With the terrible twosome backing Truss from right outside No10, it looks too much like BBC Truss is Boris's preferred candidate. The optics are awful for her on that...
Lord Adonis appears to think not changing political leadership is a sign of strength. Glossing over French Presidential terms (how could you remove a dud?) and Germany has now swapped Merkel for Scholz, neither of whom history may judge kindly
Most British heads of govt in last half century have lasted less than 4 years & we’re about to embark on the 11th. In France & Germany not a single head of govt has lasted less than 4 yrs. Spot the country in deep democratic crisis. More in my newsletter
Oh, for goodness sake. You can argue that there have been important policy failures in France or Germany.
But we're a complete basketcase in terms of developed nations. We'll soon be moving on to our fourth PM in six years, and all three of those we've had have been absolute duds, with their terms ending under a shadow, in failure and farce. We are not, at present, a stable country with a political system that appears capable of providing a steady government developing long term, predictable policy of any kind.
We have become a joke. When I travel internationally for work people either laugh at us or shake their heads sadly at whatever the latest nonsense development is. My only response is that I am Scottish and perhaps one day we will escape the asylum.
You must travel to some very strange places. That is not my experience at all.
Flew to Romania late April and was in a car with Romanian and German employees of my client. A lot of talk about our "clown King" and our stupid Brexit deal which we now want to scrap.
The only other example of similar I can think of was being in America late summer of 1997. "Oh you're British? We're so sorry about Princess Diana" followed by endless guff about her whilst I thought "meh"
I think what is happening here is people being cautious reflectors when discussing politics with someone from another country.
If I met a pro Trump American, my language about US politics would be very different to if I met a normal American. Not 180 degrees different, but significantly so, and I feel that is the correct and polite way to talk to a stranger in a casual conversation about politics.
Similarly Brits who really dislike our politics, will get that view echoed when abroad, and Brits who dislike EU politics and think Boris a great statesman will get a very different response.
In reality most foreigners don't care much about UK politics either way.
Yes, that is much closer to the truth. 99.73% of foreign people don't give a fuck about British politics, or indeed know anything about it. And why should they? 78% of BRITS don't really give a fuck, or know much
Most conversations about Britain, abroad (outside our nearest neighbours and the Anglosphere), relate to English football, because they DO know a lot about that; the rest is a mild sense that Britain is an important wealthy country, probably a good place, maybe cold, errr
I've not heard Brexit mentioned once, since about 2017, not even in western Europe - with one exception: a border guard in Switzerland who told some queueing and whingeing Brits, stuck in the Rest of the World line: "Well, you voted for this" - and everyone chuckled, ruefully or otherwise. That's it
Most western people don't care much about foreign politics, except American politics as the US is still the sole western superpower and who it elects as President affects us all
The ONLY time I can remember getting into a passionate debate abroad, about British politics - certainly in, say, the last decade - was in Spain when some Spaniards really wanted to talk about Scottish independence. Why? Because they were deeply concerned about Catalan independence, and they wanted to work out how it might pan out, the virtues of granting a vote, how to stop Catalan indy, etc
That speaks a truth. Foreigners don't give a fuck about British politics EXCEPT where it might impinge them. If you meet europhile financial-political types in Europe yes they might be antiBrexit - because they hate Brexit. Indians might talk about British immigration policy. I imagine Ukrainians will be pro-Boris, etc
Americans talk about British royalty, because they yearn for it
You happened to meet some Spanish Falangists in favour of bashing secessionist grannies? Like calls out to like.
Just been out. Why has Rishi surged in the betting?
Because he's going to win Mike.
Not if it goes to the membership
Opinium has him narrowly ahead of Truss due to a landslide amongst Tory member remainers. Which is a bit weird when you consider Sunak was a leaver and Truss a remainer. But Truss has the zeal of the converted.
Rishi looking good to dominate the first ballot on the current trend.
It may come down to who can consolidate the stop Rishi vote. Truss? She’s also the candidate Rishi would probably want to face in the second round so if he has spare votes that could prove crucial.
Penny needs to get some more endorsements in today I think. I could see her starting to struggle.
Yeah it's the start of the Penny Squeeze. Rishi is starting to hoover up anyone who is sane.
BREAKING: The Euro has fallen to parity with the US Dollar
Why? We aren't exactly doing well either. Looks like the strength of the dollar more than it is the respective weaknesses of both Pound and Euro.
I am slightly surprised that there is not more angst and upset in the Bundesbank about this. They built the strongest and largest economy in Europe with a strong deutschmark driving down inflation and forcing firms to invest constantly to improve productivity. A weak currency must be anathema to them.
On the other hand, quite the competitive advantage to exporters, particularly with a recession looming.
On the other other hand, a weak currency is exactly what you don't want in an energy crisis, when the whole world - especially Germany - will be out to buy gas and oil, priced in US dollars
That's very true.
Worth noting, though, that the two countries that spend the most on importing energy (even before the current crisis) are Italy and Japan.
Off thread, but do other posters have a view on this proposed tower in Manchester:
You will not be surprised to learn that Amir Khan is involved.
