Not just Zoe Williams in the Guardian today - I am too!
The big pic of the climate activists protest at Lords has me rather prominent. There I am quite close to the banner, looking not too shabby at all, all things considered.
Prize for anybody who can spot me.
And while you were having fun China dug another 10m tonnes of coal:
China's coal output increased 7.2 percent year-on-year to an all-time high of 384.67 million tonnes in December 2021. For the full year of 2021, output touched 4.07 billion tonnes, up 4.7 percent on the previous year.
To put that into perspective China's coal output during the last four years is greater than the UK's during the last hundred.
And to put THAT into perspective would you like to give us the figures again, per capita? Because raw they are just meaningless, unless outnumbering upstanding true born Brits is a crime in itself.
Does the environment care how many people are in a country? or does it just care how much carbon in the atmosphere there is?
I still can't believe we've made ourselves almost 100% dependent on gas as a nation during the transition from all types of fossil to renewables. We should have kept our fossil options open whilst building renewables more quickly. Ultimately the climate emissions from that approach would probably have been a wash long term with the current
Approach Fossil -> Gas -> Renewables Approach to value resiliency Fossil -> Fossil & Gas & Nuclear & More renewables -> Renewables & Nuclear.
Greenpeace has a lot to answer for on Nuclear.
Still flabbergasting that we didn't break ground on anything nuclear between 1988 and 2018.
Nuclear is catastrophic is it goes wrong (there have been more than a handful of real life examples of course) - On the other hand why in god name was fracking stopped ?
Every generation source has its risks and issues. On balance nuclear is a clean, middling price fairly reliable generation source though
Middling price?
Citation required. No nuclear power plant has been built anywhere on the planet without massive state subsidy.
The Overton Window on what is expensive in energy terms has shifted substantially over the last year. Current gas prices make nuclear prices look a lot more reasonable.
And what has that shift done to the relevant merits of tidal? Do tell...
I note you still ignore the point nuclear requires massive public subsidy.
I'm a big fan of tidal, but it's undeniable that the current high gas prices make all other energy sources look better by comparison, and that will include nuclear as well as tidal and others.
FFS - yesterday was as a result of the heavy storms causing overflows, as has happened for a very long time. It doesn't help make arguments to be so disingenuous.
Why allow facts to get in the way of a good rant though?
Not only heavy storms but heavy storms landing on bone dry and rock hard surfaces with very rapid run off as a result. Totally unsurprising and, as usual, Brexit is completely and utterly irrelevant to what happened.
You don't understand.
Brexit is to blame for current weather conditions, Covid, and the war in Ukraine.
You don't understand.
The EU was blamed for everything sub optimal and now the wheel has turned. It's your tiger, ride it.
I was mildly harangued by a Remoaner friend over wine at the Edinburgh Castle in Camden yesterday. “Well, what about Brexit? It’s terrible isn’t it??”
I told him I voted because sovereignty and democracy. And he sat there fuming because: there isn’t any comeback to that. If you voted for those reasons - which I did - then you’re happy with Brexit - which I am (and increasingly so)
So it’s really not hard to defend, indeed I find it a pleasure to do this with Remainers. They simmer with frustrated anger. Twats
I advise you to use this technique if Scotland ever goes Indy in your lifetime and you need to defend the horrendous economic damage
A lot of talk on here on whether the Standards Committee will force Boris out of Parliament, or whether they'll get Trump on tax charges. Problem is, getting rid of either/both isn't going to suddenly make the other side's ideas attractive.
Biden won power by focussing on the myriad shortfalls in Trump's personality, and the Sunak wing of the Tories managed to oust Johnson by doing the same to his many shortfalls. Starmer hopes to gain power by focussing on the personality and morals of the Tories - and he may well do so. However, in all these cases there's a complete absence of new ideas, a complete refusal to admit that Brexit and Trump might have happened because too many of the political ideals of the previous 20 years have been showed to be less than ideal.
Going after the people who have the temerity to win against the status quo cannot work in perpetuity. Thanks to Trump and Johnson, it's worked a couple of times, but not every leader will make it so easy. Call it what you want, but the Blairite/Cameronite/Neoliberal/Neoconservative/Sunakite/Starmerite political ideas remain unpopular, and judging by the Biden administration in the USA, increasingly ineffective. Sooner or later, somebody is going to need to come up with some new ideas.
I see little in Truss to suggest she will be a success, but at least compared to Sunak she seems to get this to a very small degree, which is, I would suggest, why she is likely to become the next PM.
FFS - yesterday was as a result of the heavy storms causing overflows, as has happened for a very long time. It doesn't help make arguments to be so disingenuous.
Why allow facts to get in the way of a good rant though?
Not only heavy storms but heavy storms landing on bone dry and rock hard surfaces with very rapid run off as a result. Totally unsurprising and, as usual, Brexit is completely and utterly irrelevant to what happened.
You don't understand.
Brexit is to blame for current weather conditions, Covid, and the war in Ukraine.
The War In Ukraine...well it's in Europe and Putin's disruption bots were heavily involved in the Brexit misinformation campaign....
I think there is a strong argument to suggest that Brexit emboldened Putin.....
Brexit though is fucking horrendous from whichever angle you view it...Project Fear didn't come close to depicting the full shitshow...
