Mordaunt and Badenoch are interesting as potential LotOs after 2024, but their CVs were way too thin to take over as PM now.
Badenoch has limited appeal outside the alt-right curious (as well as being fucking ugly which matters) and Penny Dreadful is just a fucking charlatan.
This analysis is bollocks, she has a great arse
She will also likely be Leader of the Opposition if the Conservatives lose the next general election under Truss or Sunak
It seems to me that there's a basic flaw in Rishi's argument that is hampering him badly, namely the link he presupposes between inflation and taxation.
He contends that cutting taxes would stoke inflation, but if that's the case then how come taxation and inflation are both at the highest in decades, and have been for a while? If Sunak is right then that situation should be impossible, inflation should be falling.
It should also be true that during periods of low taxation, inflation should be higher, when that is also not necessarily true.
It's obvious that the link Sunak is claiming does not exist, or at least not in the way Sunak claims it does, and its just a line he's been fed by his mates at HM Treasury.
Cutting taxes or increasing spending usually leads to stronger aggregate demand, which if supply is constrained will generate more inflation. The BOE will respond by raising interest rates by more. Taxes are high now but they are matched by high spending so on net are not disinflationary. There is no link between the level of taxes per se and inflation (except that raising indirect taxes leads to temporary inflation) if taxes are matched by spending, but unfunded tax cuts will be inflationary and lead to higher interest rates, Sunak is not wrong about that. If the economy wasn't supply constrained then Truss's argument would be valid but that is self-evidently not the case, since current high inflation is a result of a series of negative supply shocks (including Brexit of course).
Yes but the primary tools for controlling inflation are monetary and not fiscal. Minford's case is that cutting taxes allows the Bank of England to be more aggressive on rates and other forms of tightening. Much more aggressive.
It doesn't "allow" them to be more aggressive, it forces them to be. The reality is that both fiscal and monetary policy impact aggregate demand and hence inflation. If fiscal policy is looser, monetary policy has to be tighter. So if Truss cuts taxes without cutting spending, then either inflation or interest rates will be higher than otherwise. That doesn't seem a great outcome to me.
IF what you say is true, then the bank of England should not need to raise rates much, because fiscal policy is already the tightest in 70 years, and has been for a while.
If anything, the BoE's comments yesterday were an admission that very tight fiscal policy was not controlling inflation, because if it were inflation would be falling. It isn't. It is accelerating.
Fiscal policy for taxes is the tightest it's been in 74 years.
Fiscal policy for spending? Not so much, but then people claim that our spending is too low despite that.
The problem is we spend far too much on welfare, care and the NHS but those are shibboleths not to be touched.
It seems to me that there's a basic flaw in Rishi's argument that is hampering him badly, namely the link he presupposes between inflation and taxation.
He contends that cutting taxes would stoke inflation, but if that's the case then how come taxation and inflation are both at the highest in decades, and have been for a while? If Sunak is right then that situation should be impossible, inflation should be falling.
It should also be true that during periods of low taxation, inflation should be higher, when that is also not necessarily true.
It's obvious that the link Sunak is claiming does not exist, or at least not in the way Sunak claims it does, and its just a line he's been fed by his mates at HM Treasury.
Is he actually arguing that Government borrowing leads to higher inflation, and Liz’s tax cuts are predicated on higher borrowing? So he’s not saying that well-funded tax cuts are a problem.
His argument would appear to be that Liz's tax cuts make our inflationary problems worse, and keeping taxes high would help to control inflation.
I think its a very shaky argument and its hampering him badly.
The idea that cutting taxes drives inflation would be correct, according to the conventional Treasury economics textbooks - but the current situation is so far outside any economics textbooks.
There’s unheard-of levels of government debt and QE to unwind, and the inflation is very specifically imported, driven by only a handful of large but essential items, with very low price elacticity of demand.
The rising interest rates are driving inflation themselves, thanks to variable rate debt, and government debt is so high that debt repayment is the size of a major government department - so raising interest rates squeezes funds to the whole public sector.
The end result, is that what’s required is immediate relief from the worst of the energy bills. Fuel duty, and VAT on domestic energy being the most obvious places to start.
also a more efficient fuel pricing market.
Crude prices are now below Russian invasion commencement levels. Under USD90 a barrel.
Pre-war Sterling was $1.36, and now it's $1.20.
That means a $90 barrel of oil is now £75, compared to £66, +14%.
A litre of unleaded presently is about £1.77 Vs a pre-war typical £1.25, +42% (+46% accounting for duty changes)
So there's still more than just sterling or crude prices in play presumably?
Yes.
One of the details I read early on in the war was that the UK imported refined oil products, such as diesel, from Russia. So it's possible that the prices of refined products have gone up by more than crude oil prices.
And then, as higher prices have rippled through the rest of the economy, other costs in the refining and distribution chain are probably higher now too.
Tesla Powerwalls Create Huge 'Distributed Battery' For Grid Reliability Tesla has invited some 25,000 PG&E customers with Powerwalls to join the program. https://insideevs.com/news/602480/tesla-powerwall-pge-worlds-largest-distributed-battery/ ...Through the collaboration, Tesla will participate in PG&E’s Emergency Load Reduction Program (ELRP) pilot by combining residential Powerwalls into a virtual power plant to discharge power back to the California grid during times of high electricity demand. Participating customers will receive $2 for every incremental kilowatt-hour of electricity their Powerwall discharges during an event. They can use the Tesla app to set their backup power needs or to opt out of a particular event, as necessary....
While not massive in terms of power, imagine ubiquitous EV* usage. Even if only around 20% of vehicles' better capacity was available, it would give you a virtual distributed battery with multiple GWh capacity.
UK drivers do an average of around 20 miles a day, so there's plenty of headroom.
(* two way chargers are already being planned for electric vehicles, so the ability to discharge back to the grid will be designed in.)
The Tesla scheme was mentioned a while back.
The various companies planing superchargers are looking at building in storage to time shift/spread the load. Several are looking at over sizing the storage and using that to time shift larger amount of electricity for ££££. For reference, you can put 3/4GWh of storage in a shipping container sized installation.
Somewhat related, I found this article (well, University press bumpf) quite interesting :
"Tapping into the million-year energy source below our feet
MIT spinout Quaise Energy is working to create geothermal wells made from the deepest holes in the world.
...
Quaise is hoping to accomplish those lofty goals by tapping into the energy source below our feet. The company plans to vaporize enough rock to create the world’s deepest holes and harvest geothermal energy at a scale that could satisfy human energy consumption for millions of years. They haven’t yet solved all the related engineering challenges, but Quaise’s founders have set an ambitious timeline to begin harvesting energy from a pilot well by 2026."
1. If a dog wags its tail as it smells/senses that its owner is returning home then that is anticipating a future event. If the owner comes home every day at the same time then, say, an hour before they return does the dog think somehow that shortly my owner will return.
2. Book of Mormon is absolutely fantastic, one of the funniest things I've seen on stage; Hamilton is overrated there is so much exposition that the music gets lost. Many of the musicals are wondrously joyous. I went to see Sister Act last week (I think it's closed now) and it was great, a really uplifting time. Same with Joseph last year (not sure if that is coming back again this year).
3. As for non-musicals I think Jerusalem is on for a short while longer with Rylance and Crook but I would imagine that tickets will be as rare as rocking horse shit.
4. As for Sunak I reported a short while ago that there is a groundswell of opinion backing him amongst the Cons membership but I still can't see him overturning Truss' strong position.
Book of Mormon absolutely seconded.
If “Straight Line Crazy” is still on at the Bridge theatre then I very much recommend it, and it will appeal to the political nerd in most of us on this site, since Ralph Fiennes plays a town planner.
Fiennes is brilliant as ever but must admit I struggled to stay awake! Nothing happens!
A fairly accurate representation of town planning, then ?
Most important question of the day: "Does a dog have any concept of the future?"
(As discussed at length and inconclusively over too many bottles of wine last night with an old friend who came to stop with us. Our dog declined to get involved tbf.)
However I did spend almost a year in a garden shed and the only other living thing with which I would interact in that time was my parents' dog so I have possibly unmatched observational experience of canine behaviour and psychology.
My conclusion is that they do have a concept of the future in the sense that they are able to anticipate as yet unmanifested but probable events. However, this horizon is very short by human terms and they have almost no concept of the passage of time. Their internal chronology is based around events rather than duration.
Interesting
There are Amazon tribes with similar conceptions of the world. I read a book by a guy that lived with one of them. They had no words for past, present or future, and certainly no past or future tense. Everything was quickly forgotten. The world was seen as a series of events. ‘Now this is happening, now this, now we are eating, now it is raining’
The author admitted this kept the tribal lifestyle very primitive, but it also - he claimed - made them happy. If you never remember anything you never need to feel guilt, regret or sadness
Of course, the European author might have been idealizing. Or lying
Those plus the tendency to tell anthropologists (amateur and expert) stuff that -
(a) people think they want to hear (b) troll the stupid foreigner
Interestingly the people being discussed are descended from those who crossed the Bering Strait from Siberia and migrated right down to the Amazon basin. It almost suggests that there is not necessarily a progression in human experience; in other words we don't necessarily learn from the past!
Arguably, that’s a more accurate depiction of life. We exist in the present, doing what we are doing at the minute. The past is a story we tell ourselves based on fallible memories, and so are any plans or predictions we have for the future.
There is only “now”. And Einstein shows us even that is a strictly personal concept.
Reminds me of the joke under Stalin: "The future is certain. Only the past needs revision."
I still think Orwell and 1984 put it best:
"And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed - if all records told the same tale - then the lie passed into history and became truth. "Who controls the past," ran the Party slogan, "controls the future: who controls the present controls the past." And yet the past, though of its nature alterable, never had been altered. Whatever was true now was true from everlasting to everlasting. It was quite simple. All that was needed was an unending series of victories over your own memory. "Reality control," they called it: in Newspeak, "doublethink." (1.3.18)"
It should be noted Tunbridge Wells, where Rishi spoke and I was born and raised, is 46th on the LD target list and has a LD led council. It is very much bluewall.
I don't there was anything wrong with what he said, there are parts of Tunbridge Wells that are not that well off, Sherwood ward for instance. Yes the redwall needs support but there are parts of the country elsewhere that do too.
It should also be noted that the last 2 general election winners for the Tories, Johnson and Cameron, were both elected by the membership. The last general election winner for Labour, Tony Blair, was elected by Labour members. Starmer was also elected by Labour members and Davey by LD members
Jo Swinson was elected by the members.
Jeremy Corbyn was elected by the members.
Hell, IDS was elected by the members.
The record of member voting is, at best, patchy.
William Hague, John Major, Theresa May, Michael Foot were elected solely by MPs. Their record is at least as patchy.
In 2017 Corbyn deprived the Tories of their majority
Surely the point Mark is making is the evidence points to it being inclusive, whereas you were trying to imply it wasn't. It clearly is from the evidence Mark provided.
Personally I think members should elect leaders whilst in opposition and the public can decide on the party's members wisdom in a GE. However if you are appointing a PM of an already elected governing party it should be left to those who have the detailed knowledge i.e. the MPs to mitigate the risk of appointing a loony as PM (although the MPs might manage that also).
No it clearly isn't, of the last 4 Tory leaders elected solely by MPs, May, Howard, Hague and Major, none of them apart from Major won a general election majority and he also led the party to its worst defeat since 1832 in 1997.
If members get a say in electing the party leader then that applies in government as much as opposition. MPs select the final 2 anyway and members then choose from them, so MPs have plenty of opportunity to exclude an extremist. Braverman or Badenoch may well have won the leadership amongst members and were probably the most hardline of the candidates standing but MPs put neither in the final 2.
Labour also let members choose their leader so they equally could choose the PM in power. Had John McDonnell got enough MP nominations to take on Gordon Brown in 2007 that would certainly have been the case
I think that is a bit tough on Major. You could have had Good as leader in 1997 and you weren't going to win.
Tesla Powerwalls Create Huge 'Distributed Battery' For Grid Reliability Tesla has invited some 25,000 PG&E customers with Powerwalls to join the program. https://insideevs.com/news/602480/tesla-powerwall-pge-worlds-largest-distributed-battery/ ...Through the collaboration, Tesla will participate in PG&E’s Emergency Load Reduction Program (ELRP) pilot by combining residential Powerwalls into a virtual power plant to discharge power back to the California grid during times of high electricity demand. Participating customers will receive $2 for every incremental kilowatt-hour of electricity their Powerwall discharges during an event. They can use the Tesla app to set their backup power needs or to opt out of a particular event, as necessary....