To my surprise, despite trying, I don't hate it. (I hope I'm not unduly influenced in this by the fact that Sam Wheeler, the Momentum largely anti-development councillor for this part of the city centre, does hate it.) I think the higher the building, the more reflective it needs to be, particularly in a city where sunshine isn't a given, and it will at least be shiny.
Boring, I'm afraid - to my mind. Also, 96% of planned buildings look better in the render than in reality, so that will get worse
As I've said passim, one thing I'd love to do is get architect's drawings of a building - complete with children holding balloons, small trees lining the streets etc - and compare with real pictures of the building from the same angle.
As I have said passim is getting added to the list.
Off thread, but do other posters have a view on this proposed tower in Manchester:
You will not be surprised to learn that Amir Khan is involved.
To my surprise, despite trying, I don't hate it. (I hope I'm not unduly influenced in this by the fact that Sam Wheeler, the Momentum largely anti-development councillor for this part of the city centre, does hate it.) I think the higher the building, the more reflective it needs to be, particularly in a city where sunshine isn't a given, and it will at least be shiny.
Boring, I'm afraid - to my mind. Also, 96% of planned buildings look better in the render than in reality, so that will get worse
That is quite deliberate, I think. And quite a few renders I've seen are from perspectives impossible in real life unless you're airborne. Good architects are rare.
That's not offensive and quite like the part octagon shaping. And it's not that tall really.
Where is it? Are we looking N / NE towards the St. Peter's Square there? Somewhere west of Oxford Road?
It is up near Piccadilly Station, between it and Great Ancoats St. Up there, anything new built would be an improvement and bring the place on a bit. Ancoats itself has had a lot of redevelopment and it looks better for it
Every organisation builds up "non-jobs". The tough task is working out which are really non-jobs, which of those are filled by people who are talented and you don't want to lose from your organisation / could fill another role.
Its why you always end up with some big winners from recessions. They take the opportunity to totally re-evaluate their business and come out of it much stronger organisation.
Sunak - Cummings has had nothing to do with campaign and will have nothing to do with his government - hasn’t spoken to him since he left Downing Street.
I feel a bit sorry for Jeremy Hunt. He’s nowhere near the bogeyman the membership seem to think he is, but his time appears to have gone.
Supporting fox hunting and appointing Esther McVey as deputy PM were bizarre
Supporting fox hunting used to be Conservative mainstream. Should he have lied about it to please people that know fuck all about the countryside and think little foixywoxies are ever so cuddly?
Supporting Section 28 used to be the Conservative mainstream too.
Thankfully though, people move on from what used to be the mainstream of the past.
A little old lady round the corner feeds the foxes in her garden.
Not long ago, she was distraught - according to her, some evil people must have thrown a dog over the fence, where it tore her cat to bits and then somehow got the dog back....
foxes attacking cats is a extremely rare thing.
Seen it in our cul de sac a couple of times when the foxes come out of the wood. The males are surprisingly large. The cats try to hide under cars if they get caught on the ground and are usually ok if the car has a low enough base. But the foxes really go for them.
Perhaps this a difference between urban and rural foxes. The urban foxes where we are (and there are a lot of them) and the local cats generally ignore each other completely, even when they are within a few metres of each other.
We are completely urban here - West London. The foxes show up on the street, and the cats vanish.
West London cats are pathetic. South London cats clearly made of tougher stuff, or perhaps our foxes are weaker for Malthusian reasons.
Badenoch now saying politicians have “for too long being telling you: you can have your cake and eat it”
She tries to distance herself from unfunded tax cuts and spending rises by suggesting she’ll slim down the state
Badenoch says she “will not enter a tax bidding war” where “my tax cuts are bigger than yours”
It would be “to make promises you cannot keep”, which she says would be a “betrayal”
Tax cuts only achievable by rolling back the state
She calls for cuts in international aid, for schools to focus on core teaching not support staff and “superfluous” activities, to stop funding certain university courses, to free up police resources from dealing with “hurt feelings online”
Her comments on teaching and police are just populist rhetoric, and zero to do with cutting spending.
There is no more to slim unless we start sacking people. How is that going to help?
Start sacking people in useless jobs. There's plenty of those about.
The tax base is at the highest its been in decades and spending went up not down during so-called "austerity". There's plenty to slim.
You are so compassionate. It warms my heart.
Compassionate in my politics is one thing I've never claimed to be.
If people are redundant, they should be entitled to redundancy payments, not continued employment.
As you clearly don't need to work, it probably never worries you that some bureaucrat doesn't wrongly decide you might be surplus to requirement? Either that or because you have never really worked in the real world that you don't realise that sometimes people are axed in error?
Off thread, but do other posters have a view on this proposed tower in Manchester:
You will not be surprised to learn that Amir Khan is involved.
To my surprise, despite trying, I don't hate it. (I hope I'm not unduly influenced in this by the fact that Sam Wheeler, the Momentum largely anti-development councillor for this part of the city centre, does hate it.) I think the higher the building, the more reflective it needs to be, particularly in a city where sunshine isn't a given, and it will at least be shiny.
Boring, I'm afraid - to my mind. Also, 96% of planned buildings look better in the render than in reality, so that will get worse
As I've said passim, one thing I'd love to do is get architect's drawings of a building - complete with children holding balloons, small trees lining the streets etc - and compare with real pictures of the building from the same angle.