The idea that Putin can swing elections in the UK is Russian propaganda and does far more to undermine our democracy than any bots.
But I keep hearing how Truss has 'shone' and 'grown in stature' throughout the proceedings? After all this shining and growing in stature can she really do no better than match the hapless Sunak against the discredited criminal Boris?
Jizzy Lizzy is going to do an any% speedrun of Johnson's premiership getting to apocalyptic unpopularity within months.
Not just Zoe Williams in the Guardian today - I am too!
The big pic of the climate activists protest at Lords has me rather prominent. There I am quite close to the banner, looking not too shabby at all, all things considered.
Prize for anybody who can spot me.
This one?
Well, certainly prominent, but you're younger and blacker and more female than I thought you were. Just goes to show you can't pigeonhole a PB poster.
Utter clowns.
We need new oil and gas for the foreseeable future whatever these idiots say.
The same applies domestically here, and the Estonian politicians seen as "compromised" are increasingly facing public opprobrium. The former Centre Party PM, Juri Ratas, who attempted to distabilise the coalition a couple of months ago is now facing problems of his own, and far-right figures are getting challenged on their own links to Moscow. Would that certain UK politicians were challenged in the same way. Perhaps some of them will be, after the Conservative leadership election is out of the way.
These digs against the UK are pretty silly.
Estonia has a substantial Russian minority. It's a category error to compare their political 'links to Moscow' with conspiracy theories about figures in Britain.
I would just note that Dominic Cummings lived in Russia, that Aaron Banks had significant connections with Russia, and that quite a few other politicians have had significant business interests in Russia. I think it is either complacent or sinister that you dismiss these undeniable facts as some kind of "conspiracy".
Incidentally most of the Russian speaking minority in Estonia came in the 1960s and 70s to replace the third of the Estonian population that was either killed or fled during or just after the Second World War, or sent to the Russian GULAG after the war, the Russian population before 1940 was less than 3%.
Following the University Challenge announcement the comments on the Daily Telegraph story are openly explicitly racist. Extraordinary
Oo I missed that announcement. I hadn't thought of him during the discussions on here the other day but now he is mentioned I think he is a good choice. It needs someone a bit assertive (although Paxman was at times a bit OTT and sneary) and I think Rajan has the right persona for it. Clive Myrie has vastly improved Mastermind and although I don't think UC needs improving hopefully Rajan will have the necessary gravitas.
Fuck the Telegraph readers.
Someone did mention him in the discussion on here, I think. I agree. He comes across well when I've heard him, good choice.
Amol is a decent choice. He wrote an interesting book about spinners and probably showed his own biases towards sub-continental player there, but that's no bad thing. You are damned whatever you do now. Pick an older white male and its an issue for some. Pick a minority candidate and its a problem for some. Why not see how they do the job?
I think he's a very good choice, as he has the requisite speed of thought, sense of humour and verbal dexterity.
I think he's smart but facile. The stushie over his 'special' on Powell's Rivers of Blood speech was telling, not so much because Rajan had done it but his apparently genuine incomprehension of why some people might have a problem with the way it was presented.
I'm quite fond of UC, but in general I think there's far too much picking over these things as if they're massive foundations stones of our culture rather than at most fairly minor ones. The BBC is particularly bad for this, specially when examining its own entrails.
'Peggy Woolley to leave Ambridge, a nation holds its breath!!!'
I thought the attraction of UC was that it's always been a bit naff. Not so much a foundation as a very long lived encrustation.
FFS - yesterday was as a result of the heavy storms causing overflows, as has happened for a very long time. It doesn't help make arguments to be so disingenuous.
Why allow facts to get in the way of a good rant though?
Not only heavy storms but heavy storms landing on bone dry and rock hard surfaces with very rapid run off as a result. Totally unsurprising and, as usual, Brexit is completely and utterly irrelevant to what happened.
You don't understand.
Brexit is to blame for current weather conditions, Covid, and the war in Ukraine.
The War In Ukraine...well it's in Europe and Putin's disruption bots were heavily involved in the Brexit misinformation campaign....
I think there is a strong argument to suggest that Brexit emboldened Putin.....
Brexit though is fucking horrendous from whichever angle you view it...Project Fear didn't come close to depicting the full shitshow...
I hate the "Brexit emboldened Putin" argument. It's insulting to democratic values as it implies that choices shouldn't be allowed to be made by the public in case a despot has an interest in the decision.
No matter what you think of the decision, you shouldn't be arguing against the democratic right of a country to choose which organisations it is or is not a part of. That applies to the UK, and of course Ukraine which should have the right to apply to join the EU and NATO if it so desires.
Indeed.
Brexit was the UK voters telling our elected leaders they were unhappy with the direction being taken, rejected the arguments made by the Government of the day (and it's predecessors of all major parties) and demanding a change of action freely at the ballot box.
Whether you agree with Brexit or not, that we can peacefully do that is a course for celebration not regret or mourning and is the antithesis of Putinism.
In Putin's Russia the equivalent of Brexiteers demanding a change in the countries direction would be dead or imprisoned. That is what emboldens Putin, not democratic choices freely made.
A lot of talk on here on whether the Standards Committee will force Boris out of Parliament, or whether they'll get Trump on tax charges. Problem is, getting rid of either/both isn't going to suddenly make the other side's ideas attractive.
