This is a masterpiece of political ambivalence. Depending on what you put in "simplified regulations" it either means a glorious YIMBY orgy of construction, or that nobody will ever build another house.
No one can build a new house where I have to see it. Simple.
I'd be happy to drive down to yours and whitewash your windows if that helps?
Yes, these are crowded islands with competing interests. Which is one of the reasons planning is not simple and cannot be unless some interests are just ignored. It is never simple and anyone claiming it can be made so is either simplistic or dishonest.
Japan is crowded and has competing interests, it doesn't stop us having reasonably simple, objective planning rules that allow people to build things where they're needed. Of course some interests are just ignored - the government can't and shouldn't regulate everything for every possible purpose.
Tugendhat faces a round of quickfire questions. Would you intervene if China invade Taiwan? I would definitely support our Japanese, Indonesian and Philippine allies. Would you leave the European Convention on Human Rights? No. Will you build the whole of HS2? Yes. Are you fully committed by net zero by 2050? Fully committed. What I need now is the policy and the planning, and nobody has set it up yet. Would you privatise Channel 4? No Would you allow another referendum on Scottish independence? It's a generational decision - a generation hasn't passed. Would you work for a prime minster who has broken the law? Well I haven't worked for this one. Does the next PM have to come from outside Johnson's cabinet? We need a clean start.
It's Mordaunt's turn for a round of quickfire questions. Are there any circumstances under which you would allow another referendum on Scottish independence? It's a settled question. No. Are you committed to net zero by 2050? Yes - but it has to not clobber people and must support levelling up . Will you privatise Channel 4? Not a priority for me. Would you give Boris Johnson a cabinet position? I don't think he'd be around to serve. Will you withdraw the UK from the ECHR? No.
Tom’s answers may have been a tad stronger? But to what extent is this the candidate themself solely to blame, or the team around them can help them prepare better - rational thought through policy and strong forms of words?
Was the HS2 question not asked for Penny?
I have lifted this off of Sky, I was in a service when it was live, but it looks like they had tailored questions.
Tom is actually saying, no, I won’t help Taiwan?
The give Boris cabinet job is interesting. If he thought it was his best chance of a comeback, and Truss offered him Foreign Secretary, Boris would take it wouldn’t he? In fact right now it would sort of suit him and the Conservatives?
Foreign Secretary Boris cannot be ruled out imo.
In more Bonkers News (real or imagined) from the Tory war-room Kemi Badenoch has hit out at Ben & Jerry's owner Unilever for focusing on 'social justice at the expense of profits'.
As Bernard Manning (or similar) once said. 'You Couldn't Make it Up!'
This is a Priti Patel battle. KB strikes me more and more as a PP mini me. Not in a good way.
Do we really believe B&J are focussing on social justice at expense of profits, or it’s a glib marketing campaign.
Cummings will be revealed as the Brains behind Badenoch success. As Boris exits number 10, Gove and Cummings will be entering it. Dom will probably carry the same box through the front door much like Hitler used the same rail carriage for French surrender.
Cummings is a dead duck. Utterly ineffectual trolling campaign against Johnson which contributed exactly zero to actually getting rid of him. Gove may be a different matter
I think he was pivotal. He was the single reason I was reasonably certain Johnson would go before his time. He understands the art of persuasion like few others and he's very good at it. Selling Brexit single handedly was a work of marketing genius. I can think of very few campaigns that were as flawless (in hindsight)
We must always apply the Bonkers Tory Party Member overlay to any analysis of potential next leader.
As I keep reading (and posted yesterday an example of) there is a substantial number of such folk who viscerally despise Sunak.
I still don't understand how he has ceased to be a hard Brexiteer in their eyes. An original Brexiteer who was content with no deal. What did he do wrong? Not bonkers enough compared to your typical "hard Brexiteer"? Sounds a bit too much like Cameron and Osborne? Toppled the Brexit God?
He's in that unpleasant place one should always avoid if at all possible - between 2 stools. Stayed with Johnson so unclean to people who want to wish that whole episode away. Knifed him eventually so a sneaky traitor to those who either still like Johnson or who fetishize loyalty.
I think that is right, but it is still weird that that dislike has transformed into pretending he is a remainer traitor (as seen on here).
Boris is both Borilicious in his own right, and the one true parfit embodiment of Brexit. You cannot knife the man without knifing the creed.
This is a masterpiece of political ambivalence. Depending on what you put in "simplified regulations" it either means a glorious YIMBY orgy of construction, or that nobody will ever build another house.
No one can build a new house where I have to see it. Simple.
I'd be happy to drive down to yours and whitewash your windows if that helps?
Yes, these are crowded islands with competing interests. Which is one of the reasons planning is not simple and cannot be unless some interests are just ignored. It is never simple and anyone claiming it can be made so is either simplistic or dishonest.
Japan is crowded and has competing interests, it doesn't stop us having reasonably simple, objective planning rules that allow people to build things where they're needed. Of course some interests are just ignored - the government can't and shouldn't regulate everything for every possible purpose.
Who decides where something is "needed"?
For example, NIMBYs don't think houses are "needed" anywhere near them, but they obviously are.
Jesus Christ. In case anyone was feeling unduly chipper, let me relate a conversation I just had. Walking down Great Ducie Street, Manchester, I saw an altercation between a gaunt looking fella in a tracksuit and a shabby looking old woman. I caught the eye of the fella, who apologised, and, in step, going in the same direction, explained himself: that was his mum, she was on heroin and couldn't sort himself out, and he was looking like being made homeless because she kept going round to his flat and causing trouble. And he was almost totally blind, as was his sister, having been born to a woman on heroin. And he had almost no teeth, since being hit in the face with a tire iron six months ago. And just one thing after another. Here was a fella who life took one gigantic shit on at the start followed by a succession of smaller but still substantial ones regularly along the way. I say this not to make any particular point but just to reflect on how unbelievably awful some people have it.
A terrible tale. When I hear it, it reminds me why I vote Labour, that capitalism is not enough and that socialism would make a big difference. Capitalism is not kind to people who have bad luck.
However, I also remember that history shows us that no single political ideology or that government has all the answers. So it's not as simple as voting left and all will be well. We need balance.
So I really hope, somehow miraculously, our overall political culture manages to extract the best of right and left and maybe some new ideas and finds a way to make a better life for people with terrible luck.
It's not really possible to make life better for people who don't have any luck. The best that can be done for those people is to believe that their luck can change.
Scandinavia and Holland would beg to differ. There people's life chsnces are tilted in their favour.
Despite the rhetoric, you're much less likely to be lucky in terms of social mobility in the U.S., because in fact most of the time, it's not actually luck.
It is good to want to uplift people, but sometimes you can't. All you can really do is offer assistance and cooperation in their own decision to improve their life.
There was a horrific and funny (if you like graveyard humour)story about the Nazi attempts to deal with social misfits - who were just as precedent then as today.
They actually started from the premise of “saving” Aryans. So they tried all kinds of programs to rehabilitate alcoholics, support problem families etc. all surprisingly liberal and modern, really…
The story went downhill from there. And ended up where you’d expect a Nazi social program to end up.
Kensington is going Red whatever happens, it went Red under Corbyn in 2017 it will go red again under Starmer. I don't think HYUFD has a clue about the makeup of this seat.
Only certain if the boundary changes go through and even then Kensington voters will not want to cancel ballet as it becomes the latest Woke target
What an utter load of nonsense, you've clearly spent very little time in this seat.
Kensington cares about a few things: CoL, economic competence, honesty and trust. Your party is failing on all fronts.
They are not interested in culture wars. You do not know your own voters any more.
They do care about Ballet. Voters who live in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea have amongst the highest average earnings and highest education levels in the country and plenty of Tory voters there are strong supporters of high arts and cultue. Indeed that is more important for most of them than cost of living as most of them are very rich. Boris now going, dislike of his personality will also be less of an issue with the new leader.
They will not take kindly to the news that the The Northern School of Contemporary Dance (NSCD) has dropped ballet from auditions as it is rooted in “white European ideas” and "division of roles along gender lines", especially if that spreads even to the Royal Ballet School and affects their beloved Royal Opera House.
This is a masterpiece of political ambivalence. Depending on what you put in "simplified regulations" it either means a glorious YIMBY orgy of construction, or that nobody will ever build another house.
No one can build a new house where I have to see it. Simple.
I'd be happy to drive down to yours and whitewash your windows if that helps?
