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The rail strike could help the Tories retain Tiverton & Honiton – politicalbetting.com
The rail strike could help the Tories retain Tiverton & Honiton – politicalbetting.com
One of the factors that could have an impact on the Tory defence of the Tiverton and Honiton by-election on June 23rd is that this is one of the days earmarked for the national rail strikes at the end of June.
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And some of the activists will travel the evening before and kip down ready for the action.
Honiton and Axminster are on the South Western Railway route from Waterloo rather than the GWR & west coast route through Tiverton Parkway.
It's a slightly strange constituency in that Tiverton and Honiton have little or no geographic or social connection. It's also quite unusual for the south west in that despite being very rural it has two major roads running through it: both the M5 and A303. The south coast road A35 as well. Which means getting there isn't going to be a problem for those who can afford to fill up their cars.
I've a relative in the area and I would say that the atmosphere at the moment is febrile, almost mutinous. I may be completely wrong and I apologise if so but I would say that the chances of the Conservatives holding this constituency are less than 5%.
I really don't think people comprehend, including journalists at the Daily Mail, just how angry and hurt people feel.
Boris Johnson is toxic.
As long as he stays the tories will lose.
https://twitter.com/DanDev43761642/status/1534978659844603922
Russia has huge advantage in the amounts of artillery. Even if the russians lose 10 artillery pieces for each one that Ukraine loses, they still will run out of their artillery later than Ukraine, if UA army doesn't get enough 155-mm Western artillery, MLRS and tactical missiles.
They will run out of ammunition for their Russian era kit in the next two to three weeks, and there are no sources from which it can be replenished.
The NATO standard kit they’ve started to be supplied with will do the job, ut the numbers that have been delivered are about a tenth of what’s necessary.
The situation with battlefield missiles (MRLS) is even worse.
Either the west supplies them what they need, rapidly - in which case they will win the war - or they will lose. Losing will take longer, but it’s likely to happen, even if Russia will find it difficult, maybe impossible to govern conquered territory.
The latter case would be very dangerous indeed, both militarily and economically, for all of Europe.
https://www.crainsdetroit.com/politics/fbi-arrests-michigan-governor-candidate-ryan-kelley
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2022/06/09/match-european-fuel-tax-cuts-ease-cost-of-living-crisis-tory/
“As Mr Johnson announced a series of wide-ranging policies in Blackpool on Thursday, senior Tories said he must go further with fuel tax cuts.
“The Treasury has slashed duty by just five pence per litre, compared with 17 pence in Ireland and Spain and 25 pence in Germany.”
https://m.dailykos.com/stories/2022/6/9/2103189/-Ukraine-update-Russia-appears-to-be-losing-the-artillery-battle-at-Severodonetsk?pm_campaign=blog&pm_medium=rss&pm_source=main&utm_source=rss&utm_medium=Sendible&utm_campaign=RSS
It is quite a left wing US site, but their reporting on the battles in Ukraine has been excellent.
Mr. Sandpit, there's a three week delay* between PB and the Government.
*Minimum. I've been banging on about axing the green levy on energy for months.
Clearly the 5p reduction was lost within days by the look of things, swallowed by rising prices but I would worry that if they removed duty there would always be “reasons” why that cut would be eaten up and not passed on fully to consumer.
As the above is a word jumble - is there a figure the govt could put out daily of how much petrol “should be minus the duty” to stop profiteering?
There’s no point losing the tax revenue and then seeing it go into private companies’ pockets surely.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DPRj2UE_RhA
Not that senior Tories would be watching Nigel Farage videos!
Ukraine has consistently outfought and out thought the Russians; if you look at the detail of artillery losses, it's around 3:1 in their favour.
But the larger point that they will simply be out of ammunition for the majority of their artillery by the end of this month doesn't go away.
If they don't get large numbers of western replacements now, rather than by Christmas as Germany seems to be thinking, then the terms of battle will go against them.
This might be less of a factor in these days of working from home. WFH might also mean people can vote during the day rather than just morning and evening, depending how much WFH is actually W. Or (and not just when there is a rail strike) it might effectively reduce the time available by ending early morning voting on the way to work.
I understand why people want to cut by more. But where is the money coming from?
You know- the basic question Conservatives are meant to ask?
Putin has come out and said : "During the war with Sweden, Peter the Great didn't conquer anything, he took back what had always belonged to us, even though all of Europe recognised it as Sweden's. It seems now it's our turn to get our lands back [smiling]".
This is just the latest in a series of comments about his long-term aims. He sees vast areas of eastern Europe as Russian, and wants to get them back. And he is willing to use force to do so. Ukraine is just a small part of that.
The *only* way to get peace is for Ukraine to beat Russia, and for Russia to know it is beaten. Any sordid little compromise, any attempt to save Russian honour (what honour?) will just lead to more attacks in the future.
