My favourite line of Penny's this morning was 'we are going to modernise government with the white heat of modernisation' which got a round of applause.
Some of us remember who came up with that notion in the first place ...
And won a huge landslide.
Labour can learn a thing from that.
A majority of four isn't a landslide.
Weirdly though a Labour majority of four would feel a bit like a landslide if it happened at the next GE. It'd mean they'd probably have won Basingstoke, Bromley and Bassetlaw.
… plus Glasgow East, Glasgow North and Glasgow South West.
What is fascinating about this leadership election is the sheer spread of candidates and outlooks and positions.
At one extreme a vision of a fictional past led by Braverman. Break poor people on the wheel. Tax cuts for decent people. Put the gayers and the trannies and the haters back in their box where decent people can look down on them.
At the other extreme a vision of a dynamic future led by Badenoch. 2020s Britain as personified by a female black migrant with braided hair and a clear vision for how to respect people who who they are without having to harang or belittle like equivalent Labour people do.
What is extraordinary is that half the field are BAME, half are women and two are both. Sorry Labour Party, but if this doesn't explode your "we are the party of modern representative politics", nothing will.
It looks as if we will have the first ethnic PM or third woman PM ( all conservatives )
I think Labour's problem is the unions. When it comes to election planning it becomes a beauty contest - who can attract the most cash from their trade union. And too many unions are very white male and wealthy. Yes I know the Tories are heavily that as well, but they get outside funding. Labour candidates need cash and that cash comes from unions who advance their own people.
Its not as if the first BAME PM and/or third female PM will make a positive difference to the Tories if it is Zahawi or Braverman or Truss. Pick a mentalist, or better still continuity Boris and the party is doomed. But what opportunity there is within the selection process to actually have choice!
I still want the party removed from power, regardless of who wins. But a Badenoch government excites me - and I literally didn't know who she was until yesterday - because she would modernise the political discourse massively.
Brexit was - in a significant part - a vote to send the foreigners home, to remove the outsiders who had brought the country down. And here is Olukemi Olufunto Adegoke, who returned to her native UK from her ancestral Nigeria age 16 to escape the situation over there, did A-Levels whilst working in McDonalds, before going on to work in IT and Finance. Now Kemi Badenoch she represents everything that is the *opposite* of the nasty insular whiter Britain that so many voted for. And don't tell this leave voter that they didn't. They bloody did.
It does raise an interesting question though as to how come the Conservative Party, without all female/minority shortlists have been able to get so many women and minorities right to the very top of the party (and not just padding out the backbenches) . . . but how come the union leaders are all '[white] male and wealthy'.
Why are the unions so unrepresentative?
PS "they didn't".
Door after door after door after door. Talking to white voters in an almost entirely white British area being told there are too many foreigners. As I said - a "nasty insular whiter Britain". You can say that I didn't have those appalling conversations all you like. I did. And there is reams of evidence and reportage from the time backing that up.
Its just that people don't want to be associated with racism and their petty bigotry and jingoist friends. I can understand that. Its not so much that people are racist - reality is far more subtle than that. Its that they dislike the other. Whether that is Europeans or non-whites or people not born in Yorkshire or people who like ballet or whatever. I - like you - am a white man who voted to leave. I - like you did not do so for any of the reasons I just listed. We are not racist or bigoted or bitter. But all the people who are voted leave. That doesn't mean that all leavers are racist, just that all racists voted leave. Why is that hard to grasp?
It's not hard to grasp that some people are racists, but they are a minority. If only racists had voted Leave then Remain would have won a mammoth landslide.
Tbf to RP he's very clearly said not all leavers are racist.
Not even a majority of leave voters are racist. But all the racists voted leave. And they have poisoned the well so that now we have this horrible insular us vs Yerp antagonism. As they get richer than us due to the decisions we have made after leaving the EU I fear this will get worse - with the wrong new Tory leader.
Or we can have a Sunak or Badenoch and reclaim the modernising zeal we had under Cameron and before him Blair.
Just to say, because this has triggered some criticism, that as a leave voter I agree with you that more or less all racists will have voted leave. I think all leave voters need to be aware of that. My biggest issue when I voted was the metaphorical company I was keeping and it pained me to deliver them a victory.
I also voted leave.
All racists voted leave. Not all leave voters are racist (I'd say the majority).
Its not difficult. Yet the majority of leave winners don't seem willing to admit that millions of their fellow leavers voted so because they disliked people who weren't them.
It's just an inadequate generalisation. Leavers might say that Remainers voted to affirm a system with a dangerous democratic deficit, massive power imbalance, and rich white man's protectionist conspiracy for the benefit of bankers and plutocrats responsible for impoverishing third world farmers by exclusion.
But probably some of them had higher motives. Let's stop being judgemental.
If it helps I know at least 1 racist who did vote Remain (they figured we'd be screwed over in negotiations so not worth doing). The power of anecdotes and generalisations
Telegraph got it priority right in regards to cost of living crisis stories...
Families have been hit by the biggest jump in childcare costs on record.....terrible....how do families manage...oh wait what, they aren't talking about after school clubs...with fees charged by nannies hitting an all-time high of close to £3,000 a month.
The Telegraph has been producing articles like this for my whole lifetime. Quite spectacular lack of awareness. Which is puzzling, because I don’t imagine those with nannies are typical of Telegraph readers, and certainly not of Telegraph journalists.
I still remember an article from the 90s about Grimsby. It started “Grimsby isn’t actually that far away. You only have to use three roads to get there – the M1, the M18 and the M180” Notice anything wrong with that? You will if you don’t live in the Home Counties. But it often doesn’t appear to occur at the Telegraph that they might have readers outside of the home counties.
Telegraph got it priority right in regards to cost of living crisis stories...
Families have been hit by the biggest jump in childcare costs on record.....terrible....how do families manage...oh wait what, they aren't talking about after school clubs...with fees charged by nannies hitting an all-time high of close to £3,000 a month.
Penny says people are fed up with them not delivering.
They've had 12 years.
The public are going to give them another chance, really?
They will use Brexit as a convenient BC/AD break though. And in a sense this is both a very different country and a very different government to that pre 2019 or pre 2016. Tories 22 arent even in the same ballpark as the Cameroons.
So she's going to be a change to Cameron, May, Johnson all at the same time? If she pulls this off, well fair play she's a genius
Thats not what im saying (but yes, every politician and therefore PM is different). The current givernment arent still trying to deliver the coalitions policies (hence 'had 12 years' is irrelevant). Austerity is gone, we are no longer in the EU, there is no drive for AV ir referenda on Europe etc etc. We are about to dnter the '7th iteration' of Tiry adminustration type and style - Cameron coalition, Cameron majority, May majority, May minorty/DUP, Boris Minority/DUP, Boris landslide, ??? All have different styles, aims and approaches. Tldr - its not a 12 year continuity
It was genuinely a sincere point, not meant to sound sarcastic. If she wins another majority and is another "change" candidate she's genuinely a genius. That takes real skill.
