The state of the conservative party, as being shown to the public, with petty squabbling and disunity, while with the most diverse of candidates standing for PM, are most likely to elect the least favourable as they continue their Johnson tribute act
My wife and I discussed this this morning and agreed that unless the party comes to it's senses its deserves to go into opposition and we agreed we would vote for the independent candidate at the next GE if this came about
They are tired and have been in office too long and a period in opposition may well be needed, but I really hope the Lib Dems perform well in those circumstances and are able to protect the country from labour's worst excesses
Anyway, on Tuesday we travel to Pitlochry, then on Wednesday to Lossiemouth to see our family which we have not been able to do due to covid, then a week tomorrow we have hired a 6 berth cabin cruiser on the Caledonian Canal to be accompanied by our daughter, her husband, their son and dog, and we shall enjoy being far away from the maddening crowds
This will be our third time navigating the Caledonian canal, and my wife's late father sailed his fishing boat through the canal numerous times as he and his brothers fished in Ireland, and indeed helped to develop the Irish fishing industry at the time
Sadly the Lib Dems have no clue either. Go on their website site and click Join. And it gives you a paragraph all about Brexit and the Iraq War. Even after their humiliation in 2019, they still don’t realise that Boris got his majority because the electorate wanted to stop talking and thinking about Brexit.
As for Iraq? First time voters next time were born after Saddam died. It’d be like Blair making one of his top three campaign points that Labour kept Britain out the Vietnam War. Not even to mention that right now the public at large are fully behind efforts to arm and repel the Russian army, with Ukraine flags hanging in village squares and tower block bedroom windows up and down the land.
The state of the conservative party, as being shown to the public, with petty squabbling and disunity, while with the most diverse of candidates standing for PM, are most likely to elect the least favourable as they continue their Johnson tribute act
My wife and I discussed this this morning and agreed that unless the party comes to it's senses its deserves to go into opposition and we agreed we would vote for the independent candidate at the next GE if this came about
They are tired and have been in office too long and a period in opposition may well be needed, but I really hope the Lib Dems perform well in those circumstances and are able to protect the country from labour's worst excesses
Anyway, on Tuesday we travel to Pitlochry, then on Wednesday to Lossiemouth to see our family which we have not been able to do due to covid, then a week tomorrow we have hired a 6 berth cabin cruiser on the Caledonian Canal to be accompanied by our daughter, her husband, their son and dog, and we shall enjoy being far away from the maddening crowds
This will be our third time navigating the Caledonian canal, and my wife's late father sailed his fishing boat through the canal numerous times as he and his brothers fished in Ireland, and indeed helped to develop the Irish fishing industry at the time
I'm not quite sure what your logic is in wanting the Lib Dems to do well, but voting for "the independent candidate". Is your seat Aberconwy?
I think TSE is wrong on this - at least for some aspects of the culture war. Even on a heavily "champagne" forum like this, I'm sure many of us are aware of some quite extraordinary things that have been said to children at schools, anecdotes worth as much as a the cited focus group. When it comes to a secret ballot with the government at stake I think the results may surprise.
To borrow the Chilean saying, trans extremism is god's way of keeping the left out of power forever.
The gamble for the Tories is this: as people get cold and hungry this winter, will the supposed threat of cock-wielding trans deviants persuade them to ignore their hunger and cold and the anger that generates towards the Tories, and instead be kept warm in a Mail-induced fury about bathrooms?
Under current rules pre operative Trans people are required to live as their new gender for two years. It is hard to see how that doesn't involve using female only spaces.
Current rules passed by the current administration?
The Sunday Rawnsley: One shrewd senior Tory puts [Mordaunt's] surge down to “the rejection of the establishments”. The “Treasury establishment”, otherwise known as Rishi Sunak, is unpopular with many Tories because he has put up taxes. The “Boris establishment”, which is largely falling in behind Liz Truss, is loathed by those Tory MPs who received no preferment from the Johnson regime and those who were repelled by its scandals.
She suggests she would be a unifier, which will appeal to Tories sickened by the extreme levels of nastiness exhibited in a contest that makes Game of Thrones look bloodless. Her backers see in her the potential to revive the coalition of voters who secured victory for the Tories at the last election. Evidence for this is far from conclusive, but there has been some work by pollsters that suggests key voter groups like the look of her more than they do her rivals.
Labour thinks it has a handle on Mr Sunak and Ms Truss. Ms Mordaunt hasn’t been thought about before by Sir Keir Starmer’s team. Some of them worry that a Conservative leader from a gritty city who was schooled at a comprehensive will be harder to depict as a typical Tory.
Since she emerged as the members’ favourite, rival camps and their media allies have launched an onslaught in a frantic attempt to stall her momentum. One of her supporters says the central challenge of the next few days will be “getting past all the black propaganda". The attacks may rebound to her advantage. Tory MPs enjoy the spectacle of a vicious cage fight between wannabe leaders. Tory members tend to hate it.
She isn’t presenting anything that sounds like a thought-through strategy to address the many problems pressing on Britain, but then neither are her competitors. In a less surreal contest, her lack of top-flight experience would be a huge handicap. In this one, a lot of Tories are clearly choosing to treat being an unknown quantity as a virtue and a record in a great office of state as a liability. “Why is she doing so well?” says one of Mr Sunak’s backers. “Because she’s not Rishi and she’s not Truss.” Such is the desperate and disorientated condition of the Tory party that could be enough.
I think TSE is wrong on this - at least for some aspects of the culture war. Even on a heavily "champagne" forum like this, I'm sure many of us are aware of some quite extraordinary things that have been said to children at schools, anecdotes worth as much as a the cited focus group. When it comes to a secret ballot with the government at stake I think the results may surprise.
To borrow the Chilean saying, trans extremism is god's way of keeping the left out of power forever.
The gamble for the Tories is this: as people get cold and hungry this winter, will the supposed threat of cock-wielding trans deviants persuade them to ignore their hunger and cold and the anger that generates towards the Tories, and instead be kept warm in a Mail-induced fury about bathrooms?
But it's not really an either/or, it it? We'll be cold and hungry anyway. Gas has got much more expensive and no amount of accounting tricks will change that. Whereas we can choose whether we invite Stonewall in to our institutions to advance their gender agenda. But for the record, if government could either prevent food prices from doubling or stop schools from advancing their ultra-woke agenda, I would rather they stopped schools from advancing their ultra-woke agenda. I don't watch kids growing up with a sense of shame about being straight and white.
Mr. 1000, aye. Utterly pointless, and contrary to the obvious national interest.
It's remarkable how bad multiple parties have been on energy. They're shit hot on closing down coal-powered power stations, but when it comes to building enough new nuclear sites, less good.
Johnson's 'rush for nuclear' sums up the short-sightedness.
Have we actually been bad?
We've managed to close down almost all of our 'dirtiest' plants: the coal ones, replacing them with less-polluting gas plants. We've massively increased the amount of renewable energy over the last ten or fifteen years, even under (shock, horror) a Conservative government.
We are facing a problem with gas supply this winter due to Russia's actions. But we faced issues with electricity generation (and had electricity rationing for months) in 1974 due to the miners' strike.
Yes, we could have done more; but what we have done is actually quite impressive. Ten years or so ago, I had some conversations with RCS on here about the dangers of power cuts in 2016. He said there would not be any. He was right; I was wrong.
Ed Davey was the big mover on Renewable energy under the coalition. Tories love to claim credit for what the LibDems did in coalition.
As I have been saying for about 7 years, the Coalition will be remembered as a golden era of good government by comparison with what comes after.
I've said that as well. And with what came immediately before, as well.
But putting all of the good that happened on Ed Davey is a trifle unfair on Cameron and the others in government.
Why? Davey drove policies the Tories were against. If the Tories had actually supported them they they could take credit. As it is, horse trading saw Tory votes for LibDem energy policies just as we then had LibDem votes for Tory health policies.
Were they 'against them'?
Given that the same policies have continued (indeed, accelerated), I'd say that was hard to argue. Yes, there are some Conservatives who were (and are) vociferously against these schemes. But these schemes go on despite them.
Betfair next prime minister 2.62 Rishi Sunak 38% 2.7 Penny Mordaunt 37% 6.4 Liz Truss 16% 10.5 Kemi Badenoch 10% 95 Tom Tugendhat 110 Dominic Raab
To make the final two 1.08 Rishi Sunak 93% 1.55 Penny Mordaunt 65% 3.2 Liz Truss 31% 7.2 Kemi Badenoch 14% 100 Tom Tugendhat
No matter how useless she is, I suspect that Ms Truss is the value here.
(1) She's not Rishi Sunak, and would beat him in a head-to-head (2) She's likely to beat out Kemi for third place, and therefore will be the main repository for her votes
Ah, but would she? And will she?
While Yougov showed Truss beating Sunak in the membership head-to-heads, Opinium had Rishi beating her.
Yesterday saw a plunge on Kemi, whose odds more than halved, presumably because people believe Kemi can replace Truss as the great white hope of the Brexiteer right.
David Herdson - who knows about this kind of stuff - believes the Tories will go for Mordaunt. I find it hard to believe that they would be mad enough not to go with Sunak. But, for different reasons, either of those two takes culture wars off the table.
These things are not driven from the top. The question is whether they will weigh in or have ministers who will.
Since it will be a handy distraction from time to time of course they will.
DavidL's point that they said they weren't interested in doing so is I think rather naive. Everyone says they'll focus on important things that matter, they may even mean it, but the temptation will come.
The state of the conservative party, as being shown to the public, with petty squabbling and disunity, while with the most diverse of candidates standing for PM, are most likely to elect the least favourable as they continue their Johnson tribute act
My wife and I discussed this this morning and agreed that unless the party comes to it's senses its deserves to go into opposition and we agreed we would vote for the independent candidate at the next GE if this came about
They are tired and have been in office too long and a period in opposition may well be needed, but I really hope the Lib Dems perform well in those circumstances and are able to protect the country from labour's worst excesses
Anyway, on Tuesday we travel to Pitlochry, then on Wednesday to Lossiemouth to see our family which we have not been able to do due to covid, then a week tomorrow we have hired a 6 berth cabin cruiser on the Caledonian Canal to be accompanied by our daughter, her husband, their son and dog, and we shall enjoy being far away from the maddening crowds
This will be our third time navigating the Caledonian canal, and my wife's late father sailed his fishing boat through the canal numerous times as he and his brothers fished in Ireland, and indeed helped to develop the Irish fishing industry at the time
The Tory party deserves respect and kudos for unlocking gender and ethnic diversity at the top. Labour and a plethora of other organisations have something to learn from that.
Beyond that, this leadership election is a mess, revealing a party that doesn’t have a clue about what it wants and where it thinks the country should be going, it seriously needs some time in opposition to sort itself out,
It’s next two years could well be brutal. I have zero confidence that they will sort out the economy. They will descend into fighting and gimmicks when the going gets tough.
I think TSE is wrong on this - at least for some aspects of the culture war. Even on a heavily "champagne" forum like this, I'm sure many of us are aware of some quite extraordinary things that have been said to children at schools, anecdotes worth as much as a the cited focus group. When it comes to a secret ballot with the government at stake I think the results may surprise.
To borrow the Chilean saying, trans extremism is god's way of keeping the left out of power forever.
The gamble for the Tories is this: as people get cold and hungry this winter, will the supposed threat of cock-wielding trans deviants persuade them to ignore their hunger and cold and the anger that generates towards the Tories, and instead be kept warm in a Mail-induced fury about bathrooms?
But it's not really an either/or, it it? We'll be cold and hungry anyway. Gas has got much more expensive and no amount of accounting tricks will change that. Whereas we can choose whether we invite Stonewall in to our institutions to advance their gender agenda. But for the record, if government could either prevent food prices from doubling or stop schools from advancing their ultra-woke agenda, I would rather they stopped schools from advancing their ultra-woke agenda. I don't watch kids growing up with a sense of shame about being straight and white.
I don't see any 'ultra-woke' agenda in my son's primary school. He's just about to start Year 4. Does it start later?
Net Zero is a much bigger and juicier target than trans bathrooms during an energy crisis.
Yes, because we'd be in a much better position today if we still got all our energy from hydrocarbons.
Back in 2021, you could (rightly) claim that renewables were increasing the price of our electricity.
Today, the government paying a guaranteed £43/MWh for wind looks like like utter genius.
Building tidal lagoons instead of endlessly faffing around with overpriced and probably never to be built nuclear power stations would have looked much more like utter genius.
Particularly with renewables, you want a portfolio approach.
