapped around a packet of Lambert & Butler.
But I can't quite stretch to it being a net boost for him. I see it more as damage limitation. It would have been better if he weren't being investigated by the police. Just that sentence "being investigated by the police" or (once cleared) "was investigated by the police" is not what you want in the vicinity of a LOTO looking to emphasize the difference between him and a sleazeball of a PM.
The Police can say that the person MIGHT be guilty but the matter does not warrant further action (as they did with Cummings - they said the Barnard Castle trip MAY have been a breach, but the fact he didn't breach social distancing meant it was trivial in their view even if it was a breach). But it would only ever be a "maybe".
They can also issue an FPN, which is a stronger statement that they consider the evidence is there to give them a very good chance of conviction. The recipient then has the choice to spend quite a lot of money going to court and getting a criminal record (which an FPN doesn't give).
In neither case do the Police find the person "guilty". Only the courts can do that. But the latter is a FAR stronger statement - the former would never be more than a "perhaps".
Just learn the vocab (which is pictorial) and you can speak the language.
America would be a magnificent place to live.... if they could sort out healthcare/race/guns/crime/Trump. And destroy all the strip malls. And make the cities walkable. No biggie
That hits practically nobody and is unenforceable.
So it is either nonsense or it is to hit the homes of people so rich they buy houses and leave them more or less abandoned. In which case it isn't a bad idea as it either makes the homes available to locals or puts them back on the market for people who will use them or let them out as holiday homes which adds to the local economy.
Wouldn't be surprised though if it is the former and a complete non runner. From a selfish point of view it doesn't impact me because we, or family members, are at ours for more than 70 days a year, although how you prove that goodness knows.
The birthday cake ambush is different because it occurred between meetings and included family and friends, not just co-workers. If it turns out Mrs Starmer popped up to pour the drinks in Durham, that would be embarrassing.
Seven months of winter, more in the far north.
If I moved overseas it would have to be to somewhere with nicer weather.
The big problem, in my opinion, is that the workers in the video don't look to be doing much social distancing.
The plan was to always to:
1.Agree the WA
2.Negotiate and sign the Trade Agreement,
3.Revisit the Protocol based on the exact TA and operational issues.
This was all discussed at the time.
Of course, it now suits the EU not to be bothered about that last bit - they’ve shown bad faith when it comes to the Trusted Trader scheme and computerised border system, and A16 is all we have left.
By any sensible definition, an office birthday cake for the boss during the working day is not a bigger breach than curry and beers until 1am.
I just wish Johnson and Starmer would host a joint a press conference to apologise. For implementing such I’ll advised anti libertarian laws in the first place that set everyone up to break, purposely or inadvertently.
It will be interesting how those pictures of a group standing up eating and drinking ignoring social distancing is explained
Greens excellent
Lib Dems excellent
SNP well
Labour well
Conservatives poorly
That just ain’t good enough for Sarwar and Starmer. At this stage in the electoral cycle they ought to be utterly thrashing both the SNP and the Tories. I can understand that their activists and voters are disenchanted. And that the Greens and Lib Dems are doing so well must really piss them off.
On the other side of the spectrum, the Corbyn ultras were also enjoying the spectacle of Starmer's difficulties, as exemplified by Dianne Abbott's haste to jump on the bandwagon. Now they'll also be feeling sick, and facing the prospect of:
- Starmer actually emerging strengthened in the eyes of both the wider electorate and within the LP
- or going but with Rayner also out of the equation and the humiliation of some obscure far left candidate losing another Labour leadership election even more badly than Long-Bailey did.