As I have said passim is getting added to the list.
Oh Matthew Goodwin is back, the most useless academic in history.
What people actually care about is their bills. What are the Tories going to do about it
He is the most annoying, droning, one-trick pony for sure. But you have to hand it to him: he has somehow fashioned a career out of saying exactly the same thing over and over again and getting someone to pay him for it.
Actually we shouldn’t call him an academic anymore. He’s more a lobbyist.
Dishonest to the core, he spent his last two weeks deleting old Tweets.
He only posts polls he likes and only posts research that supports what he already thinks to be true. He is genuinely the most useless person on Twitter today. Why he has any reputation I do not know.
But as you said, he is a genius. Because people pay him for this crap
"He only posts polls he likes and only posts research that supports what he already thinks to be true." - this seems to describe a significant proportion of academics in all fields and the majority in the social sciences.
Every organisation builds up "non-jobs". The tough task is working out which are really non-jobs, which of those are filled by people who are talented and you don't want to lose from your organisation / could fill another role.
Its why you always end up with some big winners from recessions. They take the opportunity to totally re-evaluate their business and come out of it much stronger organisation.
Off thread, but do other posters have a view on this proposed tower in Manchester:
You will not be surprised to learn that Amir Khan is involved.
To my surprise, despite trying, I don't hate it. (I hope I'm not unduly influenced in this by the fact that Sam Wheeler, the Momentum largely anti-development councillor for this part of the city centre, does hate it.) I think the higher the building, the more reflective it needs to be, particularly in a city where sunshine isn't a given, and it will at least be shiny.
Boring, I'm afraid - to my mind. Also, 96% of planned buildings look better in the render than in reality, so that will get worse
That is quite deliberate, I think. And quite a few renders I've seen are from perspectives impossible in real life unless you're airborne. Good architects are rare.
That's not offensive and quite like the part octagon shaping. And it's not that tall really.
Where is it? Are we looking N / NE towards the St. Peter's Square there? Somewhere west of Oxford Road?
It is up near Piccadilly Station, between it and Great Ancoats St. Up there, anything new built would be an improvement and bring the place on a bit. Ancoats itself has had a lot of redevelopment and it looks better for it
Ancoats was a total dump when I lived there 20 years ago. And I was in Longsight.
Rishi looking good to dominate the first ballot on the current trend.
It may come down to who can consolidate the stop Rishi vote. Truss? She’s also the candidate Rishi would probably want to face in the second round so if he has spare votes that could prove crucial.
Penny needs to get some more endorsements in today I think. I could see her starting to struggle.
Yeah it's the start of the Penny Squeeze. Rishi is starting to hoover up anyone who is sane.
And the worry has to be that Liz will start to hoover up anyone who isn’t…
There is no more to slim unless we start sacking people. How is that going to help?
Start sacking people in useless jobs. There's plenty of those about.
The tax base is at the highest its been in decades and spending went up not down during so-called "austerity". There's plenty to slim.
In almost any public funding organisation, there is always bloat when it comes to staffing.
I know it is a minor example but my housemate works for the IT department at the University of Oxford. A large part of her role is teaching researchers how to manage their data and other such jobs.
At present, these courses (which are only open to members of staff and students) are free to attend.
The powers that be have now decided that they will have to become chargeable.
So money will be moved from one part of the university accounts to another part of the university accounts
And to do this, more admin staff in the Finance department will have to be employed and more admin time in individual departments will be used to process the payment requisitions.
None of this actually helps researchers. Indeed attendance at the courses is likely to drop as a result.
So new processes and systems are being introduced, more staff costs incurred for no improvement is actual delivery.
The university generates no new money out of this. And it will actually increase staff costs.
This is typical public sector thinking. And I am pretty confident similar bloat exists in every other public organisation in our nation.
There is no more to slim unless we start sacking people. How is that going to help?
Start sacking people in useless jobs. There's plenty of those about.
The tax base is at the highest its been in decades and spending went up not down during so-called "austerity". There's plenty to slim.
Okay and put them on welfare and increase the bill for that. Hot haven’t thought this through.
Austerity is and was a disastrous policy. The most economically stupid policy in 100 years.
I have thought this through. If people end up on welfare then that should be as they transition from one job to another, and not a permanent way of life. If they transition from an unproductive job to a productive one, then that is good for the economy, good for society, even if there is a bit of welfare inbetween. That is precisely what welfare should be there for, as a safety net.
There is no more to slim unless we start sacking people. How is that going to help?
Start sacking people in useless jobs. There's plenty of those about.
The tax base is at the highest its been in decades and spending went up not down during so-called "austerity". There's plenty to slim.
Those jobs all exist for a reason - so you need to bin the reason why the job exists.
And that opens up a different question - what should the Government do and why?
I currently work on destroying jobs. Literally.
My work consists of building completely automated flows in a bank, with manual interventions at few defined points. This will eliminate all the copy and pasta between systems and whole teams of people who shout at other banks on the phone about how they can't add.
Five minutes in the NHS (for example) tells you that vast increases in productivity and job satisfaction could be created by proper processes and systems. Instead, it appears to be a system that spends much of it energy (and money) on stopping the medics doing their jobs.
Why did the likes of Rabb and Shapps even start a campaign?