But I still find it astonishing that at a time when hydrocarbon prices are through the roof, a few people come out of the woodwork and say "Well, if only we'd not increased our reliance on renewables, we'd be fine."
I'm not a man to through around the "retard" word lightly. But W.T.F.
The issue with wind is it went hand in hand with the expansion of CCGT power, which was the only realistic way of balancing the load when the wind wasn't blowing.
And that's now coming home to roost with a vengeance.
If there were effective storage solutions available for wind generation things would be different. But there are none available yet.
We don't have the excess of wind energy to store. Storage only becomes an issue when there is frequently an excess that needs time-shifting. I'm confident that if we rapidly doubled our wind generation that you would see large-scale storage deployed to store the excess wind energy that would be produced at times.
Not immediately, but significant amounts of cheap surplus electricity would provide the incentive for it. The more straightforward immediate term response would be to make larger scale interconnects with Europe economically attractive. Continent wide interconnects will probably come before very large scale storage.
Mr. 1000, aye. Utterly pointless, and contrary to the obvious national interest.
It's remarkable how bad multiple parties have been on energy. They're shit hot on closing down coal-powered power stations, but when it comes to building enough new nuclear sites, less good.
Johnson's 'rush for nuclear' sums up the short-sightedness.
Have we actually been bad?
We've managed to close down almost all of our 'dirtiest' plants: the coal ones, replacing them with less-polluting gas plants. We've massively increased the amount of renewable energy over the last ten or fifteen years, even under (shock, horror) a Conservative government.
We are facing a problem with gas supply this winter due to Russia's actions. But we faced issues with electricity generation (and had electricity rationing for months) in 1974 due to the miners' strike.
Yes, we could have done more; but what we have done is actually quite impressive. Ten years or so ago, I had some conversations with RCS on here about the dangers of power cuts in 2016. He said there would not be any. He was right; I was wrong.
Ed Davey was the big mover on Renewable energy under the coalition. Tories love to claim credit for what the LibDems did in coalition.
As I have been saying for about 7 years, the Coalition will be remembered as a golden era of good government by comparison with what comes after.
I've said that as well. And with what came immediately before, as well.
But putting all of the good that happened on Ed Davey is a trifle unfair on Cameron and the others in government.
I didn't say ALL the good, I said Davey was the big mover, and he was.
The state of the conservative party, as being shown to the public, with petty squabbling and disunity, while with the most diverse of candidates standing for PM, are most likely to elect the least favourable as they continue their Johnson tribute act
My wife and I discussed this this morning and agreed that unless the party comes to it's senses its deserves to go into opposition and we agreed we would vote for the independent candidate at the next GE if this came about
They are tired and have been in office too long and a period in opposition may well be needed, but I really hope the Lib Dems perform well in those circumstances and are able to protect the country from labour's worst excesses
Anyway, on Tuesday we travel to Pitlochry, then on Wednesday to Lossiemouth to see our family which we have not been able to do due to covid, then a week tomorrow we have hired a 6 berth cabin cruiser on the Caledonian Canal to be accompanied by our daughter, her husband, their son and dog, and we shall enjoy being far away from the maddening crowds
This will be our third time navigating the Caledonian canal, and my wife's late father sailed his fishing boat through the canal numerous times as he and his brothers fished in Ireland, and indeed helped to develop the Irish fishing industry at the time
Sadly the Lib Dems have no clue either. Go on their website site and click Join. And it gives you a paragraph all about Brexit and the Iraq War. Even after their humiliation in 2019, they still don’t realise that Boris got his majority because the electorate wanted to stop talking and thinking about Brexit.
As for Iraq? First time voters next time were born after Saddam died. It’d be like Blair making one of his top three campaign points that Labour kept Britain out the Vietnam War. Not even to mention that right now the public at large are fully behind efforts to arm and repel the Russian army, with Ukraine flags hanging in village squares and tower block bedroom windows up and down the land.
Clueless they are.
This looks wrong to me. An Ashcroft poll after the 2019 elections shows that the number one reason people voted Conservative was to choose the 'party or leader “was the most likely to get the Brexit outcome I wanted”'
I think TSE is wrong on this - at least for some aspects of the culture war. Even on a heavily "champagne" forum like this, I'm sure many of us are aware of some quite extraordinary things that have been said to children at schools, anecdotes worth as much as a the cited focus group. When it comes to a secret ballot with the government at stake I think the results may surprise.
To borrow the Chilean saying, trans extremism is god's way of keeping the left out of power forever.
The gamble for the Tories is this: as people get cold and hungry this winter, will the supposed threat of cock-wielding trans deviants persuade them to ignore their hunger and cold and the anger that generates towards the Tories, and instead be kept warm in a Mail-induced fury about bathrooms?
Not a trans deviant probably, a heterosexual shit who got in a position to do what he did because of tedious dweebs who think they are being right on. Amusing post though.
Mr. Observer, they went for Boris Johnson before...
Sunak is so clearly the best candidate. For all his lies and grift, Johnson at least had a track record of winning, so there was a logic to choosing him. Mordaunt has nothing. She also seems to be a liar and fantasist. I can see the appeal of Badenoch to a very right wing electorate, so choosing her would also have a logic to it, though I think the wider public would very quickly tire of her after a briefish honeymoon.
Slightly odd header to be honest. All 5 of the candidates on the Friday debate made it very clear that they had no interest in being distracted by trans or other issues and offered moderate and reasonable positions which you would find hard to slip a fag paper between.
It was clearly much more of a risk that the Boris government would go down that path but that and he are irrelevant now.
They are still foaming on about it though. Especially aimed at Mordaunt. And remember that once they get through the shark pool that is MP voting they face the lunacy of Tory members. The only people who read the Daily Express and think its a newspaper are going to decide the next PM. Pledges will have to be made to pander to these lunatics...
Maybe I'm too taken in by the public image, but I'm inclined to file this under "Johnson doesn't think rules are worth bothering with" (which is bad but not exactly news) rather than anything more sinister. His policies don't strike me as pro-Russian (unlike, at least intermittently, Trump).
Net Zero is a much bigger and juicier target than trans bathrooms during an energy crisis.
Yes, because we'd be in a much better position today if we still got all our energy from hydrocarbons.
Back in 2021, you could (rightly) claim that renewables were increasing the price of our electricity.
Today, the government paying a guaranteed £43/MWh for wind looks like like utter genius.
Building tidal lagoons instead of endlessly faffing around with overpriced and probably never to be built nuclear power stations would have looked much more like utter genius.
We hear a lot about tidal lagoons, but I am (currently) unconvinced. The scale required to make a difference is massive, and despite what the proponents say, the costs will likewise be massive.
Having said that, I'm in favour if having as varied a power generation system in the UK as possible; we should throw everything into the mix. It's just that I doubt tidal lagoons will prove to be as cheap or effective as their proponents claim.
Whether you are convinced or not has become irrelevant because the government vetoed large scale trials, claiming it would undoubtedly be more expensive, shorter lived and less reliable than the nuclear options they were exploring. Which was clearly bullshit.
They don't have to be a silver bullet. Only more reliable than wind, cheaper than gas and longer lasting than nuclear.
Which they undoubtedly would be. There is no realistic way you can juggle the numbers to come out with a different answer.
If we'd built five lagoons five years ago we'd be in a much better situation now.
"Which they undoubtedly would be."
We are talking about new tech done on a scale that had not been attempted before. Worse, we are talking about a new tech that almost wholly involves groundworks and water: perhaps the most complex and troublesome types of civil engineering. And to make a difference, they need to be large in scale (even if individual ones are small).
If we'd started building five lagoons five years ago, we'd probably still be building them. In fact, we'd probably still be in the planning stage.
This is not a reason not to build them: but I can't see them being anywhere near as advantageous or easy as you make out.
The Swansea proposal was around the same size as the Sihwa or Rance power stations. The latter has been operating for nearly 60 years. The former for over a decade.
We are not really talking new technology here.
We are at this scale. The proponents of the Swansea scheme refer to it thus: "Swansea Bay Tidal Lagoon will be the world’s first tidal lagoon power plant."
Now, dams have been built. Barriers have been built. Barrages have been built. The Sihwa scheme is impressive. But the scale of these schemes is still impressive from a civ eng point of view.
Well, they were talking nonsense then, because their projected output for the initial lagoon AIUI was around 230 MWH - slightly less than Rance at 240.
If they are 'talking nonsense' on one of the first lines on the front page of their website, why should we take any of the rest of it as anywhere near accurate?
(There is a chance that the claim on the front page was written before the SK scheme came online, and they just have not updated it.)
A perfectly fair question, to which if I'm honest I have no answer. The most likely scenario is the intro was written by a management consultant who didn't have a clue what they were talking about.
That said, the fact the nuclear industry and their stooges at energy and climate change were so desperate not even to allow a trial suggests they were afraid the figures would not be in their favour.
And tidal power is ours. Not reliant on Canada orRussia. As long as we have a moon, we'll have tides. That's 'strategic resilience' for you.
Edit - and Rance is France, notSouth Korea. I don't think it was written before 1966.
The state of the conservative party, as being shown to the public, with petty squabbling and disunity, while with the most diverse of candidates standing for PM, are most likely to elect the least favourable as they continue their Johnson tribute act
My wife and I discussed this this morning and agreed that unless the party comes to it's senses its deserves to go into opposition and we agreed we would vote for the independent candidate at the next GE if this came about
They are tired and have been in office too long and a period in opposition may well be needed, but I really hope the Lib Dems perform well in those circumstances and are able to protect the country from labour's worst excesses
Anyway, on Tuesday we travel to Pitlochry, then on Wednesday to Lossiemouth to see our family which we have not been able to do due to covid, then a week tomorrow we have hired a 6 berth cabin cruiser on the Caledonian Canal to be accompanied by our daughter, her husband, their son and dog, and we shall enjoy being far away from the maddening crowds
This will be our third time navigating the Caledonian canal, and my wife's late father sailed his fishing boat through the canal numerous times as he and his brothers fished in Ireland, and indeed helped to develop the Irish fishing industry at the time
I'm not quite sure what your logic is in wanting the Lib Dems to do well, but voting for "the independent candidate". Is your seat Aberconwy?
Yes and the Lib dems are anonymous here
It is a very marginal conservative seat v labour
So who is "the independent candidate"? Are they more or less anonymous than the Lib Dems?
The state of the conservative party, as being shown to the public, with petty squabbling and disunity, while with the most diverse of candidates standing for PM, are most likely to elect the least favourable as they continue their Johnson tribute act
My wife and I discussed this this morning and agreed that unless the party comes to it's senses its deserves to go into opposition and we agreed we would vote for the independent candidate at the next GE if this came about
They are tired and have been in office too long and a period in opposition may well be needed, but I really hope the Lib Dems perform well in those circumstances and are able to protect the country from labour's worst excesses
Anyway, on Tuesday we travel to Pitlochry, then on Wednesday to Lossiemouth to see our family which we have not been able to do due to covid, then a week tomorrow we have hired a 6 berth cabin cruiser on the Caledonian Canal to be accompanied by our daughter, her husband, their son and dog, and we shall enjoy being far away from the maddening crowds
This will be our third time navigating the Caledonian canal, and my wife's late father sailed his fishing boat through the canal numerous times as he and his brothers fished in Ireland, and indeed helped to develop the Irish fishing industry at the time
Mr. Observer, they went for Boris Johnson before...
Sunak is so clearly the best candidate. For all his lies and grift, Johnson at least had a track record of winning, so there was a logic to choosing him. Mordaunt has nothing. She also seems to be a liar and fantasist. I can see the appeal of Badenoch to a very right wing electorate, so choosing her would also have a logic to it, though I think the wider public would very quickly tire of her after a briefish honeymoon.
The question is who can fix the economy. The Tories have three potential answers.
If you think it’s a Thatcher tribute act with dry economics, pick Truss. If you think PR and vague soft focus politicking will solve the economy, pick Mordaunt. If you think, it’s an establishment treasury led approach, pick Sunak.
I think TSE is wrong on this - at least for some aspects of the culture war. Even on a heavily "champagne" forum like this, I'm sure many of us are aware of some quite extraordinary things that have been said to children at schools, anecdotes worth as much as a the cited focus group. When it comes to a secret ballot with the government at stake I think the results may surprise.
To borrow the Chilean saying, trans extremism is god's way of keeping the left out of power forever.
The gamble for the Tories is this: as people get cold and hungry this winter, will the supposed threat of cock-wielding trans deviants persuade them to ignore their hunger and cold and the anger that generates towards the Tories, and instead be kept warm in a Mail-induced fury about bathrooms?