While not massive in terms of power, imagine ubiquitous EV* usage. Even if only around 20% of vehicles' better capacity was available, it would give you a virtual distributed battery with multiple GWh capacity.
UK drivers do an average of around 20 miles a day, so there's plenty of headroom.
(* two way chargers are already being planned for electric vehicles, so the ability to discharge back to the grid will be designed in.)
The Tesla scheme was mentioned a while back.
The various companies planing superchargers are looking at building in storage to time shift/spread the load. Several are looking at over sizing the storage and using that to time shift larger amount of electricity for ££££. For reference, you can put 3/4GWh of storage in a shipping container sized installation.
Somewhat related, I found this article (well, University press bumpf) quite interesting :
"Tapping into the million-year energy source below our feet
MIT spinout Quaise Energy is working to create geothermal wells made from the deepest holes in the world.
...
Quaise is hoping to accomplish those lofty goals by tapping into the energy source below our feet. The company plans to vaporize enough rock to create the world’s deepest holes and harvest geothermal energy at a scale that could satisfy human energy consumption for millions of years. They haven’t yet solved all the related engineering challenges, but Quaise’s founders have set an ambitious timeline to begin harvesting energy from a pilot well by 2026."
It should be noted Tunbridge Wells, where Rishi spoke and I was born and raised, is 46th on the LD target list and has a LD led council. It is very much bluewall.
I don't there was anything wrong with what he said, there are parts of Tunbridge Wells that are not that well off, Sherwood ward for instance. Yes the redwall needs support but there are parts of the country elsewhere that do too.
It should also be noted that the last 2 general election winners for the Tories, Johnson and Cameron, were both elected by the membership. The last general election winner for Labour, Tony Blair, was elected by Labour members. Starmer was also elected by Labour members and Davey by LD members
Jo Swinson was elected by the members.
Jeremy Corbyn was elected by the members.
Hell, IDS was elected by the members.
The record of member voting is, at best, patchy.
William Hague, John Major, Theresa May, Michael Foot were elected solely by MPs. Their record is at least as patchy.
In 2017 Corbyn deprived the Tories of their majority
Surely the point Mark is making is the evidence points to it being inclusive, whereas you were trying to imply it wasn't. It clearly is from the evidence Mark provided.
Personally I think members should elect leaders whilst in opposition and the public can decide on the party's members wisdom in a GE. However if you are appointing a PM of an already elected governing party it should be left to those who have the detailed knowledge i.e. the MPs to mitigate the risk of appointing a loony as PM (although the MPs might manage that also).
No it clearly isn't, of the last 4 Tory leaders elected solely by MPs, May, Howard, Hague and Major, none of them apart from Major won a general election majority and he also led the party to its worst defeat since 1832 in 1997.
If members get a say in electing the party leader then that applies in government as much as opposition. MPs select the final 2 anyway and members then choose from them, so MPs have plenty of opportunity to exclude an extremist. Braverman or Badenoch may well have won the leadership amongst members and were probably the most hardline of the candidates standing but MPs put neither in the final 2.
Labour also let members choose their leader so they equally could choose the PM in power. Had John McDonnell got enough MP nominations to take on Gordon Brown in 2007 that would certainly have been the case
I think that is a bit tough on Major. You could have had Good as leader in 1997 and you weren't going to win.
Tesla Powerwalls Create Huge 'Distributed Battery' For Grid Reliability Tesla has invited some 25,000 PG&E customers with Powerwalls to join the program. https://insideevs.com/news/602480/tesla-powerwall-pge-worlds-largest-distributed-battery/ ...Through the collaboration, Tesla will participate in PG&E’s Emergency Load Reduction Program (ELRP) pilot by combining residential Powerwalls into a virtual power plant to discharge power back to the California grid during times of high electricity demand. Participating customers will receive $2 for every incremental kilowatt-hour of electricity their Powerwall discharges during an event. They can use the Tesla app to set their backup power needs or to opt out of a particular event, as necessary....
While not massive in terms of power, imagine ubiquitous EV* usage. Even if only around 20% of vehicles' better capacity was available, it would give you a virtual distributed battery with multiple GWh capacity.
UK drivers do an average of around 20 miles a day, so there's plenty of headroom.
(* two way chargers are already being planned for electric vehicles, so the ability to discharge back to the grid will be designed in.)
The Tesla scheme was mentioned a while back.
The various companies planing superchargers are looking at building in storage to time shift/spread the load. Several are looking at over sizing the storage and using that to time shift larger amount of electricity for ££££. For reference, you can put 3/4GWh of storage in a shipping container sized installation.
Somewhat related, I found this article (well, University press bumpf) quite interesting :
"Tapping into the million-year energy source below our feet
MIT spinout Quaise Energy is working to create geothermal wells made from the deepest holes in the world.
...
Quaise is hoping to accomplish those lofty goals by tapping into the energy source below our feet. The company plans to vaporize enough rock to create the world’s deepest holes and harvest geothermal energy at a scale that could satisfy human energy consumption for millions of years. They haven’t yet solved all the related engineering challenges, but Quaise’s founders have set an ambitious timeline to begin harvesting energy from a pilot well by 2026."
Deepest hole? Geothermal energy, you say?
{rolls up sleeves}
Has Thunderbird 1 had a mishap? Call David Miliband urgently.
It should be noted Tunbridge Wells, where Rishi spoke and I was born and raised, is 46th on the LD target list and has a LD led council. It is very much bluewall.
I don't there was anything wrong with what he said, there are parts of Tunbridge Wells that are not that well off, Sherwood ward for instance. Yes the redwall needs support but there are parts of the country elsewhere that do too.
It should also be noted that the last 2 general election winners for the Tories, Johnson and Cameron, were both elected by the membership. The last general election winner for Labour, Tony Blair, was elected by Labour members. Starmer was also elected by Labour members and Davey by LD members
Jo Swinson was elected by the members.
Jeremy Corbyn was elected by the members.
Hell, IDS was elected by the members.
The record of member voting is, at best, patchy.
William Hague, John Major, Theresa May, Michael Foot were elected solely by MPs. Their record is at least as patchy.
In 2017 Corbyn deprived the Tories of their majority
Surely the point Mark is making is the evidence points to it being inclusive, whereas you were trying to imply it wasn't. It clearly is from the evidence Mark provided.
Personally I think members should elect leaders whilst in opposition and the public can decide on the party's members wisdom in a GE. However if you are appointing a PM of an already elected governing party it should be left to those who have the detailed knowledge i.e. the MPs to mitigate the risk of appointing a loony as PM (although the MPs might manage that also).
No it clearly isn't, of the last 4 Tory leaders elected solely by MPs, May, Howard, Hague and Major, none of them apart from Major won a general election majority and he also led the party to its worst defeat since 1832 in 1997.
If members get a say in electing the party leader then that applies in government as much as opposition. MPs select the final 2 anyway and members then choose from them, so MPs have plenty of opportunity to exclude an extremist. Braverman or Badenoch may well have won the leadership amongst members and were probably the most hardline of the candidates standing but MPs put neither in the final 2.
Labour also let members choose their leader so they equally could choose the PM in power. Had John McDonnell got enough MP nominations to take on Gordon Brown in 2007 that would certainly have been the case
I think that is a bit tough on Major. You could have had Good as leader in 1997 and you weren't going to win.
Tesla Powerwalls Create Huge 'Distributed Battery' For Grid Reliability Tesla has invited some 25,000 PG&E customers with Powerwalls to join the program. https://insideevs.com/news/602480/tesla-powerwall-pge-worlds-largest-distributed-battery/ ...Through the collaboration, Tesla will participate in PG&E’s Emergency Load Reduction Program (ELRP) pilot by combining residential Powerwalls into a virtual power plant to discharge power back to the California grid during times of high electricity demand. Participating customers will receive $2 for every incremental kilowatt-hour of electricity their Powerwall discharges during an event. They can use the Tesla app to set their backup power needs or to opt out of a particular event, as necessary....
While not massive in terms of power, imagine ubiquitous EV* usage. Even if only around 20% of vehicles' better capacity was available, it would give you a virtual distributed battery with multiple GWh capacity.
UK drivers do an average of around 20 miles a day, so there's plenty of headroom.
(* two way chargers are already being planned for electric vehicles, so the ability to discharge back to the grid will be designed in.)
The Tesla scheme was mentioned a while back.
The various companies planing superchargers are looking at building in storage to time shift/spread the load. Several are looking at over sizing the storage and using that to time shift larger amount of electricity for ££££. For reference, you can put 3/4GWh of storage in a shipping container sized installation.
Somewhat related, I found this article (well, University press bumpf) quite interesting :
"Tapping into the million-year energy source below our feet
MIT spinout Quaise Energy is working to create geothermal wells made from the deepest holes in the world.
...
Quaise is hoping to accomplish those lofty goals by tapping into the energy source below our feet. The company plans to vaporize enough rock to create the world’s deepest holes and harvest geothermal energy at a scale that could satisfy human energy consumption for millions of years. They haven’t yet solved all the related engineering challenges, but Quaise’s founders have set an ambitious timeline to begin harvesting energy from a pilot well by 2026."
Deepest hole? Geothermal energy, you say?
{rolls up sleeves}
Has Thunderbird 1 had a mishap? Call David Miliband urgently.
It seems to me that there's a basic flaw in Rishi's argument that is hampering him badly, namely the link he presupposes between inflation and taxation.
He contends that cutting taxes would stoke inflation, but if that's the case then how come taxation and inflation are both at the highest in decades, and have been for a while? If Sunak is right then that situation should be impossible, inflation should be falling.
It should also be true that during periods of low taxation, inflation should be higher, when that is also not necessarily true.
It's obvious that the link Sunak is claiming does not exist, or at least not in the way Sunak claims it does, and its just a line he's been fed by his mates at HM Treasury.
Cutting taxes or increasing spending usually leads to stronger aggregate demand, which if supply is constrained will generate more inflation. The BOE will respond by raising interest rates by more. Taxes are high now but they are matched by high spending so on net are not disinflationary. There is no link between the level of taxes per se and inflation (except that raising indirect taxes leads to temporary inflation) if taxes are matched by spending, but unfunded tax cuts will be inflationary and lead to higher interest rates, Sunak is not wrong about that. If the economy wasn't supply constrained then Truss's argument would be valid but that is self-evidently not the case, since current high inflation is a result of a series of negative supply shocks (including Brexit of course).
Yes but the primary tools for controlling inflation are monetary and not fiscal. Minford's case is that cutting taxes allows the Bank of England to be more aggressive on rates and other forms of tightening. Much more aggressive.
It doesn't "allow" them to be more aggressive, it forces them to be. The reality is that both fiscal and monetary policy impact aggregate demand and hence inflation. If fiscal policy is looser, monetary policy has to be tighter. So if Truss cuts taxes without cutting spending, then either inflation or interest rates will be higher than otherwise. That doesn't seem a great outcome to me.
IF what you say is true, then the bank of England should not need to raise rates much, because fiscal policy is already the tightest in 70 years, and has been for a while.
If anything, the BoE's comments yesterday were an admission that very tight fiscal policy was not controlling inflation, because if it were inflation would be falling. It isn't. It is accelerating.
Fiscal policy for taxes is the tightest it's been in 74 years.
Fiscal policy for spending? Not so much, but then people claim that our spending is too low despite that.
The problem is we spend far too much on welfare, care and the NHS but those are shibboleths not to be touched.
If you're going all Big Picture so will I. Rude not to.
The problem is our wealth is very unequally distributed and this means lots of people are pushed into penury by economic turbulence.
It should be noted Tunbridge Wells, where Rishi spoke and I was born and raised, is 46th on the LD target list and has a LD led council. It is very much bluewall.
I don't there was anything wrong with what he said, there are parts of Tunbridge Wells that are not that well off, Sherwood ward for instance. Yes the redwall needs support but there are parts of the country elsewhere that do too.
It should also be noted that the last 2 general election winners for the Tories, Johnson and Cameron, were both elected by the membership. The last general election winner for Labour, Tony Blair, was elected by Labour members. Starmer was also elected by Labour members and Davey by LD members
Jo Swinson was elected by the members.
Jeremy Corbyn was elected by the members.
Hell, IDS was elected by the members.
The record of member voting is, at best, patchy.
William Hague, John Major, Theresa May, Michael Foot were elected solely by MPs. Their record is at least as patchy.