If you want to compromise with Russia by ceding them Ukrainian territory, I might suggest you give your property in UK to a Ukrainian and then go and live in Russia - hopefully not in Moscow, but in the same sordid conditions your compromise would inflict on millions of innocent Ukrainians. Just look at what Russia has done to the Donbass since 2014...
https://euromaidanpress.com/2022/06/08/why-long-range-western-mlrs-can-become-a-game-changer-for-ukraine/
If we get the right amount of MLRS, use it in combination with modern reconnaissance and targeting, and move to tactics that suit these high-tech weapons, it will allow us to level the numerical superiority of the enemy, including in firepower. Appropriate preconditions will be created for a breaking point in this war.”
It does look to be grinding to stalemate in the Donbas, but Ukraine retaking territory is going to be quite a challenge. Offensive operations are even bigger consumers of ordinance.
My WAG is that Moscow can probably only afford to send half its kit to Ukraine, because of the commitments it has around its borders and abroad. Whilst Ukraine can focus almost everything on the threat from Russia and (to a lesser extent) Belarussia.
It would also be relatively straightforward to publish historic average prices less tax in various countries. As the price of the fuel itself rises, the country-specific costs of refinery and transport become a much smaller part of the equation.
The actual cost of petrol at the moment is around 80p per litre, plus local transport costs plus taxes. 110p should be achieveable by dropping the duty which is 52p +VAT (yes, there’s VAT on the duty!).
This comes at a direct cost of around £2bn/month, a fair amount of which comes back by reducing the cost of inflation to the public sector, and VAT revenues from other purchases.
Politically, it says to the country that the government is listening to them, something which appears to be in short supply at the moment.
One gets the feeling that the Treasury is quite happy with a dose of inflation, and that high fuel prices are great for the environment - as millions people are being squeezed hard by inflation in general and petrol prices in particular.
Ukraine's position is approaching that of the BEF in 1915, a vastly expanded army willing to fight, but numbers outstretching skilled personnel and heavy weapons.
This is going to be a long slugfest of a war.
Some other interesting pointers as well, mainly Russia likely to ask its allied states to send troops into Ukraine presumably for peacekeeping roles to free troops for the front. It’s unlikely they would agree but they may hand over equipment.
The flip side is WFH looks even more attractive because of these strikes, hurrah for the RMT et al.
It’s always been a fear of Russia that China will want resource rich Siberia / the Far East for itself. I don’t think they would fear a Chinese invasion ATM but there is probably concern of stripping out too much of the equipment in the case of any future tension.
As an aside, at the moment, there are also problems festering with Turkey. Did not do anything to deter Finland and Sweden from applying to join NATO thus ending their historic neutrality, but are now opposing it after they applied, and have sought to play the two countries off against each other; and a few days ago Lavrov turns up in Turkey. What you could say from all this is that they are not a particularly reliable ally.
This was a pretty good pointer to me that it isn't the nailed on Yellow Peril gain people think it is.
Tiverton and Honiton by-election: Ex-Labour minister appears to suggest voters go Lib Dem
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/tiverton-honiton-lib-dems-ben-bradshaw-b2088716.html
We are heading into an inflation induced recession. Tax cuts are inflationary.
We have a huge deficit and quickly rising interest rate costs given the inflation-linked element and rising rates. Tax cuts increase the deficit from a high starting position.
I'd have never voted for him, but I think even McDonnell would have been more fiscally responsible than the current Tory government.
Sadly, I expect a significant proportion never to make it to the front.
He starts off by saying the oil price hasn’t changed, which is rubbish - it went up 15% in May alone, and is now higher still.
He’s right that refining in the UK is down, and he’s right about the reasons for it, more expensive electricity thanks to green levies.
IMO his argument that government is to blame, is going to start gaining traction if they don’t do something about petrol and then domestic electricity bills in the autumn. The government won’t be able to say it’s the same elsewhere in Europe, becuase Farage will say they all signed up to the “COP26 crap”, and we left the EU so we could follow our own path.
Yes, it’s very much over-simplistic, but over-simplistic is something that Farage is very good at!
And even a long slugfest is going to present huge economic problems for the entire world.
For the last month or so, it's looked as though the west is trying to calibrate the amount of support it offers. At the moment, Ukraine is taking a couple of hundred casualties a day just to slow the Russian advance.
With sufficient kit, the war could be won fairly quickly. Neutralise their artillery, and Russia wouldn't have the ability to conduct an offence.
Meanwhile, he's not showing the slightest sign of wanting to compromise on Finland and Sweden, and is also suddenly dredging up the issue of the military on Greek islands - both Turkey and Greece have had military on the islands controlled by them, not really in keeping with the Treaty of Lausanne that he now keeps talking about, for almost 50 years - as a potential casus belli against the Greeks.
All rather concerning, as I highlighted yesterday.
I don't think we've really heard very much really from Tiverton lately and postal votes should be to-ing and fro-ing now, shouldn't they?