Throw some Rochdale taxi drivers into the mix and starvation and the cold will be furthest from the minds of your average patriot RedWall voters.
An anecdotal Brexit irony I learned this week was one of my customers is awaiting immigration documentation for a team of Sikh workers they are importing to replace the Eastern Europeans that returned home through the pandemic. Fine by me, but not something your average RedWall Tory convert read on the side of a bus I don't suppose.
Renewable energy. Stop talking, start doing. Solves so many problems. It needs to be approached with some urgency.
Tell it to these boys:
Nothing there to stop us investing in renewables and becoming an energy self sufficient, low carbon UK. Time to end the political BS, we can do this.
I agree but my point is we are never going to race well-ahead of the pack where this causes us huge relative economic pain.
Perhaps we should develop a joint energy policy with the EU? I'm not just teasing Brexiteers here - surely it's possible to want freedom to do stuff differently if we want to, and still see sense in cooperation where it's helpful?
I think TSE is wrong on this - at least for some aspects of the culture war. Even on a heavily "champagne" forum like this, I'm sure many of us are aware of some quite extraordinary things that have been said to children at schools, anecdotes worth as much as a the cited focus group. When it comes to a secret ballot with the government at stake I think the results may surprise.
To borrow the Chilean saying, trans extremism is god's way of keeping the left out of power forever.
The gamble for the Tories is this: as people get cold and hungry this winter, will the supposed threat of cock-wielding trans deviants persuade them to ignore their hunger and cold and the anger that generates towards the Tories, and instead be kept warm in a Mail-induced fury about bathrooms?
But it's not really an either/or, it it? We'll be cold and hungry anyway. Gas has got much more expensive and no amount of accounting tricks will change that. Whereas we can choose whether we invite Stonewall in to our institutions to advance their gender agenda. But for the record, if government could either prevent food prices from doubling or stop schools from advancing their ultra-woke agenda, I would rather they stopped schools from advancing their ultra-woke agenda. I don't watch kids growing up with a sense of shame about being straight and white.
My various nephews are in or have recently finished school. None of them are ashamed of being straight and white. As per TSE, I think most of the electorate will care more about food prices doubling. And wages stalling, NHS waiting lists growing, …
Back to culture wars. The did she/didn't she kerfuffle over Penny Mordaunt's trans take features on two front pages, the Sunday Times and Mail on Sunday, following a leak of government papers. Front pages: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-the-papers-62194671
But MoS harbours doubts and has a question mark on its headline, Does Leak Show Penny Did Back Gender Self-ID?
The Sunday Times headline is far more assertive — Mordaunt's gender claims undermined by leaked papers — but the online headline has been watered down to Leaked documents call Penny Mordaunt’s gender self-ID claims into question. A couple of paragraphs in it becomes clear there is no smoking gun. No wonder the Mail was unconvinced.
Penny Mordaunt’s claims that she has never supported gender self-identification have come under fresh scrutiny after leaked government documents suggested she backed watering down the legal process for transitioning.
A bigger issue than a short heatwave is the longer-term lack of rainfall there has been in many parts of the country. That's going to be a very real problem if it continues. We need a very wet winter.
A bigger issue than a short heatwave is the longer-term lack of rainfall there has been in many parts of the country. That's going to be a very real problem if it continues. We need a very wet winter.
Getting rid of so many reservoirs can't have helped.
The Sunday Rawnsley: One shrewd senior Tory puts [Mordaunt's] surge down to “the rejection of the establishments”. The “Treasury establishment”, otherwise known as Rishi Sunak, is unpopular with many Tories because he has put up taxes. The “Boris establishment”, which is largely falling in behind Liz Truss, is loathed by those Tory MPs who received no preferment from the Johnson regime and those who were repelled by its scandals.
She suggests she would be a unifier, which will appeal to Tories sickened by the extreme levels of nastiness exhibited in a contest that makes Game of Thrones look bloodless. Her backers see in her the potential to revive the coalition of voters who secured victory for the Tories at the last election. Evidence for this is far from conclusive, but there has been some work by pollsters that suggests key voter groups like the look of her more than they do her rivals.
Labour thinks it has a handle on Mr Sunak and Ms Truss. Ms Mordaunt hasn’t been thought about before by Sir Keir Starmer’s team. Some of them worry that a Conservative leader from a gritty city who was schooled at a comprehensive will be harder to depict as a typical Tory.
Since she emerged as the members’ favourite, rival camps and their media allies have launched an onslaught in a frantic attempt to stall her momentum. One of her supporters says the central challenge of the next few days will be “getting past all the black propaganda". The attacks may rebound to her advantage. Tory MPs enjoy the spectacle of a vicious cage fight between wannabe leaders. Tory members tend to hate it.
She isn’t presenting anything that sounds like a thought-through strategy to address the many problems pressing on Britain, but then neither are her competitors. In a less surreal contest, her lack of top-flight experience would be a huge handicap. In this one, a lot of Tories are clearly choosing to treat being an unknown quantity as a virtue and a record in a great office of state as a liability. “Why is she doing so well?” says one of Mr Sunak’s backers. “Because she’s not Rishi and she’s not Truss.” Such is the desperate and disorientated condition of the Tory party that could be enough.
I agree with the core premise, but jas it really been that dramatically nasty a contest? All seems pretty tame and normal to me, just a couple of accusations of people making misleading claims and the ERG crowd getting in their whinges in case their candidate loses.
Renewable energy. Stop talking, start doing. Solves so many problems. It needs to be approached with some urgency.
Tell it to these boys:
Nothing there to stop us investing in renewables and becoming an energy self sufficient, low carbon UK. Time to end the political BS, we can do this.
I agree but my point is we are never going to race well-ahead of the pack where this causes us huge relative economic pain.
Perhaps we should develop a joint energy policy with the EU? I'm not just teasing Brexiteers here - surely it's possible to want freedom to do stuff differently if we want to, and still see sense in cooperation where it's helpful?
A joint energy policy with the EU? Well, that will move quickly. 😂. It was bad enough trying to agree anything when we were on the inside, now we are outside?
We need a big hairy Apollo like goal, backed with real political leadership.
I am not holding my breath, but that is what it will take.
The state of the conservative party, as being shown to the public, with petty squabbling and disunity, while with the most diverse of candidates standing for PM, are most likely to elect the least favourable as they continue their Johnson tribute act
My wife and I discussed this this morning and agreed that unless the party comes to it's senses its deserves to go into opposition and we agreed we would vote for the independent candidate at the next GE if this came about
They are tired and have been in office too long and a period in opposition may well be needed, but I really hope the Lib Dems perform well in those circumstances and are able to protect the country from labour's worst excesses
Anyway, on Tuesday we travel to Pitlochry, then on Wednesday to Lossiemouth to see our family which we have not been able to do due to covid, then a week tomorrow we have hired a 6 berth cabin cruiser on the Caledonian Canal to be accompanied by our daughter, her husband, their son and dog, and we shall enjoy being far away from the maddening crowds
This will be our third time navigating the Caledonian canal, and my wife's late father sailed his fishing boat through the canal numerous times as he and his brothers fished in Ireland, and indeed helped to develop the Irish fishing industry at the time
The Tory party deserves respect and kudos for unlocking gender and ethnic diversity at the top. Labour and a plethora of other organisations have something to learn from that.
Beyond that, this leadership election is a mess, revealing a party that doesn’t have a clue about what it wants and where it thinks the country should be going, it seriously needs some time in opposition to sort itself out,
It’s next two years could well be brutal. I have zero confidence that they will sort out the economy. They will descend into fighting and gimmicks when the going gets tough.
Thank Cameron for unlocking Tory diversity. I don’t think any of the leadership candidates today look like another Cameron unfortunately.
Back to culture wars. The did she/didn't she kerfuffle over Penny Mordaunt's trans take features on two front pages, the Sunday Times and Mail on Sunday, following a leak of government papers. Front pages: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-the-papers-62194671
But MoS harbours doubts and has a question mark on its headline, Does Leak Show Penny Did Back Gender Self-ID?
The Sunday Times headline is far more assertive — Mordaunt's gender claims undermined by leaked papers — but the online headline has been watered down to Leaked documents call Penny Mordaunt’s gender self-ID claims into question. A couple of paragraphs in it becomes clear there is no smoking gun. No wonder the Mail was unconvinced.
Penny Mordaunt’s claims that she has never supported gender self-identification have come under fresh scrutiny after leaked government documents suggested she backed watering down the legal process for transitioning.
Mr. Observer, they went for Boris Johnson before...
Sunak is so clearly the best candidate. For all his lies and grift, Johnson at least had a track record of winning, so there was a logic to choosing him. Mordaunt has nothing. She also seems to be a liar and fantasist. I can see the appeal of Badenoch to a very right wing electorate, so choosing her would also have a logic to it, though I think the wider public would very quickly tire of her after a briefish honeymoon.
The question is who can fix the economy. The Tories have three potential answers.
If you think it’s a Thatcher tribute act with dry economics, pick Truss. If you think PR and vague soft focus politicking will solve the economy, pick Mordaunt. If you think, it’s an establishment treasury led approach, pick Sunak.
If you understand none of them have answers, and that Labour are no better, start panicking now.
Mr. Observer, they went for Boris Johnson before...
Sunak is so clearly the best candidate. For all his lies and grift, Johnson at least had a track record of winning, so there was a logic to choosing him. Mordaunt has nothing. She also seems to be a liar and fantasist. I can see the appeal of Badenoch to a very right wing electorate, so choosing her would also have a logic to it, though I think the wider public would very quickly tire of her after a briefish honeymoon.
The question is who can fix the economy. The Tories have three potential answers.
If you think it’s a Thatcher tribute act with dry economics, pick Truss. If you think PR and vague soft focus politicking will solve the economy, pick Mordaunt. If you think, it’s an establishment treasury led approach, pick Sunak.
Are you sure it is Liz Truss channelling Mrs Thatcher? (Hmm. If Liz wins, the moniker Mrs T becomes ambiguous.) Truss wants to reclassify half of government debt in order to ignore it. This could be a good idea but is it Thatcherite?
Maybe I'm too taken in by the public image, but I'm inclined to file this under "Johnson doesn't think rules are worth bothering with" (which is bad but not exactly news) rather than anything more sinister. His policies don't strike me as pro-Russian (unlike, at least intermittently, Trump).
There's a credible theory that the Italian trip's sole purpose was to pursue an illicit romance somewhere out of Carrie's line of sight. Politically entirely innocent, but he can't say so. Delicious if true
Net Zero is a much bigger and juicier target than trans bathrooms during an energy crisis.
Yes, because we'd be in a much better position today if we still got all our energy from hydrocarbons.
Back in 2021, you could (rightly) claim that renewables were increasing the price of our electricity.
Today, the government paying a guaranteed £43/MWh for wind looks like like utter genius.
Building tidal lagoons instead of endlessly faffing around with overpriced and probably never to be built nuclear power stations would have looked much more like utter genius.
Particularly with renewables, you want a portfolio approach.
But I still find it astonishing that at a time when hydrocarbon prices are through the roof, a few people come out of the woodwork and say "Well, if only we'd not increased our reliance on renewables, we'd be fine."
I'm not a man to through around the "retard" word lightly. But W.T.F.
Isn't the issue the costs and sacrifices required to achieve Net Zero right across the economy?
Decarbonising the grid is actually relatively easy without busting the economy. As this graph shows:
It's heating homes and businesses, alternative fuels for transport, waste management, industrial processes, manufacturing and construction, and agriculture where the trillions are going to come in.
Road transport, like renewables, will pay for its own investment. Electric vehicles will be cheaper to own than ICE alternatives within the decade. And there’ll be the production capacity to replace them all by the following one.
Heating is the hard one - though there are interesting technologies, like the heat batteries using electrically heated sand, which might offer quite cost effective solutions. For well insulated new build houses, heat pumps already look pretty good.
The cost, as much as the need to develop new technologies, is the reason this is a multi decade project, but that’s not an argument not to start now.
I think TSE is wrong on this - at least for some aspects of the culture war. Even on a heavily "champagne" forum like this, I'm sure many of us are aware of some quite extraordinary things that have been said to children at schools, anecdotes worth as much as a the cited focus group. When it comes to a secret ballot with the government at stake I think the results may surprise.
To borrow the Chilean saying, trans extremism is god's way of keeping the left out of power forever.
The gamble for the Tories is this: as people get cold and hungry this winter, will the supposed threat of cock-wielding trans deviants persuade them to ignore their hunger and cold and the anger that generates towards the Tories, and instead be kept warm in a Mail-induced fury about bathrooms?