If there’s one thing the Tory Party has succeeded in over the past 12 years, it’s the fact it’s managed to reinvent itself so often that people don’t see it as a 12 year long government but essentially a serious of 3-5 year long phases. Stops voter fatigue. But doesn’t lend itself to good governance IMHO.
Actually I'd say in theory that would lend itself to good governance, gives opportunity for renewal and fresh ideas.
It has not happened that way, but in theory itd work.
Telegraph got it priority right in regards to cost of living crisis stories...
Families have been hit by the biggest jump in childcare costs on record.....terrible....how do families manage...oh wait what, they aren't talking about after school clubs...with fees charged by nannies hitting an all-time high of close to £3,000 a month.
Nadhim Zahawi founded YouGov, but took no shares in it. A Gibraltar company, Balshore Investments, did instead. Zahawi says this wasn't tax avoidance, but was his father injecting capital into the business.
Here's my hunt for evidence. A very lengthy thread:
I struggle to see how any of the people who sit in cabinet - especially those who retain confidence in him - can be seen as serious candidates to take over and make a significant change of direction.
Penny Mordaunt says that Britain has lost its sense of self
She compares it to Paul McCartney's set at Glastonbury - 'he was playing new tunes but what we really wanted was the good old stuff'
Didn't Paul play literally loads of old stuff, or did I watch a different performance
Yes – terrible analogy. Not content with having a pop at Dad’s Army, she’s now having a pop at Paul McCartney.
There’s the kernel of a point here. A nation is a nation because of the stories it tells itself about itself and has in common; common cultural reference points, beliefs, and so on. There are fewer and fewer of these. We have less and less in common; both our view of our common history and our view of our common culture*. And so the Glastonbury Festival – which even thirty years ago was still quite a long way from the mainstream – is presented as the centrepiece of the British Summer; but it is headlined by a man playing songs from 60 years ago because that was our last common cultural reference point.
I’m just scratching at this issue; I’m not convinced I’m going at it right and I’m not sure where it leads. There are side issues about education, sport, situation comedy, the BBC, pubs, online and real life interactions. There’s a persuasive point about British society in here somewhere, and reflections about the extent Britain is typical or atypical of the west in the 21st century, but I’m not sure what it is or what to do about it.
I’m not a massive Paul McCartney fan, by the way. I prefer my music less melodic. But I do recognise a) his talent, and b) his cultural importance, and c) that he pitched his set excellently.
*On which point, I urge anyone to visit the Comedy Carpet in Blackpool, which is the best example we have of a common cultural reference point. It’s about half an acre of polished paving into which have been embossed dozens and dozens of punch lines and catch phrases which almost all British people and only British people will understand. “Don’t tell him, Pike – I’m playing all the right notes but not necessarily in the right order – Infamy, infamy, they’ve all got it in for me.” You don’t have to find any of it funny – though if absolutely none of it raises a smile you are either foreign or dead – but marvel at the fact that you can contextualise almost all of it without having had to try. And rejoice that there is at least something that we still have in common.
And partly that's because the boomers are so numerous, and are insisting on hanging around so long. Imagine George Formby still being the big thing in the 1960s.
The gentle evolution of popular culture that ought to have kept happening has ground to a halt and has become a bit of a tug of war.
The fragmentation of mass media doesn't help. Have we had any universally shared moments this year apart from Paddington and the Queen?
Quite like this Finkelstein quote. The comparison will irritate Tory Brexiteers. And socialists.
"Real Brexit is, like real socialism, a sort of abstract, undefined idea, always a little over the horizon, always waiting for someone bold enough, a true believer to guide us to the promised land."
There's talk of Boris Johnson going on a foreign trip next week, meaning he would miss #PMQs and leave Dominic Raab to sit-in for what would have been his last PMQs.
Telegraph got it priority right in regards to cost of living crisis stories...
Families have been hit by the biggest jump in childcare costs on record.....terrible....how do families manage...oh wait what, they aren't talking about after school clubs...with fees charged by nannies hitting an all-time high of close to £3,000 a month.
The Telegraph has been producing articles like this for my whole lifetime. Quite spectacular lack of awareness. Which is puzzling, because I don’t imagine those with nannies are typical of Telegraph readers, and certainly not of Telegraph journalists.
I still remember an article from the 90s about Grimsby. It started “Grimsby isn’t actually that far away. You only have to use three roads to get there – the M1, the M18 and the M180” Notice anything wrong with that? You will if you don’t live in the Home Counties. But it often doesn’t appear to occur at the Telegraph that they might have readers outside of the home counties.
Tbf. I remember reading a Guardian article years ago about the football museum in Preston. "A long drive up the M6" it said. 10 minutes on the train I thought.
There's talk of Boris Johnson going on a foreign trip next week, meaning he would miss #PMQs and leave Dominic Raab to sit-in for what would have been his last PMQs.
WOOLIES CONSPIRACY THEORY SPECIAL Boris calling a VONC is his revenge on the tories. Get his loyalists to support it and 'reluctantly' be forced to seek a GE then leave them all to it. Thats what id do if i were a sociopath
Devolving electoral bribery to the constituency MP.
Yes, absolutely terrible idea. No one likes Whitehall, and their intense centralising if pots of cash, but MPs arent trusted with their own expenses anymore, never mind splashing out cash in their area directly.
Bonkers idea. Anyone else as a potential Sunak opponent? No Truss please
It would be incredibly foolish of Tory MPs to give Rishi a coronation. He needs to be subjected to the scrutiny of a contest.
That said 200+ MPs would mean the other candidates are averaging around 22 which seems far too low.
It would be interesting if no candidate except Sunak got more than 30 votes. That would mean all the others were out anyway. Not that I want it to happen but it would screw up the 22 committee's plans a bit.
There's talk of Boris Johnson going on a foreign trip next week, meaning he would miss #PMQs and leave Dominic Raab to sit-in for what would have been his last PMQs.
Looking only at the first round vote, what would make any Tory MP choose one rather that another? I can come up with reasons why various different factions might support seven of the candidates (NB here I'm listing only the attractions, not any negatives):
Sunak: Brexiteer but grown-up, at least pays lip-service to sound finance, top-level experience, could clearly do the job
Truss: Nutty born-again Brexiteer, cabinet experience, plausible candidate if you want a nutty Brexiteer and irresponsible tax-cutter
Mordaunt: Fresh face, very personable, untainted, good CV for the selectorate
Badenoch: Even more of a fresh face, comes across extremely well, untainted, 'time for a change'
Tugendhat: Another fresh face and untainted, speaks well, strong on defence, traditional non-nutty Tory, supported by key Red Wall MPs.
Hunt: The only centrist (or former centrist) with the high-level experience to jump straight into the job, will appeal to the small number of remaining sane Tory MPs
Braverman: The candidate of choice for those MPs who find Liz Truss insufficiently nutty.