Several reasons.
They looked at the others and thought, well. They listened to friends. They are delusional. They wanted to show that they had a following which would justify a decent job. Unfortunately for those dropping out today they have actually shown the opposite.
Rishi looking good to dominate the first ballot on the current trend.
It may come down to who can consolidate the stop Rishi vote. Truss? She’s also the candidate Rishi would probably want to face in the second round so if he has spare votes that could prove crucial.
Penny needs to get some more endorsements in today I think. I could see her starting to struggle.
Yeah it's the start of the Penny Squeeze. Rishi is starting to hoover up anyone who is sane.
And the worry has to be that Liz will start to hoover up anyone who isn’t…
Off thread, but do other posters have a view on this proposed tower in Manchester:
You will not be surprised to learn that Amir Khan is involved.
To my surprise, despite trying, I don't hate it. (I hope I'm not unduly influenced in this by the fact that Sam Wheeler, the Momentum largely anti-development councillor for this part of the city centre, does hate it.) I think the higher the building, the more reflective it needs to be, particularly in a city where sunshine isn't a given, and it will at least be shiny.
Boring, I'm afraid - to my mind. Also, 96% of planned buildings look better in the render than in reality, so that will get worse
That is quite deliberate, I think. And quite a few renders I've seen are from perspectives impossible in real life unless you're airborne. Good architects are rare.
That's not offensive and quite like the part octagon shaping. And it's not that tall really.
Where is it? Are we looking N / NE towards the St. Peter's Square there? Somewhere west of Oxford Road?
It is up near Piccadilly Station, between it and Great Ancoats St. Up there, anything new built would be an improvement and bring the place on a bit. Ancoats itself has had a lot of redevelopment and it looks better for it
It's the colour of it which is dividing opinion. As I said, while I expected to hate it, I don't. And it's better than what's there at the moment (though there are new buildings in Manchester which are better than what was there before but still represent a regrettable missed opportunity, and in this area of town I would expect something else to come forward if this does not). For me, it passes the test - but I can see why it's controversial.
Hunt will back Sunak and get a cabinet position IMHO, back at Health?
That's the nightmare scenario for me. As Health Secretary, Hunt was an appalling nanny statist. Much like Hancock, his thought process was that if we wrap the plebs in cotton wool, tell them what's good for them and stop them ever having any fun then they're less likely to get sick, and that will save the NHS loads of cash.
Williamson has always backed him, he won't be PM this week. Percentage wise he still has fewer MPs backing him than Johnson did in 2019 or May did in 2016 or even Portillo did in 2001 at this stage.
However he is likely to have enough to at least get to the members vote and probably top the MPs poll
There is no more to slim unless we start sacking people. How is that going to help?
Start sacking people in useless jobs. There's plenty of those about.
The tax base is at the highest its been in decades and spending went up not down during so-called "austerity". There's plenty to slim.
In almost any public funding organisation, there is always bloat when it comes to staffing.
I know it is a minor example but my housemate works for the IT department at the University of Oxford. A large part of her role is teaching researchers how to manage their data and other such jobs.
At present, these courses (which are only open to members of staff and students) are free to attend.
The powers that be have now decided that they will have to become chargeable.
So money will be moved from one part of the university accounts to another part of the university accounts
And to do this, more admin staff in the Finance department will have to be employed and more admin time in individual departments will be used to process the payment requisitions.
None of this actually helps researchers. Indeed attendance at the courses is likely to drop as a result.
So new processes and systems are being introduced, more staff costs incurred for no improvement is actual delivery.
The university generates no new money out of this. And it will actually increase staff costs.
This is typical public sector thinking. And I am pretty confident similar bloat exists in every other public organisation in our nation.
All true except this:
"None of this actually helps researchers. Indeed attendance at the courses is likely to drop as a result."
What will next happen is that the course will be made compulsory.
Lord Adonis appears to think not changing political leadership is a sign of strength. Glossing over French Presidential terms (how could you remove a dud?) and Germany has now swapped Merkel for Scholz, neither of whom history may judge kindly
Most British heads of govt in last half century have lasted less than 4 years & we’re about to embark on the 11th. In France & Germany not a single head of govt has lasted less than 4 yrs. Spot the country in deep democratic crisis. More in my newsletter
Oh, for goodness sake. You can argue that there have been important policy failures in France or Germany.
But we're a complete basketcase in terms of developed nations. We'll soon be moving on to our fourth PM in six years, and all three of those we've had have been absolute duds, with their terms ending under a shadow, in failure and farce. We are not, at present, a stable country with a political system that appears capable of providing a steady government developing long term, predictable policy of any kind.
Austria is on to its ninth Chancellor in six years.
I don't think that France and Germany have had any leaders of stature since Mitterand and Kohl.
I think that a quarter of century of time passing has tended to wear away the rough edges of Kohl and Mitterrand (of which there were certainly several) and you're looking back with fondness on what feels like a better time when you were younger (as we all were) and possibilities were endless.
In reality, the French and German systems (including M & K but also since then) have produced pretty stable governments with leaders capable of developing and pursuing policy over a period of time. They've not always been good governments - you can argue about the policy records of governments and the personal qualities of individuals - but their systems have largely produced functional governments capable of thinking ahead and pursuing a course of action for more than about five minutes.