Yes, these are crowded islands with competing interests. Which is one of the reasons planning is not simple and cannot be unless some interests are just ignored. It is never simple and anyone claiming it can be made so is either simplistic or dishonest.
Japan is crowded and has competing interests, it doesn't stop us having reasonably simple, objective planning rules that allow people to build things where they're needed. Of course some interests are just ignored - the government can't and shouldn't regulate everything for every possible purpose.
Who decides where something is "needed"?
For example, NIMBYs don't think houses are "needed" anywhere near them, but they obviously are.
Nobody decides, people build stuff where they need it. That's that whole point.
There are zones but they're pretty flexible, eg you can build a house in an industrial zone or a low-rise factory in a residential zone. Honestly this stuff works way better without the government micromanaging it.
Jesus Christ. In case anyone was feeling unduly chipper, let me relate a conversation I just had. Walking down Great Ducie Street, Manchester, I saw an altercation between a gaunt looking fella in a tracksuit and a shabby looking old woman. I caught the eye of the fella, who apologised, and, in step, going in the same direction, explained himself: that was his mum, she was on heroin and couldn't sort himself out, and he was looking like being made homeless because she kept going round to his flat and causing trouble. And he was almost totally blind, as was his sister, having been born to a woman on heroin. And he had almost no teeth, since being hit in the face with a tire iron six months ago. And just one thing after another. Here was a fella who life took one gigantic shit on at the start followed by a succession of smaller but still substantial ones regularly along the way. I say this not to make any particular point but just to reflect on how unbelievably awful some people have it.
A terrible tale. When I hear it, it reminds me why I vote Labour, that capitalism is not enough and that socialism would make a big difference. Capitalism is not kind to people who have bad luck.
However, I also remember that history shows us that no single political ideology or that government has all the answers. So it's not as simple as voting left and all will be well. We need balance.
So I really hope, somehow miraculously, our overall political culture manages to extract the best of right and left and maybe some new ideas and finds a way to make a better life for people with terrible luck.
It's not really possible to make life better for people who don't have any luck. The best that can be done for those people is to believe that their luck can change.
That's a pretty shocking statement.
If a family member came round to my house and started causing trouble, the police might get involved, but there's virtually no chance my neighbours complaints would get me thrown out of a house I own.
When was the last time you were in a situation where you could have been hit in the face by a tire iron? Someone in the situation he's described is much more likely to be a victim of violence.
Is there no world in which his mum was given more support as a heroin user when she was pregnant, or as a new mum?
It may be that random luck pushes one person closer to the edge than another, but there are plenty of ways that a society can help make sure the edge is just that bit further away.
This is a masterpiece of political ambivalence. Depending on what you put in "simplified regulations" it either means a glorious YIMBY orgy of construction, or that nobody will ever build another house.
No one can build a new house where I have to see it. Simple.
I'd be happy to drive down to yours and whitewash your windows if that helps?
Yes, these are crowded islands with competing interests. Which is one of the reasons planning is not simple and cannot be unless some interests are just ignored. It is never simple and anyone claiming it can be made so is either simplistic or dishonest.
Japan is crowded and has competing interests, it doesn't stop us having reasonably simple, objective planning rules that allow people to build things where they're needed. Of course some interests are just ignored - the government can't and shouldn't regulate everything for every possible purpose.
Who decides where something is "needed"?
For example, NIMBYs don't think houses are "needed" anywhere near them, but they obviously are.
So if I had been born in 1900 I would now have lived to my actual dob. Except the cancer I had 10 years ago would have finished me off about the time of the second wsc government.
Jesus Christ. In case anyone was feeling unduly chipper, let me relate a conversation I just had. Walking down Great Ducie Street, Manchester, I saw an altercation between a gaunt looking fella in a tracksuit and a shabby looking old woman. I caught the eye of the fella, who apologised, and, in step, going in the same direction, explained himself: that was his mum, she was on heroin and couldn't sort himself out, and he was looking like being made homeless because she kept going round to his flat and causing trouble. And he was almost totally blind, as was his sister, having been born to a woman on heroin. And he had almost no teeth, since being hit in the face with a tire iron six months ago. And just one thing after another. Here was a fella who life took one gigantic shit on at the start followed by a succession of smaller but still substantial ones regularly along the way. I say this not to make any particular point but just to reflect on how unbelievably awful some people have it.
A terrible tale. When I hear it, it reminds me why I vote Labour, that capitalism is not enough and that socialism would make a big difference. Capitalism is not kind to people who have bad luck.
However, I also remember that history shows us that no single political ideology or that government has all the answers. So it's not as simple as voting left and all will be well. We need balance.
So I really hope, somehow miraculously, our overall political culture manages to extract the best of right and left and maybe some new ideas and finds a way to make a better life for people with terrible luck.
Thanks. I was trying to reflect on the politics of it, and what I would loosely term as 'my side' of politics doesn't have much of an answer to this situation. We can discourage it from arising by criminalising drugs and disincentivising the likes of his mother from having children, but that's never going to be wholly successful and isn't much consolation for the likes of this fella. But I don't think the left have a solution for this either apart from providing more resources for looking after the discarded pieces. Ultimately, politics mainly deals with the middle 96% and cases like this are perhaps more properly the domain of charity. (In Mamchester, we have a number of organisations dealing with matters of the bottom 2%, one of which is Big Change Manchester, which I think does a good job - I'm sure other cities have their equivalents. ) One cheerier note, I have just bought a birthday card for my Dad from WHSmith. It featured a Matt cartoon. The assistant behind the counter was an antithesis of daily Telegraph reader - young, male, vaguely gothic, sparkly nail varnish - but enthusiastically announced that that was his favourite range and he absolutloves those cartoons. So perhaps the UK does still have something to hold us together: Matt cartoons.
I would say that the first step is to avoid any politics that uses the poor as a scapegoat or dehumanises them. The poor are not scroungers or lazy. They are us. We are not where they are because of the roll of the dice.
Once you establish that, you can move forward.
Yeah. No different to anyone else. Except with less money. For more likely to hold "outdated" views the older they are. Which is logical after all.
To be clear, the left can be guilty of dehumanising the poor.
Historically, solutions were focussed on big government programmes delivered through faceless (often unaccountable) institutions with one size fits all approach.
The view that the poor need to be pitied and saved is something that I have a bit of a problem with. That patrician view is not the worst sentiment in the world (and far better than doing nothing and has delivered some great progress), but it is another form of us vs. them.
People who are poor and in the gutter are just the same as you and me. They need help and respect. They do not need to be looked down on. We are all the same and should help each other.
Sometimes I surprise myself with how much I agree with you, and you're certainly patriotic.
Maybe you and I should be a tad less partisan?
More in common.
Suspect most of us could find far more to agree on than to disagree.
Almost all of us want a better future. We just disagree about certain details of how we get there.
I'd say that's broadly true.
For me, ref your story, a fundamental driver of being on the left is a belief that the biggest single determinant (by miles) of the relative material life outcomes of individuals is luck. Varying types of luck, not so much as in playing dice or the lottery, but as in circumstances, the most important being those of your birth. Where and to whom you are born.
This is why I don't go for the personal aspiration, small state politics of the Thatcherite right. It's not really about how this translates into policies it's more that it feels not only wrong to me but harsh - because the flipside of falsely believing people's success is down to them is falsely believing their failure is also down to them. Things then flow from that. Often quite nasty things.
That said, I vastly prefer this traditional brand of right wing politics - because I think it can be well meant and its analysis does sometimes have merit - to the national populist crap which has proliferated in recent times. This I find utterly toxic with barely a redeeming feature.
This is a masterpiece of political ambivalence. Depending on what you put in "simplified regulations" it either means a glorious YIMBY orgy of construction, or that nobody will ever build another house.
No one can build a new house where I have to see it. Simple.
I'd be happy to drive down to yours and whitewash your windows if that helps?
Yes, these are crowded islands with competing interests. Which is one of the reasons planning is not simple and cannot be unless some interests are just ignored. It is never simple and anyone claiming it can be made so is either simplistic or dishonest.
Japan is crowded and has competing interests, it doesn't stop us having reasonably simple, objective planning rules that allow people to build things where they're needed. Of course some interests are just ignored - the government can't and shouldn't regulate everything for every possible purpose.
Who decides where something is "needed"?
For example, NIMBYs don't think houses are "needed" anywhere near them, but they obviously are.
Parts of US have similar problems with housing costs and planning rules. US average house now 6x annual salary.
This new piece on pricing in the US and the politics of markets and regulation is very interesting:
The quickfire questions that need be asked. Yes or no.