But it's not really an either/or, it it? We'll be cold and hungry anyway. Gas has got much more expensive and no amount of accounting tricks will change that. Whereas we can choose whether we invite Stonewall in to our institutions to advance their gender agenda. But for the record, if government could either prevent food prices from doubling or stop schools from advancing their ultra-woke agenda, I would rather they stopped schools from advancing their ultra-woke agenda. I don't watch kids growing up with a sense of shame about being straight and white.
As an aside, just seen that Pathfinder Wrath of the Righteous is coming to consoles 29 September.
Had mixed feelings on Kingmaker. I liked a lot of it, but load times were on the slow side and I think the strategic side (managing the kingdom) did not work well. It just annoyed me (which was surprising as this was after strategy games came to console so I was familiar with, and liked, Civ VI and Stellaris).
Anybody happen to know if the buggy mess that Pillars of Eternity 2, for PS4, apparently was got resolved by patches?
I'm still a PC gamer so didn't encounter the load issues, but I agree the strategic side of Kingmaker feels a bit half-baked (and I like you I enjoyed Civ VI and Stellaris) - the sort of add-on that someone not very familiar with strategy gaming might design. It does add some variety, though - Kingmaker is so long that some of the missions can feel like a bit of a chore. A friend who really likes Kingmaker is enthusiastic about Wrath (to the point that he gave it to me as a birthday present, but I want to finish Kingmaker first), but even he says Wrath is loooooooong! If you don't mind that (after all, means you've got something to enjoy all year), it's apparently very good.
The state of the conservative party, as being shown to the public, with petty squabbling and disunity, while with the most diverse of candidates standing for PM, are most likely to elect the least favourable as they continue their Johnson tribute act
My wife and I discussed this this morning and agreed that unless the party comes to it's senses its deserves to go into opposition and we agreed we would vote for the independent candidate at the next GE if this came about
They are tired and have been in office too long and a period in opposition may well be needed, but I really hope the Lib Dems perform well in those circumstances and are able to protect the country from labour's worst excesses
Anyway, on Tuesday we travel to Pitlochry, then on Wednesday to Lossiemouth to see our family which we have not been able to do due to covid, then a week tomorrow we have hired a 6 berth cabin cruiser on the Caledonian Canal to be accompanied by our daughter, her husband, their son and dog, and we shall enjoy being far away from the maddening crowds
This will be our third time navigating the Caledonian canal, and my wife's late father sailed his fishing boat through the canal numerous times as he and his brothers fished in Ireland, and indeed helped to develop the Irish fishing industry at the time
Sensible post.
Have a lovely time in Scotland Big_G!
Seconded.
When we stay in Inverness we get a B&B near the canal staircase. Last time we met a friend doing his transit on his catamaran. Went down to Dochgarroch to meet him and cruised back. Very impressive canal - proper size, unlike most of the southern ones.
By way of an industrial history digression, I have discovered a rather good local history society book on the mine barrage from Scotland to Norway in WW1. The whole area of derelict land with some new housing next to the northern sea basin - now a yachties' marina - was a huge storage and processing complex for mines, railways and sheds everywhere, assembling them from bits brought over the railway from Kyle of Lochalsh (imported from the USA) and loading them onto the minelayers. Wouldn't think it today apart from the suspiciously wide quayside at the basin.
The state of the conservative party, as being shown to the public, with petty squabbling and disunity, while with the most diverse of candidates standing for PM, are most likely to elect the least favourable as they continue their Johnson tribute act
My wife and I discussed this this morning and agreed that unless the party comes to it's senses its deserves to go into opposition and we agreed we would vote for the independent candidate at the next GE if this came about
They are tired and have been in office too long and a period in opposition may well be needed, but I really hope the Lib Dems perform well in those circumstances and are able to protect the country from labour's worst excesses
Anyway, on Tuesday we travel to Pitlochry, then on Wednesday to Lossiemouth to see our family which we have not been able to do due to covid, then a week tomorrow we have hired a 6 berth cabin cruiser on the Caledonian Canal to be accompanied by our daughter, her husband, their son and dog, and we shall enjoy being far away from the maddening crowds
This will be our third time navigating the Caledonian canal, and my wife's late father sailed his fishing boat through the canal numerous times as he and his brothers fished in Ireland, and indeed helped to develop the Irish fishing industry at the time
The Tory party deserves respect and kudos for unlocking gender and ethnic diversity at the top. Labour and a plethora of other organisations have something to learn from that.
Beyond that, this leadership election is a mess, revealing a party that doesn’t have a clue about what it wants and where it thinks the country should be going, it seriously needs some time in opposition to sort itself out,
It’s next two years could well be brutal. I have zero confidence that they will sort out the economy. They will descend into fighting and gimmicks when the going gets tough.
Good post. They have 12 years behind them and a big majority to play with but do not appear to have idea what to do, and only tinkering and gimmicks are being suggested (or fantasies). They are simply desperate to win, naturally, so will flit from short term idea to short term idea as there's no plan or coherence.
I think TSE is wrong on this - at least for some aspects of the culture war. Even on a heavily "champagne" forum like this, I'm sure many of us are aware of some quite extraordinary things that have been said to children at schools, anecdotes worth as much as a the cited focus group. When it comes to a secret ballot with the government at stake I think the results may surprise.
To borrow the Chilean saying, trans extremism is god's way of keeping the left out of power forever.
The gamble for the Tories is this: as people get cold and hungry this winter, will the supposed threat of cock-wielding trans deviants persuade them to ignore their hunger and cold and the anger that generates towards the Tories, and instead be kept warm in a Mail-induced fury about bathrooms?
Perhaps Trans people will be cast as modern day witches? Will the madder Tories think that burning transwomen at the stake might reverse the economic woes?
Slightly odd header to be honest. All 5 of the candidates on the Friday debate made it very clear that they had no interest in being distracted by trans or other issues and offered moderate and reasonable positions which you would find hard to slip a fag paper between.
It was clearly much more of a risk that the Boris government would go down that path but that and he are irrelevant now.
They are still foaming on about it though. Especially aimed at Mordaunt. And remember that once they get through the shark pool that is MP voting they face the lunacy of Tory members. The only people who read the Daily Express and think its a newspaper are going to decide the next PM. Pledges will have to be made to pander to these lunatics...
No the reason that they are foaming on about it in respect of Mordaunt is that she lied about what she did. She was pursuing the self identification policy and Badenock, supported by Truss, insisted that the full procedure necessary to obtain a gender recognition certificate had to be followed. Mordaunt was claiming that she had done this but she hadn't. So the issue is whether Mordaunt is truthful or a bit of a fantasist. And given who they are taking over from that is a real issue.
I think TSE is wrong on this - at least for some aspects of the culture war. Even on a heavily "champagne" forum like this, I'm sure many of us are aware of some quite extraordinary things that have been said to children at schools, anecdotes worth as much as a the cited focus group. When it comes to a secret ballot with the government at stake I think the results may surprise.
To borrow the Chilean saying, trans extremism is god's way of keeping the left out of power forever.
The gamble for the Tories is this: as people get cold and hungry this winter, will the supposed threat of cock-wielding trans deviants persuade them to ignore their hunger and cold and the anger that generates towards the Tories, and instead be kept warm in a Mail-induced fury about bathrooms?
Not a trans deviant probably, a heterosexual shit who got in a position to do what he did because of tedious dweebs who think they are being right on. Amusing post though.
You've just reinforced my argument. These are fringe of the fringe cases - how many real world examples like the one in the McExpress are there? Vs how many real world examples of people really feeling the squeeze and by the autumn the onset of rising panic/anger.
The number of women raped on hospital wards - microscopic. By trans people? Even more so. The number of people already in a dreadful mess trying to pay their bills? Millions. And in the autumn? Millions more.
So the trans "threat" isn't a threat except for in extremely rare edge cases, whereas the COL crisis is a direct threat to vast numbers. So if the Tories want to foam on about the cock-tucking deviants thats their loss.
Maybe I'm too taken in by the public image, but I'm inclined to file this under "Johnson doesn't think rules are worth bothering with" (which is bad but not exactly news) rather than anything more sinister. His policies don't strike me as pro-Russian (unlike, at least intermittently, Trump).
There's a credible theory that the Italian trip's sole purpose was to pursue an illicit romance somewhere out of Carrie's line of sight. Politically entirely innocent, but he can't say so. Delicious if true
Given that the Russian state has a particular line in gathering kompromat for blackmail purposes, it's far from clear that such an explanation could be described as politically innocent. It strikes me as hugely risky.
I think TSE is wrong on this - at least for some aspects of the culture war. Even on a heavily "champagne" forum like this, I'm sure many of us are aware of some quite extraordinary things that have been said to children at schools, anecdotes worth as much as a the cited focus group. When it comes to a secret ballot with the government at stake I think the results may surprise.
To borrow the Chilean saying, trans extremism is god's way of keeping the left out of power forever.
The gamble for the Tories is this: as people get cold and hungry this winter, will the supposed threat of cock-wielding trans deviants persuade them to ignore their hunger and cold and the anger that generates towards the Tories, and instead be kept warm in a Mail-induced fury about bathrooms?
Under current rules pre operative Trans people are required to live as their new gender for two years. It is hard to see how that doesn't involve using female only spaces.
There is something a bit chicken and egg about the current rules that must make the experience unnecessarily difficult for those going through it.
The state of the conservative party, as being shown to the public, with petty squabbling and disunity, while with the most diverse of candidates standing for PM, are most likely to elect the least favourable as they continue their Johnson tribute act
My wife and I discussed this this morning and agreed that unless the party comes to it's senses its deserves to go into opposition and we agreed we would vote for the independent candidate at the next GE if this came about
They are tired and have been in office too long and a period in opposition may well be needed, but I really hope the Lib Dems perform well in those circumstances and are able to protect the country from labour's worst excesses
Anyway, on Tuesday we travel to Pitlochry, then on Wednesday to Lossiemouth to see our family which we have not been able to do due to covid, then a week tomorrow we have hired a 6 berth cabin cruiser on the Caledonian Canal to be accompanied by our daughter, her husband, their son and dog, and we shall enjoy being far away from the maddening crowds
This will be our third time navigating the Caledonian canal, and my wife's late father sailed his fishing boat through the canal numerous times as he and his brothers fished in Ireland, and indeed helped to develop the Irish fishing industry at the time
The Tory party deserves respect and kudos for unlocking gender and ethnic diversity at the top. Labour and a plethora of other organisations have something to learn from that.
Beyond that, this leadership election is a mess, revealing a party that doesn’t have a clue about what it wants and where it thinks the country should be going, it seriously needs some time in opposition to sort itself out,
It’s next two years could well be brutal. I have zero confidence that they will sort out the economy. They will descend into fighting and gimmicks when the going gets tough.
Thank Cameron for unlocking Tory diversity. I don’t think any of the leadership candidates today look like another Cameron unfortunately.
Rishi is the closest but I agree, none of them look capable of taking the nasty element out of the Tories again and detoxifying the brand. Some, such as Truss, might even make it worse.
As an aside, just seen that Pathfinder Wrath of the Righteous is coming to consoles 29 September.
Had mixed feelings on Kingmaker. I liked a lot of it, but load times were on the slow side and I think the strategic side (managing the kingdom) did not work well. It just annoyed me (which was surprising as this was after strategy games came to console so I was familiar with, and liked, Civ VI and Stellaris).
Anybody happen to know if the buggy mess that Pillars of Eternity 2, for PS4, apparently was got resolved by patches?
I'm still a PC gamer so didn't encounter the load issues, but I agree the strategic side of Kingmaker feels a bit half-baked (and I like you I enjoyed Civ VI and Stellaris) - the sort of add-on that someone not very familiar with strategy gaming might design. It does add some variety, though - Kingmaker is so long that some of the missions can feel like a bit of a chore. A friend who really likes Kingmaker is enthusiastic about Wrath (to the point that he gave it to me as a birthday present, but I want to finish Kingmaker first), but even he says Wrath is loooooooong! If you don't mind that (after all, means you've got something to enjoy all year), it's apparently very good.
Have you been keeping an eye on Terra Invicta? Looks like barrel of fun, if a bit of Stellaris level time investment.
Good post. They have 12 years behind them and a big majority to play with but do not appear to have idea what to do, and only tinkering and gimmicks are being suggested (or fantasies). They are simply desperate to win, naturally, so will flit from short term idea to short term idea as there's no plan or coherence.