I know on here we love the drama of constant change and it presents betting opportunities. But it really has been badly dysfunctional since 2015. And I agree Austria has been too.
NEW: John Major fires a broadside at the cabinet, many of whom are now running for Tory leader (Suank, Truss, Zahawi...) for failing to confront the PM.
There is no more to slim unless we start sacking people. How is that going to help?
Start sacking people in useless jobs. There's plenty of those about.
The tax base is at the highest its been in decades and spending went up not down during so-called "austerity". There's plenty to slim.
In almost any public funding organisation, there is always bloat when it comes to staffing.
I know it is a minor example but my housemate works for the IT department at the University of Oxford. A large part of her role is teaching researchers how to manage their data and other such jobs.
At present, these courses (which are only open to members of staff and students) are free to attend.
The powers that be have now decided that they will have to become chargeable.
So money will be moved from one part of the university accounts to another part of the university accounts
And to do this, more admin staff in the Finance department will have to be employed and more admin time in individual departments will be used to process the payment requisitions.
None of this actually helps researchers. Indeed attendance at the courses is likely to drop as a result.
So new processes and systems are being introduced, more staff costs incurred for no improvement is actual delivery.
The university generates no new money out of this. And it will actually increase staff costs.
This is typical public sector thinking. And I am pretty confident similar bloat exists in every other public organisation in our nation.
Concerning the public sector as a whole, this stems from thinking introduced by the Conservatives, as I well recall from the early days ... not exactly helping improve efficiency is it?
Why did the likes of Rabb and Shapps even start a campaign?
Partly delusion, partly to seek favour when they concede to the winner.
Not that I am convinced being a candidate really helps secure a place in the new regime. It didn't help Hunt or a number of others last time.
I get the idea of being in the running to then later doing the horse trading to say well if I give you the votes of my 30-40-50 supporters I want a prime job in your cabinet, but the likes of Shapps, he isn't an unknown face in the Tory party having been a minister for most of past 12 years (and we all know he is pretty shit at his job) and well he could fill his supporters in the Lib Dem taxi.
Guido understands newly-appointed education minister Brendan Clarke-Smith is preparing to post a raft of legal letters to high-profile celebrity lefties who spread false claims about a photo of the MP that appeared over the weekend. The photo, which showed Clarke-Smith posing in a thong, was taken over ten years ago during a waxing fundraiser for the British Heart Foundation and Lincolnshire and Nottinghamshire Air Ambulance. It made the rounds recently when the Twitterati baselessly declared it showed Clarke-Smith mocking NHS staff during the height of the pandemic…
Sue Perkins 💙 @sueperkins 1/ I messed up & want to offer a correction. I retweeted a post about @Bren4Bassetlaw without fact-checking. The picture of him was not taken during the pandemic, nor was he mocking NHS staff. He was fund-raising. I’d like to offer him my sincerest apologies for any upset caused.
He was wearing a thong during an - excuse me - "waxing fundraiser"?
Off thread, but do other posters have a view on this proposed tower in Manchester:
You will not be surprised to learn that Amir Khan is involved.
To my surprise, despite trying, I don't hate it. (I hope I'm not unduly influenced in this by the fact that Sam Wheeler, the Momentum largely anti-development councillor for this part of the city centre, does hate it.) I think the higher the building, the more reflective it needs to be, particularly in a city where sunshine isn't a given, and it will at least be shiny.
Boring, I'm afraid - to my mind. Also, 96% of planned buildings look better in the render than in reality, so that will get worse
As I've said passim, one thing I'd love to do is get architect's drawings of a building - complete with children holding balloons, small trees lining the streets etc - and compare with real pictures of the building from the same angle.
As I have said passim is getting added to the list.
Off thread, but do other posters have a view on this proposed tower in Manchester:
You will not be surprised to learn that Amir Khan is involved.
To my surprise, despite trying, I don't hate it. (I hope I'm not unduly influenced in this by the fact that Sam Wheeler, the Momentum largely anti-development councillor for this part of the city centre, does hate it.) I think the higher the building, the more reflective it needs to be, particularly in a city where sunshine isn't a given, and it will at least be shiny.
Boring, I'm afraid - to my mind. Also, 96% of planned buildings look better in the render than in reality, so that will get worse
That is quite deliberate, I think. And quite a few renders I've seen are from perspectives impossible in real life unless you're airborne. Good architects are rare.
That's not offensive and quite like the part octagon shaping. And it's not that tall really.
Where is it? Are we looking N / NE towards the St. Peter's Square there? Somewhere west of Oxford Road?
It is up near Piccadilly Station, between it and Great Ancoats St. Up there, anything new built would be an improvement and bring the place on a bit. Ancoats itself has had a lot of redevelopment and it looks better for it
Ancoats was a total dump when I lived there 20 years ago. And I was in Longsight.
I did some short contract work there a few years back and was very surprised at the changes. These days it is, apparently, becoming trendy. The areas near the Metro line are sought after for both housing and business.
Rishi looking good to dominate the first ballot on the current trend.
It may come down to who can consolidate the stop Rishi vote. Truss? She’s also the candidate Rishi would probably want to face in the second round so if he has spare votes that could prove crucial.