In 2017 Corbyn deprived the Tories of their majority
Surely the point Mark is making is the evidence points to it being inclusive, whereas you were trying to imply it wasn't. It clearly is from the evidence Mark provided.
Personally I think members should elect leaders whilst in opposition and the public can decide on the party's members wisdom in a GE. However if you are appointing a PM of an already elected governing party it should be left to those who have the detailed knowledge i.e. the MPs to mitigate the risk of appointing a loony as PM (although the MPs might manage that also).
No it clearly isn't, of the last 4 Tory leaders elected solely by MPs, May, Howard, Hague and Major, none of them apart from Major won a general election majority and he also led the party to its worst defeat since 1832 in 1997.
If members get a say in electing the party leader then that applies in government as much as opposition. MPs select the final 2 anyway and members then choose from them, so MPs have plenty of opportunity to exclude an extremist. Braverman or Badenoch may well have won the leadership amongst members and were probably the most hardline of the candidates standing but MPs put neither in the final 2.
Labour also let members choose their leader so they equally could choose the PM in power. Had John McDonnell got enough MP nominations to take on Gordon Brown in 2007 that would certainly have been the case
I think that is a bit tough on Major. You could have had Good as leader in 1997 and you weren't going to win.
Sunak said that expecting it to be leaked. Possibly even deliberately leaking it.
The selectorate for this contest largely live in Tunbridge Wells and not Manchester. A candidate who robs Manchester to pay Tunbridge Wells is exactly what they want to hear.
It will bomb outside Tory members, but Tory members are Sunak's immediate problem. If Truss really does have a 30ish-point lead, this sort of wildcard is Sunak's only chance of getting back in the game.
Sunak said that expecting it to be leaked. Possibly even deliberately leaking it.
The selectorate for this contest largely live in Tunbridge Wells and not Manchester. A candidate who robs Manchester to pay Tunbridge Wells is exactly what they want to hear.
It will bomb outside Tory members, but Tory members are Sunak's immediate problem. If Truss really does have a 30ish-point lead, this sort of wildcard is Sunak's only chance of getting back in the game.
(I'm not sure whether I believe this or not.)
The desperation to find rationality in our political class is understandable but almost inevitably doomed to disappointment.
Sunak said that expecting it to be leaked. Possibly even deliberately leaking it.
The selectorate for this contest largely live in Tunbridge Wells and not Manchester. A candidate who robs Manchester to pay Tunbridge Wells is exactly what they want to hear.
It will bomb outside Tory members, but Tory members are Sunak's immediate problem. If Truss really does have a 30ish-point lead, this sort of wildcard is Sunak's only chance of getting back in the game.
(I'm not sure whether I believe this or not.)
It doesn't feel like that. If you watch the vid I sense he realises he has made an error but he gabbles on to try and obscure it....
It should be noted Tunbridge Wells, where Rishi spoke and I was born and raised, is 46th on the LD target list and has a LD led council. It is very much bluewall.
I don't there was anything wrong with what he said, there are parts of Tunbridge Wells that are not that well off, Sherwood ward for instance. Yes the redwall needs support but there are parts of the country elsewhere that do too.
It should also be noted that the last 2 general election winners for the Tories, Johnson and Cameron, were both elected by the membership. The last general election winner for Labour, Tony Blair, was elected by Labour members. Starmer was also elected by Labour members and Davey by LD members
Jo Swinson was elected by the members.
Jeremy Corbyn was elected by the members.
Hell, IDS was elected by the members.
The record of member voting is, at best, patchy.
William Hague, John Major, Theresa May, Michael Foot were elected solely by MPs. Their record is at least as patchy.
In 2017 Corbyn deprived the Tories of their majority
Surely the point Mark is making is the evidence points to it being inclusive, whereas you were trying to imply it wasn't. It clearly is from the evidence Mark provided.
Personally I think members should elect leaders whilst in opposition and the public can decide on the party's members wisdom in a GE. However if you are appointing a PM of an already elected governing party it should be left to those who have the detailed knowledge i.e. the MPs to mitigate the risk of appointing a loony as PM (although the MPs might manage that also).
No it clearly isn't, of the last 4 Tory leaders elected solely by MPs, May, Howard, Hague and Major, none of them apart from Major won a general election majority and he also led the party to its worst defeat since 1832 in 1997.
If members get a say in electing the party leader then that applies in government as much as opposition. MPs select the final 2 anyway and members then choose from them, so MPs have plenty of opportunity to exclude an extremist. Braverman or Badenoch may well have won the leadership amongst members and were probably the most hardline of the candidates standing but MPs put neither in the final 2.
Labour also let members choose their leader so they equally could choose the PM in power. Had John McDonnell got enough MP nominations to take on Gordon Brown in 2007 that would certainly have been the case
I think that is a bit tough on Major. You could have had Good as leader in 1997 and you weren't going to win.
In hindsight, Major was actually quite good as PM. Or did you mean God ?
I meant God. I'm really getting fed up with spell checker.
I also thought Major was good. Hague was pretty good as a leader also. I think @hyufd is getting cause and correlation mixed up. There are lots of other reasons why a PM/leader wins or loses. Whether they were elected by MPs or members is only one of them, if at all. Major, Hague and Howard had other rather bigger problems. And as Mark showed there are plenty of counter examples.
It should be noted Tunbridge Wells, where Rishi spoke and I was born and raised, is 46th on the LD target list and has a LD led council. It is very much bluewall.
I don't there was anything wrong with what he said, there are parts of Tunbridge Wells that are not that well off, Sherwood ward for instance. Yes the redwall needs support but there are parts of the country elsewhere that do too.
It should also be noted that the last 2 general election winners for the Tories, Johnson and Cameron, were both elected by the membership. The last general election winner for Labour, Tony Blair, was elected by Labour members. Starmer was also elected by Labour members and Davey by LD members
Jo Swinson was elected by the members.
Jeremy Corbyn was elected by the members.
Hell, IDS was elected by the members.
The record of member voting is, at best, patchy.
William Hague, John Major, Theresa May, Michael Foot were elected solely by MPs. Their record is at least as patchy.
In 2017 Corbyn deprived the Tories of their majority
Surely the point Mark is making is the evidence points to it being inclusive, whereas you were trying to imply it wasn't. It clearly is from the evidence Mark provided.
Personally I think members should elect leaders whilst in opposition and the public can decide on the party's members wisdom in a GE. However if you are appointing a PM of an already elected governing party it should be left to those who have the detailed knowledge i.e. the MPs to mitigate the risk of appointing a loony as PM (although the MPs might manage that also).
No it clearly isn't, of the last 4 Tory leaders elected solely by MPs, May, Howard, Hague and Major, none of them apart from Major won a general election majority and he also led the party to its worst defeat since 1832 in 1997.
If members get a say in electing the party leader then that applies in government as much as opposition. MPs select the final 2 anyway and members then choose from them, so MPs have plenty of opportunity to exclude an extremist. Braverman or Badenoch may well have won the leadership amongst members and were probably the most hardline of the candidates standing but MPs put neither in the final 2.
Labour also let members choose their leader so they equally could choose the PM in power. Had John McDonnell got enough MP nominations to take on Gordon Brown in 2007 that would certainly have been the case
I think that is a bit tough on Major. You could have had Good as leader in 1997 and you weren't going to win.
In hindsight, Major was actually quite good as PM. Or did you mean God ?
God - a leader who inspires absolute devotion in His followers while others look on sceptically, bewildered or even contemptuous about it.
His followers have divided themselves into various camps that frequently seem to hate each other more than they hate non believers.
His most fervent believers think that only a select few are worthy, which can include some very wealthy people despite what He has said about the wealthy.
Has views that seem frozen from times in the past despite time moving on.
Spends half of his time obsessing about Jews.
God is a politician and His name is Jeremy Corbyn.
US July jobs report is out, over half a million jobs added in a single month. I think you have to go back over 7 presidents to get a figure like that.
Unemploymemt at a 50 year low.
Terrifying recession conditions.
Two words for you.
Gasoline
prices
But yes, things might be looking a little better for the dems in the midterms.
Gasoline prices have been coming down for 50 days+ in a row in the US. Even I am starting to think things are looking better for the Ds in November (however, I still think they will lose the House and the Senate is on a knife-edge).
It should be noted Tunbridge Wells, where Rishi spoke and I was born and raised, is 46th on the LD target list and has a LD led council. It is very much bluewall.
I don't there was anything wrong with what he said, there are parts of Tunbridge Wells that are not that well off, Sherwood ward for instance. Yes the redwall needs support but there are parts of the country elsewhere that do too.
It should also be noted that the last 2 general election winners for the Tories, Johnson and Cameron, were both elected by the membership. The last general election winner for Labour, Tony Blair, was elected by Labour members. Starmer was also elected by Labour members and Davey by LD members
Jo Swinson was elected by the members.
Jeremy Corbyn was elected by the members.
Hell, IDS was elected by the members.
The record of member voting is, at best, patchy.
William Hague, John Major, Theresa May, Michael Foot were elected solely by MPs. Their record is at least as patchy.
In 2017 Corbyn deprived the Tories of their majority
Surely the point Mark is making is the evidence points to it being inclusive, whereas you were trying to imply it wasn't. It clearly is from the evidence Mark provided.
Personally I think members should elect leaders whilst in opposition and the public can decide on the party's members wisdom in a GE. However if you are appointing a PM of an already elected governing party it should be left to those who have the detailed knowledge i.e. the MPs to mitigate the risk of appointing a loony as PM (although the MPs might manage that also).
No it clearly isn't, of the last 4 Tory leaders elected solely by MPs, May, Howard, Hague and Major, none of them apart from Major won a general election majority and he also led the party to its worst defeat since 1832 in 1997.
If members get a say in electing the party leader then that applies in government as much as opposition. MPs select the final 2 anyway and members then choose from them, so MPs have plenty of opportunity to exclude an extremist. Braverman or Badenoch may well have won the leadership amongst members and were probably the most hardline of the candidates standing but MPs put neither in the final 2.
Labour also let members choose their leader so they equally could choose the PM in power. Had John McDonnell got enough MP nominations to take on Gordon Brown in 2007 that would certainly have been the case
I think that is a bit tough on Major. You could have had Good as leader in 1997 and you weren't going to win.
In hindsight, Major was actually quite good as PM. Or did you mean God ?
I meant God. I'm really getting fed up with spell checker.
I also thought Major was good. Hague was pretty good as a leader also. I think @hyufd is getting cause and correlation mixed up. There are lots of other reasons why a PM/leader wins or loses. Whether they were elected by MPs or members is only one of them, if at all. Major, Hague and Howard had other rather bigger problems. And as Mark showed there are plenty of counter examples.
The 2 worst defeats the Tories suffered since universal suffrage were under Major in 1997 and Hague in 2001.
Now Major was not too bad a PM and part of that was down to Blair having more appeal than any Labour leader before to Middle England but neither were exactly great leaders of the party
Tesla Powerwalls Create Huge 'Distributed Battery' For Grid Reliability Tesla has invited some 25,000 PG&E customers with Powerwalls to join the program. https://insideevs.com/news/602480/tesla-powerwall-pge-worlds-largest-distributed-battery/ ...Through the collaboration, Tesla will participate in PG&E’s Emergency Load Reduction Program (ELRP) pilot by combining residential Powerwalls into a virtual power plant to discharge power back to the California grid during times of high electricity demand. Participating customers will receive $2 for every incremental kilowatt-hour of electricity their Powerwall discharges during an event. They can use the Tesla app to set their backup power needs or to opt out of a particular event, as necessary....
While not massive in terms of power, imagine ubiquitous EV* usage. Even if only around 20% of vehicles' better capacity was available, it would give you a virtual distributed battery with multiple GWh capacity.
UK drivers do an average of around 20 miles a day, so there's plenty of headroom.
(* two way chargers are already being planned for electric vehicles, so the ability to discharge back to the grid will be designed in.)
The Tesla scheme was mentioned a while back.
The various companies planing superchargers are looking at building in storage to time shift/spread the load. Several are looking at over sizing the storage and using that to time shift larger amount of electricity for ££££. For reference, you can put 3/4GWh of storage in a shipping container sized installation.
Somewhat related, I found this article (well, University press bumpf) quite interesting :
"Tapping into the million-year energy source below our feet
MIT spinout Quaise Energy is working to create geothermal wells made from the deepest holes in the world.
...