Anyone got any suggestions for Zahawi? I don't see it.
Penny Mordaunt says that Britain has lost its sense of self
She compares it to Paul McCartney's set at Glastonbury - 'he was playing new tunes but what we really wanted was the good old stuff'
Didn't Paul play literally loads of old stuff, or did I watch a different performance
Yes – terrible analogy. Not content with having a pop at Dad’s Army, she’s now having a pop at Paul McCartney.
There’s the kernel of a point here. A nation is a nation because of the stories it tells itself about itself and has in common; common cultural reference points, beliefs, and so on. There are fewer and fewer of these. We have less and less in common; both our view of our common history and our view of our common culture*. And so the Glastonbury Festival – which even thirty years ago was still quite a long way from the mainstream – is presented as the centrepiece of the British Summer; but it is headlined by a man playing songs from 60 years ago because that was our last common cultural reference point.
I’m just scratching at this issue; I’m not convinced I’m going at it right and I’m not sure where it leads. There are side issues about education, sport, situation comedy, the BBC, pubs, online and real life interactions. There’s a persuasive point about British society in here somewhere, and reflections about the extent Britain is typical or atypical of the west in the 21st century, but I’m not sure what it is or what to do about it.
I’m not a massive Paul McCartney fan, by the way. I prefer my music less melodic. But I do recognise a) his talent, and b) his cultural importance, and c) that he pitched his set excellently.
*On which point, I urge anyone to visit the Comedy Carpet in Blackpool, which is the best example we have of a common cultural reference point. It’s about half an acre of polished paving into which have been embossed dozens and dozens of punch lines and catch phrases which almost all British people and only British people will understand. “Don’t tell him, Pike – I’m playing all the right notes but not necessarily in the right order – Infamy, infamy, they’ve all got it in for me.” You don’t have to find any of it funny – though if absolutely none of it raises a smile you are either foreign or dead – but marvel at the fact that you can contextualise almost all of it without having had to try. And rejoice that there is at least something that we still have in common.
And partly that's because the boomers are so numerous, and are insisting on hanging around so long. Imagine George Formby still being the big thing in the 1960s.
The gentle evolution of popular culture that ought to have kept happening has ground to a halt and has become a bit of a tug of war.
The fragmentation of mass media doesn't help. Have we had any universally shared moments this year apart from Paddington and the Queen?
I saw a teenage kid my daughter's age wearing a Beatles t-shirt yesterday, it did make me feel a bit sad. Mind you, my daughter wears my old Deltic Preservation Society sweatshirt, apparently her friends all rave about how vintage it is. It does feel a bit as if the culture is ossifying.
Telegraph got it priority right in regards to cost of living crisis stories...
Families have been hit by the biggest jump in childcare costs on record.....terrible....how do families manage...oh wait what, they aren't talking about after school clubs...with fees charged by nannies hitting an all-time high of close to £3,000 a month.
The Telegraph has been producing articles like this for my whole lifetime. Quite spectacular lack of awareness. Which is puzzling, because I don’t imagine those with nannies are typical of Telegraph readers, and certainly not of Telegraph journalists.
I still remember an article from the 90s about Grimsby. It started “Grimsby isn’t actually that far away. You only have to use three roads to get there – the M1, the M18 and the M180” Notice anything wrong with that? You will if you don’t live in the Home Counties. But it often doesn’t appear to occur at the Telegraph that they might have readers outside of the home counties.
Tbf. I remember reading a Guardian article years ago about the football museum in Preston. "A long drive up the M6" it said. 10 minutes on the train I thought.
The Guardian do many an article that is equally spectacularly unaware. They have done the au pair stuff already, although to be fair also been banging on about how it is also modern slavery, but at the same time outrageous that it is now so difficult to get a cheap one.
Don't usually like this guys comedy but this made me chuckle...
Telegraph got it priority right in regards to cost of living crisis stories...
Families have been hit by the biggest jump in childcare costs on record.....terrible....how do families manage...oh wait what, they aren't talking about after school clubs...with fees charged by nannies hitting an all-time high of close to £3,000 a month.
Looking only at the first round vote, what would make any Tory MP choose one rather that another? I can come up with reasons why various different factions might support seven of the candidates (NB here I'm listing only the attractions, not any negatives):
Sunak: Brexiteer but grown-up, at least pays lip-service to sound finance, top-level experience, could clearly do the job
Truss: Nutty born-again Brexiteer, cabinet experience, plausible candidate if you want a nutty Brexiteer and irresponsible tax-cutter
Mordaunt: Fresh face, very personable, untainted, good CV for the selectorate
Badenoch: Even more of a fresh face, comes across extremely well, untainted, 'time for a change'
Tugendhat: Another fresh face and untainted, speaks well, strong on defence, traditional non-nutty Tory, supported by key Red Wall MPs.
Hunt: The only centrist (or former centrist) with the high-level experience to jump straight into the job, will appeal to the small number of remaining sane Tory MPs
Braverman: The candidate of choice for those MPs who find Liz Truss insufficiently nutty.
Anyone got any suggestions for Zahawi? I don't see it.
Won't make an HMRC investigation into your tax arrangements a priority?
Looking only at the first round vote, what would make any Tory MP choose one rather that another? I can come up with reasons why various different factions might support seven of the candidates (NB here I'm listing only the attractions, not any negatives):
Sunak: Brexiteer but grown-up, at least pays lip-service to sound finance, top-level experience, could clearly do the job
Truss: Nutty born-again Brexiteer, cabinet experience, plausible candidate if you want a nutty Brexiteer and irresponsible tax-cutter
Mordaunt: Fresh face, very personable, untainted, good CV for the selectorate
Badenoch: Even more of a fresh face, comes across extremely well, untainted, 'time for a change'
Tugendhat: Another fresh face and untainted, speaks well, strong on defence, traditional non-nutty Tory, supported by key Red Wall MPs.
Hunt: The only centrist (or former centrist) with the high-level experience to jump straight into the job, will appeal to the small number of remaining sane Tory MPs
Braverman: The candidate of choice for those MPs who find Liz Truss insufficiently nutty.
Anyone got any suggestions for Zahawi? I don't see it.
Telegraph got it priority right in regards to cost of living crisis stories...
Families have been hit by the biggest jump in childcare costs on record.....terrible....how do families manage...oh wait what, they aren't talking about after school clubs...with fees charged by nannies hitting an all-time high of close to £3,000 a month.
The Telegraph has been producing articles like this for my whole lifetime. Quite spectacular lack of awareness. Which is puzzling, because I don’t imagine those with nannies are typical of Telegraph readers, and certainly not of Telegraph journalists.
I still remember an article from the 90s about Grimsby. It started “Grimsby isn’t actually that far away. You only have to use three roads to get there – the M1, the M18 and the M180” Notice anything wrong with that? You will if you don’t live in the Home Counties. But it often doesn’t appear to occur at the Telegraph that they might have readers outside of the home counties.