Penny needs to get some more endorsements in today I think. I could see her starting to struggle.
Yeah it's the start of the Penny Squeeze. Rishi is starting to hoover up anyone who is sane.
And the worry has to be that Liz will start to hoover up anyone who isn’t…
Truss still 4th of MPs declared behind Sunak, Mordaunt and Tugendhat
What because he has Gavin's backing? lol. Seriously, I hope he is not. He always was a lightweight and the fact he did not have the balls or the decency and probity to resign ages ago tells me he is unfit for the office> he will be an improvement on The Clown, but not much, and he won't beat Labour
Williamson has always backed him, he won't be PM this week. Percentage wise he still has fewer MPs backing him than Johnson did in 2019 or May did in 2016 or even Portillo did in 2001 at this stage.
However he is likely to have enough to at least get to the members vote and probably top the MPs poll
And his negatives are all pretty much out there, one assumes, and old news. He always ought to have been nailed on favourite, on the grounds that you can't win if you aren't one of the two. And there hasn't been a time when that hasn't looked certain.
Every organisation builds up "non-jobs". The tough task is working out which are really non-jobs, which of those are filled by people who are talented and you don't want to lose from your organisation / could fill another role.
Its why you always end up with some big winners from recessions. They take the opportunity to totally re-evaluate their business and come out of it much stronger organisation.
A rather more nuanced post than Barty's.
The creative destruction thing is why private enterprise actually works - eventually all organisations cruft up with pointless bullshit.
Read the Mitrokhin Archive - it is story of how the Soviet intelligence services started up (ha!) as a few hundred people in a flat structure. They could get shit done. By the Seventies, they were 100,000s of people in tower block offices, holding meetings about who should budget for the meeting to decide if there should be a meeting to decide if the KGB resident in (Vienna, I think) should try and ask some criminals how much they would charge to beat up Rudolph Nureyev.
The Queen’s most senior advisors have been working closely with Downing Street officials to ensure “her Majesty is not put in a difficult position” over any honours that outgoing Prime Minister Boris Johnson may attempt to bestow before leaving office, i understands.
It is understood the Queen’s private secretary Sir Edward Young has been in regular contact with Cabinet Secretary Simon Case since Mr Johnson resigned last Thursday and has been assured the UK’s top civil servant will vet any recommendations deemed unsuitable before passing them on to the Palace.
Hunt will back Sunak and get a cabinet position IMHO, back at Health?
That's the nightmare scenario for me. As Health Secretary, Hunt was an appalling nanny statist. Much like Hancock, his thought process was that if we wrap the plebs in cotton wool, tell them what's good for them and stop them ever having any fun then they're less likely to get sick, and that will save the NHS loads of cash.
As the great Mark E Smith said, 99% of non-smokers die.
Keep people alive and they will just end up dying later and more expensively.
I suspect there is some finessing to be done to this point.
There is no more to slim unless we start sacking people. How is that going to help?
Start sacking people in useless jobs. There's plenty of those about.
The tax base is at the highest its been in decades and spending went up not down during so-called "austerity". There's plenty to slim.
In almost any public funding organisation, there is always bloat when it comes to staffing.
I know it is a minor example but my housemate works for the IT department at the University of Oxford. A large part of her role is teaching researchers how to manage their data and other such jobs.
At present, these courses (which are only open to members of staff and students) are free to attend.
The powers that be have now decided that they will have to become chargeable...
This is typical public sector thinking. And I am pretty confident similar bloat exists in every other public organisation in our nation.
Is not that because they're trying to squeeze budgets, though ?
I know it's a minor example, but this sort of thing is likely to be replicated elsewhere as ministers try to implements spending cuts...
There is no more to slim unless we start sacking people. How is that going to help?
Start sacking people in useless jobs. There's plenty of those about.
The tax base is at the highest its been in decades and spending went up not down during so-called "austerity". There's plenty to slim.
In almost any public funding organisation, there is always bloat when it comes to staffing.
I know it is a minor example but my housemate works for the IT department at the University of Oxford. A large part of her role is teaching researchers how to manage their data and other such jobs.
At present, these courses (which are only open to members of staff and students) are free to attend.
The powers that be have now decided that they will have to become chargeable.
So money will be moved from one part of the university accounts to another part of the university accounts
And to do this, more admin staff in the Finance department will have to be employed and more admin time in individual departments will be used to process the payment requisitions.
None of this actually helps researchers. Indeed attendance at the courses is likely to drop as a result.
So new processes and systems are being introduced, more staff costs incurred for no improvement is actual delivery.
The university generates no new money out of this. And it will actually increase staff costs.
This is typical public sector thinking. And I am pretty confident similar bloat exists in every other public organisation in our nation.
Concerning the public sector as a whole, this stems from thinking introduced by the Conservatives, as I well recall from the early days ... not exactly helping improve efficiency is it?
I know it comes from the idea of treating public sector activity as a business but if you don't have a proper business mentality running the shop, you end up with bloat.
Moving money around different departments just costs money. It doesn't generate it.
There is no more to slim unless we start sacking people. How is that going to help?
Start sacking people in useless jobs. There's plenty of those about.
The tax base is at the highest its been in decades and spending went up not down during so-called "austerity". There's plenty to slim.