Quaise is hoping to accomplish those lofty goals by tapping into the energy source below our feet. The company plans to vaporize enough rock to create the world’s deepest holes and harvest geothermal energy at a scale that could satisfy human energy consumption for millions of years. They haven’t yet solved all the related engineering challenges, but Quaise’s founders have set an ambitious timeline to begin harvesting energy from a pilot well by 2026."
Deepest hole? Geothermal energy, you say?
{rolls up sleeves}
Has Thunderbird 1 had a mishap? Call David Miliband urgently.
"The Third Doctor and UNIT are called in to investigate a murder at Project Inferno, an effort to drill through the Earth's crust to harness great energies within the planet's core. It transpires that the drilling is producing a green ooze that transforms all who touch it into savage humanoid creatures called Primords, who can only be killed via extreme cold.
Unbeknownst to anyone, the project leader, Professor Stahlman has been infected and is in the early stages of the change. After quarrelling with Stahlman, the Doctor attempts an experiment on the detached TARDIS console, but a freak accident transports him into a parallel space-time continuum. "
Some especially impressive make-up and shambling amongst the baddies too.
US July jobs report is out, over half a million jobs added in a single month. I think you have to go back over 7 presidents to get a figure like that.
Unemploymemt at a 50 year low.
Terrifying recession conditions.
Two words for you.
Gasoline
prices
But yes, things might be looking a little better for the dems in the midterms.
Gasoline prices have been coming down for 50 days+ in a row in the US. Even I am starting to think things are looking better for the Ds in November (however, I still think they will lose the House and the Senate is on a knife-edge).
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2022/08/05/raphael-warnock-georgia-senate-2022-profile-00049352 ...“Senator Cruz stood up to make his argument about why he thought we should do this, and then came my turn,” Warnock said, “and then I heard myself say words that I did not imagine hearing myself ever say. I said, ‘I would like to associate myself with the remarks of the senator from Texas, Ted Cruz.’ They couldn’t believe it — I think 30 or 40 of my colleagues probably didn’t know what was in the amendment, but they said, ‘If he’s for it, and he’s for it, we better pass this thing.’ It passed unanimously.” And to this the still rapt crowd responded with raucous applause.
“My folks were asking, ‘Why would you work with him?’ Very simple. Senator Cruz wanted to build out this road in Texas — called I-14. Guess what? The same road that runs through Texas” — he paused a beat before the reveal — “runs through Georgia. Connects some of our military installations, and critical parts of this state that could use the development,” Warnock said. “It goes through communities that are largely red and communities that are blue. It goes past,” he crescendoed, “people who worship at churches, and temples and mosques — all have to get on the same road! Folks who are going to work, and the folks those folks work for — all have to get on the same road! In other words, if we build out the road, everybody can get to where they need to go! There is a road that runs through our humanity …”
And now the people in the bleachers were congregants as much as constituents, saying yessir, saying mm-hmm, talking back to Warnock the way a Black Baptist pastor wants, giving him the political equivalents of amens and uh-huhs. I’ve watched over the years countless candidates’ set-piece speeches — never, though, one that deliberately elevated a pedestrian piece of potential political pork into a nearly holy totem of American democracy. In a recent week of campaign events, official events and church events, it wasn’t the only time I saw him do this, and it always conjured something Democratic Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey told me earlier this summer when he called to talk about Warnock: “There’s never been anybody like him in the United States Senate.”...
Accompanying brochure from Sunak has, on page 3, endorsements from: Rabb, Hague, Villiers ("London MP and Brexiteer") and Ben Houchen. Are those really the most impressive names he can come up with, as the Tory party Establishment candidate (so to speak)? Have members outside London got someone else in the Villiers slot?
It should be noted Tunbridge Wells, where Rishi spoke and I was born and raised, is 46th on the LD target list and has a LD led council. It is very much bluewall.
I don't there was anything wrong with what he said, there are parts of Tunbridge Wells that are not that well off, Sherwood ward for instance. Yes the redwall needs support but there are parts of the country elsewhere that do too.
It should also be noted that the last 2 general election winners for the Tories, Johnson and Cameron, were both elected by the membership. The last general election winner for Labour, Tony Blair, was elected by Labour members. Starmer was also elected by Labour members and Davey by LD members
Jo Swinson was elected by the members.
Jeremy Corbyn was elected by the members.
Hell, IDS was elected by the members.
The record of member voting is, at best, patchy.
William Hague, John Major, Theresa May, Michael Foot were elected solely by MPs. Their record is at least as patchy.
In 2017 Corbyn deprived the Tories of their majority
Surely the point Mark is making is the evidence points to it being inclusive, whereas you were trying to imply it wasn't. It clearly is from the evidence Mark provided.
Personally I think members should elect leaders whilst in opposition and the public can decide on the party's members wisdom in a GE. However if you are appointing a PM of an already elected governing party it should be left to those who have the detailed knowledge i.e. the MPs to mitigate the risk of appointing a loony as PM (although the MPs might manage that also).
No it clearly isn't, of the last 4 Tory leaders elected solely by MPs, May, Howard, Hague and Major, none of them apart from Major won a general election majority and he also led the party to its worst defeat since 1832 in 1997.
If members get a say in electing the party leader then that applies in government as much as opposition. MPs select the final 2 anyway and members then choose from them, so MPs have plenty of opportunity to exclude an extremist. Braverman or Badenoch may well have won the leadership amongst members and were probably the most hardline of the candidates standing but MPs put neither in the final 2.
Labour also let members choose their leader so they equally could choose the PM in power. Had John McDonnell got enough MP nominations to take on Gordon Brown in 2007 that would certainly have been the case
I think that is a bit tough on Major. You could have had Good as leader in 1997 and you weren't going to win.
In hindsight, Major was actually quite good as PM. Or did you mean God ?
I meant God. I'm really getting fed up with spell checker.
I also thought Major was good. Hague was pretty good as a leader also. I think @hyufd is getting cause and correlation mixed up. There are lots of other reasons why a PM/leader wins or loses. Whether they were elected by MPs or members is only one of them, if at all. Major, Hague and Howard had other rather bigger problems. And as Mark showed there are plenty of counter examples.
The 2 worst defeats the Tories suffered since universal suffrage were under Major in 1997 and Hague in 2001.
Now Major was not too bad a PM and part of that was down to Blair having more appeal than any Labour leader before to Middle England but neither were exactly great leaders of the party
Other than not winning, obviously, why were they not good leaders? Interested to know your views on that. In both cases much of this was outside of their control. After all Major won against the odds in 92. Hague I'm sure would have beaten Corbyn if that had been the choice. Hague I think would have made a good first of being PM. Major did.
@HYUFD our spat the other day - I don't understand what caused it. I thought we were having a good discussion. You then, appeared for no apparent reason, to be rude to me for which I retaliated. I don't know why that happened. I was not aware of me saying anything for which offence could be taken. Did I?
She won by 2% over the more moderate Kerrin Robson. She just has to hope that Robson voters vote for her and not the Democrat candidate Katie Hobbs in November
It should be noted Tunbridge Wells, where Rishi spoke and I was born and raised, is 46th on the LD target list and has a LD led council. It is very much bluewall.
I don't there was anything wrong with what he said, there are parts of Tunbridge Wells that are not that well off, Sherwood ward for instance. Yes the redwall needs support but there are parts of the country elsewhere that do too.
It should also be noted that the last 2 general election winners for the Tories, Johnson and Cameron, were both elected by the membership. The last general election winner for Labour, Tony Blair, was elected by Labour members. Starmer was also elected by Labour members and Davey by LD members
Jo Swinson was elected by the members.
Jeremy Corbyn was elected by the members.
Hell, IDS was elected by the members.
The record of member voting is, at best, patchy.
William Hague, John Major, Theresa May, Michael Foot were elected solely by MPs. Their record is at least as patchy.
In 2017 Corbyn deprived the Tories of their majority
Surely the point Mark is making is the evidence points to it being inclusive, whereas you were trying to imply it wasn't. It clearly is from the evidence Mark provided.
Personally I think members should elect leaders whilst in opposition and the public can decide on the party's members wisdom in a GE. However if you are appointing a PM of an already elected governing party it should be left to those who have the detailed knowledge i.e. the MPs to mitigate the risk of appointing a loony as PM (although the MPs might manage that also).
No it clearly isn't, of the last 4 Tory leaders elected solely by MPs, May, Howard, Hague and Major, none of them apart from Major won a general election majority and he also led the party to its worst defeat since 1832 in 1997.
If members get a say in electing the party leader then that applies in government as much as opposition. MPs select the final 2 anyway and members then choose from them, so MPs have plenty of opportunity to exclude an extremist. Braverman or Badenoch may well have won the leadership amongst members and were probably the most hardline of the candidates standing but MPs put neither in the final 2.
Labour also let members choose their leader so they equally could choose the PM in power. Had John McDonnell got enough MP nominations to take on Gordon Brown in 2007 that would certainly have been the case
I think that is a bit tough on Major. You could have had Good as leader in 1997 and you weren't going to win.
In hindsight, Major was actually quite good as PM. Or did you mean God ?
I meant God. I'm really getting fed up with spell checker.
I also thought Major was good. Hague was pretty good as a leader also. I think @hyufd is getting cause and correlation mixed up. There are lots of other reasons why a PM/leader wins or loses. Whether they were elected by MPs or members is only one of them, if at all. Major, Hague and Howard had other rather bigger problems. And as Mark showed there are plenty of counter examples.
The 2 worst defeats the Tories suffered since universal suffrage were under Major in 1997 and Hague in 2001.
Now Major was not too bad a PM and part of that was down to Blair having more appeal than any Labour leader before to Middle England but neither were exactly great leaders of the party
Other than not winning, obviously, why were they not good leaders? Interested to know your views on that. In both cases much of this was outside of their control. After all Major won against the odds in 92. Hague I'm sure would have beaten Corbyn if that had been the choice. Hague I think would have made a good first of being PM. Major did.
Agggh I am going to have to stop posting from my phone. Spell checker is during me mad. Fist not first.
She has more chance than some others listed mind - such as Meghan Markle.
I'd put a fiver on her if she was 100/1
She is a demagogue with some dangerous opinions BUT she is articulate, telegenic, clever and knows how to work a crowd - and the media. She can be brutal in despatching journalists, I've rarely see anything like it. She ATTACKS them rather than nervously batting away their questions. It's Trumpism, but done by someone eloquent and "plausible" and not obviously mad
But to get to the White House she needs an awful lot of difficult things to happen exactly right
But if Trump chose her as a running mate in 2024? That could do it
Accompanying brochure from Sunak has, on page 3, endorsements from: Raab, Hague, Villiers ("London MP and Brexiteer") and Ben Houchen. Are those really the most impressive names he can come up with, as the Tory party Establishment candidate (so to speak)? Have members outside London got someone else in the Villiers slot?
Interesting that support from Jeremy Hunt isn't mentioned.
She has more chance than some others listed mind - such as Meghan Markle.
I'd put a fiver on her if she was 100/1
She is a demagogue with some dangerous opinions BUT she is articulate, telegenic, clever and knows how to work a crowd - and the media. She can be brutal in despatching journalists, I've rarely see anything like it. She ATTACKS them rather than nervously batting away their questions. It's Trumpism, but done by someone eloquent and "plausible" and not obviously mad
But to get to the White House she needs an awful lot of difficult things to happen exactly right
But if Trump chose her as a running mate in 2024? That could do it
I knew I’d seen her before but couldn’t think where - saw her on this podcast a couple of weeks ago.
US July jobs report is out, over half a million jobs added in a single month. I think you have to go back over 7 presidents to get a figure like that.
Unemploymemt at a 50 year low.
Terrifying recession conditions.
Two words for you.
Gasoline
prices
But yes, things might be looking a little better for the dems in the midterms.
Brent Crude has just plunged to its lowest price since Feb.
Is Lizzy a lucky general?
According to the BBC it is up $1.19 today. I am a bit confused. Edit in fairness it has fallen quite a bit the last few days. The jobs numbers from the US may drive it higher again.
She has more chance than some others listed mind - such as Meghan Markle.
I'd put a fiver on her if she was 100/1
She is a demagogue with some dangerous opinions BUT she is articulate, telegenic, clever and knows how to work a crowd - and the media. She can be brutal in despatching journalists, I've rarely see anything like it. She ATTACKS them rather than nervously batting away their questions. It's Trumpism, but done by someone eloquent and "plausible" and not obviously mad
But to get to the White House she needs an awful lot of difficult things to happen exactly right
But if Trump chose her as a running mate in 2024? That could do it
My WH24 betting is essentially the Big Short on Trump, flat Biden, long everybody else.