Tbf. I remember reading a Guardian article years ago about the football museum in Preston. "A long drive up the M6" it said. 10 minutes on the train I thought.
Ha, yes, and come to think of it I remember an article in the Times which speculated that the Yorkshire accent was distinctive 'because Yorkshire is so far from everywhere else'. Which is true if your idea of everywhere stops at the Watford Gap, but not if you look at a map of the UK which has Yorkshire very roughly in the middle and quite apart from its own population, a population of roughly 10 million within ab hour's drive.
I’m supporting @KemiBadenoch a fresh, brave & intelligent woman who’s prepared to tackle issues head on so many have ignored for too long, total transparency & integrity. The @Conservatives party needs to vote for someone who will win at the ballot box & look forward #Kemi4PM
If Sunak is such a shoe in why are all these people standing rather than backing him to get in his good books?
So they can show that they have a significant following in the party and need a really good job to bring the party back together again. Except for maybe Truss and Mordaunt who may genuinely think that they can win this.
JESUS. I just solved basically every problem in the West
Childless people should be taxed. Heavily
That solves the demographic issue - bingo. It also brings in a ton of money for HMG. Bringing down debt and deficit
SORTED
The French do something similar, in effect. You get tax breaks for having children. It's unusual in the west in the high birth rates among middle class people.
WOOLIES CONSPIRACY THEORY SPECIAL Boris calling a VONC is his revenge on the tories. Get his loyalists to support it and 'reluctantly' be forced to seek a GE then leave them all to it. Thats what id do if i were a sociopath
Not sure it would work, as the Queen might feel there is clearly an alternative government that could command the confidence of House and tell Johnson to stick his dissolution request.
CONFIRMED Results of the first ballot of the leadership election to be announced at 5pm tonight live on TV. Any candidate with fewer than 30 MPs in support is OUT.
Nadhim Zahawi founded YouGov, but took no shares in it. A Gibraltar company, Balshore Investments, did instead. Zahawi says this wasn't tax avoidance, but was his father injecting capital into the business.
Here's my hunt for evidence. A very lengthy thread:
Telegraph got it priority right in regards to cost of living crisis stories...
Families have been hit by the biggest jump in childcare costs on record.....terrible....how do families manage...oh wait what, they aren't talking about after school clubs...with fees charged by nannies hitting an all-time high of close to £3,000 a month.
I’m supporting @KemiBadenoch a fresh, brave & intelligent woman who’s prepared to tackle issues head on so many have ignored for too long, total transparency & integrity. The @Conservatives party needs to vote for someone who will win at the ballot box & look forward #Kemi4PM
Bit of a knock for Penny, given that a photograph with Sharon was featured in her Twitter discussion on woke! Seems like perhaps Sharon didn't like being marshalled into the PM campaign.
Penny Mordaunt says that Britain has lost its sense of self
She compares it to Paul McCartney's set at Glastonbury - 'he was playing new tunes but what we really wanted was the good old stuff'
Didn't Paul play literally loads of old stuff, or did I watch a different performance
Yes – terrible analogy. Not content with having a pop at Dad’s Army, she’s now having a pop at Paul McCartney.
There’s the kernel of a point here. A nation is a nation because of the stories it tells itself about itself and has in common; common cultural reference points, beliefs, and so on. There are fewer and fewer of these. We have less and less in common; both our view of our common history and our view of our common culture*. And so the Glastonbury Festival – which even thirty years ago was still quite a long way from the mainstream – is presented as the centrepiece of the British Summer; but it is headlined by a man playing songs from 60 years ago because that was our last common cultural reference point.
I’m just scratching at this issue; I’m not convinced I’m going at it right and I’m not sure where it leads. There are side issues about education, sport, situation comedy, the BBC, pubs, online and real life interactions. There’s a persuasive point about British society in here somewhere, and reflections about the extent Britain is typical or atypical of the west in the 21st century, but I’m not sure what it is or what to do about it.
I’m not a massive Paul McCartney fan, by the way. I prefer my music less melodic. But I do recognise a) his talent, and b) his cultural importance, and c) that he pitched his set excellently.
*On which point, I urge anyone to visit the Comedy Carpet in Blackpool, which is the best example we have of a common cultural reference point. It’s about half an acre of polished paving into which have been embossed dozens and dozens of punch lines and catch phrases which almost all British people and only British people will understand. “Don’t tell him, Pike – I’m playing all the right notes but not necessarily in the right order – Infamy, infamy, they’ve all got it in for me.” You don’t have to find any of it funny – though if absolutely none of it raises a smile you are either foreign or dead – but marvel at the fact that you can contextualise almost all of it without having had to try. And rejoice that there is at least something that we still have in common.
And partly that's because the boomers are so numerous, and are insisting on hanging around so long. Imagine George Formby still being the big thing in the 1960s.
The gentle evolution of popular culture that ought to have kept happening has ground to a halt and has become a bit of a tug of war.
The fragmentation of mass media doesn't help. Have we had any universally shared moments this year apart from Paddington and the Queen?
I saw a teenage kid my daughter's age wearing a Beatles t-shirt yesterday, it did make me feel a bit sad. Mind you, my daughter wears my old Deltic Preservation Society sweatshirt, apparently her friends all rave about how vintage it is. It does feel a bit as if the culture is ossifying.
'Twas ever thus though, from my teens to early 20s I cosplayed rockers, rockabillies, fey Weimar romantics, 1940s zoot suiters, Waughian fogeys and a bit of cowboy thrown in. A brief period of punk was about the only new thing under the sun.
It is difficult to see how a genuine cultural upheaval like punk could happen now mind, fat John Lydon advertising butter and luvvin Trump & Brexit spoiled it for everyone.
I’m supporting @KemiBadenoch a fresh, brave & intelligent woman who’s prepared to tackle issues head on so many have ignored for too long, total transparency & integrity. The @Conservatives party needs to vote for someone who will win at the ballot box & look forward #Kemi4PM
Telegraph got it priority right in regards to cost of living crisis stories...
Families have been hit by the biggest jump in childcare costs on record.....terrible....how do families manage...oh wait what, they aren't talking about after school clubs...with fees charged by nannies hitting an all-time high of close to £3,000 a month.
The Telegraph has been producing articles like this for my whole lifetime. Quite spectacular lack of awareness. Which is puzzling, because I don’t imagine those with nannies are typical of Telegraph readers, and certainly not of Telegraph journalists.
I still remember an article from the 90s about Grimsby. It started “Grimsby isn’t actually that far away. You only have to use three roads to get there – the M1, the M18 and the M180” Notice anything wrong with that? You will if you don’t live in the Home Counties. But it often doesn’t appear to occur at the Telegraph that they might have readers outside of the home counties.
Tbf. I remember reading a Guardian article years ago about the football museum in Preston. "A long drive up the M6" it said. 10 minutes on the train I thought.