They can't address the big problems we face because they can't say the word that needs to be said
Yes focusing on the cost of living crisis is key and that means targeted tax cuts, controlling spending and increasing energy supplies.
However that does not mean there are no votes to be had in the culture wars, especially if it means pushing back at the extremes of the left attacking our culture and heritage, even ballet now under threat
Mr. kle4, the sleeper cell claim might just be made to try and undermine Badenoch rather than Gove.
Mr. Palmer, cheers for the thoughts on those two games. Yeah, I was expecting something vaguely Civ-ish for the kingdom management and didn't like the faffing about. With building placements and adjacency bonuses I thought that would matter a lot but it seemed way less significant than I'd supposed.
Now to decide whether to pre-order or not. I'm tempted but the second Pillars game seemed to have buggered up the console port to a dramatic extent which does make me a little wary.
I think TSE is wrong on this - at least for some aspects of the culture war. Even on a heavily "champagne" forum like this, I'm sure many of us are aware of some quite extraordinary things that have been said to children at schools, anecdotes worth as much as a the cited focus group. When it comes to a secret ballot with the government at stake I think the results may surprise.
To borrow the Chilean saying, trans extremism is god's way of keeping the left out of power forever.
The gamble for the Tories is this: as people get cold and hungry this winter, will the supposed threat of cock-wielding trans deviants persuade them to ignore their hunger and cold and the anger that generates towards the Tories, and instead be kept warm in a Mail-induced fury about bathrooms?
Perhaps Trans people will be cast as modern day witches? Will the madder Tories think that burning transwomen at the stake might reverse the economic woes?
It could generate Community Heat. Simply assemble the poor around the wicker man, lecture them about the evils of woke, and burn the tranny. Solve all of society's problems at once!
Maybe I'm too taken in by the public image, but I'm inclined to file this under "Johnson doesn't think rules are worth bothering with" (which is bad but not exactly news) rather than anything more sinister. His policies don't strike me as pro-Russian (unlike, at least intermittently, Trump).
Quite. Boris does not believe the rules apply to him. He never has.
But even if it might tell us why Boris did not report their tryst, that does not explain why Boris met Lebedev. Nor does it explain Lebedev's motivation for meeting Boris.
Mr. Observer, they went for Boris Johnson before...
Sunak is so clearly the best candidate. For all his lies and grift, Johnson at least had a track record of winning, so there was a logic to choosing him. Mordaunt has nothing. She also seems to be a liar and fantasist. I can see the appeal of Badenoch to a very right wing electorate, so choosing her would also have a logic to it, though I think the wider public would very quickly tire of her after a briefish honeymoon.
The question is who can fix the economy. The Tories have three potential answers.
If you think it’s a Thatcher tribute act with dry economics, pick Truss. If you think PR and vague soft focus politicking will solve the economy, pick Mordaunt. If you think, it’s an establishment treasury led approach, pick Sunak.
If you understand none of them have answers, and that Labour are no better, start panicking now.
Labour have two years to answer that question, but they have got one thing on their side that really matter. The fresh air of democratic change. They will not have to defend political baggage, they can open the books and can take new direction. Tired old governments like this one are limited by their history.
I think that there is very little chance of him being in the next cabinet which means these stories will matter less but yet another interesting pick by Boris.
Net Zero is a much bigger and juicier target than trans bathrooms during an energy crisis.
Yes, because we'd be in a much better position today if we still got all our energy from hydrocarbons.
Back in 2021, you could (rightly) claim that renewables were increasing the price of our electricity.
Today, the government paying a guaranteed £43/MWh for wind looks like like utter genius.
Building tidal lagoons instead of endlessly faffing around with overpriced and probably never to be built nuclear power stations would have looked much more like utter genius.
We hear a lot about tidal lagoons, but I am (currently) unconvinced. The scale required to make a difference is massive, and despite what the proponents say, the costs will likewise be massive.
Having said that, I'm in favour if having as varied a power generation system in the UK as possible; we should throw everything into the mix. It's just that I doubt tidal lagoons will prove to be as cheap or effective as their proponents claim.
Whether you are convinced or not has become irrelevant because the government vetoed large scale trials, claiming it would undoubtedly be more expensive, shorter lived and less reliable than the nuclear options they were exploring. Which was clearly bullshit.
They don't have to be a silver bullet. Only more reliable than wind, cheaper than gas and longer lasting than nuclear.
Which they undoubtedly would be. There is no realistic way you can juggle the numbers to come out with a different answer.
If we'd built five lagoons five years ago we'd be in a much better situation now.
"Which they undoubtedly would be."
We are talking about new tech done on a scale that had not been attempted before. Worse, we are talking about a new tech that almost wholly involves groundworks and water: perhaps the most complex and troublesome types of civil engineering. And to make a difference, they need to be large in scale (even if individual ones are small).
If we'd started building five lagoons five years ago, we'd probably still be building them. In fact, we'd probably still be in the planning stage.
This is not a reason not to build them: but I can't see them being anywhere near as advantageous or easy as you make out.
The Swansea proposal was around the same size as the Sihwa or Rance power stations. The latter has been operating for nearly 60 years. The former for over a decade.
We are not really talking new technology here.
We are at this scale. The proponents of the Swansea scheme refer to it thus: "Swansea Bay Tidal Lagoon will be the world’s first tidal lagoon power plant."
Now, dams have been built. Barriers have been built. Barrages have been built. The Sihwa scheme is impressive. But the scale of these schemes is still impressive from a civ eng point of view.
Well, they were talking nonsense then, because their projected output for the initial lagoon AIUI was around 230 MWH - slightly less than Rance at 240.
Swansea was a small scale proof of concept project. It would have had 15 operative turbines. It was a testbed for the Cardiff lagoon that will have 160 operative turbines that power 1.6 million homes.
The anti-tidal lobby (largely nuclear) have cleverly extrapolated the Swansea numbers when the prize (and the economics) is a series of Cardiff-scale projects around our coast.
Lol yeah blame the civil servants and not the politicians making the decisions. If they’re too stupid to understand what the civil servants are doing then maybe they shouldn’t have gone into politics.
I can offer some partial light on the process here, as I was involved as PPS to Malcolm Wicks in the energy review in something like 2008. Malcolm used me to discuss ideas (some PPS jobs really are just bag-carrying) and we went over the data carefully. At that stage, the figures for tidal lagoons supplied by the civil service researchers were an order of magnitude worse (in terms of return on investment) than any other way of producing more energy - I forget the exact figures but they were off the scale. I'm used to analysing data in detail, though not an expert in engineering, and I couldn't see any reason to doubt the calculations. What was obviously best at that point was lots of wind, preferably on-shore if the Nimby opposition could be overcome (because installation and maintenance is far cheaper), though I think we did underestimate the need for nuclear baseload.
I don't think we were really in a position to demolish the civil service calculations, or any particular reason why they should have been biased. It's possible that they were simply wrong, or that subsequent events have changed the balance, but Occam's Razor is that the civil servants do their best to present the options and the politicians try to make sensible decisions based on them which won't be too unpopular. We don't need to demonise the people involved, but perhaps there's scope for more independent challenging of the data before decisions are made.
I think TSE is wrong on this - at least for some aspects of the culture war. Even on a heavily "champagne" forum like this, I'm sure many of us are aware of some quite extraordinary things that have been said to children at schools, anecdotes worth as much as a the cited focus group. When it comes to a secret ballot with the government at stake I think the results may surprise.
To borrow the Chilean saying, trans extremism is god's way of keeping the left out of power forever.
The gamble for the Tories is this: as people get cold and hungry this winter, will the supposed threat of cock-wielding trans deviants persuade them to ignore their hunger and cold and the anger that generates towards the Tories, and instead be kept warm in a Mail-induced fury about bathrooms?
Not a trans deviant probably, a heterosexual shit who got in a position to do what he did because of tedious dweebs who think they are being right on. Amusing post though.
You've just reinforced my argument. These are fringe of the fringe cases - how many real world examples like the one in the McExpress are there? Vs how many real world examples of people really feeling the squeeze and by the autumn the onset of rising panic/anger.
The number of women raped on hospital wards - microscopic. By trans people? Even more so. The number of people already in a dreadful mess trying to pay their bills? Millions. And in the autumn? Millions more.
So the trans "threat" isn't a threat except for in extremely rare edge cases, whereas the COL crisis is a direct threat to vast numbers. So if the Tories want to foam on about the cock-tucking deviants thats their loss.
Ken Dodd tax evasion trial
KD my accountant died Prosecutor Did that really matter? KD Well, it mattered to him
I am sure this woman will realise how trivial her problems are when she learns that she is a "fringe issue" and "edge case" to a white flightist posting on an Internet forum from somewhere near Aberdeen. Women, hey? Mountains and molehills.
Yes focusing on the cost of living crisis is key and that means targeted tax cuts, controlling spending and increasing energy supplies.
However that does not mean there are no votes to be had in the culture wars, especially if it means pushing back at the extremes of the left attacking our culture and heritage, even ballet now under threat
Net Zero is a much bigger and juicier target than trans bathrooms during an energy crisis.
Yes, because we'd be in a much better position today if we still got all our energy from hydrocarbons.
Back in 2021, you could (rightly) claim that renewables were increasing the price of our electricity.
Today, the government paying a guaranteed £43/MWh for wind looks like like utter genius.
Building tidal lagoons instead of endlessly faffing around with overpriced and probably never to be built nuclear power stations would have looked much more like utter genius.
We hear a lot about tidal lagoons, but I am (currently) unconvinced. The scale required to make a difference is massive, and despite what the proponents say, the costs will likewise be massive.
Having said that, I'm in favour if having as varied a power generation system in the UK as possible; we should throw everything into the mix. It's just that I doubt tidal lagoons will prove to be as cheap or effective as their proponents claim.
Whether you are convinced or not has become irrelevant because the government vetoed large scale trials, claiming it would undoubtedly be more expensive, shorter lived and less reliable than the nuclear options they were exploring. Which was clearly bullshit.
They don't have to be a silver bullet. Only more reliable than wind, cheaper than gas and longer lasting than nuclear.
Which they undoubtedly would be. There is no realistic way you can juggle the numbers to come out with a different answer.
If we'd built five lagoons five years ago we'd be in a much better situation now.
"Which they undoubtedly would be."
We are talking about new tech done on a scale that had not been attempted before. Worse, we are talking about a new tech that almost wholly involves groundworks and water: perhaps the most complex and troublesome types of civil engineering. And to make a difference, they need to be large in scale (even if individual ones are small).
If we'd started building five lagoons five years ago, we'd probably still be building them. In fact, we'd probably still be in the planning stage.
This is not a reason not to build them: but I can't see them being anywhere near as advantageous or easy as you make out.
The Swansea proposal was around the same size as the Sihwa or Rance power stations. The latter has been operating for nearly 60 years. The former for over a decade.
We are not really talking new technology here.
We are at this scale. The proponents of the Swansea scheme refer to it thus: "Swansea Bay Tidal Lagoon will be the world’s first tidal lagoon power plant."
Now, dams have been built. Barriers have been built. Barrages have been built. The Sihwa scheme is impressive. But the scale of these schemes is still impressive from a civ eng point of view.
Well, they were talking nonsense then, because their projected output for the initial lagoon AIUI was around 230 MWH - slightly less than Rance at 240.
Swansea was a small scale proof of concept project. It would have had 15 operative turbines. It was a testbed for the Cardiff lagoon that will have 160 operative turbines that power 1.6 million homes.
The anti-tidal lobby (largely nuclear) have cleverly extrapolated the Swansea numbers when the prize (and the economics) is a series of Cardiff-scale projects around our coast.
So, how do we unlock progress? Is it conceivable on this issue, our political leaders could agree and push something through?
Mr. kle4, the sleeper cell claim might just be made to try and undermine Badenoch rather than Gove.
Mr. Palmer, cheers for the thoughts on those two games. Yeah, I was expecting something vaguely Civ-ish for the kingdom management and didn't like the faffing about. With building placements and adjacency bonuses I thought that would matter a lot but it seemed way less significant than I'd supposed.
Now to decide whether to pre-order or not. I'm tempted but the second Pillars game seemed to have buggered up the console port to a dramatic extent which does make me a little wary.
A shame, as I played it for the first time on PC about 3 months ago and really enjoyed it.
Yes focusing on the cost of living crisis is key and that means targeted tax cuts, controlling spending and increasing energy supplies.
However that does not mean there are no votes to be had in the culture wars, especially if it means pushing back at the extremes of the left attacking our culture and heritage, even ballet now under threat
Ah, yes, defending ballet, guaranteed Red Wall vote winner.