'I wish he could be, but he isn't': Britain's strictest headteacher says Boris Johnson is no role model for children > watch our interview with Katherine Birbalsingh on @skynews now
People see the rising prices and demand wage/pension increases to match the external price rises, which then internalises the inflation. Once that happens its much tougher to break the cycle.
If you want to prevent that cycle from starting then tax cuts, in a wartime budget, can be deflationary. If fuel duty were to be suspended for the duration of the war, then fuel would revert to about £1.20 per litre, that would reverse the inflation of that overnight. Abolish VAT on energy, the price of energy goes down.
The price of energy, both fuel and electricity/gas feed inflation in everything else in the economy. Both of those are feeding into everything right now and they are causing the inflation, but half of the price of fuel is tax. Suspend the tax as a wartime budget, the inflation is gone and the inflationary price cycle is broken.
Borrowing isn't good, but borrowing during times of war make sense and internalising the external shock of the energy crisis may not be what you want.
In the absence of a Russian collapse we could be looking at much the same front lines at Christmas.
I bet all the journalists go by train though.
Countries that accept US infosec help told they could pay a price too
https://www.theregister.com/2022/06/10/russia_china_usa_ukraine_cyberdefense/
How would that affect the nation's finances ?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-61737750
I suspect it would need to be 44p rather than 40p.
I would imagine that the idea that "Our Taiwanese Brothers will welcome us " is not quite so believed as before - the Chinese government used to push that out every so often....
https://twitter.com/DMiliband/status/1535142436346990592
https://www.itv.com/news/2022-06-09/brexit-cost-the-uk-billions-in-lost-trade-and-tax-revenues-research-finds
"Meanwhile, other goods and services contributed 5.5 percentage points to UK inflation in April, similar to the US and Canada."
Inflation would be well above target even stripping out the impact of energy price rises. All while we have record low unemployment meaning wages will rise.
Cutting fuel duty is just adding fuel to the fire.
https://on.ft.com/3O8dfv7
Someone mentioned the Ajax procurement recently, which is a typical example of a peacetime luxury, where it doesn't make a whole lot of difference if delivery is delayed for several years - but what new armoured vehicles are we going to build for Ukraine over the next few months? We don't seem to have shifted to a wartime level of equipment production.
What's relevant is what's possible and likely to happen. The Ukrainians can't kick the Russians out of the Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts and the Russians can't get to the Dneiper.
So what's likely to happen is a negotiated ceasefire along those lines that neither side has any intention of honouring in the longer term.
https://twitter.com/bbcquestiontime/status/1535019051017191424?s=20&t=V93rxUWmrwMMi3_dwM6V1w
The Javelins and other ATGMs that everyone was wanking off over are great if the Russians have already invaded and are at the end of your street but they were no use for preventing an invasion or holding it at the border.
Perhaps we should go back to twitter footage of a Russian platoon in a contact dismounting its APC to draw meaningful insight from the war.
I do wonder if the Ukranians are planning a bigger offensive in Kherson and towards Melitopol. Recovering those would be a much better negotiating position.
- rail strikes in Scotland, SNP blamed by PBTories ad nauseam
- rail strikes in England, large chunks of which are nationalised including the infrastructure, Tories not at all blamed by PBTories, oh no nothing to do with them, it's all Union Barons (what is this, the 1970s?)
With respect to the thread, nothing can help the conservatives until 33 more join the 148 and do the decent thing
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-norfolk-61734192
The interesting this about this is Parliament has repeatedly disclosed the same information in previous years, but they now say they’ve changed their policy and consider disclosure a risk to their computer systems (the FOI act itself hasn’t changed just their view)
"Turkey is among the countries continuing to buy grain that Russia stole from Ukraine, Kyiv's ambassador to Ankara said today.
Ambassador Vasyl Bodnar also told reporters he has sought help from Turkish authorities and Interpol to investigate who is involved in the shipments of grains transiting Turkish waters."
https://m.dailykos.com/stories/2022/5/20/2099183/-Ukraine-Update-As-Ukraine-begs-for-MLRS-here-s-a-weapons-system-we-absolutely-shouldn-t-send-them?pm_campaign=blog&pm_medium=rss&pm_source=main&utm_source=rss&utm_medium=Sendible&utm_campaign=RSS
However, that is not political acceptable even by labour at present
It might be that the best route to a Ukrainian victory is via a de facto ceasefire, during which the Ukrainian armed forces can be supplied with more NATO equipment and trained to use it, so that they can win round 3, but that's different from the delusion that there is a durable peace settlement with Russia that involves ceding territory. That only feeds Russian expansionist ambitions.
Has Turkey began (Continued) it's Northern Syria invasion, or is it only Russian landgrabs that bother us these days ?
I await eagerly the first pivot from ‘Haha, EssEnnPee getting rightly shafted by RMT’ to ‘Bloody EssEnnPee giving in to greedy RMT blackmailing barstewards’.