1. Should we leave the ECHR? 2. Should we abandon the Rwanda policy? 3. Should we invoke article 16? 4. Do you support Net Zero by 2050? 5. Would you privatise Ch4? 6. Would you rule out employing Priti Patel in your Cabinet? 7. Would you employ Suella Braverman as Attorney General under any circumstances?
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.
Seacole. Bloody autocorrect.
I agree about autocorrect. I fail to see the problem with teaching kids about Mary Seacole.
I must admit that I do find the focus on such an obscure figure rather odd.
Surely Seacole is only 'an obscure figure' because she was overlooked for a century due to her skin colour. C.f. Florence Nightingale.
But it's not as if Florence Nightingale was ever a core figure of primary school history.
Mary Seacole is interesting largely through being the first non-white person of historical note in Britain. From this though the wrong conclusion is often drawn I.e. non-white people have just as big a role as white people but have been overlooked, rather than the conclusion that there were very, very few non-whute people in Britain before the second half of the twentieth century. The past looks very unlike the present. She is interesting precisely because she is unrepresentative.
She was basically a good hearted camp follower, but there were black Britons of note before her. I would cite Cuffay as an example:
So if I had been born in 1900 I would now have lived to my actual dob. Except the cancer I had 10 years ago would have finished me off about the time of the second wsc government.
Happy Birthday.
May there be thick black hedges for many years to come.
Japan is crowded and has competing interests, it doesn't stop us having reasonably simple, objective planning rules that allow people to build things where they're needed. Of course some interests are just ignored - the government can't and shouldn't regulate everything for every possible purpose.
I'm not a resident, but my impression has been that Japan's planning system tends to be a bit too far shifted in the other direction sometimes (allowing building of some pretty ugly buildings in Kyoto so its historic buildings end up isolated remnants in a sea of could-be-anywhere concrete, for instance).
This is a masterpiece of political ambivalence. Depending on what you put in "simplified regulations" it either means a glorious YIMBY orgy of construction, or that nobody will ever build another house.
No one can build a new house where I have to see it. Simple.
I'd be happy to drive down to yours and whitewash your windows if that helps?
Yes, these are crowded islands with competing interests. Which is one of the reasons planning is not simple and cannot be unless some interests are just ignored. It is never simple and anyone claiming it can be made so is either simplistic or dishonest.
Japan is crowded and has competing interests, it doesn't stop us having reasonably simple, objective planning rules that allow people to build things where they're needed. Of course some interests are just ignored - the government can't and shouldn't regulate everything for every possible purpose.
Who decides where something is "needed"?
For example, NIMBYs don't think houses are "needed" anywhere near them, but they obviously are.
Parts of US have similar problems with housing costs and planning rules. US average house now 6x annual salary.
This new piece on pricing in the US and the politics of markets and regulation is very interesting:
As usual, the Americans have created the worst version of a common problem, in cities such as San Fransico, where enormous efforts have been expended on preventing any solution
This is a masterpiece of political ambivalence. Depending on what you put in "simplified regulations" it either means a glorious YIMBY orgy of construction, or that nobody will ever build another house.
No one can build a new house where I have to see it. Simple.
I'd be happy to drive down to yours and whitewash your windows if that helps?
Yes, these are crowded islands with competing interests. Which is one of the reasons planning is not simple and cannot be unless some interests are just ignored. It is never simple and anyone claiming it can be made so is either simplistic or dishonest.
Japan is crowded and has competing interests, it doesn't stop us having reasonably simple, objective planning rules that allow people to build things where they're needed. Of course some interests are just ignored - the government can't and shouldn't regulate everything for every possible purpose.
Who decides where something is "needed"?
For example, NIMBYs don't think houses are "needed" anywhere near them, but they obviously are.
Yeah, well, that's LibDems for you.....
Plenty of NIMBY Conservatives and Labour supporters too
This is a masterpiece of political ambivalence. Depending on what you put in "simplified regulations" it either means a glorious YIMBY orgy of construction, or that nobody will ever build another house.
No one can build a new house where I have to see it. Simple.
I'd be happy to drive down to yours and whitewash your windows if that helps?
Yes, these are crowded islands with competing interests. Which is one of the reasons planning is not simple and cannot be unless some interests are just ignored. It is never simple and anyone claiming it can be made so is either simplistic or dishonest.
Japan is crowded and has competing interests, it doesn't stop us having reasonably simple, objective planning rules that allow people to build things where they're needed. Of course some interests are just ignored - the government can't and shouldn't regulate everything for every possible purpose.
Who decides where something is "needed"?
For example, NIMBYs don't think houses are "needed" anywhere near them, but they obviously are.
Nobody decides, people build stuff where they need it. That's that whole point.
There are zones but they're pretty flexible, eg you can build a house in an industrial zone or a low-rise factory in a residential zone. Honestly this stuff works way better without the government micromanaging it.
Japan also has the effects of a population that is not increasing rapidly. They don’t need to build a fair sized city of homes each year to keep up.
This is a masterpiece of political ambivalence. Depending on what you put in "simplified regulations" it either means a glorious YIMBY orgy of construction, or that nobody will ever build another house.
No one can build a new house where I have to see it. Simple.
I'd be happy to drive down to yours and whitewash your windows if that helps?
Yes, these are crowded islands with competing interests. Which is one of the reasons planning is not simple and cannot be unless some interests are just ignored. It is never simple and anyone claiming it can be made so is either simplistic or dishonest.
Japan is crowded and has competing interests, it doesn't stop us having reasonably simple, objective planning rules that allow people to build things where they're needed. Of course some interests are just ignored - the government can't and shouldn't regulate everything for every possible purpose.
Who decides where something is "needed"?
For example, NIMBYs don't think houses are "needed" anywhere near them, but they obviously are.
Parts of US have similar problems with housing costs and planning rules. US average house now 6x annual salary.
This new piece on pricing in the US and the politics of markets and regulation is very interesting:
The US has some truly loopy planning rules. Parking requirements, over strict zoning, banning anything that isn’t a tower block or single family dwellings. It’s all set at local level and is very inconsistent.
So if I had been born in 1900 I would now have lived to my actual dob. Except the cancer I had 10 years ago would have finished me off about the time of the second wsc government.
Happy Birthday.
May there be thick black hedges for many years to come.
The emphasis on culture wars in the leadership contest seems principally to be a tactical move by some of the candidates (particularly Truss) to get Mordaunt out of the final two - and I think that the damage this is doing to Mordaunt is less to do with the substance of her views before the leadership contest (though it seems most Tories disagree with them) and more to do with her readiness to ditch those views the moment they became inconvenient.
If Mordaunt's support does deflate, we could conceivably see Badenoch in the final two instead of Mordaunt or Truss. Though Badenoch's initial 'fame' came from her culture wars fights in the Equalities Minister brief (notably following the Sewell report), she and Sunak largely seem to agree on that sort of thing, so it may not be an issue in that final stage of the fight - it's not a dividing issue.
However, if the Tories fight the next general election on cultural issues, I agree they will lose, not because people necessarily disagree with them, but because it will indicate they can't fight the election on anything else (like their economic record).
This is a masterpiece of political ambivalence. Depending on what you put in "simplified regulations" it either means a glorious YIMBY orgy of construction, or that nobody will ever build another house.
No one can build a new house where I have to see it. Simple.
I'd be happy to drive down to yours and whitewash your windows if that helps?
Yes, these are crowded islands with competing interests. Which is one of the reasons planning is not simple and cannot be unless some interests are just ignored. It is never simple and anyone claiming it can be made so is either simplistic or dishonest.
Japan is crowded and has competing interests, it doesn't stop us having reasonably simple, objective planning rules that allow people to build things where they're needed. Of course some interests are just ignored - the government can't and shouldn't regulate everything for every possible purpose.
Who decides where something is "needed"?
For example, NIMBYs don't think houses are "needed" anywhere near them, but they obviously are.
Nobody decides, people build stuff where they need it. That's that whole point.
There are zones but they're pretty flexible, eg you can build a house in an industrial zone or a low-rise factory in a residential zone. Honestly this stuff works way better without the government micromanaging it.
If we had that, the whole country would be "Green Belt Zone" or "Heritage Zone" or similar and nothing would get built.