Guaranteed blue wall winner in Kensington, Westminster and the Home counties, defending Churchill and our history guaranteed red wall winner and ensuring trans rights are balanced with womens' rights important to win the latter
I think TSE is wrong on this - at least for some aspects of the culture war. Even on a heavily "champagne" forum like this, I'm sure many of us are aware of some quite extraordinary things that have been said to children at schools, anecdotes worth as much as a the cited focus group. When it comes to a secret ballot with the government at stake I think the results may surprise.
To borrow the Chilean saying, trans extremism is god's way of keeping the left out of power forever.
The gamble for the Tories is this: as people get cold and hungry this winter, will the supposed threat of cock-wielding trans deviants persuade them to ignore their hunger and cold and the anger that generates towards the Tories, and instead be kept warm in a Mail-induced fury about bathrooms?
Under current rules pre operative Trans people are required to live as their new gender for two years. It is hard to see how that doesn't involve using female only spaces.
Especially in light of the validation by senior politicians and popular media given to the idea that trans women are likely rapists. It strikes me as very similar to the idea that was commonplace when I was younger that gay men were likely paedophiles.
There's too much fear of and hostility towards trans people right now.
Yes focusing on the cost of living crisis is key and that means targeted tax cuts, controlling spending and increasing energy supplies.
However that does not mean there are no votes to be had in the culture wars, especially if it means pushing back at the extremes of the left attacking our culture and heritage, even ballet now under threat
Agreed with the thread header. Unfortunately Badenoch especially seems to be too interested in the "woke" issues, so I'd have her as my last choice preference.
From what I've seen of the candidates so far, ignoring my betting position (which puts Sunak as #1 preference for entirely book-related reasons) my preference would be:
1. Truss - Seems very sound on the economy etc, also came up with the excellent NI solution 2. Tugendhat - Less dry, but pro more housing which is always a big tick 3. Mordaunt - Neutral, seems to change her positions based on what's popular today, ironically like a continuity Boris 4. Sunak - Too high tax 5. Badenoch - Anti-woke
I appreciate that's probably a pretty unusual preference list.
Renewable energy. Stop talking, start doing. Solves so many problems. It needs to be approached with some urgency.
Tell it to these boys:
Nothing there to stop us investing in renewables and becoming an energy self sufficient, low carbon UK. Time to end the political BS, we can do this.
I agree but my point is we are never going to race well-ahead of the pack where this causes us huge relative economic pain.
We will go as fast as we can that makes logical political and economic sense to do so in the short-medium term.
The solution, of course, is tech, engineering and megaproject delivery skills.
Moving the Treasury to Darlo could help with this - especially if you can tap into the down to earth engineering talent pool in the North.
I've never really understood the idea that the weight of government bureaucracy will shift if the offices are located in another location.
I mean, is the DVLA of particularly Welsh character because it is in Swansea? Why would location drive thinking?
Well it should if the recruitment pool (and hiring policies) are different. You definitely have a different pool of candidates on Teesside than you in London whatever way you look at it.
The state of the conservative party, as being shown to the public, with petty squabbling and disunity, while with the most diverse of candidates standing for PM, are most likely to elect the least favourable as they continue their Johnson tribute act
My wife and I discussed this this morning and agreed that unless the party comes to it's senses its deserves to go into opposition and we agreed we would vote for the independent candidate at the next GE if this came about
They are tired and have been in office too long and a period in opposition may well be needed, but I really hope the Lib Dems perform well in those circumstances and are able to protect the country from labour's worst excesses
Anyway, on Tuesday we travel to Pitlochry, then on Wednesday to Lossiemouth to see our family which we have not been able to do due to covid, then a week tomorrow we have hired a 6 berth cabin cruiser on the Caledonian Canal to be accompanied by our daughter, her husband, their son and dog, and we shall enjoy being far away from the maddening crowds
This will be our third time navigating the Caledonian canal, and my wife's late father sailed his fishing boat through the canal numerous times as he and his brothers fished in Ireland, and indeed helped to develop the Irish fishing industry at the time
Sensible post.
Have a lovely time in Scotland Big_G!
Seconded.
When we stay in Inverness we get a B&B near the canal staircase. Last time we met a friend doing his transit on his catamaran. Went down to Dochgarroch to meet him and cruised back. Very impressive canal - proper size, unlike most of the southern ones.
By way of an industrial history digression, I have discovered a rather good local history society book on the mine barrage from Scotland to Norway in WW1. The whole area of derelict land with some new housing next to the northern sea basin - now a yachties' marina - was a huge storage and processing complex for mines, railways and sheds everywhere, assembling them from bits brought over the railway from Kyle of Lochalsh (imported from the USA) and loading them onto the minelayers. Wouldn't think it today apart from the suspiciously wide quayside at the basin.
I think TSE is wrong on this - at least for some aspects of the culture war. Even on a heavily "champagne" forum like this, I'm sure many of us are aware of some quite extraordinary things that have been said to children at schools, anecdotes worth as much as a the cited focus group. When it comes to a secret ballot with the government at stake I think the results may surprise.
To borrow the Chilean saying, trans extremism is god's way of keeping the left out of power forever.
The gamble for the Tories is this: as people get cold and hungry this winter, will the supposed threat of cock-wielding trans deviants persuade them to ignore their hunger and cold and the anger that generates towards the Tories, and instead be kept warm in a Mail-induced fury about bathrooms?
Not a trans deviant probably, a heterosexual shit who got in a position to do what he did because of tedious dweebs who think they are being right on. Amusing post though.
You've just reinforced my argument. These are fringe of the fringe cases - how many real world examples like the one in the McExpress are there? Vs how many real world examples of people really feeling the squeeze and by the autumn the onset of rising panic/anger.
The number of women raped on hospital wards - microscopic. By trans people? Even more so. The number of people already in a dreadful mess trying to pay their bills? Millions. And in the autumn? Millions more.
So the trans "threat" isn't a threat except for in extremely rare edge cases, whereas the COL crisis is a direct threat to vast numbers. So if the Tories want to foam on about the cock-tucking deviants thats their loss.
Ken Dodd tax evasion trial
KD my accountant died Prosecutor Did that really matter? KD Well, it mattered to him
I am sure this woman will realise how trivial her problems are when she learns that she is a "fringe issue" and "edge case" to a white flightist posting on an Internet forum from somewhere near Aberdeen. Women, hey? Mountains and molehills.
I think something being a fringe issue can sometiems be a reasonable rejoinder. No policy is ever perfect for example, someone who has experienced difficulty as a result will be able to be found, or it might not have been carried out particularly well, but the principle and intent may still be sound, with some refinement, so in those instances not reacting to fringe or edge cases can be reasonable. But of course you cannot simply ignore them every time, as they can be important issues to address even if they are not widespread.
I think TSE is wrong on this - at least for some aspects of the culture war. Even on a heavily "champagne" forum like this, I'm sure many of us are aware of some quite extraordinary things that have been said to children at schools, anecdotes worth as much as a the cited focus group. When it comes to a secret ballot with the government at stake I think the results may surprise.
To borrow the Chilean saying, trans extremism is god's way of keeping the left out of power forever.
Perhaps. But as a Labour activist with no strong views on the trans issue, I shall be delighted if the Tories lead on it (and appalled if Labour started obsessing about it too). It's an issue where you can completely win the argument and still not shift more than a handful of votes.
Agreed with the thread header. Unfortunately Badenoch especially seems to be too interested in the "woke" issues, so I'd have her as my last choice preference.
From what I've seen of the candidates so far, ignoring my betting position (which puts Sunak as #1 preference for entirely book-related reasons) my preference would be:
1. Truss - Seems very sound on the economy etc, also came up with the excellent NI solution 2. Tugendhat - Less dry, but pro more housing which is always a big tick 3. Mordaunt - Neutral, seems to change her positions based on what's popular today, ironically like a continuity Boris 4. Sunak - Too high tax 5. Badenoch - Anti-woke
I appreciate that's probably a pretty unusual preference list.
It is a useful reminder that we shouldn’t presume that X’s supporters will go to Y, etc.
Renewable energy. Stop talking, start doing. Solves so many problems. It needs to be approached with some urgency.
Tell it to these boys:
Nothing there to stop us investing in renewables and becoming an energy self sufficient, low carbon UK. Time to end the political BS, we can do this.
I agree but my point is we are never going to race well-ahead of the pack where this causes us huge relative economic pain.
We will go as fast as we can that makes logical political and economic sense to do so in the short-medium term.
The solution, of course, is tech, engineering and megaproject delivery skills.
Moving the Treasury to Darlo could help with this - especially if you can tap into the down to earth engineering talent pool in the North.
I've never really understood the idea that the weight of government bureaucracy will shift if the offices are located in another location.
I mean, is the DVLA of particularly Welsh character because it is in Swansea? Why would location drive thinking?
Well it should if the recruitment pool (and hiring policies) are different. You definitely have a different pool of candidates on Teesside than you in London whatever way you look at it.
Still seems improbable to me. Organisational culture is a thing, and the kind of people who join the Treasury probably have a predisposition to think like people in the Treasury.
Maybe I'm too taken in by the public image, but I'm inclined to file this under "Johnson doesn't think rules are worth bothering with" (which is bad but not exactly news) rather than anything more sinister. His policies don't strike me as pro-Russian (unlike, at least intermittently, Trump).
There's a credible theory that the Italian trip's sole purpose was to pursue an illicit romance somewhere out of Carrie's line of sight. Politically entirely innocent, but he can't say so. Delicious if true
How is it a credible theory that Boris flew to Italy and met Lebedev for an illicit romance? It's nonsense on stilts. The closest you might get is if Boris was honeytrapped by the KGB at Chez Lebedev but that surely makes things even worse.
This threader is an example of the People cannot think about more than one thing at once fallacy. It is reasonable at this stage for the conservatives to think about where as a party they want to stand on all sorts of points. It may even be strategically very smart to resolve it now to increase the chances of Labour disarray at the next GE
Mr. kle4, yeah, I'm mildly surprised that I didn't end up pre-ordering PoE II given how much I liked the first but lucky escape as the reviews were atrocious. Unsure if it's been patched.
On leader drawbacks: Sunak should be pressed on Ukraine.
Agreed with the thread header. Unfortunately Badenoch especially seems to be too interested in the "woke" issues, so I'd have her as my last choice preference.
From what I've seen of the candidates so far, ignoring my betting position (which puts Sunak as #1 preference for entirely book-related reasons) my preference would be:
1. Truss - Seems very sound on the economy etc, also came up with the excellent NI solution 2. Tugendhat - Less dry, but pro more housing which is always a big tick 3. Mordaunt - Neutral, seems to change her positions based on what's popular today, ironically like a continuity Boris 4. Sunak - Too high tax 5. Badenoch - Anti-woke
I appreciate that's probably a pretty unusual preference list.
The woke stuff is Badenoch's hook - it is what she was most known for going in to the contest, since she has little other experience to draw on, and it provides differentiation.
It may be she would have a number of interesting or distinct other positions, but it would be a gamble as currently she has little to go on.
A bigger issue than a short heatwave is the longer-term lack of rainfall there has been in many parts of the country. That's going to be a very real problem if it continues. We need a very wet winter.
Seems unfair to say it when he's banned, but we need a winter that would send Leon into depression (or exile) - interminably grey with relentless gentle rain that will gradually soak into the groundwater, but not intense enough to cause flooding.
Though we have to give a way of dealing with what we get. Another good reason not to abandon levelling up is the water supply difficulties in the South-East.
Renewable energy. Stop talking, start doing. Solves so many problems. It needs to be approached with some urgency.
Tell it to these boys:
Nothing there to stop us investing in renewables and becoming an energy self sufficient, low carbon UK. Time to end the political BS, we can do this.
I agree but my point is we are never going to race well-ahead of the pack where this causes us huge relative economic pain.
We will go as fast as we can that makes logical political and economic sense to do so in the short-medium term.
The solution, of course, is tech, engineering and megaproject delivery skills.
Moving the Treasury to Darlo could help with this - especially if you can tap into the down to earth engineering talent pool in the North.
I've never really understood the idea that the weight of government bureaucracy will shift if the offices are located in another location.
I mean, is the DVLA of particularly Welsh character because it is in Swansea? Why would location drive thinking?
Well it should if the recruitment pool (and hiring policies) are different. You definitely have a different pool of candidates on Teesside than you in London whatever way you look at it.
Still seems improbable to me. Organisational culture is a thing, and the kind of people who join the Treasury probably have a predisposition to think like people in the Treasury.