In almost any public funding organisation, there is always bloat when it comes to staffing.
I know it is a minor example but my housemate works for the IT department at the University of Oxford. A large part of her role is teaching researchers how to manage their data and other such jobs.
At present, these courses (which are only open to members of staff and students) are free to attend.
The powers that be have now decided that they will have to become chargeable.
So money will be moved from one part of the university accounts to another part of the university accounts
And to do this, more admin staff in the Finance department will have to be employed and more admin time in individual departments will be used to process the payment requisitions.
None of this actually helps researchers. Indeed attendance at the courses is likely to drop as a result.
So new processes and systems are being introduced, more staff costs incurred for no improvement is actual delivery.
The university generates no new money out of this. And it will actually increase staff costs.
This is typical public sector thinking. And I am pretty confident similar bloat exists in every other public organisation in our nation.
You forget that researchers also find external courses that better suit their needs, thereby a net outflow from the organisation.
That isn't so much a critique of public sector employers so much as the internal markets forced on them by neoliberalism over recent decades.
I am reminded of a proposed CIP of our theatres directorate to reduce the numbers of scrub nurses on a team. Saved them a few bob, but didn't do much for productivity, though that cost fell on a different directorate.
Rishi looking good to dominate the first ballot on the current trend.
It may come down to who can consolidate the stop Rishi vote. Truss? She’s also the candidate Rishi would probably want to face in the second round so if he has spare votes that could prove crucial.
Penny needs to get some more endorsements in today I think. I could see her starting to struggle.
Yeah it's the start of the Penny Squeeze. Rishi is starting to hoover up anyone who is sane.
And the worry has to be that Liz will start to hoover up anyone who isn’t…
Truss still 4th of MPs declared behind Sunak, Mordaunt and Tugendhat
Mordaunt goes for Sunak IMHO and she ends up Chancellor or something like that
She won't, she has already launched, already has more than enough MPs to get nominated unlike Shapps and will likely be runner up to Sunak in the ballot tomorrow.
Well, the sanctions that the US has imposed means that any German entities starting up Nord Stream 2 would be breaking US sanctions. Good luck trying to do finance on this planet while avoiding the US sanction regime.
This will, I predict, become a source of friction. When Germany decides the Ukraine War is over as far as they are concerned, they will want to lift sanctions. The US will, almost certainly, want to keep sanctions - certainly far longer than Germany...
She would work well with Rishi. Chancellor? The Saj needs to get on board quickly.
Thats a sensible idea. We end up with the sane and the anti-Boris rebels backing Sunak, Truss hoovering up the sane Borislickers, Braverman the insane Borislickers, and a battle between Badenoch and Tugendhat for the "it wasn't me" vote.
Off thread, but do other posters have a view on this proposed tower in Manchester:
You will not be surprised to learn that Amir Khan is involved.
To my surprise, despite trying, I don't hate it. (I hope I'm not unduly influenced in this by the fact that Sam Wheeler, the Momentum largely anti-development councillor for this part of the city centre, does hate it.) I think the higher the building, the more reflective it needs to be, particularly in a city where sunshine isn't a given, and it will at least be shiny.
Boring, I'm afraid - to my mind. Also, 96% of planned buildings look better in the render than in reality, so that will get worse
That is quite deliberate, I think. And quite a few renders I've seen are from perspectives impossible in real life unless you're airborne. Good architects are rare.
That's not offensive and quite like the part octagon shaping. And it's not that tall really.
Where is it? Are we looking N / NE towards the St. Peter's Square there? Somewhere west of Oxford Road?
It is up near Piccadilly Station, between it and Great Ancoats St. Up there, anything new built would be an improvement and bring the place on a bit. Ancoats itself has had a lot of redevelopment and it looks better for it
Ancoats was a total dump when I lived there 20 years ago. And I was in Longsight.
I did some short contract work there a few years back and was very surprised at the changes. These days it is, apparently, becoming trendy. The areas near the Metro line are sought after for both housing and business.
Yep. And surprised that eldest reports Fallowfield to be the new cheap, dumpy student bit.
Still waiting for a better PM than Blair. He left office in 2007…
I despised Blair at the time. Now I look back on it as a halcyon period of a hard working PM, on top of the detail, delivering his vision for the country (right or wrong) who was, extraordinarily, a "pretty straight sort of guy" (by comparison with those who followed).
Comments
But Truss has the zeal of the converted.
If people are redundant, they should be entitled to redundancy payments, not continued employment.
I hope many people here got him at the 250/1.
Worth noting, though, that the two countries that spend the most on importing energy (even before the current crisis) are Italy and Japan.
Austerity is and was a disastrous policy. The most economically stupid policy in 100 years.
Its why you always end up with some big winners from recessions. They take the opportunity to totally re-evaluate their business and come out of it much stronger organisation.
- this seems to describe a significant proportion of academics in all fields and the majority in the social sciences.
I know it is a minor example but my housemate works for the IT department at the University of Oxford. A large part of her role is teaching researchers how to manage their data and other such jobs.
At present, these courses (which are only open to members of staff and students) are free to attend.
The powers that be have now decided that they will have to become chargeable.