But I do also have a long shot hunch punt - on MICHELLE OBAMA. It's a performing punt too. On at 100 for the Dem Nom, trading in the 20s now.
Isn't it time for Ed Davey to come out and say unequivocally that if the Lib Dems win the next election they will immediately set in train reversing Brexit. No referendum needed. His manifesto will be his mandate.
He has never been in a better position. The country is in favour of rejoining and the financial position now we've left is dire and getting worse. On WATO they were talking about the possibility of real human hardship next year. The situation could be apocalyptic.
As a USP for a third line Party the situation couldn't be better. Starmer has abandoned it for a mushy Trussesque God-knows-what which leaves the Greens the Lib Dems and the Scottish Nats fully in favour. Perfect for the revival of the Liberal Party.
Starmer is offering nothing other than not being Tory. The Tories are dead in the water. The country needs a new movement and joining the EU Euro and all is tailor made.
She has more chance than some others listed mind - such as Meghan Markle.
I'd put a fiver on her if she was 100/1
She is a demagogue with some dangerous opinions BUT she is articulate, telegenic, clever and knows how to work a crowd - and the media. She can be brutal in despatching journalists, I've rarely see anything like it. She ATTACKS them rather than nervously batting away their questions. It's Trumpism, but done by someone eloquent and "plausible" and not obviously mad
But to get to the White House she needs an awful lot of difficult things to happen exactly right
But if Trump chose her as a running mate in 2024? That could do it
I knew I’d seen her before but couldn’t think where - saw her on this podcast a couple of weeks ago.
Former news anchor on local TV, so not only does everyone know her, she’s had two decades of daily public speaking and interviewing.
Yep, she's notably skilled at TV for this reason. Telling against her is her age, perhaps - she's already in her 50s and needs everything to hurry up, she's still only a possible governor, no more than that
On the other hand Americans don't mind geriatric leaders, male or female. Pelosi is about 109 and looks older
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2022/08/05/raphael-warnock-georgia-senate-2022-profile-00049352 ...“Senator Cruz stood up to make his argument about why he thought we should do this, and then came my turn,” Warnock said, “and then I heard myself say words that I did not imagine hearing myself ever say. I said, ‘I would like to associate myself with the remarks of the senator from Texas, Ted Cruz.’ They couldn’t believe it — I think 30 or 40 of my colleagues probably didn’t know what was in the amendment, but they said, ‘If he’s for it, and he’s for it, we better pass this thing.’ It passed unanimously.” And to this the still rapt crowd responded with raucous applause.
“My folks were asking, ‘Why would you work with him?’ Very simple. Senator Cruz wanted to build out this road in Texas — called I-14. Guess what? The same road that runs through Texas” — he paused a beat before the reveal — “runs through Georgia. Connects some of our military installations, and critical parts of this state that could use the development,” Warnock said. “It goes through communities that are largely red and communities that are blue. It goes past,” he crescendoed, “people who worship at churches, and temples and mosques — all have to get on the same road! Folks who are going to work, and the folks those folks work for — all have to get on the same road! In other words, if we build out the road, everybody can get to where they need to go! There is a road that runs through our humanity …”
And now the people in the bleachers were congregants as much as constituents, saying yessir, saying mm-hmm, talking back to Warnock the way a Black Baptist pastor wants, giving him the political equivalents of amens and uh-huhs. I’ve watched over the years countless candidates’ set-piece speeches — never, though, one that deliberately elevated a pedestrian piece of potential political pork into a nearly holy totem of American democracy. In a recent week of campaign events, official events and church events, it wasn’t the only time I saw him do this, and it always conjured something Democratic Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey told me earlier this summer when he called to talk about Warnock: “There’s never been anybody like him in the United States Senate.”...
Isn't it time for Ed Davey to come out and say unequivocally that if the Lib Dems win the next election they will immediately set in train reversing Brexit. No referendum needed. His manifesto will be his mandate.
He has never been in a better position. The country is in favour of rejoining and the financial position now we've left is dire and getting worse. On WATO they were talking about the possibility of real human hardship next year. The situation could be apocalyptic.
As a USP for a third line Party the situation couldn't be better. Starmer has abandoned it for a mushy Trussesque God-knows-what which leaves the Greens the Lib Dems and the Scottish Nats fully in favour. Perfect for the revival of the Liberal Party.
Starmer is offering nothing other than not being Tory. The Tories are dead in the water. The country needs a new movement and joining the EU Euro and all is tailor made.
I would like to think you were right, Mr R. But I fear you are over optimistic. One difficulty of course is that the popular press is hysterically against the idea of the EU, let alone rejoining! But it's a lovely thought!
She is genuinely deplorable in several ways, yet the way she doesn't take any shit, and the way she brings the fight back to the hacks. It is impressive
She has more chance than some others listed mind - such as Meghan Markle.
I'd put a fiver on her if she was 100/1
She is a demagogue with some dangerous opinions BUT she is articulate, telegenic, clever and knows how to work a crowd - and the media. She can be brutal in despatching journalists, I've rarely see anything like it. She ATTACKS them rather than nervously batting away their questions. It's Trumpism, but done by someone eloquent and "plausible" and not obviously mad
But to get to the White House she needs an awful lot of difficult things to happen exactly right
But if Trump chose her as a running mate in 2024? That could do it
I knew I’d seen her before but couldn’t think where - saw her on this podcast a couple of weeks ago.
Former news anchor on local TV, so not only does everyone know her, she’s had two decades of daily public speaking and interviewing.
Quite a few of these Trump fruitcakes seem to be TV people. Makes sense, I guess, since that's essentially what he is. What he was anyway. I think an underappreciated factor in his political rise was all that time on The Apprentice, a persona of "tough can-do guy with a sense of humour" projected into millions of homes in America every week for years. That's gold, really, in this age of celeb. If Alan Sugar wasn't Alan Sugar maybe something similar - on the usual smaller and paler British scale - could have happened here.
US July jobs report is out, over half a million jobs added in a single month. I think you have to go back over 7 presidents to get a figure like that.
Unemploymemt at a 50 year low.
Terrifying recession conditions.
The July figures for the UK showed a slower rate of increase but it was still that: an increase in employment.
There is a theoretical level of unemployment under which wages grow and cause inflation to rise (NAIRU).
I suppose the current rate of inflation would suggest we are well below it. But is it different if the inflation is a result of external factors? Been a while since my degree.
Do Truss supporting newspapers realise that by promoting this story they are effectively trumpeting a smoking gun that provides evidence that the policy of "levelling up" has for the past three years amounted to one huge con trick, in which both Sunak and Truss were complicit.
She is genuinely deplorable in several ways, yet the way she doesn't take any shit, and the way she brings the fight back to the hacks. It is impressive
She has more chance than some others listed mind - such as Meghan Markle.
I'd put a fiver on her if she was 100/1
She is a demagogue with some dangerous opinions BUT she is articulate, telegenic, clever and knows how to work a crowd - and the media. She can be brutal in despatching journalists, I've rarely see anything like it. She ATTACKS them rather than nervously batting away their questions. It's Trumpism, but done by someone eloquent and "plausible" and not obviously mad
But to get to the White House she needs an awful lot of difficult things to happen exactly right
But if Trump chose her as a running mate in 2024? That could do it
I knew I’d seen her before but couldn’t think where - saw her on this podcast a couple of weeks ago.
Former news anchor on local TV, so not only does everyone know her, she’s had two decades of daily public speaking and interviewing.
Quite a few of these Trump fruitcakes seem to be TV people. Makes sense, I guess, since that's essentially what he is. What he was anyway. I think an underappreciated factor in his political rise was all that time on The Apprentice, a persona of "tough can-do guy with a sense of humour" projected into millions of homes in America every week for years. That's gold, really, in this age of celeb. If Alan Sugar wasn't Alan Sugar maybe something similar - on the usual smaller and paler British scale - could have happened here.
We tend to be slightly less impressed by glossy bullshit.
Re the thread topic, I don't know if it has been noticed on here that someone has conveniently unearthed a clip of Mr S saying he'd managed to change fuinding in favour of Kent etc. (No idea if this is a fair interpretation or not, myself.)
Kent has some of the most deprived areas of the country, especially around Margate, Ramsgate, Gravesend, Isle of Sheppey etc
Not his rationale.
“We inherited formulas from the Labour Party, that shoved all the funding into deprived urban areas. That needed to be undone: I started the work of undoing that.”
I've been to Kent in recent years. It's filthy rich with a few shitty poor bits. It's not the poor bits the Tories live in, as opposed to Brexiters. The poor bits are not Mr S's target.
She has more chance than some others listed mind - such as Meghan Markle.
I'd put a fiver on her if she was 100/1
She is a demagogue with some dangerous opinions BUT she is articulate, telegenic, clever and knows how to work a crowd - and the media. She can be brutal in despatching journalists, I've rarely see anything like it. She ATTACKS them rather than nervously batting away their questions. It's Trumpism, but done by someone eloquent and "plausible" and not obviously mad
But to get to the White House she needs an awful lot of difficult things to happen exactly right
But if Trump chose her as a running mate in 2024? That could do it
I knew I’d seen her before but couldn’t think where - saw her on this podcast a couple of weeks ago.
Former news anchor on local TV, so not only does everyone know her, she’s had two decades of daily public speaking and interviewing.
Quite a few of these Trump fruitcakes seem to be TV people. Makes sense, I guess, since that's essentially what he is. What he was anyway. I think an underappreciated factor in his political rise was all that time on The Apprentice, a persona of "tough can-do guy with a sense of humour" projected into millions of homes in America every week for years. That's gold, really, in this age of celeb. If Alan Sugar wasn't Alan Sugar maybe something similar - on the usual smaller and paler British scale - could have happened here.
We tend to be slightly less impressed by glossy bullshit.
She has more chance than some others listed mind - such as Meghan Markle.
I'd put a fiver on her if she was 100/1
She is a demagogue with some dangerous opinions BUT she is articulate, telegenic, clever and knows how to work a crowd - and the media. She can be brutal in despatching journalists, I've rarely see anything like it. She ATTACKS them rather than nervously batting away their questions. It's Trumpism, but done by someone eloquent and "plausible" and not obviously mad
But to get to the White House she needs an awful lot of difficult things to happen exactly right
But if Trump chose her as a running mate in 2024? That could do it
I knew I’d seen her before but couldn’t think where - saw her on this podcast a couple of weeks ago.
Former news anchor on local TV, so not only does everyone know her, she’s had two decades of daily public speaking and interviewing.
Quite a few of these Trump fruitcakes seem to be TV people. Makes sense, I guess, since that's essentially what he is. What he was anyway. I think an underappreciated factor in his political rise was all that time on The Apprentice, a persona of "tough can-do guy with a sense of humour" projected into millions of homes in America every week for years. That's gold, really, in this age of celeb. If Alan Sugar wasn't Alan Sugar maybe something similar - on the usual smaller and paler British scale - could have happened here.
We tend to be slightly less impressed by glossy bullshit.
She is genuinely deplorable in several ways, yet the way she doesn't take any shit, and the way she brings the fight back to the hacks. It is impressive
Go to minute 9 to see her really slapping him
Shouldn't he be interviewing her?
He loses the plot because she is, in this instance, quite right. He comes with an agenda, she exposes it and bats it away, and then she goes on the attack - humiliating him
The Australian journalist in the other video is correct when he says "this is what Trump does", because this IS what Trump does. Trump attacks the media, turning the tables. But she does it much better and with more confidence and eloquence - partly, I guess, because she was herself a news anchor for so long
She has more chance than some others listed mind - such as Meghan Markle.
I'd put a fiver on her if she was 100/1
She is a demagogue with some dangerous opinions BUT she is articulate, telegenic, clever and knows how to work a crowd - and the media. She can be brutal in despatching journalists, I've rarely see anything like it. She ATTACKS them rather than nervously batting away their questions. It's Trumpism, but done by someone eloquent and "plausible" and not obviously mad
But to get to the White House she needs an awful lot of difficult things to happen exactly right
But if Trump chose her as a running mate in 2024? That could do it
I knew I’d seen her before but couldn’t think where - saw her on this podcast a couple of weeks ago.
Former news anchor on local TV, so not only does everyone know her, she’s had two decades of daily public speaking and interviewing.