Ha, yes, and come to think of it I remember an article in the Times which speculated that the Yorkshire accent was distinctive 'because Yorkshire is so far from everywhere else'. Which is true if your idea of everywhere stops at the Watford Gap, but not if you look at a map of the UK which has Yorkshire very roughly in the middle and quite apart from its own population, a population of roughly 10 million within ab hour's drive.
I was listening to PM on R4 a while back doing a little piece on life 'in the regions' kinda thing. They were speaking to a teacher from, as I remember, Norfolk and asked them "So, what's it like trying to teach when you have an accent?".
JESUS. I just solved basically every problem in the West
Childless people should be taxed. Heavily
That solves the demographic issue - bingo. It also brings in a ton of money for HMG. Bringing down debt and deficit
SORTED
There was a man on Radio 5 Breakfast a few days ago offering that idea in their "In My Opinion" slot. It suffices to say that the idea was not popular with the listeners even though it did make a fair bit of sense to me.
Christopher Hope📝 @christopherhope · 14m CONFIRMED Results of the first ballot of the leadership election to be announced at 5pm tonight live on TV. Any candidate with fewer than 30 MPs in support is OUT.
I’m supporting @KemiBadenoch a fresh, brave & intelligent woman who’s prepared to tackle issues head on so many have ignored for too long, total transparency & integrity. The @Conservatives party needs to vote for someone who will win at the ballot box & look forward #Kemi4PM
My favourite line of Penny's this morning was 'we are going to modernise government with the white heat of modernisation' which got a round of applause.
Some of us remember who came up with that notion in the first place ...
And won a huge landslide.
Labour can learn a thing from that.
A majority of four isn't a landslide.
Weirdly though a Labour majority of four would feel a bit like a landslide if it happened at the next GE. It'd mean they'd probably have won Basingstoke, Bromley and Bassetlaw.
Yah, would put Starmer, in terms of net gains as LOTO, in the Atlee, Blair, and Cameron territory.
You are forgetting Heath. The last time a working majority for one side was turned into a working majority for the other was 1970.
However, we've only had the circumstances where the Governing party had a working majority (but not a landslide majority) going into an election three times since then (Feb 1974, 1983, and 2010).
Oct 1974, 1979, 1997, 2015, 2017, and 2019 are discounted as the governing party did not have a working majority going in, so we can't get any information from those. 1987, 1992, 2001, 2005 were all elections where the ruling party had a majority in excess of 100 going into them.
Only those three are elections where the governing party had a non-landslide working majority going in, and I think 3 elections aren't enough to draw a conclusion. All three of those had distinguishing factors: - Feb 1974 was pretty close to a majority - 1983 had a massively split opposition - 2010 had a very large third party with a lot of coverage
We pretty much need to take elections on a case by case basis.
Penny Mordaunt says that Britain has lost its sense of self
She compares it to Paul McCartney's set at Glastonbury - 'he was playing new tunes but what we really wanted was the good old stuff'
Didn't Paul play literally loads of old stuff, or did I watch a different performance
Yes – terrible analogy. Not content with having a pop at Dad’s Army, she’s now having a pop at Paul McCartney.
There’s the kernel of a point here. A nation is a nation because of the stories it tells itself about itself and has in common; common cultural reference points, beliefs, and so on. There are fewer and fewer of these. We have less and less in common; both our view of our common history and our view of our common culture*. And so the Glastonbury Festival – which even thirty years ago was still quite a long way from the mainstream – is presented as the centrepiece of the British Summer; but it is headlined by a man playing songs from 60 years ago because that was our last common cultural reference point.
I’m just scratching at this issue; I’m not convinced I’m going at it right and I’m not sure where it leads. There are side issues about education, sport, situation comedy, the BBC, pubs, online and real life interactions. There’s a persuasive point about British society in here somewhere, and reflections about the extent Britain is typical or atypical of the west in the 21st century, but I’m not sure what it is or what to do about it.
I’m not a massive Paul McCartney fan, by the way. I prefer my music less melodic. But I do recognise a) his talent, and b) his cultural importance, and c) that he pitched his set excellently.
*On which point, I urge anyone to visit the Comedy Carpet in Blackpool, which is the best example we have of a common cultural reference point. It’s about half an acre of polished paving into which have been embossed dozens and dozens of punch lines and catch phrases which almost all British people and only British people will understand. “Don’t tell him, Pike – I’m playing all the right notes but not necessarily in the right order – Infamy, infamy, they’ve all got it in for me.” You don’t have to find any of it funny – though if absolutely none of it raises a smile you are either foreign or dead – but marvel at the fact that you can contextualise almost all of it without having had to try. And rejoice that there is at least something that we still have in common.
And partly that's because the boomers are so numerous, and are insisting on hanging around so long. Imagine George Formby still being the big thing in the 1960s.
The gentle evolution of popular culture that ought to have kept happening has ground to a halt and has become a bit of a tug of war.
The fragmentation of mass media doesn't help. Have we had any universally shared moments this year apart from Paddington and the Queen?
I saw a teenage kid my daughter's age wearing a Beatles t-shirt yesterday, it did make me feel a bit sad. Mind you, my daughter wears my old Deltic Preservation Society sweatshirt, apparently her friends all rave about how vintage it is. It does feel a bit as if the culture is ossifying.
I concur.
Saw a German boy aged about twelve wearing a Rolling Stones t-shirt yesterday. That’s like if I had gone about in the 1980s wearing a Fletcher Henderson Orchestra t-shirt. Simply tragic.
JESUS. I just solved basically every problem in the West
Childless people should be taxed. Heavily
That solves the demographic issue - bingo. It also brings in a ton of money for HMG. Bringing down debt and deficit
SORTED
The French do something similar, in effect. You get tax breaks for having children. It's unusual in the west in the high birth rates among middle class people.
Yes but we need to get punitive. This is a demographic crisis. Your duty is to have kids. End of
I SUPPOSE we can make exceptions for people without wombs etc, but other than that: slam them with harsh taxes, maybe even deny them normal human rights. Stop them joining choirs. Let them into larger cities only between 3-5pm. Why do they need to move around anyway if they don’t have kids?
CONFIRMED Results of the first ballot of the leadership election to be announced at 5pm tonight live on TV. Any candidate with fewer than 30 MPs in support is OUT.
Anyone got any suggestions for Zahawi? I don't see it.
The three big achievements for Johnson and his government, as claimed by his supporters, are: Brexit, Vaccines and Ukraine.
The minister for Ukraine isn't standing. Brexit isn't all that popular in the polls, and the deal is being unpicked. So that leaves vaccines.
Zahawi was vaccines minister. He's the only contender closely associated with an indisputable success for the government. That ought to count for something.