Jesus Christ. In case anyone was feeling unduly chipper, let me relate a conversation I just had. Walking down Great Ducie Street, Manchester, I saw an altercation between a gaunt looking fella in a tracksuit and a shabby looking old woman. I caught the eye of the fella, who apologised, and, in step, going in the same direction, explained himself: that was his mum, she was on heroin and couldn't sort himself out, and he was looking like being made homeless because she kept going round to his flat and causing trouble. And he was almost totally blind, as was his sister, having been born to a woman on heroin. And he had almost no teeth, since being hit in the face with a tire iron six months ago. And just one thing after another. Here was a fella who life took one gigantic shit on at the start followed by a succession of smaller but still substantial ones regularly along the way. I say this not to make any particular point but just to reflect on how unbelievably awful some people have it.
A terrible tale. When I hear it, it reminds me why I vote Labour, that capitalism is not enough and that socialism would make a big difference. Capitalism is not kind to people who have bad luck.
However, I also remember that history shows us that no single political ideology or that government has all the answers. So it's not as simple as voting left and all will be well. We need balance.
So I really hope, somehow miraculously, our overall political culture manages to extract the best of right and left and maybe some new ideas and finds a way to make a better life for people with terrible luck.
It's not really possible to make life better for people who don't have any luck. The best that can be done for those people is to believe that their luck can change.
Scandinavia and Holland would beg to differ. There people's life chsnces are tilted in their favour.
Despite the rhetoric, you're much less likely to be lucky in terms of social mobility in the U.S., because in fact most of the time, it's not actually luck.
It is good to want to uplift people, but sometimes you can't. All you can really do is offer assistance and cooperation in their own decision to improve their life.
There was a horrific and funny (if you like graveyard humour)story about the Nazi attempts to deal with social misfits - who were just as precedent then as today.
They actually started from the premise of “saving” Aryans. So they tried all kinds of programs to rehabilitate alcoholics, support problem families etc. all surprisingly liberal and modern, really…
The story went downhill from there. And ended up where you’d expect a Nazi social program to end up.
The Nazis were quite good at some things. The above st
Jesus Christ. In case anyone was feeling unduly chipper, let me relate a conversation I just had. Walking down Great Ducie Street, Manchester, I saw an altercation between a gaunt looking fella in a tracksuit and a shabby looking old woman. I caught the eye of the fella, who apologised, and, in step, going in the same direction, explained himself: that was his mum, she was on heroin and couldn't sort himself out, and he was looking like being made homeless because she kept going round to his flat and causing trouble. And he was almost totally blind, as was his sister, having been born to a woman on heroin. And he had almost no teeth, since being hit in the face with a tire iron six months ago. And just one thing after another. Here was a fella who life took one gigantic shit on at the start followed by a succession of smaller but still substantial ones regularly along the way. I say this not to make any particular point but just to reflect on how unbelievably awful some people have it.
A terrible tale. When I hear it, it reminds me why I vote Labour, that capitalism is not enough and that socialism would make a big difference. Capitalism is not kind to people who have bad luck.
However, I also remember that history shows us that no single political ideology or that government has all the answers. So it's not as simple as voting left and all will be well. We need balance.
So I really hope, somehow miraculously, our overall political culture manages to extract the best of right and left and maybe some new ideas and finds a way to make a better life for people with terrible luck.
It's not really possible to make life better for people who don't have any luck. The best that can be done for those people is to believe that their luck can change.
That's a pretty shocking statement.
If a family member came round to my house and started causing trouble, the police might get involved, but there's virtually no chance my neighbours complaints would get me thrown out of a house I own.
When was the last time you were in a situation where you could have been hit in the face by a tire iron? Someone in the situation he's described is much more likely to be a victim of violence.
Is there no world in which his mum was given more support as a heroin user when she was pregnant, or as a new mum?
It may be that random luck pushes one person closer to the edge than another, but there are plenty of ways that a society can help make sure the edge is just that bit further away.
If the person is set on reaching that edge, they will do so. Others should, as I've said, be there to help that guy turn it around when he is ready to do so, but it has to start with him, and the starting point is his own belief that it can get just a little better, and easier, than it is today.
This is a masterpiece of political ambivalence. Depending on what you put in "simplified regulations" it either means a glorious YIMBY orgy of construction, or that nobody will ever build another house.
No one can build a new house where I have to see it. Simple.
I'd be happy to drive down to yours and whitewash your windows if that helps?
Yes, these are crowded islands with competing interests. Which is one of the reasons planning is not simple and cannot be unless some interests are just ignored. It is never simple and anyone claiming it can be made so is either simplistic or dishonest.
Japan is crowded and has competing interests, it doesn't stop us having reasonably simple, objective planning rules that allow people to build things where they're needed. Of course some interests are just ignored - the government can't and shouldn't regulate everything for every possible purpose.
It helps that the population of Japan has dropped by 2.5 million over the last 14 years.
Interesting, not least as the criticism is from a Tory heroine.
'[Bingham] said there had since been missed opportunities – including failing to bring scientific and commercial expertise into the government, and not pursuing the creation of bulk antibody-manufacturing capabilities in the UK.
[...]
Bingham said in order to have bulk-scale manufacturing of antibodies it was necessary to have bio-processors with capacity of up to 20,000 litres, noting that such processors could also be used for other biological products, including vaccines, and would allow the UK to export.
“We’re way off that [capacity]. So all our biological therapeutics are all imported,” she said, adding the reason for the situation is simple. “Just lack of government appetite,” she said.'
This is a masterpiece of political ambivalence. Depending on what you put in "simplified regulations" it either means a glorious YIMBY orgy of construction, or that nobody will ever build another house.
No one can build a new house where I have to see it. Simple.
I'd be happy to drive down to yours and whitewash your windows if that helps?
Yes, these are crowded islands with competing interests. Which is one of the reasons planning is not simple and cannot be unless some interests are just ignored. It is never simple and anyone claiming it can be made so is either simplistic or dishonest.
Japan is crowded and has competing interests, it doesn't stop us having reasonably simple, objective planning rules that allow people to build things where they're needed. Of course some interests are just ignored - the government can't and shouldn't regulate everything for every possible purpose.
Who decides where something is "needed"?
For example, NIMBYs don't think houses are "needed" anywhere near them, but they obviously are.
Nobody decides, people build stuff where they need it. That's that whole point.
There are zones but they're pretty flexible, eg you can build a house in an industrial zone or a low-rise factory in a residential zone. Honestly this stuff works way better without the government micromanaging it.
Japan also has the effects of a population that is not increasing rapidly. They don’t need to build a fair sized city of homes each year to keep up.
Tokyo does though, so if you look at Tokyo you can see that the planning system is doing its job. Population is growing, floor space per person is growing, rents are stable, shops and transport are convenient.
This is a masterpiece of political ambivalence. Depending on what you put in "simplified regulations" it either means a glorious YIMBY orgy of construction, or that nobody will ever build another house.
No one can build a new house where I have to see it. Simple.
I'd be happy to drive down to yours and whitewash your windows if that helps?
Yes, these are crowded islands with competing interests. Which is one of the reasons planning is not simple and cannot be unless some interests are just ignored. It is never simple and anyone claiming it can be made so is either simplistic or dishonest.
Japan is crowded and has competing interests, it doesn't stop us having reasonably simple, objective planning rules that allow people to build things where they're needed. Of course some interests are just ignored - the government can't and shouldn't regulate everything for every possible purpose.
It helps that the population of Japan has dropped by 2.5 million over the last 14 years.
The same thing works in places where population is growing like Tokyo.
IDK, I think it is very interesting he thinks Sunak, Mordaunt, Truss and Badenoch would all weaken defence, recklessly spend and divide the Union. How else to interpret that only Tugendhat would seek to prevent Starmer doing those things?
This is a masterpiece of political ambivalence. Depending on what you put in "simplified regulations" it either means a glorious YIMBY orgy of construction, or that nobody will ever build another house.
No one can build a new house where I have to see it. Simple.
I'd be happy to drive down to yours and whitewash your windows if that helps?
Yes, these are crowded islands with competing interests. Which is one of the reasons planning is not simple and cannot be unless some interests are just ignored. It is never simple and anyone claiming it can be made so is either simplistic or dishonest.
Japan is crowded and has competing interests, it doesn't stop us having reasonably simple, objective planning rules that allow people to build things where they're needed. Of course some interests are just ignored - the government can't and shouldn't regulate everything for every possible purpose.
Who decides where something is "needed"?
For example, NIMBYs don't think houses are "needed" anywhere near them, but they obviously are.
Nobody decides, people build stuff where they need it. That's that whole point.
There are zones but they're pretty flexible, eg you can build a house in an industrial zone or a low-rise factory in a residential zone. Honestly this stuff works way better without the government micromanaging it.