Quite a few of these Trump fruitcakes seem to be TV people. Makes sense, I guess, since that's essentially what he is. What he was anyway. I think an underappreciated factor in his political rise was all that time on The Apprentice, a persona of "tough can-do guy with a sense of humour" projected into millions of homes in America every week for years. That's gold, really, in this age of celeb. If Alan Sugar wasn't Alan Sugar maybe something similar - on the usual smaller and paler British scale - could have happened here.
We tend to be slightly less impressed by glossy bullshit.
Alan Sugar is a Pound Shop Donald Fucking Trump.
I know Mr Sugar caused a minor revolution with his PCW computers (I had about eight of them in succession, variously adapted and cannibalised). But I don't think Mr S ever tried to do a Boris Johnson in No 10 and imitate a limpet in a rockpool.
It should be noted Tunbridge Wells, where Rishi spoke and I was born and raised, is 46th on the LD target list and has a LD led council. It is very much bluewall.
I don't there was anything wrong with what he said, there are parts of Tunbridge Wells that are not that well off, Sherwood ward for instance. Yes the redwall needs support but there are parts of the country elsewhere that do too.
It should also be noted that the last 2 general election winners for the Tories, Johnson and Cameron, were both elected by the membership. The last general election winner for Labour, Tony Blair, was elected by Labour members. Starmer was also elected by Labour members and Davey by LD members
Jo Swinson was elected by the members.
Jeremy Corbyn was elected by the members.
Hell, IDS was elected by the members.
The record of member voting is, at best, patchy.
William Hague, John Major, Theresa May, Michael Foot were elected solely by MPs. Their record is at least as patchy.
In 2017 Corbyn deprived the Tories of their majority
Surely the point Mark is making is the evidence points to it being inclusive, whereas you were trying to imply it wasn't. It clearly is from the evidence Mark provided.
Personally I think members should elect leaders whilst in opposition and the public can decide on the party's members wisdom in a GE. However if you are appointing a PM of an already elected governing party it should be left to those who have the detailed knowledge i.e. the MPs to mitigate the risk of appointing a loony as PM (although the MPs might manage that also).
No it clearly isn't, of the last 4 Tory leaders elected solely by MPs, May, Howard, Hague and Major, none of them apart from Major won a general election majority and he also led the party to its worst defeat since 1832 in 1997.
If members get a say in electing the party leader then that applies in government as much as opposition. MPs select the final 2 anyway and members then choose from them, so MPs have plenty of opportunity to exclude an extremist. Braverman or Badenoch may well have won the leadership amongst members and were probably the most hardline of the candidates standing but MPs put neither in the final 2.
Labour also let members choose their leader so they equally could choose the PM in power. Had John McDonnell got enough MP nominations to take on Gordon Brown in 2007 that would certainly have been the case
I think you just flip it around.
* 10% of MP base required to be nominated as a candidate (so max 10 as each MP can only nominate 1) * All candidates (so max 10) go to the membership for a vote * Top 5 (I would suggest STV) selected by members for the final round * MPs then have 2 rounds of voting using FPTP: 5>3 and then 3>1
Re dog's view of the world. We have a Sproodle. It is bonkers. I have never come across a dog so excitable. It definitely has triggers that tell it something is happening and therefore it should do stuff, but I think it only has a limited measure of time, say 1 hour at most.
Our dog suffers from separation anxiety (of course he does!). He would go mad if left. We can leave him for up to an hour now. My wife wants to keep paying a fortune to trainers. I reckon he is fixed and we could leave him longer, but that isn't so profitable for the trainer.
PS as a puppy he was expelled from dog training classes for being belligerent. He basically got all the other dogs to misbehave en mass. He is actually well trained provided another human or dog is not in sight.
She has more chance than some others listed mind - such as Meghan Markle.
I'd put a fiver on her if she was 100/1
She is a demagogue with some dangerous opinions BUT she is articulate, telegenic, clever and knows how to work a crowd - and the media. She can be brutal in despatching journalists, I've rarely see anything like it. She ATTACKS them rather than nervously batting away their questions. It's Trumpism, but done by someone eloquent and "plausible" and not obviously mad
But to get to the White House she needs an awful lot of difficult things to happen exactly right
But if Trump chose her as a running mate in 2024? That could do it
I knew I’d seen her before but couldn’t think where - saw her on this podcast a couple of weeks ago.
Former news anchor on local TV, so not only does everyone know her, she’s had two decades of daily public speaking and interviewing.
Quite a few of these Trump fruitcakes seem to be TV people. Makes sense, I guess, since that's essentially what he is. What he was anyway. I think an underappreciated factor in his political rise was all that time on The Apprentice, a persona of "tough can-do guy with a sense of humour" projected into millions of homes in America every week for years. That's gold, really, in this age of celeb. If Alan Sugar wasn't Alan Sugar maybe something similar - on the usual smaller and paler British scale - could have happened here.
We tend to be slightly less impressed by glossy bullshit.
Alan Sugar is a Pound Shop Donald Fucking Trump.
I know Mr Sugar caused a minor revolution with his PCW computers (I had about eight of them in succession, variously adapted and cannibalised). But I don't think Mr S ever tried to do a Boris Johnson in No 10 and imitate a limpet in a rockpool.
His "thing" was buying companies and slowly running them into the ground, going for the lowest possible quality.
The reason that Lord Sugar didn't get anywhere in UK politics is that he wasn't up for the time and effort of becoming an MP.
It should be noted Tunbridge Wells, where Rishi spoke and I was born and raised, is 46th on the LD target list and has a LD led council. It is very much bluewall.
I don't there was anything wrong with what he said, there are parts of Tunbridge Wells that are not that well off, Sherwood ward for instance. Yes the redwall needs support but there are parts of the country elsewhere that do too.
It should also be noted that the last 2 general election winners for the Tories, Johnson and Cameron, were both elected by the membership. The last general election winner for Labour, Tony Blair, was elected by Labour members. Starmer was also elected by Labour members and Davey by LD members
Jo Swinson was elected by the members.
Jeremy Corbyn was elected by the members.
Hell, IDS was elected by the members.
The record of member voting is, at best, patchy.
William Hague, John Major, Theresa May, Michael Foot were elected solely by MPs. Their record is at least as patchy.
In 2017 Corbyn deprived the Tories of their majority
Surely the point Mark is making is the evidence points to it being inclusive, whereas you were trying to imply it wasn't. It clearly is from the evidence Mark provided.
Personally I think members should elect leaders whilst in opposition and the public can decide on the party's members wisdom in a GE. However if you are appointing a PM of an already elected governing party it should be left to those who have the detailed knowledge i.e. the MPs to mitigate the risk of appointing a loony as PM (although the MPs might manage that also).
No it clearly isn't, of the last 4 Tory leaders elected solely by MPs, May, Howard, Hague and Major, none of them apart from Major won a general election majority and he also led the party to its worst defeat since 1832 in 1997.
If members get a say in electing the party leader then that applies in government as much as opposition. MPs select the final 2 anyway and members then choose from them, so MPs have plenty of opportunity to exclude an extremist. Braverman or Badenoch may well have won the leadership amongst members and were probably the most hardline of the candidates standing but MPs put neither in the final 2.
Labour also let members choose their leader so they equally could choose the PM in power. Had John McDonnell got enough MP nominations to take on Gordon Brown in 2007 that would certainly have been the case
I think that is a bit tough on Major. You could have had Good as leader in 1997 and you weren't going to win.
In hindsight, Major was actually quite good as PM. Or did you mean God ?
God - a leader who inspires absolute devotion in His followers while others look on sceptically, bewildered or even contemptuous about it.
His followers have divided themselves into various camps that frequently seem to hate each other more than they hate non believers.
His most fervent believers think that only a select few are worthy, which can include some very wealthy people despite what He has said about the wealthy.
Has views that seem frozen from times in the past despite time moving on.
Spends half of his time obsessing about Jews.
God is a politician and His name is Jeremy Corbyn.
Your rants about God are increasingly tedious.
We all know that you are a militant atheist.
Others are believers. How about you practice some of those libertarian ideals and let them do what the fuck they like without insulting them?
Re the thread topic, I don't know if it has been noticed on here that someone has conveniently unearthed a clip of Mr S saying he'd managed to change fuinding in favour of Kent etc. (No idea if this is a fair interpretation or not, myself.)
Kent has some of the most deprived areas of the country, especially around Margate, Ramsgate, Gravesend, Isle of Sheppey etc
Not his rationale.
“We inherited formulas from the Labour Party, that shoved all the funding into deprived urban areas. That needed to be undone: I started the work of undoing that.”
I've been to Kent in recent years. It's filthy rich with a few shitty poor bits. It's not the poor bits the Tories live in, as opposed to Brexiters. The poor bits are not Mr S's target.
Even Tunbridge Wells has some poorer bits eg Sherwood ward. Tunbridge Wells also now has a LD led council
She is genuinely deplorable in several ways, yet the way she doesn't take any shit, and the way she brings the fight back to the hacks. It is impressive
Go to minute 9 to see her really slapping him
Whether it's impressive or not depends on whether she's using it to puncture media nonsense or to deflect scrutiny. It's almost always the latter with far right populists.
She has more chance than some others listed mind - such as Meghan Markle.
I'd put a fiver on her if she was 100/1
She is a demagogue with some dangerous opinions BUT she is articulate, telegenic, clever and knows how to work a crowd - and the media. She can be brutal in despatching journalists, I've rarely see anything like it. She ATTACKS them rather than nervously batting away their questions. It's Trumpism, but done by someone eloquent and "plausible" and not obviously mad
But to get to the White House she needs an awful lot of difficult things to happen exactly right
But if Trump chose her as a running mate in 2024? That could do it
I knew I’d seen her before but couldn’t think where - saw her on this podcast a couple of weeks ago.
Former news anchor on local TV, so not only does everyone know her, she’s had two decades of daily public speaking and interviewing.
Quite a few of these Trump fruitcakes seem to be TV people. Makes sense, I guess, since that's essentially what he is. What he was anyway. I think an underappreciated factor in his political rise was all that time on The Apprentice, a persona of "tough can-do guy with a sense of humour" projected into millions of homes in America every week for years. That's gold, really, in this age of celeb. If Alan Sugar wasn't Alan Sugar maybe something similar - on the usual smaller and paler British scale - could have happened here.
We tend to be slightly less impressed by glossy bullshit.
Alan Sugar is a Pound Shop Donald Fucking Trump.
I know Mr Sugar caused a minor revolution with his PCW computers (I had about eight of them in succession, variously adapted and cannibalised). But I don't think Mr S ever tried to do a Boris Johnson in No 10 and imitate a limpet in a rockpool.
His "thing" was buying companies and slowly running them into the ground, going for the lowest possible quality.
The reason that Lord Sugar didn't get anywhere in UK politics is that he wasn't up for the time and effort of becoming an MP.
It must be admitted that the PCW started off by throwing together a design based on, IIRC, a job lot of non-standard three-inch (?) disc drives that had lost out to competition with the smaller PC format disc and were knocking around at minimal cost. I rather suspect everyone was very surprised when the PCW turned out to be so popular that they had to put the disc drives back into production! (Though I adapted mine with a PC 5.25" drive as well.) I don't suppose the little green screen was very high tech even then, either.
Isn't it time for Ed Davey to come out and say unequivocally that if the Lib Dems win the next election they will immediately set in train reversing Brexit. No referendum needed. His manifesto will be his mandate.
He has never been in a better position. The country is in favour of rejoining and the financial position now we've left is dire and getting worse. On WATO they were talking about the possibility of real human hardship next year. The situation could be apocalyptic.
As a USP for a third line Party the situation couldn't be better. Starmer has abandoned it for a mushy Trussesque God-knows-what which leaves the Greens the Lib Dems and the Scottish Nats fully in favour. Perfect for the revival of the Liberal Party.
Starmer is offering nothing other than not being Tory. The Tories are dead in the water. The country needs a new movement and joining the EU Euro and all is tailor made.
The only areas where most voters would not only want to rejoin the EU but join the Euro too are in inner London and university cities elsewhere like Manchester, Liverpool and Edinburgh and Cambridge, Bristol and Oxford which had huge Remain majorities.
The LDs main target seats however are mainly Tory home counties seats which only narrowly voted Remain in 2016 or narrowly voted Leave
US July jobs report is out, over half a million jobs added in a single month. I think you have to go back over 7 presidents to get a figure like that.
Unemploymemt at a 50 year low.
Terrifying recession conditions.