JESUS. I just solved basically every problem in the West
Childless people should be taxed. Heavily
That solves the demographic issue - bingo. It also brings in a ton of money for HMG. Bringing down debt and deficit
SORTED
Nah. We need an Offspring Tax. You want the little snot goblins? Then you can pay for all the extra burden you place on NHS, education, social services etc etc.
It would make for a thriving business - smuggling your delightful financial drains out the tax regime to Somalia.
Looking only at the first round vote, what would make any Tory MP choose one rather that another? I can come up with reasons why various different factions might support seven of the candidates (NB here I'm listing only the attractions, not any negatives):
Sunak: Brexiteer but grown-up, at least pays lip-service to sound finance, top-level experience, could clearly do the job
Truss: Nutty born-again Brexiteer, cabinet experience, plausible candidate if you want a nutty Brexiteer and irresponsible tax-cutter
Mordaunt: Fresh face, very personable, untainted, good CV for the selectorate
Badenoch: Even more of a fresh face, comes across extremely well, untainted, 'time for a change'
Tugendhat: Another fresh face and untainted, speaks well, strong on defence, traditional non-nutty Tory, supported by key Red Wall MPs.
Hunt: The only centrist (or former centrist) with the high-level experience to jump straight into the job, will appeal to the small number of remaining sane Tory MPs
Braverman: The candidate of choice for those MPs who find Liz Truss insufficiently nutty.
Anyone got any suggestions for Zahawi? I don't see it.
On the latter, perhaps those looking for personal enrichment without much scrutiny from the top.....
Fair play of Sunak to highlight those figures, but surely they’re all about name recognition at this time. They’re not going to be a great predictor of how the others would actually perform once the electorate got to know them better.
JESUS. I just solved basically every problem in the West
Childless people should be taxed. Heavily
That solves the demographic issue - bingo. It also brings in a ton of money for HMG. Bringing down debt and deficit
SORTED
1. The population Ponzi scheme is lunacy. There are already far too many people on Earth as it is. 2. Any support for such a daft idea as there is lasts precisely as long as Mrs X gets a 30% increase in her income tax bill immediately after her husband and two kids perish horribly in a motorway pile-up.
FWIW, if you're really determined to persuade young people to pump out brats earlier and in larger numbers then the most effective ways to get there are heavy subsidies for childcare, and bringing down the price of housing by building it quickly and in enormous numbers. Not through punishment beatings.
Telegraph got it priority right in regards to cost of living crisis stories...
Families have been hit by the biggest jump in childcare costs on record.....terrible....how do families manage...oh wait what, they aren't talking about after school clubs...with fees charged by nannies hitting an all-time high of close to £3,000 a month.
The Telegraph has been producing articles like this for my whole lifetime. Quite spectacular lack of awareness. Which is puzzling, because I don’t imagine those with nannies are typical of Telegraph readers, and certainly not of Telegraph journalists.
I still remember an article from the 90s about Grimsby. It started “Grimsby isn’t actually that far away. You only have to use three roads to get there – the M1, the M18 and the M180” Notice anything wrong with that? You will if you don’t live in the Home Counties. But it often doesn’t appear to occur at the Telegraph that they might have readers outside of the home counties.
Tbf. I remember reading a Guardian article years ago about the football museum in Preston. "A long drive up the M6" it said. 10 minutes on the train I thought.
Anyone got any suggestions for Zahawi? I don't see it.
The three big achievements for Johnson and his government, as claimed by his supporters, are: Brexit, Vaccines and Ukraine.
The minister for Ukraine isn't standing. Brexit isn't all that popular in the polls, and the deal is being unpicked. So that leaves vaccines.
Zahawi was vaccines minister. He's the only contender closely associated with an indisputable success for the government. That ought to count for something.
Yes, I know people have made that argument, and it does seem to be true that Zahawi is an effective administrator, but that doesn't strike me as particularly relevant to the leader/PM job.
Penny Mordaunt says that Britain has lost its sense of self
She compares it to Paul McCartney's set at Glastonbury - 'he was playing new tunes but what we really wanted was the good old stuff'
Didn't Paul play literally loads of old stuff, or did I watch a different performance
Yes – terrible analogy. Not content with having a pop at Dad’s Army, she’s now having a pop at Paul McCartney.
There’s the kernel of a point here. A nation is a nation because of the stories it tells itself about itself and has in common; common cultural reference points, beliefs, and so on. There are fewer and fewer of these. We have less and less in common; both our view of our common history and our view of our common culture*. And so the Glastonbury Festival – which even thirty years ago was still quite a long way from the mainstream – is presented as the centrepiece of the British Summer; but it is headlined by a man playing songs from 60 years ago because that was our last common cultural reference point.
I’m just scratching at this issue; I’m not convinced I’m going at it right and I’m not sure where it leads. There are side issues about education, sport, situation comedy, the BBC, pubs, online and real life interactions. There’s a persuasive point about British society in here somewhere, and reflections about the extent Britain is typical or atypical of the west in the 21st century, but I’m not sure what it is or what to do about it.
I’m not a massive Paul McCartney fan, by the way. I prefer my music less melodic. But I do recognise a) his talent, and b) his cultural importance, and c) that he pitched his set excellently.
*On which point, I urge anyone to visit the Comedy Carpet in Blackpool, which is the best example we have of a common cultural reference point. It’s about half an acre of polished paving into which have been embossed dozens and dozens of punch lines and catch phrases which almost all British people and only British people will understand. “Don’t tell him, Pike – I’m playing all the right notes but not necessarily in the right order – Infamy, infamy, they’ve all got it in for me.” You don’t have to find any of it funny – though if absolutely none of it raises a smile you are either foreign or dead – but marvel at the fact that you can contextualise almost all of it without having had to try. And rejoice that there is at least something that we still have in common.
And partly that's because the boomers are so numerous, and are insisting on hanging around so long. Imagine George Formby still being the big thing in the 1960s.
The gentle evolution of popular culture that ought to have kept happening has ground to a halt and has become a bit of a tug of war.
The fragmentation of mass media doesn't help. Have we had any universally shared moments this year apart from Paddington and the Queen?
I saw a teenage kid my daughter's age wearing a Beatles t-shirt yesterday, it did make me feel a bit sad. Mind you, my daughter wears my old Deltic Preservation Society sweatshirt, apparently her friends all rave about how vintage it is. It does feel a bit as if the culture is ossifying.
I concur.
Saw a German boy aged about twelve wearing a Rolling Stones t-shirt yesterday. That’s like if I had gone about in the 1980s wearing a Fletcher Henderson Orchestra t-shirt. Simply tragic.
Guess you must have missed Flanders & Swann headlining Glasto in '72.
If you’re fat and stupid it should only be 6% of income, say. But the more genetically desirable you are - slim, smart, attractive, educated - the higher the tax if you don’t sprog. 30% of income
I mean, if you’re that much of a catch, why aren’t you knocking out the bairns?