I don't think there's any talk about Trump being done on tax charges by the Standards Committee. Funny though that would be, it would also be a bit of a stretch in jurisdiction!
Not just Zoe Williams in the Guardian today - I am too!
The big pic of the climate activists protest at Lords has me rather prominent. There I am quite close to the banner, looking not too shabby at all, all things considered.
Prize for anybody who can spot me.
And while you were having fun China dug another 10m tonnes of coal:
China's coal output increased 7.2 percent year-on-year to an all-time high of 384.67 million tonnes in December 2021. For the full year of 2021, output touched 4.07 billion tonnes, up 4.7 percent on the previous year.
To put that into perspective China's coal output during the last four years is greater than the UK's during the last hundred.
Well I wasn't actually part of the demo. But what's your point with this? I know China is producing more pollution than the UK. China produces more of most things than the UK - whopping big nation of over 1b people trying to catch up with western living standards that it is.
The point is that the UK is an irrelevance when it comes to climate change.
The decisive factor has been and will continue to be what China does.
So any climate activists should be protesting outside the Chinese embassy not at a cricket ground.
"AGW is a load of hysterical nonsense. We don't need to do anything. These activists should desist and refrain."
"AGW is down to China not us. We're doing our bit. These activists should protest outside the Chinese Embassy".
Thus does the "thinking" of the climate "skeptics" evolve.
AGW being due to China and us doing our bit isn't scepticism, it's science.
As much as Flagellants want to take us back to the pre enlightenment pre IR era.
I'm not a Flagellant I can assure you. In fact I'm poor on this issue. It's only quite recently that I've truly appreciated the extent of the problem.
I've always grasped the extent of the problem and have been in favour of clean technologies for decades.
Part of the problem is people who are not in favour of clean technologies and want to trash 'capitalism' or other things under the name of climate change. They discredit the entire climate issue which is a shame as its a very serious issue - but one that the UK is a genuine world leader in taking seriously. Hence why we're at 0.03 tonnes of coal per capita while China is at 3 tonnes of coal per capita.
Ok very good. But be wary of a "markets will fix it" absolutist mentality. You are prone to this on occasion if we're being totally honest (as we should try to be).
Markets will fix it given the right incentive.
Hence why I have always been OK with carbon taxes. It is acceptable in my eyes to tax externalities and if we are going to have taxes better on externalities we wish to discourage than positives like working that we should want to encourage.
The mistake that has been made too long is taxing domestic emissions only which just sends a signal to export our emissions which makes the global problem worse not better since we import from countries using dirtier technologies.
Hence my advocation for carbon tariffs that match the carbon inspired taxes we have domestically. As it stands our tax system incentives importing from nations using dirty carbon emitting fuels over domestic production. That is the market operating with the wrong incentives, thanks to politics, and the market will and has responded accordingly which isn't ideal in these circumstances!
I agree 100% in principle - in practise, adding to the cost of anything at the moment is a very tough sell. The same thing is true of British farmers competing against imported foods with lower welfare standards.
My object to Amol Rajan taking over UC is his diction; he speaks with a lazy slur, which I was told on this board some time ago is fashionable. I also find him rather smug but so was Paxo.
Not just Zoe Williams in the Guardian today - I am too!
The big pic of the climate activists protest at Lords has me rather prominent. There I am quite close to the banner, looking not too shabby at all, all things considered.
Prize for anybody who can spot me.
And while you were having fun China dug another 10m tonnes of coal:
China's coal output increased 7.2 percent year-on-year to an all-time high of 384.67 million tonnes in December 2021. For the full year of 2021, output touched 4.07 billion tonnes, up 4.7 percent on the previous year.
To put that into perspective China's coal output during the last four years is greater than the UK's during the last hundred.
Well I wasn't actually part of the demo. But what's your point with this? I know China is producing more pollution than the UK. China produces more of most things than the UK - whopping big nation of over 1b people trying to catch up with western living standards that it is.
The point is that the UK is an irrelevance when it comes to climate change.
The decisive factor has been and will continue to be what China does.
So any climate activists should be protesting outside the Chinese embassy not at a cricket ground.
"AGW is a load of hysterical nonsense. We don't need to do anything. These activists should desist and refrain."
"AGW is down to China not us. We're doing our bit. These activists should protest outside the Chinese Embassy".
Thus does the "thinking" of the climate "skeptics" evolve.
Probably unfair. There is a plausible view that AGW may well but may not be fully established, but the precautionary principle applies and that this being the case the UK is doing reasonably well compared with China and the USA.
I don't know anyone who says that we should do nothing but China should do lots because different rules apply.
But yet John Kerry thinks its OK to fly over here and tell us not to open a new coal mine.
Another perfectly plausible view is to be neutral on the matter (while exercising the precautionary principle) until the elites who have the access to the best possible sources of information live lives and implement policies which show that they really and truly from the heart believe their own rhetoric.
Why? The rhetoric is that this is an existential matter for the planet. The well informed elites have families, children and grand children like the rest of us. This is as true of the Chinese, USA and Indian elites as any other.
An ad hominem argument dressed up as epistemological, given the relative democratisation of the information available. Anyway, popping in to the Learjet is equally consistent with believing 1. that it's all a big hoax and teperatures will stabilise at +1.5 no matter what, 2. things are so bad the world will catch fire by 2050 no matter what we do, or 3. (the reality) things need to be done and might make a real difference, but the optimum for me and my family is foor the rules to apply generally but not to me personally.