The July figures for the UK showed a slower rate of increase but it was still that: an increase in employment.
There is a theoretical level of unemployment under which wages grow and cause inflation to rise (NAIRU).
I suppose the current rate of inflation would suggest we are well below it. But is it different if the inflation is a result of external factors? Been a while since my degree.
The “A” is critical - “accelerating”
If unemployment is below NAIRU then inflation will accelerate from whatever baseline it is currently at. (Due to wage pressure)
Re the thread topic, I don't know if it has been noticed on here that someone has conveniently unearthed a clip of Mr S saying he'd managed to change fuinding in favour of Kent etc. (No idea if this is a fair interpretation or not, myself.)
Kent has some of the most deprived areas of the country, especially around Margate, Ramsgate, Gravesend, Isle of Sheppey etc
Not his rationale.
“We inherited formulas from the Labour Party, that shoved all the funding into deprived urban areas. That needed to be undone: I started the work of undoing that.”
I've been to Kent in recent years. It's filthy rich with a few shitty poor bits. It's not the poor bits the Tories live in, as opposed to Brexiters. The poor bits are not Mr S's target.
Even Tunbridge Wells has some poorer bits eg Sherwood ward. Tunbridge Wells also now has a LD led council
Quite so. I was very struck by the contrasts on a drive north through the Weald and Maidstone to Chatham Dockyard.
Re the thread topic, I don't know if it has been noticed on here that someone has conveniently unearthed a clip of Mr S saying he'd managed to change fuinding in favour of Kent etc. (No idea if this is a fair interpretation or not, myself.)
Kent has some of the most deprived areas of the country, especially around Margate, Ramsgate, Gravesend, Isle of Sheppey etc
Not his rationale.
“We inherited formulas from the Labour Party, that shoved all the funding into deprived urban areas. That needed to be undone: I started the work of undoing that.”
I've been to Kent in recent years. It's filthy rich with a few shitty poor bits. It's not the poor bits the Tories live in, as opposed to Brexiters. The poor bits are not Mr S's target.
I don't agree with this characterisation of Kent. Fair enough the rural areas have expensive houses and gastropubs, surrounded by AONB's and Greenbelt. But the towns are not that great. There is a lot of poverty and deprivation which is exacerbated by high house prices. Tunbridge Wells and Canterbury are exceptions, but a lot of towns are very deprived, ie Sheerness, Dover, Gravesend; just as bad as the north of England.
I get a bit sceptical about this idea that these places need investment though. The main consequence of such investment seems to be that people move in to the towns and push up house prices, forcing poor people out of their rented houses and in to homelessness/ greater poverty. That dynamic doesn't really happen so much in the north of england where there is no shortage of housing.
She is genuinely deplorable in several ways, yet the way she doesn't take any shit, and the way she brings the fight back to the hacks. It is impressive
Go to minute 9 to see her really slapping him
Whether it's impressive or not depends on whether she's using it to puncture media nonsense or to deflect scrutiny. It's almost always the latter with far right populists.
I'm talking about the media skill NOT the actual politics. A lot of what she claims to believe is pernicious nonsense
But does she have a presence on TV? Yes. Is she good at bitch-slapping journos? Also Yes. Could she make it to the White House? Why not. If she wins the AZ governorship, then I could see Trump making her his running mate in 2024, and then - whether he wins or not - she is ideally placed for 2028
Paradoxically, however, she needs to rein in the Trumpist conspiracy bollocks to win Arizona. A difficult maneuver
Kari Lake has never held an elected office, and has never been an executive. If she is elected governor of Arizona, she is unlikely to attract competent help.
Any chance you folks can take her off our hands by putting her in charge of one of your football clubs? (She is probably more qualified for that than being governor. (My apologies to those who consider football serious, but not governing.)
Her shifts in party loyalties, from Republican, to Democrat, to Trumpista, look overall as if they are determined by her ambitions, not any serious thought. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kari_Lake
She has more chance than some others listed mind - such as Meghan Markle.
I'd put a fiver on her if she was 100/1
She is a demagogue with some dangerous opinions BUT she is articulate, telegenic, clever and knows how to work a crowd - and the media. She can be brutal in despatching journalists, I've rarely see anything like it. She ATTACKS them rather than nervously batting away their questions. It's Trumpism, but done by someone eloquent and "plausible" and not obviously mad
But to get to the White House she needs an awful lot of difficult things to happen exactly right
But if Trump chose her as a running mate in 2024? That could do it
I knew I’d seen her before but couldn’t think where - saw her on this podcast a couple of weeks ago.
Former news anchor on local TV, so not only does everyone know her, she’s had two decades of daily public speaking and interviewing.
Quite a few of these Trump fruitcakes seem to be TV people. Makes sense, I guess, since that's essentially what he is. What he was anyway. I think an underappreciated factor in his political rise was all that time on The Apprentice, a persona of "tough can-do guy with a sense of humour" projected into millions of homes in America every week for years. That's gold, really, in this age of celeb. If Alan Sugar wasn't Alan Sugar maybe something similar - on the usual smaller and paler British scale - could have happened here.
We tend to be slightly less impressed by glossy bullshit.
Alan Sugar is a Pound Shop Donald Fucking Trump.
I know Mr Sugar caused a minor revolution with his PCW computers (I had about eight of them in succession, variously adapted and cannibalised). But I don't think Mr S ever tried to do a Boris Johnson in No 10 and imitate a limpet in a rockpool.
His "thing" was buying companies and slowly running them into the ground, going for the lowest possible quality.
The reason that Lord Sugar didn't get anywhere in UK politics is that he wasn't up for the time and effort of becoming an MP.
It must be admitted that the PCW started off by throwing together a design based on, IIRC, a job lot of non-standard three-inch (?) disc drives that had lost out to competition with the smaller PC format disc and were knocking around at minimal cost. I rather suspect everyone was very surprised when the PCW turned out to be so popular that they had to put the disc drives back into production! (Though I adapted mine with a PC 5.25" drive as well.) I don't suppose the little green screen was very high tech even then, either.
The drives (3 inch vs 3 1/2 inch drives) was a small part of it.
Those involved with Sugar describe his business as purely about sales - he apparently believes that a real business man sells whatever crap he has on hand, for the highest margin he can get. As opposed to investing in productivity or technology.
Re dog's view of the world. We have a Sproodle. It is bonkers. I have never come across a dog so excitable. It definitely has triggers that tell it something is happening and therefore it should do stuff, but I think it only has a limited measure of time, say 1 hour at most.
Our dog suffers from separation anxiety (of course he does!). He would go mad if left. We can leave him for up to an hour now. My wife wants to keep paying a fortune to trainers. I reckon he is fixed and we could leave him longer, but that isn't so profitable for the trainer.
PS as a puppy he was expelled from dog training classes for being belligerent. He basically got all the other dogs to misbehave en mass. He is actually well trained provided another human or dog is not in sight.
Er, how do you know?
We don't, but there is one way to find out and that is to leave him longer and see what happens (we monitor him on a camera). Anxiety kicks in immediately. Having trained him to not be anxious when we leave by coming and going repeatedly day after day, sometimes 30 times in a session, initially for only one second at a time, we lengthen the time until we are now up to an hour. We have been doing this for 2 months and pay a fortune for advice and monitoring. Frankly I'm pretty convinced that after a certain time it makes not a blind bit of difference.
He is a bright dog but he hasn't got a watch and he can't tell the time.
His emotions seem to be:
They are going, oh no they are going, where are they going...
1 hour of sleep
Yippee they are back, they are back, I'm so excited, they are back.
Her shifts in party loyalties, from Republican, to Democrat, to Trumpista, look overall as if they are determined by her ambitions, not any serious thought. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kari_Lake
Her explanation of flirting with the Democrats because of the Bush-era wars isn’t implausible.
Kari Lake has never held an elected office, and has never been an executive. If she is elected governor of Arizona, she is unlikely to attract competent help.
Any chance you folks can take her off our hands by putting her in charge of one of your football clubs? (She is probably more qualified for that than being governor. (My apologies to those who consider football serious, but not governing.)
Her shifts in party loyalties, from Republican, to Democrat, to Trumpista, look overall as if they are determined by her ambitions, not any serious thought. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kari_Lake
And?
Donald Trump himself went from Democrat to Republican to Trumpista, and became president
She is genuinely deplorable in several ways, yet the way she doesn't take any shit, and the way she brings the fight back to the hacks. It is impressive
Go to minute 9 to see her really slapping him
Shouldn't he be interviewing her?
He loses the plot because she is, in this instance, quite right. He comes with an agenda, she exposes it and bats it away, and then she goes on the attack - humiliating him
The Australian journalist in the other video is correct when he says "this is what Trump does", because this IS what Trump does. Trump attacks the media, turning the tables. But she does it much better and with more confidence and eloquence - partly, I guess, because she was herself a news anchor for so long
Not sure if she's that good or if he's just incredibly crap. I can't imagine, say, Paxman in his pomp meekly swivelling on his chair while the politician drones on for ages about how it's all a liberal-media conspiracy.
Re the thread topic, I don't know if it has been noticed on here that someone has conveniently unearthed a clip of Mr S saying he'd managed to change fuinding in favour of Kent etc. (No idea if this is a fair interpretation or not, myself.)
Kent has some of the most deprived areas of the country, especially around Margate, Ramsgate, Gravesend, Isle of Sheppey etc
Not his rationale.
“We inherited formulas from the Labour Party, that shoved all the funding into deprived urban areas. That needed to be undone: I started the work of undoing that.”
I've been to Kent in recent years. It's filthy rich with a few shitty poor bits. It's not the poor bits the Tories live in, as opposed to Brexiters. The poor bits are not Mr S's target.
I don't agree with this characterisation of Kent. Fair enough the rural areas have expensive houses and gastropubs, surrounded by AONB's and Greenbelt. But the towns are not that great. There is a lot of poverty and deprivation which is exacerbated by high house prices. Tunbridge Wells and Canterbury are exceptions, but a lot of towns are very deprived, ie Sheerness, Dover, Gravesend; just as bad as the north of England.
I get a bit sceptical about this idea that these places need investment though. The main consequence of such investment seems to be that people move in to the towns and push up house prices, forcing poor people out of their rented houses and in to homelessness/ greater poverty. That dynamic doesn't really happen so much in the north of england where there is no shortage of housing.
I agree, Tunbridge Wells and Sevenoaks may be demographically similar to affluent home counties like Surrey, Bucks and Hertfordshire. The rest of Kent isn't
Kari Lake has never held an elected office, and has never been an executive. If she is elected governor of Arizona, she is unlikely to attract competent help.
Any chance you folks can take her off our hands by putting her in charge of one of your football clubs? (She is probably more qualified for that than being governor. (My apologies to those who consider football serious, but not governing.)
Her shifts in party loyalties, from Republican, to Democrat, to Trumpista, look overall as if they are determined by her ambitions, not any serious thought. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kari_Lake
And?
Donald Trump himself went from Democrat to Republican to Trumpista, and became president
She is genuinely deplorable in several ways, yet the way she doesn't take any shit, and the way she brings the fight back to the hacks. It is impressive
Go to minute 9 to see her really slapping him
Whether it's impressive or not depends on whether she's using it to puncture media nonsense or to deflect scrutiny. It's almost always the latter with far right populists.
I'm talking about the media skill NOT the actual politics. A lot of what she claims to believe is pernicious nonsense
But does she have a presence on TV? Yes. Is she good at bitch-slapping journos? Also Yes. Could she make it to the White House? Why not. If she wins the AZ governorship, then I could see Trump making her his running mate in 2024, and then - whether he wins or not - she is ideally placed for 2028
Paradoxically, however, she needs to rein in the Trumpist conspiracy bollocks to win Arizona. A difficult maneuver
Sense she's another narcissist on the make. And of course we now know such a person CAN be president outside of Ballard novels. So not a completely crazy suggestion.
But my point - re this 'bitchslapping journos" ability that you're celebrating - is whether it's a quality or a vice depends on what she's reacting to.
Eg in British terms:
Labour politician being hassled with the tedious "What is a woman?" question by Kay Burley. They bitchslap her. GOOD.
Labour politician being asked wtf does Starmer mean by "strong secure peaceful fair growth?" by - yes why not - Kay Burley. They bitchslap her. BAD.
Bet Lake is all about the 2nd sort. Using a facility for sarcasm and putdown to avoid scrutiny.
Kari Lake has never held an elected office, and has never been an executive. If she is elected governor of Arizona, she is unlikely to attract competent help.