If we had that, the whole country would be "Green Belt Zone" or "Heritage Zone" or similar and nothing would get built.
I mean... don't do that. Set the policy nationally, and make it non-stupid.
Jesus Christ. In case anyone was feeling unduly chipper, let me relate a conversation I just had. Walking down Great Ducie Street, Manchester, I saw an altercation between a gaunt looking fella in a tracksuit and a shabby looking old woman. I caught the eye of the fella, who apologised, and, in step, going in the same direction, explained himself: that was his mum, she was on heroin and couldn't sort himself out, and he was looking like being made homeless because she kept going round to his flat and causing trouble. And he was almost totally blind, as was his sister, having been born to a woman on heroin. And he had almost no teeth, since being hit in the face with a tire iron six months ago. And just one thing after another. Here was a fella who life took one gigantic shit on at the start followed by a succession of smaller but still substantial ones regularly along the way. I say this not to make any particular point but just to reflect on how unbelievably awful some people have it.
A terrible tale. When I hear it, it reminds me why I vote Labour, that capitalism is not enough and that socialism would make a big difference. Capitalism is not kind to people who have bad luck.
However, I also remember that history shows us that no single political ideology or that government has all the answers. So it's not as simple as voting left and all will be well. We need balance.
So I really hope, somehow miraculously, our overall political culture manages to extract the best of right and left and maybe some new ideas and finds a way to make a better life for people with terrible luck.
It's not really possible to make life better for people who don't have any luck. The best that can be done for those people is to believe that their luck can change.
Scandinavia and Holland would beg to differ. There people's life chsnces are tilted in their favour.
Despite the rhetoric, you're much less likely to be lucky in terms of social mobility in the U.S., because in fact most of the time, it's not actually luck.
It is good to want to uplift people, but sometimes you can't. All you can really do is offer assistance and cooperation in their own decision to improve their life.
There was a horrific and funny (if you like graveyard humour)story about the Nazi attempts to deal with social misfits - who were just as precedent then as today.
They actually started from the premise of “saving” Aryans. So they tried all kinds of programs to rehabilitate alcoholics, support problem families etc. all surprisingly liberal and modern, really…
The story went downhill from there. And ended up where you’d expect a Nazi social program to end up.
The Nazis were quite good at some things. The above st
Jesus Christ. In case anyone was feeling unduly chipper, let me relate a conversation I just had. Walking down Great Ducie Street, Manchester, I saw an altercation between a gaunt looking fella in a tracksuit and a shabby looking old woman. I caught the eye of the fella, who apologised, and, in step, going in the same direction, explained himself: that was his mum, she was on heroin and couldn't sort himself out, and he was looking like being made homeless because she kept going round to his flat and causing trouble. And he was almost totally blind, as was his sister, having been born to a woman on heroin. And he had almost no teeth, since being hit in the face with a tire iron six months ago. And just one thing after another. Here was a fella who life took one gigantic shit on at the start followed by a succession of smaller but still substantial ones regularly along the way. I say this not to make any particular point but just to reflect on how unbelievably awful some people have it.
A terrible tale. When I hear it, it reminds me why I vote Labour, that capitalism is not enough and that socialism would make a big difference. Capitalism is not kind to people who have bad luck.
However, I also remember that history shows us that no single political ideology or that government has all the answers. So it's not as simple as voting left and all will be well. We need balance.
So I really hope, somehow miraculously, our overall political culture manages to extract the best of right and left and maybe some new ideas and finds a way to make a better life for people with terrible luck.
It's not really possible to make life better for people who don't have any luck. The best that can be done for those people is to believe that their luck can change.
That's a pretty shocking statement.
If a family member came round to my house and started causing trouble, the police might get involved, but there's virtually no chance my neighbours complaints would get me thrown out of a house I own.
When was the last time you were in a situation where you could have been hit in the face by a tire iron? Someone in the situation he's described is much more likely to be a victim of violence.
Is there no world in which his mum was given more support as a heroin user when she was pregnant, or as a new mum?
It may be that random luck pushes one person closer to the edge than another, but there are plenty of ways that a society can help make sure the edge is just that bit further away.
If the person is set on reaching that edge, they will do so. Others should, as I've said, be there to help that guy turn it around when he is ready to do so, but it has to start with him, and the starting point is his own belief that it can get just a little better, and easier, than it is today.
Hmm. Sure Start was aimed at stopping that journey. It was cut by the Tories.
This is a masterpiece of political ambivalence. Depending on what you put in "simplified regulations" it either means a glorious YIMBY orgy of construction, or that nobody will ever build another house.
No one can build a new house where I have to see it. Simple.
I'd be happy to drive down to yours and whitewash your windows if that helps?
Yes, these are crowded islands with competing interests. Which is one of the reasons planning is not simple and cannot be unless some interests are just ignored. It is never simple and anyone claiming it can be made so is either simplistic or dishonest.
Japan is crowded and has competing interests, it doesn't stop us having reasonably simple, objective planning rules that allow people to build things where they're needed. Of course some interests are just ignored - the government can't and shouldn't regulate everything for every possible purpose.
Who decides where something is "needed"?
For example, NIMBYs don't think houses are "needed" anywhere near them, but they obviously are.
Nobody decides, people build stuff where they need it. That's that whole point.
There are zones but they're pretty flexible, eg you can build a house in an industrial zone or a low-rise factory in a residential zone. Honestly this stuff works way better without the government micromanaging it.
If we had that, the whole country would be "Green Belt Zone" or "Heritage Zone" or similar and nothing would get built.
I mean... don't do that. Set the policy nationally, and make it non-stupid.
I don't think we can. Sounds like Japan's culture has for a long time accepted the situation and behaves sensibly, but what British voters want from a planning system is for any level of objection, however silly (5G health effects), to let them say no.
Local councils rely on blaming national goverment for forcing them to accept building of anything, if you give them more power to say no, or local people to say no, that's all we'd hear.
So if I had been born in 1900 I would now have lived to my actual dob. Except the cancer I had 10 years ago would have finished me off about the time of the second wsc government.
See, QED, birth circumstances. Where and to whom and WHEN you were born is key. I missed out the last one for simplicity. It's hard to work with 3 axes on a 2D blog.
And HB! You've caught me up. Not for long though, I'll be powering away again next month.
This is a masterpiece of political ambivalence. Depending on what you put in "simplified regulations" it either means a glorious YIMBY orgy of construction, or that nobody will ever build another house.
No one can build a new house where I have to see it. Simple.
I'd be happy to drive down to yours and whitewash your windows if that helps?
Yes, these are crowded islands with competing interests. Which is one of the reasons planning is not simple and cannot be unless some interests are just ignored. It is never simple and anyone claiming it can be made so is either simplistic or dishonest.
Japan is crowded and has competing interests, it doesn't stop us having reasonably simple, objective planning rules that allow people to build things where they're needed. Of course some interests are just ignored - the government can't and shouldn't regulate everything for every possible purpose.
Who decides where something is "needed"?
For example, NIMBYs don't think houses are "needed" anywhere near them, but they obviously are.
Parts of US have similar problems with housing costs and planning rules. US average house now 6x annual salary.
This new piece on pricing in the US and the politics of markets and regulation is very interesting:
The US has some truly loopy planning rules. Parking requirements, over strict zoning, banning anything that isn’t a tower block or single family dwellings. It’s all set at local level and is very inconsistent.
Yes but Canada and Australia both have tons of space with building not overly restricted, and yet have been through big property booms.
ISTM that financing, easy money, and openness to foreign speculation are the more critical factors.
Jesus Christ. In case anyone was feeling unduly chipper, let me relate a conversation I just had. Walking down Great Ducie Street, Manchester, I saw an altercation between a gaunt looking fella in a tracksuit and a shabby looking old woman. I caught the eye of the fella, who apologised, and, in step, going in the same direction, explained himself: that was his mum, she was on heroin and couldn't sort himself out, and he was looking like being made homeless because she kept going round to his flat and causing trouble. And he was almost totally blind, as was his sister, having been born to a woman on heroin. And he had almost no teeth, since being hit in the face with a tire iron six months ago. And just one thing after another. Here was a fella who life took one gigantic shit on at the start followed by a succession of smaller but still substantial ones regularly along the way. I say this not to make any particular point but just to reflect on how unbelievably awful some people have it.
A terrible tale. When I hear it, it reminds me why I vote Labour, that capitalism is not enough and that socialism would make a big difference. Capitalism is not kind to people who have bad luck.