The same applies domestically here, and the Estonian politicians seen as "compromised" are increasingly facing public opprobrium. The former Centre Party PM, Juri Ratas, who attempted to distabilise the coalition a couple of months ago is now facing problems of his own, and far-right figures are getting challenged on their own links to Moscow. Would that certain UK politicians were challenged in the same way. Perhaps some of them will be, after the Conservative leadership election is out of the way.
These digs against the UK are pretty silly.
Estonia has a substantial Russian minority. It's a category error to compare their political 'links to Moscow' with conspiracy theories about figures in Britain.
I would just note that Dominic Cummings lived in Russia, that Aaron Banks had significant connections with Russia, and that quite a few other politicians have had significant business interests in Russia. I think it is either complacent or sinister that you dismiss these undeniable facts as some kind of "conspiracy".
Incidentally most of the Russian speaking minority in Estonia came in the 1960s and 70s to replace the third of the Estonian population that was either killed or fled during or just after the Second World War, or sent to the Russian GULAG after the war, the Russian population before 1940 was less than 3%.
How To Destroy Your PB Reputation In One Comment
“I would just note that Dominic Cummings lived in Russia”
Omfg. I actually flew over Russia once. Maybe they recruited me as well
My object to Amol Rajan taking over UC is his diction; he speaks with a lazy slur, which I was told on this board some time ago is fashionable. I also find him rather smug but so was Paxo.
Oxford Colleges need to be worried - he's a Cambridge man!
The same applies domestically here, and the Estonian politicians seen as "compromised" are increasingly facing public opprobrium. The former Centre Party PM, Juri Ratas, who attempted to distabilise the coalition a couple of months ago is now facing problems of his own, and far-right figures are getting challenged on their own links to Moscow. Would that certain UK politicians were challenged in the same way. Perhaps some of them will be, after the Conservative leadership election is out of the way.
These digs against the UK are pretty silly.
Estonia has a substantial Russian minority. It's a category error to compare their political 'links to Moscow' with conspiracy theories about figures in Britain.
I would just note that Dominic Cummings lived in Russia, that Aaron Banks had significant connections with Russia, and that quite a few other politicians have had significant business interests in Russia. I think it is either complacent or sinister that you dismiss these undeniable facts as some kind of "conspiracy".
Incidentally most of the Russian speaking minority in Estonia came in the 1960s and 70s to replace the third of the Estonian population that was either killed or fled during or just after the Second World War, or sent to the Russian GULAG after the war, the Russian population before 1940 was less than 3%.
How To Destroy Your PB Reputation In One Comment
“I would just note that Dominic Cummings lived in Russia”
Omfg. I actually flew over Russia once. Maybe they recruited me as well
You utter utter twat
Didn't Cummings try to run an airline in Russia?
As I recall he did his usual thing - winged it without knowing what he was doing so it all crashed.
My object to Amol Rajan taking over UC is his diction; he speaks with a lazy slur, which I was told on this board some time ago is fashionable. I also find him rather smug but so was Paxo.
Oxford Colleges need to be worried - he's a Cambridge man!
Not just Zoe Williams in the Guardian today - I am too!
The big pic of the climate activists protest at Lords has me rather prominent. There I am quite close to the banner, looking not too shabby at all, all things considered.
Prize for anybody who can spot me.
And while you were having fun China dug another 10m tonnes of coal:
China's coal output increased 7.2 percent year-on-year to an all-time high of 384.67 million tonnes in December 2021. For the full year of 2021, output touched 4.07 billion tonnes, up 4.7 percent on the previous year.
To put that into perspective China's coal output during the last four years is greater than the UK's during the last hundred.
Well I wasn't actually part of the demo. But what's your point with this? I know China is producing more pollution than the UK. China produces more of most things than the UK - whopping big nation of over 1b people trying to catch up with western living standards that it is.
The point is that the UK is an irrelevance when it comes to climate change.
The decisive factor has been and will continue to be what China does.
So any climate activists should be protesting outside the Chinese embassy not at a cricket ground.
"AGW is a load of hysterical nonsense. We don't need to do anything. These activists should desist and refrain."
"AGW is down to China not us. We're doing our bit. These activists should protest outside the Chinese Embassy".
Thus does the "thinking" of the climate "skeptics" evolve.
Probably unfair. There is a plausible view that AGW may well but may not be fully established, but the precautionary principle applies and that this being the case the UK is doing reasonably well compared with China and the USA.
I don't know anyone who says that we should do nothing but China should do lots because different rules apply.
But yet John Kerry thinks its OK to fly over here and tell us not to open a new coal mine.
Another perfectly plausible view is to be neutral on the matter (while exercising the precautionary principle) until the elites who have the access to the best possible sources of information live lives and implement policies which show that they really and truly from the heart believe their own rhetoric.
Why? The rhetoric is that this is an existential matter for the planet. The well informed elites have families, children and grand children like the rest of us. This is as true of the Chinese, USA and Indian elites as any other.
Of course what will happen is that we will be expected to eat ze bugs, not fly etc. Meat, flights, etc etc will just be taxed to the level that puts them firmly in the 'luxury' bracket so arseholes like Gates and co can continue to enjoy them whilst the general population scarfs down bug burgers and heavily processed 'plant based' muck and holidays once a decade. Yay for the elites!