So money will be moved from one part of the university accounts to another part of the university accounts
And to do this, more admin staff in the Finance department will have to be employed and more admin time in individual departments will be used to process the payment requisitions.
None of this actually helps researchers. Indeed attendance at the courses is likely to drop as a result.
So new processes and systems are being introduced, more staff costs incurred for no improvement is actual delivery.
The university generates no new money out of this. And it will actually increase staff costs.
This is typical public sector thinking. And I am pretty confident similar bloat exists in every other public organisation in our nation.
Gender isn't the only thing that can transition.
My work consists of building completely automated flows in a bank, with manual interventions at few defined points. This will eliminate all the copy and pasta between systems and whole teams of people who shout at other banks on the phone about how they can't add.
Five minutes in the NHS (for example) tells you that vast increases in productivity and job satisfaction could be created by proper processes and systems. Instead, it appears to be a system that spends much of it energy (and money) on stopping the medics doing their jobs.
Calls for a radical shrinkage of the state instead.
Which is at least coherent.
2.68 Rishi Sunak implied probability 37%
3.65 Penny Mordaunt 27%
4.9 Liz Truss 20%
15.5 Tom Tugendhat 6.5%
20 Kemi Badenoch 5%
55 Jeremy Hunt
70 Nadhim Zahawi
100 Keir Starmer
100 Sajid Javid
100 Suella Braverman
110 Priti Patel
130 Dominic Raab
The way this is going he could be PM next week
https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/live/bbcnews
They looked at the others and thought, well.
They listened to friends.
They are delusional.
They wanted to show that they had a following which would justify a decent job. Unfortunately for those dropping out today they have actually shown the opposite.
As I said, while I expected to hate it, I don't. And it's better than what's there at the moment (though there are new buildings in Manchester which are better than what was there before but still represent a regrettable missed opportunity, and in this area of town I would expect something else to come forward if this does not).
For me, it passes the test - but I can see why it's controversial.
You have been very anti Rishi and should he win the contest will you endorse him ?
There's clearly only one winner from that. Badenoch.
Not that I am convinced being a candidate really helps secure a place in the new regime. It didn't help Hunt or a number of others last time.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/germany-faces-nightmare-winter-as-russia-shuts-down-nord-stream-1-8vnzc950j
Keep it away from the membership I say.
However he is likely to have enough to at least get to the members vote and probably top the MPs poll
"None of this actually helps researchers. Indeed attendance at the courses is likely to drop as a result."
What will next happen is that the course will be made compulsory.
In reality, the French and German systems (including M & K but also since then) have produced pretty stable governments with leaders capable of developing and pursuing policy over a period of time. They've not always been good governments - you can argue about the policy records of governments and the personal qualities of individuals - but their systems have largely produced functional governments capable of thinking ahead and pursuing a course of action for more than about five minutes.
I know on here we love the drama of constant change and it presents betting opportunities. But it really has been badly dysfunctional since 2015. And I agree Austria has been too.
How fabulous!
Robert Courts
George Eustice
Trudy Harrison
Graham Stuart
Dr. James Davies
Paul Bristow
Sheryll Murray
https://conservativehome.com/2022/07/11/next-tory-leader-whos-backing-whom-our-working-list/
He always ought to have been nailed on favourite, on the grounds that you can't win if you aren't one of the two.
And there hasn't been a time when that hasn't looked certain.
Read the Mitrokhin Archive - it is story of how the Soviet intelligence services started up (ha!) as a few hundred people in a flat structure. They could get shit done. By the Seventies, they were 100,000s of people in tower block offices, holding meetings about who should budget for the meeting to decide if there should be a meeting to decide if the KGB resident in (Vienna, I think) should try and ask some criminals how much they would charge to beat up Rudolph Nureyev.
Mind you, that's normal.
Keep people alive and they will just end up dying later and more expensively.
I suspect there is some finessing to be done to this point.
I can definitely see some vote 'lending' here if he can't be anointed without a run off.
Does he go for such dirty tricks or just try and win straight? The choice of tactic might tell us a lot about him.
I know it's a minor example, but this sort of thing is likely to be replicated elsewhere as ministers try to implements spending cuts...
Moving money around different departments just costs money. It doesn't generate it.
That isn't so much a critique of public sector employers so much as the internal markets forced on them by neoliberalism over recent decades.
I am reminded of a proposed CIP of our theatres directorate to reduce the numbers of scrub nurses on a team. Saved them a few bob, but didn't do much for productivity, though that cost fell on a different directorate.
Does Bandenoch even have enough endorsements to make it to the second round?
But if you're wanting a better Labour PM, you might need to wait until Labour are popular again. Perhaps Starmer's successor might do it?
Excuse me a second at the thought of that 🤮
As it goes into the member vote there is so much the back truss stop Rishi team can attack Rishi with.
At least it doesn’t look like Truss can be coronated next week, will need the member vote to get it.
This will, I predict, become a source of friction. When Germany decides the Ukraine War is over as far as they are concerned, they will want to lift sanctions. The US will, almost certainly, want to keep sanctions - certainly far longer than Germany...
Hunt? What a loser.
Johnson and Cameron divided the country and oversaw the largest stagnation in society in 100 years.
One can only wonder what Sir Graham Brady Old Lady makes of it all.