One argument for privatisation and PFI was that it would bring an efficient, private sector culture into moribund public services. A colleague did some research showing that what happened was that a public service culture was brought into the private sector bodies running public services.
Maybe I'm too taken in by the public image, but I'm inclined to file this under "Johnson doesn't think rules are worth bothering with" (which is bad but not exactly news) rather than anything more sinister. His policies don't strike me as pro-Russian (unlike, at least intermittently, Trump).
There's a credible theory that the Italian trip's sole purpose was to pursue an illicit romance somewhere out of Carrie's line of sight. Politically entirely innocent, but he can't say so. Delicious if true
How is it a credible theory that Boris flew to Italy and met Lebedev for an illicit romance? It's nonsense on stilts. The closest you might get is if Boris was honeytrapped by the KGB at Chez Lebedev but that surely makes things even worse.
Maybe I'm too taken in by the public image, but I'm inclined to file this under "Johnson doesn't think rules are worth bothering with" (which is bad but not exactly news) rather than anything more sinister. His policies don't strike me as pro-Russian (unlike, at least intermittently, Trump).
There's a credible theory that the Italian trip's sole purpose was to pursue an illicit romance somewhere out of Carrie's line of sight. Politically entirely innocent, but he can't say so. Delicious if true
How is it a credible theory that Boris flew to Italy and met Lebedev for an illicit romance? It's nonsense on stilts. The closest you might get is if Boris was honeytrapped by the KGB at Chez Lebedev but that surely makes things even worse.
If you had heard what I have heard about Boris at Eton...
No. The suggestion is that Lebedevs role was that of pander; that he hosted Boris and a talented young female.
Renewable energy. Stop talking, start doing. Solves so many problems. It needs to be approached with some urgency.
Tell it to these boys:
Nothing there to stop us investing in renewables and becoming an energy self sufficient, low carbon UK. Time to end the political BS, we can do this.
I agree but my point is we are never going to race well-ahead of the pack where this causes us huge relative economic pain.
We will go as fast as we can that makes logical political and economic sense to do so in the short-medium term.
The solution, of course, is tech, engineering and megaproject delivery skills.
Moving the Treasury to Darlo could help with this - especially if you can tap into the down to earth engineering talent pool in the North.
I've never really understood the idea that the weight of government bureaucracy will shift if the offices are located in another location.
I mean, is the DVLA of particularly Welsh character because it is in Swansea? Why would location drive thinking?
Well it should if the recruitment pool (and hiring policies) are different. You definitely have a different pool of candidates on Teesside than you in London whatever way you look at it.
You also lose institutional knowledge. Therese an example in DEFRA of a chap who is the guy who knows everything about specific areas or organic food law. If he were to leave because he didn’t want to relocate to Stoke on Trent (and the lobbying firms would be circling after him with chequebooks) then you’d need to train someone else up. Certainly possible, but you’re looking at 5 years of not having your walking encyclopaedia in the department. You can mitigate that with extensive knowledge sharing and documentation, but even private companies I’ve worked for never actually do. I can name someone at each firm who, if they were hit by a bus, would cause their department to sink or collapse in efficiency. Multiply that across an entire government department and your going to have to make some serious investments to get your staff up to speed quickly (which might end up costing more).
This threader is an example of the People cannot think about more than one thing at once fallacy. It is reasonable at this stage for the conservatives to think about where as a party they want to stand on all sorts of points. It may even be strategically very smart to resolve it now to increase the chances of Labour disarray at the next GE
People might be able to think about more than one thing, but you can only talk about one thing at a time. If you waste the precious oxygen of publicity on a third-tier issue, it's a huge opportunity cost.
This threader is an example of the People cannot think about more than one thing at once fallacy. It is reasonable at this stage for the conservatives to think about where as a party they want to stand on all sorts of points. It may even be strategically very smart to resolve it now to increase the chances of Labour disarray at the next GE
People absolutely can think of more than one thing at once, which is why decent candidates can put an array of issues forwards. Parties end up putting manifestos down afterall which tackle a plethora of issues.
Some of the candidates have done this. Truss has it seems to be put down sound policies on debt, tax, Europe, the environment and more.
Badenoch seems to have concentrated on woke, woke, woke, woke and abandoning net zero (which is another big no from me, justifying her last placed preference).
For most of the public, their preferred issue they need resolving right now? Well, as usual, its the economy, stupid.
The Sunday Mail hatchet job on Maudaunt today is extreme, nasty, and frankly disgusting, while at the same time they have Johnson in the cockpit of a fighter jet extolling him as if he is a deity
However, it is reported more sensible senior conservatives are demanding Johnson resigns his seat on the 6th September as they do not want the Johnson drama continuing, with all the investigations into his behaviour due in the Autumn
Agreed with the thread header. Unfortunately Badenoch especially seems to be too interested in the "woke" issues, so I'd have her as my last choice preference.
From what I've seen of the candidates so far, ignoring my betting position (which puts Sunak as #1 preference for entirely book-related reasons) my preference would be:
1. Truss - Seems very sound on the economy etc, also came up with the excellent NI solution 2. Tugendhat - Less dry, but pro more housing which is always a big tick 3. Mordaunt - Neutral, seems to change her positions based on what's popular today, ironically like a continuity Boris 4. Sunak - Too high tax 5. Badenoch - Anti-woke
I appreciate that's probably a pretty unusual preference list.
Though Tugendhat is focused on building in brownfield first, correctly
I think TSE is wrong on this - at least for some aspects of the culture war. Even on a heavily "champagne" forum like this, I'm sure many of us are aware of some quite extraordinary things that have been said to children at schools, anecdotes worth as much as a the cited focus group. When it comes to a secret ballot with the government at stake I think the results may surprise.
To borrow the Chilean saying, trans extremism is god's way of keeping the left out of power forever.
The gamble for the Tories is this: as people get cold and hungry this winter, will the supposed threat of cock-wielding trans deviants persuade them to ignore their hunger and cold and the anger that generates towards the Tories, and instead be kept warm in a Mail-induced fury about bathrooms?
But it's not really an either/or, it it? We'll be cold and hungry anyway. Gas has got much more expensive and no amount of accounting tricks will change that. Whereas we can choose whether we invite Stonewall in to our institutions to advance their gender agenda. But for the record, if government could either prevent food prices from doubling or stop schools from advancing their ultra-woke agenda, I would rather they stopped schools from advancing their ultra-woke agenda. I don't watch kids growing up with a sense of shame about being straight and white.
If that was happening en masse then perhaps.
But as it isn't...
But it is, Rochdale. Or at least, in a sample size of 5 secondary schools I have visited recently, the incidence of it was 100%. If you infer the schools' orders of priorities from the visibility of display materials, they are: 1) now you're in secondary school, you need to pick a sexuality and identity from this list. This is very important and if you're not sure it's probably because you're bi, rather than, you know, 11 or 12 and not actually sexual at all yet. Why not join the Rainbow Club? =2) woohoo for BLM! Mary Seacombe and Rosa Parks. Why not join the equality club? =2) the environment: we're all doomed. 4) while you're here, if you want to indulge in a little education, or perhaps sport, that would also be fine.
Renewable energy. Stop talking, start doing. Solves so many problems. It needs to be approached with some urgency.
Tell it to these boys:
Nothing there to stop us investing in renewables and becoming an energy self sufficient, low carbon UK. Time to end the political BS, we can do this.
I agree but my point is we are never going to race well-ahead of the pack where this causes us huge relative economic pain.
We will go as fast as we can that makes logical political and economic sense to do so in the short-medium term.
The solution, of course, is tech, engineering and megaproject delivery skills.
Moving the Treasury to Darlo could help with this - especially if you can tap into the down to earth engineering talent pool in the North.
I've never really understood the idea that the weight of government bureaucracy will shift if the offices are located in another location.
I mean, is the DVLA of particularly Welsh character because it is in Swansea? Why would location drive thinking?
Well it should if the recruitment pool (and hiring policies) are different. You definitely have a different pool of candidates on Teesside than you in London whatever way you look at it.
The Treasury recruits new civil servants straight from university. It is cleaners and catering staff who might come from a Teeside Jobcentre but they do not set economic policy. There might be an indirect effect in the medium term as senior mandarins live in the North-East but more likely it would just make recruitment more difficult.
Of course, it would benefit the town in which it is based in the same way having any new, large employer would do, in terms of jobs and wages spent locally.
I find Raab swinging behind Sunak one of the more interesting of the endorsements thus far, and seemingly not talked about much.
I mean, this is the guy who Boris seemingly trusted enough to be his official number 2, but he swung behind the guy Boris and his acolytes are doing everything in their power to ensure does not win.
I think TSE is wrong on this - at least for some aspects of the culture war. Even on a heavily "champagne" forum like this, I'm sure many of us are aware of some quite extraordinary things that have been said to children at schools, anecdotes worth as much as a the cited focus group. When it comes to a secret ballot with the government at stake I think the results may surprise.
To borrow the Chilean saying, trans extremism is god's way of keeping the left out of power forever.
The gamble for the Tories is this: as people get cold and hungry this winter, will the supposed threat of cock-wielding trans deviants persuade them to ignore their hunger and cold and the anger that generates towards the Tories, and instead be kept warm in a Mail-induced fury about bathrooms?
Throw some Rochdale taxi drivers into the mix and starvation and the cold will be furthest from the minds of your average patriot RedWall voters.
An anecdotal Brexit irony I learned this week was one of my customers is awaiting immigration documentation for a team of Sikh workers they are importing to replace the Eastern Europeans that returned home through the pandemic. Fine by me, but not something your average RedWall Tory convert read on the side of a bus I don't suppose.
Similarly our Greek doctors are being replaced by Egyptians, who seem to get through the language and professional tests well. Their postgraduate qualifications aren't eligible for senior posts, at least not before the 5 year+ CESR process.
Agreed with the thread header. Unfortunately Badenoch especially seems to be too interested in the "woke" issues, so I'd have her as my last choice preference.
From what I've seen of the candidates so far, ignoring my betting position (which puts Sunak as #1 preference for entirely book-related reasons) my preference would be:
1. Truss - Seems very sound on the economy etc, also came up with the excellent NI solution 2. Tugendhat - Less dry, but pro more housing which is always a big tick 3. Mordaunt - Neutral, seems to change her positions based on what's popular today, ironically like a continuity Boris 4. Sunak - Too high tax 5. Badenoch - Anti-woke
I appreciate that's probably a pretty unusual preference list.
Though Tugendhat is focused on building in brownfield first, correctly
Everyone agrees with building on brownfield first, it is utterly pointless as a differentiation tactic, since that is how you get the NIMBY vote (not that there should not be building on brownfield, just that politicians pretend it alone will be sufficient).
Giving people more opportunity to say no, when government policy has long been in the opposite direction (so many things would have been refused by councils or on appeal had goverment policy not been different) just strikes me as mad.
As an aside, just seen that Pathfinder Wrath of the Righteous is coming to consoles 29 September.
Had mixed feelings on Kingmaker. I liked a lot of it, but load times were on the slow side and I think the strategic side (managing the kingdom) did not work well. It just annoyed me (which was surprising as this was after strategy games came to console so I was familiar with, and liked, Civ VI and Stellaris).
Anybody happen to know if the buggy mess that Pillars of Eternity 2, for PS4, apparently was got resolved by patches?
I'm still a PC gamer so didn't encounter the load issues, but I agree the strategic side of Kingmaker feels a bit half-baked (and I like you I enjoyed Civ VI and Stellaris) - the sort of add-on that someone not very familiar with strategy gaming might design. It does add some variety, though - Kingmaker is so long that some of the missions can feel like a bit of a chore. A friend who really likes Kingmaker is enthusiastic about Wrath (to the point that he gave it to me as a birthday present, but I want to finish Kingmaker first), but even he says Wrath is loooooooong! If you don't mind that (after all, means you've got something to enjoy all year), it's apparently very good.
Have you been keeping an eye on Terra Invicta? Looks like barrel of fun, if a bit of Stellaris level time investment.
Agreed with the thread header. Unfortunately Badenoch especially seems to be too interested in the "woke" issues, so I'd have her as my last choice preference.
From what I've seen of the candidates so far, ignoring my betting position (which puts Sunak as #1 preference for entirely book-related reasons) my preference would be:
1. Truss - Seems very sound on the economy etc, also came up with the excellent NI solution 2. Tugendhat - Less dry, but pro more housing which is always a big tick 3. Mordaunt - Neutral, seems to change her positions based on what's popular today, ironically like a continuity Boris 4. Sunak - Too high tax 5. Badenoch - Anti-woke
I appreciate that's probably a pretty unusual preference list.