But I keep hearing how Truss has 'shone' and 'grown in stature' throughout the proceedings? After all this shining and growing in stature can she really do no better than match the hapless Sunak against the discredited criminal Boris?
Jizzy Lizzy is going to do an any% speedrun of Johnson's premiership getting to apocalyptic unpopularity within months.
Doubt it. She'll certainly have the odd embarrassing moment, but she'll put in a solid, workmanlike performance. People don't change, and there's no reason to suppose her Prime Ministerial career will be any different to her Ministerial one.
My object to Amol Rajan taking over UC is his diction; he speaks with a lazy slur, which I was told on this board some time ago is fashionable. I also find him rather smug but so was Paxo.
FFS - yesterday was as a result of the heavy storms causing overflows, as has happened for a very long time. It doesn't help make arguments to be so disingenuous.
Why allow facts to get in the way of a good rant though?
Not only heavy storms but heavy storms landing on bone dry and rock hard surfaces with very rapid run off as a result. Totally unsurprising and, as usual, Brexit is completely and utterly irrelevant to what happened.
You don't understand.
Brexit is to blame for current weather conditions, Covid, and the war in Ukraine.
You don't understand.
The EU was blamed for everything sub optimal and now the wheel has turned. It's your tiger, ride it.
I was mildly harangued by a Remoaner friend over wine at the Edinburgh Castle in Camden yesterday. “Well, what about Brexit? It’s terrible isn’t it??”
I told him I voted because sovereignty and democracy. And he sat there fuming because: there isn’t any comeback to that. If you voted for those reasons - which I did - then you’re happy with Brexit - which I am (and increasingly so)
So it’s really not hard to defend, indeed I find it a pleasure to do this with Remainers. They simmer with frustrated anger. Twats
I advise you to use this technique if Scotland ever goes Indy in your lifetime and you need to defend the horrendous economic damage
The thing about Brexit is it means no hiding place.
Our Parliament is sovereign and our politicians are accountable. IF we're bankrupt that's your fault. If the boats are still coming that's your fault. If there's a giant f8ck up....ditto. If crime soars.....you get the idea.
You can see that this accountability is a massive shock to many MPs, whichever side of the divide you are on politically. Confronted with their own horrendous mistakes in interviews they are often reduced to gabbling, spluttering nonsense or silence. Whatever they came into politics for, it clearly wasn't this.
FFS - yesterday was as a result of the heavy storms causing overflows, as has happened for a very long time. It doesn't help make arguments to be so disingenuous.
Why allow facts to get in the way of a good rant though?
Not only heavy storms but heavy storms landing on bone dry and rock hard surfaces with very rapid run off as a result. Totally unsurprising and, as usual, Brexit is completely and utterly irrelevant to what happened.
Not sure. Wasn't Brexit supposed to lead to sunny uplands? With all that sun drying things out, when the occasional storm comes it runs right off the uplands into the sewers...
And the other side said that Brexit would lead to a release of all kinds of shit. So a rare occasion where both leavers and remainers effectively predicted this.
You saying we haven't had sunny uplands? Blimey, how much of this sun stuff do you want?
We've had the sun, for sure. But unfortunately my bit of Yorkshire is as flat a lowland as ever #brexitbetrayal
FFS - yesterday was as a result of the heavy storms causing overflows, as has happened for a very long time. It doesn't help make arguments to be so disingenuous.
Why allow facts to get in the way of a good rant though?
Not only heavy storms but heavy storms landing on bone dry and rock hard surfaces with very rapid run off as a result. Totally unsurprising and, as usual, Brexit is completely and utterly irrelevant to what happened.
You don't understand.
Brexit is to blame for current weather conditions, Covid, and the war in Ukraine.
You don't understand.
The EU was blamed for everything sub optimal and now the wheel has turned. It's your tiger, ride it.
I was mildly harangued by a Remoaner friend over wine at the Edinburgh Castle in Camden yesterday. “Well, what about Brexit? It’s terrible isn’t it??”
I told him I voted because sovereignty and democracy. And he sat there fuming because: there isn’t any comeback to that. If you voted for those reasons - which I did - then you’re happy with Brexit - which I am (and increasingly so)
So it’s really not hard to defend, indeed I find it a pleasure to do this with Remainers. They simmer with frustrated anger. Twats
I advise you to use this technique if Scotland ever goes Indy in your lifetime and you need to defend the horrendous economic damage
The thing about Brexit is it means no hiding place.
Our Parliament is sovereign and our politicians are accountable. IF we're bankrupt that's your fault. If the boats are still coming that's your fault. If there's a giant f8ck up....ditto. If crime soars.....you get the idea.
You can see that this accountability is a massive shock to many MPs, whichever side of the divide you are on politically. Confronted with their own horrendous mistakes in interviews they are often reduced to gabbling, spluttering nonsense or silence. Whatever they came into politics for, it clearly wasn't this.
Good.
Yes. We farmed out so much of our governance to the EU we forgot how to do it
Now we are learning again. It is all up to us. This is painful but in the long run it is seriously good
The same applies domestically here, and the Estonian politicians seen as "compromised" are increasingly facing public opprobrium. The former Centre Party PM, Juri Ratas, who attempted to distabilise the coalition a couple of months ago is now facing problems of his own, and far-right figures are getting challenged on their own links to Moscow. Would that certain UK politicians were challenged in the same way. Perhaps some of them will be, after the Conservative leadership election is out of the way.