However, I also remember that history shows us that no single political ideology or that government has all the answers. So it's not as simple as voting left and all will be well. We need balance.
So I really hope, somehow miraculously, our overall political culture manages to extract the best of right and left and maybe some new ideas and finds a way to make a better life for people with terrible luck.
It's not really possible to make life better for people who don't have any luck. The best that can be done for those people is to believe that their luck can change.
Scandinavia and Holland would beg to differ. There people's life chsnces are tilted in their favour.
Despite the rhetoric, you're much less likely to be lucky in terms of social mobility in the U.S., because in fact most of the time, it's not actually luck.
It is good to want to uplift people, but sometimes you can't. All you can really do is offer assistance and cooperation in their own decision to improve their life.
There was a horrific and funny (if you like graveyard humour)story about the Nazi attempts to deal with social misfits - who were just as precedent then as today.
They actually started from the premise of “saving” Aryans. So they tried all kinds of programs to rehabilitate alcoholics, support problem families etc. all surprisingly liberal and modern, really…
The story went downhill from there. And ended up where you’d expect a Nazi social program to end up.
Only following in the tracks of Kanzler Bismarck, who invented the state OAP with a NI type system to maintain the might of the Reich through efficient workforces and to prevent the Sozis exploiting the lack thereof.
This is a masterpiece of political ambivalence. Depending on what you put in "simplified regulations" it either means a glorious YIMBY orgy of construction, or that nobody will ever build another house.
No one can build a new house where I have to see it. Simple.
I'd be happy to drive down to yours and whitewash your windows if that helps?
Yes, these are crowded islands with competing interests. Which is one of the reasons planning is not simple and cannot be unless some interests are just ignored. It is never simple and anyone claiming it can be made so is either simplistic or dishonest.
Japan is crowded and has competing interests, it doesn't stop us having reasonably simple, objective planning rules that allow people to build things where they're needed. Of course some interests are just ignored - the government can't and shouldn't regulate everything for every possible purpose.
Who decides where something is "needed"?
For example, NIMBYs don't think houses are "needed" anywhere near them, but they obviously are.
Parts of US have similar problems with housing costs and planning rules. US average house now 6x annual salary.
This new piece on pricing in the US and the politics of markets and regulation is very interesting:
The US has some truly loopy planning rules. Parking requirements, over strict zoning, banning anything that isn’t a tower block or single family dwellings. It’s all set at local level and is very inconsistent.
Yes but Canada and Australia both have tons of space with building not overly restricted, and yet have been through big property booms.
ISTM that financing, easy money, and openness to foreign speculation are the more critical factors.
British Columbia has very little space to build to be fair.
Boris's plan to install Lord Hogan-Howe to the NCA has been mentioned more than once on pb over the past few weeks, although I cannot recall any discussion of it, except that Boris was overriding Priti Patel as well as the normal rules. That's the trouble with Boris, it's just one thing after another.
Boris's plan to install Lord Hogan-Howe to the NCA has been mentioned more than once on pb, although I cannot recall any discussion of it, except that Boris was overriding Priti Patel as well as the normal rules. That's the trouble with Boris, it's just one thing after another.
Come on, the man's a mate, you have to stand by your mates!
This is a masterpiece of political ambivalence. Depending on what you put in "simplified regulations" it either means a glorious YIMBY orgy of construction, or that nobody will ever build another house.
No one can build a new house where I have to see it. Simple.
I'd be happy to drive down to yours and whitewash your windows if that helps?
Yes, these are crowded islands with competing interests. Which is one of the reasons planning is not simple and cannot be unless some interests are just ignored. It is never simple and anyone claiming it can be made so is either simplistic or dishonest.
Japan is crowded and has competing interests, it doesn't stop us having reasonably simple, objective planning rules that allow people to build things where they're needed. Of course some interests are just ignored - the government can't and shouldn't regulate everything for every possible purpose.
Who decides where something is "needed"?
For example, NIMBYs don't think houses are "needed" anywhere near them, but they obviously are.
Parts of US have similar problems with housing costs and planning rules. US average house now 6x annual salary.
This new piece on pricing in the US and the politics of markets and regulation is very interesting:
The US has some truly loopy planning rules. Parking requirements, over strict zoning, banning anything that isn’t a tower block or single family dwellings. It’s all set at local level and is very inconsistent.
Yes but Canada and Australia both have tons of space with building not overly restricted, and yet have been through big property booms.
ISTM that financing, easy money, and openness to foreign speculation are the more critical factors.
I believe Australia issue is related to a tax "fiddle" that basically everybody with any money does in order to substantially reduce their tax burden. Once you earn more than a certain amount you are an idiot not to buy another house, from which you can then start to write off a load of money against tax, and then you keep buying more and more properties.
Jesus Christ. In case anyone was feeling unduly chipper, let me relate a conversation I just had. Walking down Great Ducie Street, Manchester, I saw an altercation between a gaunt looking fella in a tracksuit and a shabby looking old woman. I caught the eye of the fella, who apologised, and, in step, going in the same direction, explained himself: that was his mum, she was on heroin and couldn't sort himself out, and he was looking like being made homeless because she kept going round to his flat and causing trouble. And he was almost totally blind, as was his sister, having been born to a woman on heroin. And he had almost no teeth, since being hit in the face with a tire iron six months ago. And just one thing after another. Here was a fella who life took one gigantic shit on at the start followed by a succession of smaller but still substantial ones regularly along the way. I say this not to make any particular point but just to reflect on how unbelievably awful some people have it.
A terrible tale. When I hear it, it reminds me why I vote Labour, that capitalism is not enough and that socialism would make a big difference. Capitalism is not kind to people who have bad luck.
However, I also remember that history shows us that no single political ideology or that government has all the answers. So it's not as simple as voting left and all will be well. We need balance.
So I really hope, somehow miraculously, our overall political culture manages to extract the best of right and left and maybe some new ideas and finds a way to make a better life for people with terrible luck.
It's not really possible to make life better for people who don't have any luck. The best that can be done for those people is to believe that their luck can change.
Scandinavia and Holland would beg to differ. There people's life chsnces are tilted in their favour.
Despite the rhetoric, you're much less likely to be lucky in terms of social mobility in the U.S., because in fact most of the time, it's not actually luck.
It is good to want to uplift people, but sometimes you can't. All you can really do is offer assistance and cooperation in their own decision to improve their life.
There was a horrific and funny (if you like graveyard humour)story about the Nazi attempts to deal with social misfits - who were just as precedent then as today.
They actually started from the premise of “saving” Aryans. So they tried all kinds of programs to rehabilitate alcoholics, support problem families etc. all surprisingly liberal and modern, really…
The story went downhill from there. And ended up where you’d expect a Nazi social program to end up.
The Nazis were quite good at some things. The above st
Jesus Christ. In case anyone was feeling unduly chipper, let me relate a conversation I just had. Walking down Great Ducie Street, Manchester, I saw an altercation between a gaunt looking fella in a tracksuit and a shabby looking old woman. I caught the eye of the fella, who apologised, and, in step, going in the same direction, explained himself: that was his mum, she was on heroin and couldn't sort himself out, and he was looking like being made homeless because she kept going round to his flat and causing trouble. And he was almost totally blind, as was his sister, having been born to a woman on heroin. And he had almost no teeth, since being hit in the face with a tire iron six months ago. And just one thing after another. Here was a fella who life took one gigantic shit on at the start followed by a succession of smaller but still substantial ones regularly along the way. I say this not to make any particular point but just to reflect on how unbelievably awful some people have it.
A terrible tale. When I hear it, it reminds me why I vote Labour, that capitalism is not enough and that socialism would make a big difference. Capitalism is not kind to people who have bad luck.
However, I also remember that history shows us that no single political ideology or that government has all the answers. So it's not as simple as voting left and all will be well. We need balance.
So I really hope, somehow miraculously, our overall political culture manages to extract the best of right and left and maybe some new ideas and finds a way to make a better life for people with terrible luck.
It's not really possible to make life better for people who don't have any luck. The best that can be done for those people is to believe that their luck can change.
That's a pretty shocking statement.
If a family member came round to my house and started causing trouble, the police might get involved, but there's virtually no chance my neighbours complaints would get me thrown out of a house I own.
When was the last time you were in a situation where you could have been hit in the face by a tire iron? Someone in the situation he's described is much more likely to be a victim of violence.
Is there no world in which his mum was given more support as a heroin user when she was pregnant, or as a new mum?
It may be that random luck pushes one person closer to the edge than another, but there are plenty of ways that a society can help make sure the edge is just that bit further away.