JESUS. I just solved basically every problem in the West
Childless people should be taxed. Heavily
That solves the demographic issue - bingo. It also brings in a ton of money for HMG. Bringing down debt and deficit
SORTED
1. The population Ponzi scheme is lunacy. There are already far too many people on Earth as it is. 2. Any support for such a daft idea as there is lasts precisely as long as Mrs X gets a 30% increase in her income tax bill immediately after her husband and two kids perish horribly in a motorway pile-up.
FWIW, if you're really determined to persuade young people to pump out brats earlier and in larger numbers then the most effective ways to get there are heavy subsidies for childcare, and bringing down the price of housing by building it quickly and in enormous numbers. Not through punishment beatings.
Sweden has a large suite of policies to make childbearing attractive, not least generous parental leave up until child reaches 8 (12 for state employees). It seems to have a marginally positive effect on fertility rates.
I struggle to see how any of the people who sit in cabinet - especially those who retain confidence in him - can be seen as serious candidates to take over and make a significant change of direction.
Brown after Blair? Starmer after Corbyn? Sturgeon after Salmond? Close lieutenants often do manage to present themselves as a change.
Telegraph got it priority right in regards to cost of living crisis stories...
Families have been hit by the biggest jump in childcare costs on record.....terrible....how do families manage...oh wait what, they aren't talking about after school clubs...with fees charged by nannies hitting an all-time high of close to £3,000 a month.
The Telegraph has been producing articles like this for my whole lifetime. Quite spectacular lack of awareness. Which is puzzling, because I don’t imagine those with nannies are typical of Telegraph readers, and certainly not of Telegraph journalists.
I still remember an article from the 90s about Grimsby. It started “Grimsby isn’t actually that far away. You only have to use three roads to get there – the M1, the M18 and the M180” Notice anything wrong with that? You will if you don’t live in the Home Counties. But it often doesn’t appear to occur at the Telegraph that they might have readers outside of the home counties.
I think it's aimed at the psychology of some middle class types who aspire to be UC and insist on regarding UC problems as their own.
Penny Mordaunt says that Britain has lost its sense of self
She compares it to Paul McCartney's set at Glastonbury - 'he was playing new tunes but what we really wanted was the good old stuff'
Didn't Paul play literally loads of old stuff, or did I watch a different performance
Yes – terrible analogy. Not content with having a pop at Dad’s Army, she’s now having a pop at Paul McCartney.
There’s the kernel of a point here. A nation is a nation because of the stories it tells itself about itself and has in common; common cultural reference points, beliefs, and so on. There are fewer and fewer of these. We have less and less in common; both our view of our common history and our view of our common culture*. And so the Glastonbury Festival – which even thirty years ago was still quite a long way from the mainstream – is presented as the centrepiece of the British Summer; but it is headlined by a man playing songs from 60 years ago because that was our last common cultural reference point.
I’m just scratching at this issue; I’m not convinced I’m going at it right and I’m not sure where it leads. There are side issues about education, sport, situation comedy, the BBC, pubs, online and real life interactions. There’s a persuasive point about British society in here somewhere, and reflections about the extent Britain is typical or atypical of the west in the 21st century, but I’m not sure what it is or what to do about it.
I’m not a massive Paul McCartney fan, by the way. I prefer my music less melodic. But I do recognise a) his talent, and b) his cultural importance, and c) that he pitched his set excellently.
*On which point, I urge anyone to visit the Comedy Carpet in Blackpool, which is the best example we have of a common cultural reference point. It’s about half an acre of polished paving into which have been embossed dozens and dozens of punch lines and catch phrases which almost all British people and only British people will understand. “Don’t tell him, Pike – I’m playing all the right notes but not necessarily in the right order – Infamy, infamy, they’ve all got it in for me.” You don’t have to find any of it funny – though if absolutely none of it raises a smile you are either foreign or dead – but marvel at the fact that you can contextualise almost all of it without having had to try. And rejoice that there is at least something that we still have in common.
And partly that's because the boomers are so numerous, and are insisting on hanging around so long. Imagine George Formby still being the big thing in the 1960s.
The gentle evolution of popular culture that ought to have kept happening has ground to a halt and has become a bit of a tug of war.
The fragmentation of mass media doesn't help. Have we had any universally shared moments this year apart from Paddington and the Queen?
I saw a teenage kid my daughter's age wearing a Beatles t-shirt yesterday, it did make me feel a bit sad. Mind you, my daughter wears my old Deltic Preservation Society sweatshirt, apparently her friends all rave about how vintage it is. It does feel a bit as if the culture is ossifying.
I've made exactly this point for some time. Culturally, 2022 doesn't feel that different from the late 90s. The music and telly and clothes are different, but not so different as the difference between the late 90s and the early 70s.
I would say this is almost solely down to the internet.
When I was young, you may not have liked what was on telly, or in the charts, but hunting out alternatives was pretty hard. You were at least aware of what was going on in the mainstream even if it wasn't your choice. Nowadays - well, I can't remember the last time I watched BBC1; and I am almost totally ignorant of chart music since Radio 6 came along and filled that need. And it is so much easier to seek out whatever niche in the cultural spectrum you might want to inhabit and ignore the rest of it. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it does mean we lose our common reference points.
Fair play of Sunak to highlight those figures, but surely they’re all about name recognition at this time. They’re not going to be a great predictor of how the others would actually perform once the electorate got to know them better.
Sunak's candidacy is about to illustrate the big and growing ideological gap between the Tory MPs and the people who work and campaign for them.
Sunak's attempt to bounce the membership into voting for him is going down like a cup of cold sick on conhome.
If you’re fat and stupid it should only be 6% of income, say. But the more genetically desirable you are - slim, smart, attractive, educated - the higher the tax if you don’t sprog. 30% of income
I mean, if you’re that much of a catch, why aren’t you knocking out the bairns?
On that scoresheet a Glasgow druggie, more emaciated than any supermodel, should have no problem at all.
I struggle to see how any of the people who sit in cabinet - especially those who retain confidence in him - can be seen as serious candidates to take over and make a significant change of direction.
Brown after Blair? Starmer after Corbyn? Sturgeon after Salmond? Close lieutenants often do manage to present themselves as a change.
They do - when the government was seen as a success. In this case the guy is resigning in disgrace with scores of ministers demanding that he quit.
Anyone got any suggestions for Zahawi? I don't see it.
The three big achievements for Johnson and his government, as claimed by his supporters, are: Brexit, Vaccines and Ukraine.
The minister for Ukraine isn't standing. Brexit isn't all that popular in the polls, and the deal is being unpicked. So that leaves vaccines.
Zahawi was vaccines minister. He's the only contender closely associated with an indisputable success for the government. That ought to count for something.
Yes, I know people have made that argument, and it does seem to be true that Zahawi is an effective administrator, but that doesn't strike me as particularly relevant to the leader/PM job.