These digs against the UK are pretty silly.
Estonia has a substantial Russian minority. It's a category error to compare their political 'links to Moscow' with conspiracy theories about figures in Britain.
I would just note that Dominic Cummings lived in Russia, that Aaron Banks had significant connections with Russia, and that quite a few other politicians have had significant business interests in Russia. I think it is either complacent or sinister that you dismiss these undeniable facts as some kind of "conspiracy".
Incidentally most of the Russian speaking minority in Estonia came in the 1960s and 70s to replace the third of the Estonian population that was either killed or fled during or just after the Second World War, or sent to the Russian GULAG after the war, the Russian population before 1940 was less than 3%.
Thank you for again highlighting how silly it is to compare political links in a country that was occupied for 50 years with one where one of your political opponents once happened to live in Russia!
What on earth is the conspiracy supposed to be about Cummings? Whether you agree with him or not, he has a perfectly legible set of political opinions and it's very obvious why he thought Britain would be better off without the EU institutions. Are we supposed to imagine that if he hadn't once breathed the air in Russia, Brexit wouldn't have happened and we'd all have lived happily ever after under the benevolent rule of Brussels?
FFS - yesterday was as a result of the heavy storms causing overflows, as has happened for a very long time. It doesn't help make arguments to be so disingenuous.
Why allow facts to get in the way of a good rant though?
Not only heavy storms but heavy storms landing on bone dry and rock hard surfaces with very rapid run off as a result. Totally unsurprising and, as usual, Brexit is completely and utterly irrelevant to what happened.
You don't understand.
Brexit is to blame for current weather conditions, Covid, and the war in Ukraine.
You don't understand.
The EU was blamed for everything sub optimal and now the wheel has turned. It's your tiger, ride it.
Just as the EU was used as an excuse to avoid sorting out our own problems, so will Brexit be used similarly.
That suggests a national characteistic rather than one belonging to one or other political side.
The British (or perhaps English) pathology is to insist everything is “world-leading” while simultaneously regretting that things aren’t as good as they were in 1950 (or 1850) and that (x) is to blame.
X is usually some variation of foreigners and the idle working class.
A good one this morning being our world leading renewables industry which consists of buying large quantities of Chinese invented and designed and manufactured kit from China, which makes China the bad guys in all this.
A lot of talk on here on whether the Standards Committee will force Boris out of Parliament, or whether they'll get Trump on tax charges. Problem is, getting rid of either/both isn't going to suddenly make the other side's ideas attractive.
Biden won power by focussing on the myriad shortfalls in Trump's personality, and the Sunak wing of the Tories managed to oust Johnson by doing the same to his many shortfalls. Starmer hopes to gain power by focussing on the personality and morals of the Tories - and he may well do so. However, in all these cases there's a complete absence of new ideas, a complete refusal to admit that Brexit and Trump might have happened because too many of the political ideals of the previous 20 years have been showed to be less than ideal.
Going after the people who have the temerity to win against the status quo cannot work in perpetuity. Thanks to Trump and Johnson, it's worked a couple of times, but not every leader will make it so easy. Call it what you want, but the Blairite/Cameronite/Neoliberal/Neoconservative/Sunakite/Starmerite political ideas remain unpopular, and judging by the Biden administration in the USA, increasingly ineffective. Sooner or later, somebody is going to need to come up with some new ideas.
I see little in Truss to suggest she will be a success, but at least compared to Sunak she seems to get this to a very small degree, which is, I would suggest, why she is likely to become the next PM.
The old mainstream ideas are basically unpopular because demographics mean things are not going to go as well for the next generations regardless of policy choices and much of the public have been sold on ideas that are founded on lies and cannot deliver, even if the prophets of those lies like Trump and Johnson had any interest in doing so, which they don't, they are just in it for personal status and power.
FFS - yesterday was as a result of the heavy storms causing overflows, as has happened for a very long time. It doesn't help make arguments to be so disingenuous.
Why allow facts to get in the way of a good rant though?
Not only heavy storms but heavy storms landing on bone dry and rock hard surfaces with very rapid run off as a result. Totally unsurprising and, as usual, Brexit is completely and utterly irrelevant to what happened.
You don't understand.
Brexit is to blame for current weather conditions, Covid, and the war in Ukraine.
You don't understand.
The EU was blamed for everything sub optimal and now the wheel has turned. It's your tiger, ride it.
I was mildly harangued by a Remoaner friend over wine at the Edinburgh Castle in Camden yesterday. “Well, what about Brexit? It’s terrible isn’t it??”
I told him I voted because sovereignty and democracy. And he sat there fuming because: there isn’t any comeback to that. If you voted for those reasons - which I did - then you’re happy with Brexit - which I am (and increasingly so)
So it’s really not hard to defend, indeed I find it a pleasure to do this with Remainers. They simmer with frustrated anger. Twats
I advise you to use this technique if Scotland ever goes Indy in your lifetime and you need to defend the horrendous economic damage
The thing about Brexit is it means no hiding place.