If the person is set on reaching that edge, they will do so. Others should, as I've said, be there to help that guy turn it around when he is ready to do so, but it has to start with him, and the starting point is his own belief that it can get just a little better, and easier, than it is today.
I'm fascinated to know where the original comment was going, Ken.
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.
Seacole. Bloody autocorrect.
I agree about autocorrect. I fail to see the problem with teaching kids about Mary Seacole.
I must admit that I do find the focus on such an obscure figure rather odd.
Surely Seacole is only 'an obscure figure' because she was overlooked for a century due to her skin colour. C.f. Florence Nightingale.
But it's not as if Florence Nightingale was ever a core figure of primary school history.
Mary Seacole is interesting largely through being the first non-white person of historical note in Britain. From this though the wrong conclusion is often drawn I.e. non-white people have just as big a role as white people but have been overlooked, rather than the conclusion that there were very, very few non-whute people in Britain before the second half of the twentieth century. The past looks very unlike the present. She is interesting precisely because she is unrepresentative.
She was basically a good hearted camp follower, but there were black Britons of note before her. I would cite Cuffay as an example:
Or Olaudah Equiano, a freed slave who settled in Britain in the late eighteenth century and wrote an account of his life that helped to fuel the abolitionist movement. He married a British woman and campaigned tirelessly for abolition. There is a statue of him in our local park created by children from the primary school that my eldest daughter attended. Or James Robertson, the first black Rugby player who attended my Scottish secondary school in the mid nineteenth century. You don't have to look very far to find plenty of non-White people living in the UK and doing interesting things well before the arrival of the Empire Windrush.
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.
Seacole. Bloody autocorrect.
I agree about autocorrect. I fail to see the problem with teaching kids about Mary Seacole.
I must admit that I do find the focus on such an obscure figure rather odd.
Surely Seacole is only 'an obscure figure' because she was overlooked for a century due to her skin colour. C.f. Florence Nightingale.
But it's not as if Florence Nightingale was ever a core figure of primary school history.
Mary Seacole is interesting largely through being the first non-white person of historical note in Britain. From this though the wrong conclusion is often drawn I.e. non-white people have just as big a role as white people but have been overlooked, rather than the conclusion that there were very, very few non-whute people in Britain before the second half of the twentieth century. The past looks very unlike the present. She is interesting precisely because she is unrepresentative.
She was basically a good hearted camp follower, but there were black Britons of note before her. I would cite Cuffay as an example:
Or Olaudah Equiano, a freed slave who settled in Britain in the late eighteenth century and wrote an account of his life that helped to fuel the abolitionist movement. He married a British woman and campaigned tirelessly for abolition. There is a statue of him in our local park created by children from the primary school that my eldest daughter attended. Or James Robertson, the first black Rugby player who attended my Scottish secondary school in the mid nineteenth century. You don't have to look very far to find plenty of non-White people living in the UK and doing interesting things well before the arrival of the Empire Windrush.
That's true. Numbers were a lot lower, obviously, but it's not as though there were none.
Jesus Christ. In case anyone was feeling unduly chipper, let me relate a conversation I just had. Walking down Great Ducie Street, Manchester, I saw an altercation between a gaunt looking fella in a tracksuit and a shabby looking old woman. I caught the eye of the fella, who apologised, and, in step, going in the same direction, explained himself: that was his mum, she was on heroin and couldn't sort himself out, and he was looking like being made homeless because she kept going round to his flat and causing trouble. And he was almost totally blind, as was his sister, having been born to a woman on heroin. And he had almost no teeth, since being hit in the face with a tire iron six months ago. And just one thing after another. Here was a fella who life took one gigantic shit on at the start followed by a succession of smaller but still substantial ones regularly along the way. I say this not to make any particular point but just to reflect on how unbelievably awful some people have it.
A terrible tale. When I hear it, it reminds me why I vote Labour, that capitalism is not enough and that socialism would make a big difference. Capitalism is not kind to people who have bad luck.
However, I also remember that history shows us that no single political ideology or that government has all the answers. So it's not as simple as voting left and all will be well. We need balance.
So I really hope, somehow miraculously, our overall political culture manages to extract the best of right and left and maybe some new ideas and finds a way to make a better life for people with terrible luck.
It's not really possible to make life better for people who don't have any luck. The best that can be done for those people is to believe that their luck can change.
Scandinavia and Holland would beg to differ. There people's life chsnces are tilted in their favour.
Despite the rhetoric, you're much less likely to be lucky in terms of social mobility in the U.S., because in fact most of the time, it's not actually luck.
It is good to want to uplift people, but sometimes you can't. All you can really do is offer assistance and cooperation in their own decision to improve their life.
There was a horrific and funny (if you like graveyard humour)story about the Nazi attempts to deal with social misfits - who were just as precedent then as today.
They actually started from the premise of “saving” Aryans. So they tried all kinds of programs to rehabilitate alcoholics, support problem families etc. all surprisingly liberal and modern, really…
The story went downhill from there. And ended up where you’d expect a Nazi social program to end up.
The Nazis were quite good at some things. The above st
Jesus Christ. In case anyone was feeling unduly chipper, let me relate a conversation I just had. Walking down Great Ducie Street, Manchester, I saw an altercation between a gaunt looking fella in a tracksuit and a shabby looking old woman. I caught the eye of the fella, who apologised, and, in step, going in the same direction, explained himself: that was his mum, she was on heroin and couldn't sort himself out, and he was looking like being made homeless because she kept going round to his flat and causing trouble. And he was almost totally blind, as was his sister, having been born to a woman on heroin. And he had almost no teeth, since being hit in the face with a tire iron six months ago. And just one thing after another. Here was a fella who life took one gigantic shit on at the start followed by a succession of smaller but still substantial ones regularly along the way. I say this not to make any particular point but just to reflect on how unbelievably awful some people have it.
A terrible tale. When I hear it, it reminds me why I vote Labour, that capitalism is not enough and that socialism would make a big difference. Capitalism is not kind to people who have bad luck.
However, I also remember that history shows us that no single political ideology or that government has all the answers. So it's not as simple as voting left and all will be well. We need balance.
So I really hope, somehow miraculously, our overall political culture manages to extract the best of right and left and maybe some new ideas and finds a way to make a better life for people with terrible luck.
It's not really possible to make life better for people who don't have any luck. The best that can be done for those people is to believe that their luck can change.
That's a pretty shocking statement.
If a family member came round to my house and started causing trouble, the police might get involved, but there's virtually no chance my neighbours complaints would get me thrown out of a house I own.
When was the last time you were in a situation where you could have been hit in the face by a tire iron? Someone in the situation he's described is much more likely to be a victim of violence.
Is there no world in which his mum was given more support as a heroin user when she was pregnant, or as a new mum?
It may be that random luck pushes one person closer to the edge than another, but there are plenty of ways that a society can help make sure the edge is just that bit further away.
If the person is set on reaching that edge, they will do so. Others should, as I've said, be there to help that guy turn it around when he is ready to do so, but it has to start with him, and the starting point is his own belief that it can get just a little better, and easier, than it is today.
That I can agree with - although he may need to know the help is there before he starts believing.
This is a masterpiece of political ambivalence. Depending on what you put in "simplified regulations" it either means a glorious YIMBY orgy of construction, or that nobody will ever build another house.
No one can build a new house where I have to see it. Simple.
I'd be happy to drive down to yours and whitewash your windows if that helps?
Yes, these are crowded islands with competing interests. Which is one of the reasons planning is not simple and cannot be unless some interests are just ignored. It is never simple and anyone claiming it can be made so is either simplistic or dishonest.
Japan is crowded and has competing interests, it doesn't stop us having reasonably simple, objective planning rules that allow people to build things where they're needed. Of course some interests are just ignored - the government can't and shouldn't regulate everything for every possible purpose.
Who decides where something is "needed"?
For example, NIMBYs don't think houses are "needed" anywhere near them, but they obviously are.
Nobody decides, people build stuff where they need it. That's that whole point.
There are zones but they're pretty flexible, eg you can build a house in an industrial zone or a low-rise factory in a residential zone. Honestly this stuff works way better without the government micromanaging it.
Japan also has the effects of a population that is not increasing rapidly. They don’t need to build a fair sized city of homes each year to keep up.
Tokyo does though, so if you look at Tokyo you can see that the planning system is doing its job. Population is growing, floor space per person is growing, rents are stable, shops and transport are convenient.