WOOLIES CONSPIRACY THEORY SPECIAL Boris calling a VONC is his revenge on the tories. Get his loyalists to support it and 'reluctantly' be forced to seek a GE then leave them all to it. Thats what id do if i were a sociopath
Not sure it would work, as the Queen might feel there is clearly an alternative government that could command the confidence of House and tell Johnson to stick his dissolution request.
Comments
Those are big asks.
Citing a leader needs the support of a majority of MPs.
Go on Rishi
Smart? Perhaps.
I still remember an article from the 90s about Grimsby. It started “Grimsby isn’t actually that far away. You only have to use three roads to get there – the M1, the M18 and the M180” Notice anything wrong with that? You will if you don’t live in the Home Counties. But it often doesn’t appear to occur at the Telegraph that they might have readers outside of the home counties.
It has not happened that way, but in theory itd work.
Nadhim Zahawi founded YouGov, but took no shares in it. A Gibraltar company, Balshore Investments, did instead. Zahawi says this wasn't tax avoidance, but was his father injecting capital into the business.
Here's my hunt for evidence. A very lengthy thread:
https://twitter.com/danneidle/status/1547167726963236864
The gentle evolution of popular culture that ought to have kept happening has ground to a halt and has become a bit of a tug of war.
The fragmentation of mass media doesn't help. Have we had any universally shared moments this year apart from Paddington and the Queen?
There's talk of Boris Johnson going on a foreign trip next week, meaning he would miss #PMQs and leave Dominic Raab to sit-in for what would have been his last PMQs.
https://twitter.com/matt_dathan/status/1547180206716248067
10 minutes on the train I thought.
That said 200+ MPs would mean the other candidates are averaging around 22 which seems far too low.
Boris calling a VONC is his revenge on the tories. Get his loyalists to support it and 'reluctantly' be forced to seek a GE then leave them all to it.
Thats what id do if i were a sociopath
Linda Mann was murdered by Colin Pitchfork. Absolutely no interest shown by Johnson.
Whatever happens, it will always be about him.
Bonkers idea. Anyone else as a potential Sunak opponent? No Truss please
Sunak: Brexiteer but grown-up, at least pays lip-service to sound finance, top-level experience, could clearly do the job
Truss: Nutty born-again Brexiteer, cabinet experience, plausible candidate if you want a nutty Brexiteer and irresponsible tax-cutter
Mordaunt: Fresh face, very personable, untainted, good CV for the selectorate
Badenoch: Even more of a fresh face, comes across extremely well, untainted, 'time for a change'
Tugendhat: Another fresh face and untainted, speaks well, strong on defence, traditional non-nutty Tory, supported by key Red Wall MPs.
Hunt: The only centrist (or former centrist) with the high-level experience to jump straight into the job, will appeal to the small number of remaining sane Tory MPs
Braverman: The candidate of choice for those MPs who find Liz Truss insufficiently nutty.
Anyone got any suggestions for Zahawi? I don't see it.
Don't usually like this guys comedy but this made me chuckle...
Notting Hill Dad furious about Ukraine
https://twitter.com/SimonBrodkin/status/1507025450052296708?s=20&t=JK4XKLYzxgkP4mfvHai90g
Childless people should be taxed. Heavily
That solves the demographic issue - bingo. It also brings in a ton of money for HMG. Bringing down debt and deficit
SORTED
Remember folks - revenge is a dish best served cold. Remember how Theresa May coldly fired George Osborne in her first hours in Downing Street.
https://twitter.com/sharrond62/status/1547163343441592320
https://twitter.com/christopherhope/status/1547180421515018240
https://abcnews.go.com/US/quarter-americans-convinced-sun-revolves-earth-survey-finds/story?id=22542847
It is difficult to see how a genuine cultural upheaval like punk could happen now mind, fat John Lydon advertising butter and luvvin Trump & Brexit spoiled it for everyone.
My tax rebate for BMIs under 25 campaign is based on the same logic (and that used for health insurance premiums in the US).
@christopherhope
·
14m
CONFIRMED Results of the first ballot of the leadership election to be announced at 5pm tonight live on TV. Any candidate with fewer than 30 MPs in support is OUT.
https://twitter.com/PennyMordaunt/status/1545908492892098560
Oct 1974, 1979, 1997, 2015, 2017, and 2019 are discounted as the governing party did not have a working majority going in, so we can't get any information from those.
1987, 1992, 2001, 2005 were all elections where the ruling party had a majority in excess of 100 going into them.
Only those three are elections where the governing party had a non-landslide working majority going in, and I think 3 elections aren't enough to draw a conclusion. All three of those had distinguishing factors:
- Feb 1974 was pretty close to a majority
- 1983 had a massively split opposition
- 2010 had a very large third party with a lot of coverage
We pretty much need to take elections on a case by case basis.
Saw a German boy aged about twelve wearing a Rolling Stones t-shirt yesterday. That’s like if I had gone about in the 1980s wearing a Fletcher Henderson Orchestra t-shirt. Simply tragic.
I SUPPOSE we can make exceptions for people without wombs etc, but other than that: slam them with harsh taxes, maybe even deny them normal human rights. Stop them joining choirs. Let them into larger cities only between 3-5pm. Why do they need to move around anyway if they don’t have kids?
The minister for Ukraine isn't standing. Brexit isn't all that popular in the polls, and the deal is being unpicked. So that leaves vaccines.
Zahawi was vaccines minister. He's the only contender closely associated with an indisputable success for the government. That ought to count for something.
It would make for a thriving business - smuggling your delightful financial drains out the tax regime to Somalia.
Thanks
*buys shares in DNA testing firms*
2. Any support for such a daft idea as there is lasts precisely as long as Mrs X gets a 30% increase in her income tax bill immediately after her husband and two kids perish horribly in a motorway pile-up.
FWIW, if you're really determined to persuade young people to pump out brats earlier and in larger numbers then the most effective ways to get there are heavy subsidies for childcare, and bringing down the price of housing by building it quickly and in enormous numbers. Not through punishment beatings.
If you’re fat and stupid it should only be 6% of income, say. But the more genetically desirable you are - slim, smart, attractive, educated - the higher the tax if you don’t sprog. 30% of income
I mean, if you’re that much of a catch, why aren’t you knocking out the bairns?
Would that be tapered?
Culturally, 2022 doesn't feel that different from the late 90s. The music and telly and clothes are different, but not so different as the difference between the late 90s and the early 70s.
I would say this is almost solely down to the internet.
When I was young, you may not have liked what was on telly, or in the charts, but hunting out alternatives was pretty hard. You were at least aware of what was going on in the mainstream even if it wasn't your choice.
Nowadays - well, I can't remember the last time I watched BBC1; and I am almost totally ignorant of chart music since Radio 6 came along and filled that need. And it is so much easier to seek out whatever niche in the cultural spectrum you might want to inhabit and ignore the rest of it.
This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it does mean we lose our common reference points.
Sunak's attempt to bounce the membership into voting for him is going down like a cup of cold sick on conhome.
Effective, both absolute snakes.