Our Parliament is sovereign and our politicians are accountable. IF we're bankrupt that's your fault. If the boats are still coming that's your fault. If there's a giant f8ck up....ditto. If crime soars.....you get the idea.
You can see that this accountability is a massive shock to many MPs, whichever side of the divide you are on politically. Confronted with their own horrendous mistakes in interviews they are often reduced to gabbling, spluttering nonsense or silence. Whatever they came into politics for, it clearly wasn't this.
Good.
And yet, governments so far have sought to reduce accountability to Parliament.
Cummings was very young when he went to Russia to help run an airline.
It’s not obvious how he got this opportunity. I don’t remember anyone approaching me to run an airline when I left university.
I don’t think there’s a conspiracy here, just another underqualified member of the elite getting opportunities that others don’t.
I have left wing Remainery friends who went to Russia after the fall of communism for the same reason Cummings did. It was a wild place, almost lawless, with money to be made (and then some). The sort of place where - with a bit of audacity and acumen - you could end up running an airline age 24
Weirdly the Russians ignored these Remainers and only recruited the brexiteers even tho this was all 30 years before Brexit?
@cicero is a ludicrous Remainer twit who is indulging himself in tragic conspiratorial bollocks
Following the University Challenge announcement the comments on the Daily Telegraph story are openly explicitly racist. Extraordinary
Oo I missed that announcement. I hadn't thought of him during the discussions on here the other day but now he is mentioned I think he is a good choice. It needs someone a bit assertive (although Paxman was at times a bit OTT and sneary) and I think Rajan has the right persona for it. Clive Myrie has vastly improved Mastermind and although I don't think UC needs improving hopefully Rajan will have the necessary gravitas.
Fuck the Telegraph readers.
Someone did mention him in the discussion on here, I think. I agree. He comes across well when I've heard him, good choice.
Amol is a decent choice. He wrote an interesting book about spinners and probably showed his own biases towards sub-continental player there, but that's no bad thing. You are damned whatever you do now. Pick an older white male and its an issue for some. Pick a minority candidate and its a problem for some. Why not see how they do the job?
I think he's a very good choice, as he has the requisite speed of thought, sense of humour and verbal dexterity.
I think he's smart but facile. The stushie over his 'special' on Powell's Rivers of Blood speech was telling, not so much because Rajan had done it but his apparently genuine incomprehension of why some people might have a problem with the way it was presented.
I'm quite fond of UC, but in general I think there's far too much picking over these things as if they're massive foundations stones of our culture rather than at most fairly minor ones. The BBC is particularly bad for this, specially when examining its own entrails.
'Peggy Woolley to leave Ambridge, a nation holds its breath!!!'
I thought the attraction of UC was that it's always been a bit naff. Not so much a foundation as a very long lived encrustation.
And don't be mean to June Spencer. 😊
Of course June Spencer is a game old bird, and I'm also fond of The Archers in a reflexive lifelong habit sort of way. I particularly enjoy spotting their attempts to have all 4 nations represented, sometimes with the subtlety of a flying cowpat, eg Glaswegian Jazzer who istr plays the bagpipes and let off the first scripted fart on R4. SeanT of course doesn't construct Scottish personae, but if he did..
FFS - yesterday was as a result of the heavy storms causing overflows, as has happened for a very long time. It doesn't help make arguments to be so disingenuous.
Why allow facts to get in the way of a good rant though?
Not only heavy storms but heavy storms landing on bone dry and rock hard surfaces with very rapid run off as a result. Totally unsurprising and, as usual, Brexit is completely and utterly irrelevant to what happened.
You don't understand.
Brexit is to blame for current weather conditions, Covid, and the war in Ukraine.
You don't understand.
The EU was blamed for everything sub optimal and now the wheel has turned. It's your tiger, ride it.
I was mildly harangued by a Remoaner friend over wine at the Edinburgh Castle in Camden yesterday. “Well, what about Brexit? It’s terrible isn’t it??”
I told him I voted because sovereignty and democracy. And he sat there fuming because: there isn’t any comeback to that. If you voted for those reasons - which I did - then you’re happy with Brexit - which I am (and increasingly so)
So it’s really not hard to defend, indeed I find it a pleasure to do this with Remainers. They simmer with frustrated anger. Twats
I advise you to use this technique if Scotland ever goes Indy in your lifetime and you need to defend the horrendous economic damage
The thing about Brexit is it means no hiding place...
Good.
On the contrary, it has allowed our politicians to postpone any decisions of actual importance for the best part of a decade.
FFS - yesterday was as a result of the heavy storms causing overflows, as has happened for a very long time. It doesn't help make arguments to be so disingenuous.
Why allow facts to get in the way of a good rant though?
Not only heavy storms but heavy storms landing on bone dry and rock hard surfaces with very rapid run off as a result. Totally unsurprising and, as usual, Brexit is completely and utterly irrelevant to what happened.
You don't understand.
Brexit is to blame for current weather conditions, Covid, and the war in Ukraine.
You don't understand.
The EU was blamed for everything sub optimal and now the wheel has turned. It's your tiger, ride it.
I was mildly harangued by a Remoaner friend over wine at the Edinburgh Castle in Camden yesterday. “Well, what about Brexit? It’s terrible isn’t it??”