IIRC it is quite normal in Japan to tear a house down after 50 years and build a new one. Living in a Conservation Zone I find that kind of approach hard to imagine!
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.
What is economically sensible is determined by the anticipated price of the alternatives. When a strike price was agreed for Hinckly Point at £92.50 per megawat hour I was appalled and wrote several posts pointing out that this was likely to make large scale manufacturing in this country uncompetitive. It may still prove to be but the current price is £70.59 and rising fairly fast. If the risk of hydrocarbons massively increasing in price was not in your calculations then they would have been wrong.
That £92.50 has an inflation kicker though....
I know, it is still worrying me but I am less confident that it is absolutely outrageous than I was. The other thing that has happened since it was agreed is that the cost per megawatt hour for offshore wind and solar has collapsed.
We still have to see how long those offshore developments last. Seawater is going to expose every possible weakness in their build. If many last 30 years I will be seriously surprised. Then they need rebuilding from the seabed up.
Contrast with tidal lagoons that have a 120 year minimum life expectancy - but in reality, they will likely last centuries with a bit of tlc. Sure, the turbines will need changing out. They recently did that at La Rance - they should last another 60 years.
La Rance is the cheapest power production in France.
It depends upon the strike price for those 120 years though surely?
120 years at rip off strike prices is a problem. 120 years at a low price is great.
If tidal lagoons can be built, privately, with the same strike price commitments as granted to offshore wind etc then the state should get out of the way and ensure planning consent is granted. If it can't, then it might not be economic.
Let's say it is £50-£55. For 120 years. That needs a new set of turbines at 60 years. That will deliver guaranteed power at predictable rates (how much on February 18th 2089 - check the tide charts). Clean, waste-free power. Putin-interference free. Zero carbon once running, some carbon for the concrete and steel that can be offset/utilise new low carbon cement techniques. Virtually no abandonment costs, in however many centuries hence that might be.
In that scenario, you have to ask - why has there been such determined effort to build nuclear instead of tidal? Keep asking yourself that....
Considering £50-£55 is above the strike price for most alternative investments, and you want to lock that in for even longer, that seems like a poor investment to my uneducated eyes - if it can even be achieved for that, every independent report I've seen on Swansea showed massively higher strike prices into three figures.
Nuclear may be higher, but it provides a baseload and we aren't locking ourselves in to that for centuries.
PS predictability isn't a pro, given that it needs to supplement the far cheaper and unpredictable wind, being on-demand is more valuable than being predictable.
Pay attention. Forget the bloody Swansea prices! Look at Cardiff.
And what is the strike price in 30 years for wind, when the kit has lasted less time than promised and more regular replacement has to be factored in? £50 - £55 might be their norm too. And for that, you get a whole lot of seaside statues in a high pressure system sat over the UK in February - contributing nothing to the National Grid as it tries to stop the country freezing in minus Celsius numbers.
I have never said we shouldn't have wind power. I have never said we shouldn't have solar. But look at the down sides - solar power has inbuilt 50% obsolescence, just because there's no sun for half the year. Wind is an erratic source of supply. Tidal is as steady as she goes. And with none of the downsides of nuclear. I have never said we shouldn't have nuclear. It's just that build the first tidal lagoon power station, and you will never build another nuclear plant in this country. The cases put side by side will be so overwhelming in favour of one.
As nuclear fears.
That's not the case in S Korea, which did so recently.
Comments
For example, NIMBYs don't think houses are "needed" anywhere near them, but they obviously are.
https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/weather/forecast/gcqzwtdw7#?date=2022-07-17
They actually started from the premise of “saving” Aryans. So they tried all kinds of programs to rehabilitate alcoholics, support problem families etc. all surprisingly liberal and modern, really…
The story went downhill from there. And ended up where you’d expect a Nazi social program to end up.
There's nothing nicer than a glass of champagne during the interval in the Floral Hall.
Do I detect that some @HYUFD family members thought or think so also?
Of course none of my goddamn business.
There are zones but they're pretty flexible, eg you can build a house in an industrial zone or a low-rise factory in a residential zone. Honestly this stuff works way better without the government micromanaging it.
If a family member came round to my house and started causing trouble, the police might get involved, but there's virtually no chance my neighbours complaints would get me thrown out of a house I own.
When was the last time you were in a situation where you could have been hit in the face by a tire iron? Someone in the situation he's described is much more likely to be a victim of violence.
Is there no world in which his mum was given more support as a heroin user when she was pregnant, or as a new mum?
It may be that random luck pushes one person closer to the edge than another, but there are plenty of ways that a society can help make sure the edge is just that bit further away.
So if I had been born in 1900 I would now have lived to my actual dob. Except the cancer I had 10 years ago would have finished me off about the time of the second wsc government.
For me, ref your story, a fundamental driver of being on the left is a belief that the biggest single determinant (by miles) of the relative material life outcomes of individuals is luck. Varying types of luck, not so much as in playing dice or the lottery, but as in circumstances, the most important being those of your birth. Where and to whom you are born.
This is why I don't go for the personal aspiration, small state politics of the Thatcherite right. It's not really about how this translates into policies it's more that it feels not only wrong to me but harsh - because the flipside of falsely believing people's success is down to them is falsely believing their failure is also down to them. Things then flow from that. Often quite nasty things.
That said, I vastly prefer this traditional brand of right wing politics - because I think it can be well meant and its analysis does sometimes have merit - to the national populist crap which has proliferated in recent times. This I find utterly toxic with barely a redeeming feature.
This new piece on pricing in the US and the politics of markets and regulation is very interesting:
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/17/opinion/inflation-prices-affordability.html
1. Should we leave the ECHR?
2. Should we abandon the Rwanda policy?
3. Should we invoke article 16?
4. Do you support Net Zero by 2050?
5. Would you privatise Ch4?
6. Would you rule out employing Priti Patel in your Cabinet?
7. Would you employ Suella Braverman as Attorney General under any circumstances?
https://www.tribunemag.co.uk/2020/07/william-cuffay-the-chartists-black-leader#:~:text=There can only be one,a freed slave from St.
May there be thick black hedges for many years to come.
If Mordaunt's support does deflate, we could conceivably see Badenoch in the final two instead of Mordaunt or Truss. Though Badenoch's initial 'fame' came from her culture wars fights in the Equalities Minister brief (notably following the Sewell report), she and Sunak largely seem to agree on that sort of thing, so it may not be an issue in that final stage of the fight - it's not a dividing issue.
However, if the Tories fight the next general election on cultural issues, I agree they will lose, not because people necessarily disagree with them, but because it will indicate they can't fight the election on anything else (like their economic record).
Goodness me what a load of tripe.
1. Rishi going big on anti-EU rhetoric in the Telegraph.
2. The FB post of an MP (uber Johnson supporter) which included comments saying how dreadful he (Rishi) is has been taken down.
He is fighting to shore up the loony/Brexit factions.
Interesting, not least as the criticism is from a Tory heroine.
'[Bingham] said there had since been missed opportunities – including failing to bring scientific and commercial expertise into the government, and not pursuing the creation of bulk antibody-manufacturing capabilities in the UK.
[...]
Bingham said in order to have bulk-scale manufacturing of antibodies it was necessary to have bio-processors with capacity of up to 20,000 litres, noting that such processors could also be used for other biological products, including vaccines, and would allow the UK to export.
“We’re way off that [capacity]. So all our biological therapeutics are all imported,” she said, adding the reason for the situation is simple. “Just lack of government appetite,” she said.'
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/jul/17/civil-service-johnson-cant-hand-top-police-job-to-friend
Local councils rely on blaming national goverment for forcing them to accept building of anything, if you give them more power to say no, or local people to say no, that's all we'd hear.
And HB! You've caught me up. Not for long though, I'll be powering away again next month.
Can feel it warming substantially in the past hour.
Is Leon still banned?
I'd love it if it hit 40 and he isn't here to gloat.
ISTM that financing, easy money, and openness to foreign speculation are the more critical factors.
The Venusian wave won't truly pummel us until tomorrow, thank God.
Here is the explanation,
The "Dirty" Economy Of Australia
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ohj_pOjp6U
Or James Robertson, the first black Rugby player who attended my Scottish secondary school in the mid nineteenth century.
You don't have to look very far to find plenty of non-White people living in the UK and doing interesting things well before the arrival of the Empire Windrush.
I think she might be a proper moron.
NEW THREAD
S.Korea to lift nuclear share of energy mix to 30% by 2030 from 27% last year
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/skorea-lift-nuclear-powers-share-energy-mix-30-by-2030-2022-07-05/