The woke stuff is Badenoch's hook - it is what she was most known for going in to the contest, since she has little other experience to draw on, and it provides differentiation.
It may be she would have a number of interesting or distinct other positions, but it would be a gamble as currently she has little to go on.
I think that Badenoch's take on woke is less important than her take on the role of the state. She has said that 'the state should do less, but do it better'.
I think that Badenoch needs to be pinned down on exactly which areas of public life the state should withdraw from, how much this would save, and the social impact of the state withdrawing.
Comments
As for Iraq? First time voters next time were born after Saddam died. It’d be like Blair making one of his top three campaign points that Labour kept Britain out the Vietnam War. Not even to mention that right now the public at large are fully behind efforts to arm and repel the Russian army, with Ukraine flags hanging in village squares and tower block bedroom windows up and down the land.
Clueless they are.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/jul/16/carole-cadwalladr-boris-johnson-lebedevs-prime-ministers-defining-scandal
Yes and the Lib dems are anonymous here
It is a very marginal conservative seat v labour
She suggests she would be a unifier, which will appeal to Tories sickened by the extreme levels of nastiness exhibited in a contest that makes Game of Thrones look bloodless. Her backers see in her the potential to revive the coalition of voters who secured victory for the Tories at the last election. Evidence for this is far from conclusive, but there has been some work by pollsters that suggests key voter groups like the look of her more than they do her rivals.
Labour thinks it has a handle on Mr Sunak and Ms Truss. Ms Mordaunt hasn’t been thought about before by Sir Keir Starmer’s team. Some of them worry that a Conservative leader from a gritty city who was schooled at a comprehensive will be harder to depict as a typical Tory.
Since she emerged as the members’ favourite, rival camps and their media allies have launched an onslaught in a frantic attempt to stall her momentum. One of her supporters says the central challenge of the next few days will be “getting past all the black propaganda". The attacks may rebound to her advantage. Tory MPs enjoy the spectacle of a vicious cage fight between wannabe leaders. Tory members tend to hate it.
She isn’t presenting anything that sounds like a thought-through strategy to address the many problems pressing on Britain, but then neither are her competitors. In a less surreal contest, her lack of top-flight experience would be a huge handicap. In this one, a lot of Tories are clearly choosing to treat being an unknown quantity as a virtue and a record in a great office of state as a liability. “Why is she doing so well?” says one of Mr Sunak’s backers. “Because she’s not Rishi and she’s not Truss.” Such is the desperate and disorientated condition of the Tory party that could be enough.
But for the record, if government could either prevent food prices from doubling or stop schools from advancing their ultra-woke agenda, I would rather they stopped schools from advancing their ultra-woke agenda. I don't watch kids growing up with a sense of shame about being straight and white.
Given that the same policies have continued (indeed, accelerated), I'd say that was hard to argue. Yes, there are some Conservatives who were (and are) vociferously against these schemes. But these schemes go on despite them.
While Yougov showed Truss beating Sunak in the membership head-to-heads, Opinium had Rishi beating her.
Yesterday saw a plunge on Kemi, whose odds more than halved, presumably because people believe Kemi can replace Truss as the great white hope of the Brexiteer right.
Since it will be a handy distraction from time to time of course they will.
DavidL's point that they said they weren't interested in doing so is I think rather naive. Everyone says they'll focus on important things that matter, they may even mean it, but the temptation will come.
Beyond that, this leadership election is a mess, revealing a party that doesn’t have a clue about what it wants and where it thinks the country should be going, it seriously needs some time in opposition to sort itself out,
It’s next two years could well be brutal. I have zero confidence that they will sort out the economy. They will descend into fighting and gimmicks when the going gets tough.
The more straightforward immediate term response would be to make larger scale interconnects with Europe economically attractive. Continent wide interconnects will probably come before very large scale storage.
An Ashcroft poll after the 2019 elections shows that the number one reason people voted Conservative was to choose the 'party or leader “was the most likely to get the Brexit outcome I wanted”'
https://www.scottishdailyexpress.co.uk/news/politics/hospital-says-patient-could-not-26506744
Not a trans deviant probably, a heterosexual shit who got in a position to do what he did because of tedious dweebs who think they are being right on. Amusing post though.
That said, the fact the nuclear industry and their stooges at energy and climate change were so desperate not even to allow a trial suggests they were afraid the figures would not be in their favour.
And tidal power is ours. Not reliant on Canada orRussia. As long as we have a moon, we'll have tides. That's 'strategic resilience' for you.
Edit - and Rance is France, notSouth Korea. I don't think it was written before 1966.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11020935/Michael-Gove-accused-launching-sleeper-cell-plot-Cabinet-Rishi-Sunak.html
Have a lovely time in Scotland Big_G!
If you think it’s a Thatcher tribute act with dry economics, pick Truss.
If you think PR and vague soft focus politicking will solve the economy, pick Mordaunt.
If you think, it’s an establishment treasury led approach, pick Sunak.
An anecdotal Brexit irony I learned this week was one of my customers is awaiting immigration documentation for a team of Sikh workers they are importing to replace the Eastern Europeans that returned home through the pandemic. Fine by me, but not something your average RedWall Tory convert read on the side of a bus I don't suppose.
I mean, is the DVLA of particularly Welsh character because it is in Swansea? Why would location drive thinking?
Front pages: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-the-papers-62194671
But MoS harbours doubts and has a question mark on its headline, Does Leak Show Penny Did Back Gender Self-ID?
The Sunday Times headline is far more assertive — Mordaunt's gender claims undermined by leaked papers — but the online headline has been watered down to Leaked documents call Penny Mordaunt’s gender self-ID claims into question. A couple of paragraphs in it becomes clear there is no smoking gun. No wonder the Mail was unconvinced.
Penny Mordaunt’s claims that she has never supported gender self-identification have come under fresh scrutiny after leaked government documents suggested she backed watering down the legal process for transitioning.
Papers drawn up by civil servants appear to show she was in favour of removing at least one medical requirement needed by transgender people when she was equalities minister.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/leaked-documents-call-penny-mordaunts-gender-self-id-claims-into-question-g07ch5ptt (£££)
Pretty thin gruel, and circumstantial at best.
We need a big hairy Apollo like goal, backed with real political leadership.
I am not holding my breath, but that is what it will take.
Nadhim Zahawi’s story just doesn’t appear to add up.
An ever growing pile of questions for the man now responsible for overseeing the nation's finances.
Time for him to come clean with the British people.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/nadhim-zahawi-may-have-avoided-millions-in-tax-with-trust-0n8mt7kj7
more questions for the chancellor in the Observer https://twitter.com/PickardJE/status/1548569702061981696/photo/1
Heating is the hard one - though there are interesting technologies, like the heat batteries using electrically heated sand, which might offer quite cost effective solutions.
For well insulated new build houses, heat pumps already look pretty good.
The cost, as much as the need to develop new technologies, is the reason this is a multi decade project, but that’s not an argument not to start now.
But as it isn't...
When we stay in Inverness we get a B&B near the canal staircase. Last time we met a friend doing his transit on his catamaran. Went down to Dochgarroch to meet him and cruised back. Very impressive canal - proper size, unlike most of the southern ones.
By way of an industrial history digression, I have discovered a rather good local history society book on the mine barrage from Scotland to Norway in WW1. The whole area of derelict land with some new housing next to the northern sea basin - now a yachties' marina - was a huge storage and processing complex for mines, railways and sheds everywhere, assembling them from bits brought over the railway from Kyle of Lochalsh (imported from the USA) and loading them onto the minelayers. Wouldn't think it today apart from the suspiciously wide quayside at the basin.
The number of women raped on hospital wards - microscopic. By trans people? Even more so. The number of people already in a dreadful mess trying to pay their bills? Millions. And in the autumn? Millions more.
So the trans "threat" isn't a threat except for in extremely rare edge cases, whereas the COL crisis is a direct threat to vast numbers. So if the Tories want to foam on about the cock-tucking deviants thats their loss.
However that does not mean there are no votes to be had in the culture wars, especially if it means pushing back at the extremes of the left attacking our culture and heritage, even ballet now under threat
https://twitter.com/DanielJHannan/status/1548526406904135685?s=20&t=bbAF4XFZQxzkrIZEPt8Ovg
Mr. Palmer, cheers for the thoughts on those two games. Yeah, I was expecting something vaguely Civ-ish for the kingdom management and didn't like the faffing about. With building placements and adjacency bonuses I thought that would matter a lot but it seemed way less significant than I'd supposed.
Now to decide whether to pre-order or not. I'm tempted but the second Pillars game seemed to have buggered up the console port to a dramatic extent which does make me a little wary.
"We ought to enjoy the sunshine"
#Ridge #SundayMorning https://twitter.com/Haggis_UK/status/1548574734882787329/video/1
But even if it might tell us why Boris did not report their tryst, that does not explain why Boris met Lebedev. Nor does it explain Lebedev's motivation for meeting Boris.
The anti-tidal lobby (largely nuclear) have cleverly extrapolated the Swansea numbers when the prize (and the economics) is a series of Cardiff-scale projects around our coast.
I don't think we were really in a position to demolish the civil service calculations, or any particular reason why they should have been biased. It's possible that they were simply wrong, or that subsequent events have changed the balance, but Occam's Razor is that the civil servants do their best to present the options and the politicians try to make sensible decisions based on them which won't be too unpopular. We don't need to demonise the people involved, but perhaps there's scope for more independent challenging of the data before decisions are made.
KD my accountant died
Prosecutor Did that really matter?
KD Well, it mattered to him
I am sure this woman will realise how trivial her problems are when she learns that she is a "fringe issue" and "edge case" to a white flightist posting on an Internet forum from somewhere near Aberdeen. Women, hey? Mountains and molehills.
winner and ensuring trans rights are balanced with womens' rights important to win the latter
There's too much fear of and hostility towards trans people right now.
From what I've seen of the candidates so far, ignoring my betting position (which puts Sunak as #1 preference for entirely book-related reasons) my preference would be:
1. Truss - Seems very sound on the economy etc, also came up with the excellent NI solution
2. Tugendhat - Less dry, but pro more housing which is always a big tick
3. Mordaunt - Neutral, seems to change her positions based on what's popular today, ironically like a continuity Boris
4. Sunak - Too high tax
5. Badenoch - Anti-woke
I appreciate that's probably a pretty unusual preference list.
On leader drawbacks: Sunak should be pressed on Ukraine.
It may be she would have a number of interesting or distinct other positions, but it would be a gamble as currently she has little to go on.
Though we have to give a way of dealing with what we get. Another good reason not to abandon levelling up is the water supply difficulties in the South-East.
No. The suggestion is that Lebedevs role was that of pander; that he hosted Boris and a talented young female.
Some of the candidates have done this. Truss has it seems to be put down sound policies on debt, tax, Europe, the environment and more.
Badenoch seems to have concentrated on woke, woke, woke, woke and abandoning net zero (which is another big no from me, justifying her last placed preference).
For most of the public, their preferred issue they need resolving right now? Well, as usual, its the economy, stupid.
However, it is reported more sensible senior conservatives are demanding Johnson resigns his seat on the 6th September as they do not want the Johnson drama continuing, with all the investigations into his behaviour due in the Autumn
https://twitter.com/TomTugendhat/status/1548586142257266690?s=20&t=bbAF4XFZQxzkrIZEPt8Ovg
If you infer the schools' orders of priorities from the visibility of display materials, they are:
1) now you're in secondary school, you need to pick a sexuality and identity from this list. This is very important and if you're not sure it's probably because you're bi, rather than, you know, 11 or 12 and not actually sexual at all yet. Why not join the Rainbow Club?
=2) woohoo for BLM! Mary Seacombe and Rosa Parks. Why not join the equality club?
=2) the environment: we're all doomed.
4) while you're here, if you want to indulge in a little education, or perhaps sport, that would also be fine.
Of course, it would benefit the town in which it is based in the same way having any new, large employer would do, in terms of jobs and wages spent locally.
I mean, this is the guy who Boris seemingly trusted enough to be his official number 2, but he swung behind the guy Boris and his acolytes are doing everything in their power to ensure does not win.
Giving people more opportunity to say no, when government policy has long been in the opposite direction (so many things would have been refused by councils or on appeal had goverment policy not been different) just strikes me as mad.
I think that Badenoch needs to be pinned down on exactly which areas of public life the state should withdraw from, how much this would save, and the social impact of the state withdrawing.