Any chance you folks can take her off our hands by putting her in charge of one of your football clubs? (She is probably more qualified for that than being governor. (My apologies to those who consider football serious, but not governing.)
Her shifts in party loyalties, from Republican, to Democrat, to Trumpista, look overall as if they are determined by her ambitions, not any serious thought. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kari_Lake
And?
Donald Trump himself went from Democrat to Republican to Trumpista, and became president
Indeed. She's just another grifter.
Grifter?!
"a person who engages in petty or small-scale swindling."
Comments
Fiscal policy for spending? Not so much, but then people claim that our spending is too low despite that.
The problem is we spend far too much on welfare, care and the NHS but those are shibboleths not to be touched.
One of the details I read early on in the war was that the UK imported refined oil products, such as diesel, from Russia. So it's possible that the prices of refined products have gone up by more than crude oil prices.
And then, as higher prices have rippled through the rest of the economy, other costs in the refining and distribution chain are probably higher now too.
https://news.mit.edu/2022/quaise-energy-geothermal-0628
"Tapping into the million-year energy source below our feet
MIT spinout Quaise Energy is working to create geothermal wells made from the deepest holes in the world.
...
Quaise is hoping to accomplish those lofty goals by tapping into the energy source below our feet. The company plans to vaporize enough rock to create the world’s deepest holes and harvest geothermal energy at a scale that could satisfy human energy consumption for millions of years. They haven’t yet solved all the related engineering challenges, but Quaise’s founders have set an ambitious timeline to begin harvesting energy from a pilot well by 2026."
Unemploymemt at a 50 year low.
Terrifying recession conditions.
"And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed - if all records told the same tale - then the lie passed into history and became truth. "Who controls the past," ran the Party slogan, "controls the future: who controls the present controls the past." And yet the past, though of its nature alterable, never had been altered. Whatever was true now was true from everlasting to everlasting. It was quite simple. All that was needed was an unending series of victories over your own memory. "Reality control," they called it: in Newspeak, "doublethink." (1.3.18)"
Just genius.
I think @MarqueeMark evidence speaks for itself.
{rolls up sleeves}
Biden’s big bill: Two GOP strategists on how to kill it
https://www.politico.com/news/2022/08/05/reconciliation-congress-deep-dive-00049895
Or did you mean God ?
Firing nuclear weapons down a borehole. Environmental impact study? What's that?
The problem is our wealth is very unequally distributed and this means lots of people are pushed into penury by economic turbulence.
Sunak said that expecting it to be leaked. Possibly even deliberately leaking it.
The selectorate for this contest largely live in Tunbridge Wells and not Manchester. A candidate who robs Manchester to pay Tunbridge Wells is exactly what they want to hear.
It will bomb outside Tory members, but Tory members are Sunak's immediate problem. If Truss really does have a 30ish-point lead, this sort of wildcard is Sunak's only chance of getting back in the game.
(I'm not sure whether I believe this or not.)
Gasoline
prices
But yes, things might be looking a little better for the dems in the midterms.
His followers have divided themselves into various camps that frequently seem to hate each other more than they hate non believers.
His most fervent believers think that only a select few are worthy, which can include some very wealthy people despite what He has said about the wealthy.
Has views that seem frozen from times in the past despite time moving on.
Spends half of his time obsessing about Jews.
God is a politician and His name is Jeremy Corbyn.
Now Major was not too bad a PM and part of that was down to Blair having more appeal than any Labour leader before to Middle England but neither were exactly great leaders of the party
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inferno_(Doctor_Who)
"The Third Doctor and UNIT are called in to investigate a murder at Project Inferno, an effort to drill through the Earth's crust to harness great energies within the planet's core. It transpires that the drilling is producing a green ooze that transforms all who touch it into savage humanoid creatures called Primords, who can only be killed via extreme cold.
Unbeknownst to anyone, the project leader, Professor Stahlman has been infected and is in the early stages of the change. After quarrelling with Stahlman, the Doctor attempts an experiment on the detached TARDIS console, but a freak accident transports him into a parallel space-time continuum. "
Some especially impressive make-up and shambling amongst the baddies too.
Frankly, I think they should buzz off.
EDIT: It's a nit picking story, alright.
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2022/08/05/raphael-warnock-georgia-senate-2022-profile-00049352
...“Senator Cruz stood up to make his argument about why he thought we should do this, and then came my turn,” Warnock said, “and then I heard myself say words that I did not imagine hearing myself ever say. I said, ‘I would like to associate myself with the remarks of the senator from Texas, Ted Cruz.’ They couldn’t believe it — I think 30 or 40 of my colleagues probably didn’t know what was in the amendment, but they said, ‘If he’s for it, and he’s for it, we better pass this thing.’ It passed unanimously.” And to this the still rapt crowd responded with raucous applause.
“My folks were asking, ‘Why would you work with him?’ Very simple. Senator Cruz wanted to build out this road in Texas — called I-14. Guess what? The same road that runs through Texas” — he paused a beat before the reveal — “runs through Georgia. Connects some of our military installations, and critical parts of this state that could use the development,” Warnock said. “It goes through communities that are largely red and communities that are blue. It goes past,” he crescendoed, “people who worship at churches, and temples and mosques — all have to get on the same road! Folks who are going to work, and the folks those folks work for — all have to get on the same road! In other words, if we build out the road, everybody can get to where they need to go! There is a road that runs through our humanity …”
And now the people in the bleachers were congregants as much as constituents, saying yessir, saying mm-hmm, talking back to Warnock the way a Black Baptist pastor wants, giving him the political equivalents of amens and uh-huhs. I’ve watched over the years countless candidates’ set-piece speeches — never, though, one that deliberately elevated a pedestrian piece of potential political pork into a nearly holy totem of American democracy. In a recent week of campaign events, official events and church events, it wasn’t the only time I saw him do this, and it always conjured something Democratic Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey told me earlier this summer when he called to talk about Warnock: “There’s never been anybody like him in the United States Senate.”...
Accompanying brochure from Sunak has, on page 3, endorsements from: Rabb, Hague, Villiers ("London MP and Brexiteer") and Ben Houchen. Are those really the most impressive names he can come up with, as the Tory party Establishment candidate (so to speak)? Have members outside London got someone else in the Villiers slot?
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/08/02/us/elections/results-arizona.html
She actually won every county
Her march to the presidency continues
https://twitter.com/CohenJust/status/1555549534801039360?s=20&t=9vSEh9S6BuntGFTj_ACyxw
https://www.betfair.com/exchange/plus/politics/market/1.176878927
She has more chance than some others listed mind - such as Meghan Markle.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11084283/Rishi-Sunak-fire-video-claim-diverted-cash-deprived-cities-Tory-towns.html
And again driving not during
She is a demagogue with some dangerous opinions BUT she is articulate, telegenic, clever and knows how to work a crowd - and the media. She can be brutal in despatching journalists, I've rarely see anything like it. She ATTACKS them rather than nervously batting away their questions. It's Trumpism, but done by someone eloquent and "plausible" and not obviously mad
But to get to the White House she needs an awful lot of difficult things to happen exactly right
But if Trump chose her as a running mate in 2024? That could do it
https://youtube.com/watch?v=2yPNMbn3vdI
Former news anchor on local TV, so not only does everyone know her, she’s had two decades of daily public speaking and interviewing.
Edit in fairness it has fallen quite a bit the last few days. The jobs numbers from the US may drive it higher again.
But I do also have a long shot hunch punt - on MICHELLE OBAMA. It's a performing punt too. On at 100 for the Dem Nom, trading in the 20s now.
God can you imagine. (yes I can)
He has never been in a better position. The country is in favour of rejoining and the financial position now we've left is dire and getting worse. On WATO they were talking about the possibility of real human hardship next year. The situation could be apocalyptic.
As a USP for a third line Party the situation couldn't be better. Starmer has abandoned it for a mushy Trussesque God-knows-what which leaves the Greens the Lib Dems and the Scottish Nats fully in favour. Perfect for the revival of the Liberal Party.
Starmer is offering nothing other than not being Tory. The Tories are dead in the water. The country needs a new movement and joining the EU Euro and all is tailor made.
1 Day chart
1 Month chart
3 Year chart
“I don’t live in Australia. Are you actually a respectable journalist there or are you kind of considered a joke?”
https://youtu.be/OY1dLJ7YKAk
On the other hand Americans don't mind geriatric leaders, male or female. Pelosi is about 109 and looks older
But it's a lovely thought!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QA0raqj8aK8
She is genuinely deplorable in several ways, yet the way she doesn't take any shit, and the way she brings the fight back to the hacks. It is impressive
Go to minute 9 to see her really slapping him
I suppose the current rate of inflation would suggest we are well below it. But is it different if the inflation is a result of external factors? Been a while since my degree.
When she asks him "are you masking your children?" you can see a hint of panic on his face, as he realises he is losing badly
“We inherited formulas from the Labour Party, that shoved all the funding into deprived urban areas. That needed to be undone: I started the work of undoing that.”
I've been to Kent in recent years. It's filthy rich with a few shitty poor bits. It's not the poor bits the Tories live in, as opposed to Brexiters. The poor bits are not Mr S's target.
The Australian journalist in the other video is correct when he says "this is what Trump does", because this IS what Trump does. Trump attacks the media, turning the tables. But she does it much better and with more confidence and eloquence - partly, I guess, because she was herself a news anchor for so long
* 10% of MP base required to be nominated as a candidate (so max 10 as each MP can only nominate 1)
* All candidates (so max 10) go to the membership for a vote
* Top 5 (I would suggest STV) selected by members for the final round
* MPs then have 2 rounds of voting using FPTP: 5>3 and then 3>1
The reason that Lord Sugar didn't get anywhere in UK politics is that he wasn't up for the time and effort of becoming an MP.
We all know that you are a militant atheist.
Others are believers. How about you practice some of those libertarian ideals and let them do what the fuck they like without insulting them?
Why should high earning tax payers in Sheffield or Cambridge see their hard earned taxes spent on shitholes like Middlesbrough or Oxford.
Tough love for the dumps.
Day
Month
3 years
Hopefully she's defeated in the General.
The LDs main target seats however are mainly Tory home counties seats which only narrowly voted Remain in 2016 or narrowly voted Leave
If unemployment is below NAIRU then inflation will accelerate from whatever baseline it is currently at. (Due to wage pressure)
The external factors influence the baseline
I get a bit sceptical about this idea that these places need investment though. The main consequence of such investment seems to be that people move in to the towns and push up house prices, forcing poor people out of their rented houses and in to homelessness/ greater poverty. That dynamic doesn't really happen so much in the north of england where there is no shortage of housing.
But does she have a presence on TV? Yes. Is she good at bitch-slapping journos? Also Yes. Could she make it to the White House? Why not. If she wins the AZ governorship, then I could see Trump making her his running mate in 2024, and then - whether he wins or not - she is ideally placed for 2028
Paradoxically, however, she needs to rein in the Trumpist conspiracy bollocks to win Arizona. A difficult maneuver
Any chance you folks can take her off our hands by putting her in charge of one of your football clubs? (She is probably more qualified for that than being governor. (My apologies to those who consider football serious, but not governing.)
Her shifts in party loyalties, from Republican, to Democrat, to Trumpista, look overall as if they are determined by her ambitions, not any serious thought.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kari_Lake
Those involved with Sugar describe his business as purely about sales - he apparently believes that a real business man sells whatever crap he has on hand, for the highest margin he can get. As opposed to investing in productivity or technology.
He is a bright dog but he hasn't got a watch and he can't tell the time.
His emotions seem to be:
They are going, oh no they are going, where are they going...
1 hour of sleep
Yippee they are back, they are back, I'm so excited, they are back.
Donald Trump himself went from Democrat to Republican to Trumpista, and became president
Unions reject 7%.
She's just another grifter.
But my point - re this 'bitchslapping journos" ability that you're celebrating - is whether it's a quality or a vice depends on what she's reacting to.
Eg in British terms:
Labour politician being hassled with the tedious "What is a woman?" question by Kay Burley. They bitchslap her. GOOD.
Labour politician being asked wtf does Starmer mean by "strong secure peaceful fair growth?" by - yes why not - Kay Burley. They bitchslap her. BAD.
Bet Lake is all about the 2nd sort. Using a facility for sarcasm and putdown to avoid scrutiny.
"a person who engages in petty or small-scale swindling."
No. Not a grifter. Wrong usage. Bzzzt