I told him I voted because sovereignty and democracy. And he sat there fuming because: there isn’t any comeback to that. If you voted for those reasons - which I did - then you’re happy with Brexit - which I am (and increasingly so)
So it’s really not hard to defend, indeed I find it a pleasure to do this with Remainers. They simmer with frustrated anger. Twats
I advise you to use this technique if Scotland ever goes Indy in your lifetime and you need to defend the horrendous economic damage
The thing about Brexit is it means no hiding place.
Our Parliament is sovereign and our politicians are accountable. IF we're bankrupt that's your fault. If the boats are still coming that's your fault. If there's a giant f8ck up....ditto. If crime soars.....you get the idea.
You can see that this accountability is a massive shock to many MPs, whichever side of the divide you are on politically. Confronted with their own horrendous mistakes in interviews they are often reduced to gabbling, spluttering nonsense or silence. Whatever they came into politics for, it clearly wasn't this.
Good.
Yes. We farmed out so much of our governance to the EU we forgot how to do it
Now we are learning again. It is all up to us. This is painful but in the long run it is seriously good
Liz had better do a bloody good job. She'll be the first truly post-Brexit British prime minister. Right-wing libertarian ideology lives or dies with her.
Anyway there is an opening to be a member of the Committee on Standards in Public Life.
(I know, I know: what standards? I hear you cry.)
The deadline was 3 August but has now been extended to the end of the month, presumably because no-one worthwhile applied on the grounds of "What's the point of this committee?".
FFS - yesterday was as a result of the heavy storms causing overflows, as has happened for a very long time. It doesn't help make arguments to be so disingenuous.
Why allow facts to get in the way of a good rant though?
Not only heavy storms but heavy storms landing on bone dry and rock hard surfaces with very rapid run off as a result. Totally unsurprising and, as usual, Brexit is completely and utterly irrelevant to what happened.
You don't understand.
Brexit is to blame for current weather conditions, Covid, and the war in Ukraine.
You don't understand.
The EU was blamed for everything sub optimal and now the wheel has turned. It's your tiger, ride it.
I was mildly harangued by a Remoaner friend over wine at the Edinburgh Castle in Camden yesterday. “Well, what about Brexit? It’s terrible isn’t it??”
I told him I voted because sovereignty and democracy. And he sat there fuming because: there isn’t any comeback to that. If you voted for those reasons - which I did - then you’re happy with Brexit - which I am (and increasingly so)
So it’s really not hard to defend, indeed I find it a pleasure to do this with Remainers. They simmer with frustrated anger. Twats
I advise you to use this technique if Scotland ever goes Indy in your lifetime and you need to defend the horrendous economic damage
The thing about Brexit is it means no hiding place.
Our Parliament is sovereign and our politicians are accountable. IF we're bankrupt that's your fault. If the boats are still coming that's your fault. If there's a giant f8ck up....ditto. If crime soars.....you get the idea.
You can see that this accountability is a massive shock to many MPs, whichever side of the divide you are on politically. Confronted with their own horrendous mistakes in interviews they are often reduced to gabbling, spluttering nonsense or silence. Whatever they came into politics for, it clearly wasn't this.
Good.
And yet, governments so far have sought to reduce accountability to Parliament.
Boris didn’t see Brexit as a democratic project.
Parliament is sovereign again over the rules it's sovereignty had been put into abeyance over in the past.
And what Boris did or didn't see is neither here nor there. Parliament has ousted Boris, not the other way around.
Britain's Parliament, sovereignty and self rule is bigger than any politician including Boris.
FFS - yesterday was as a result of the heavy storms causing overflows, as has happened for a very long time. It doesn't help make arguments to be so disingenuous.
Why allow facts to get in the way of a good rant though?
Not only heavy storms but heavy storms landing on bone dry and rock hard surfaces with very rapid run off as a result. Totally unsurprising and, as usual, Brexit is completely and utterly irrelevant to what happened.
You don't understand.
Brexit is to blame for current weather conditions, Covid, and the war in Ukraine.
You don't understand.
The EU was blamed for everything sub optimal and now the wheel has turned. It's your tiger, ride it.
I was mildly harangued by a Remoaner friend over wine at the Edinburgh Castle in Camden yesterday. “Well, what about Brexit? It’s terrible isn’t it??”
I told him I voted because sovereignty and democracy. And he sat there fuming because: there isn’t any comeback to that. If you voted for those reasons - which I did - then you’re happy with Brexit - which I am (and increasingly so)
So it’s really not hard to defend, indeed I find it a pleasure to do this with Remainers. They simmer with frustrated anger. Twats
I advise you to use this technique if Scotland ever goes Indy in your lifetime and you need to defend the horrendous economic damage
The thing about Brexit is it means no hiding place.
Our Parliament is sovereign and our politicians are accountable. IF we're bankrupt that's your fault. If the boats are still coming that's your fault. If there's a giant f8ck up....ditto. If crime soars.....you get the idea.
You can see that this accountability is a massive shock to many MPs, whichever side of the divide you are on politically. Confronted with their own horrendous mistakes in interviews they are often reduced to gabbling, spluttering nonsense or silence. Whatever they came into politics for, it clearly wasn't this.
Good.
Yes. We farmed out so much of our governance to the EU we forgot how to do it
Now we are learning again. It is all up to us. This is painful but in the long run it is seriously good
Liz had better do a bloody good job. She'll be the first truly post-Brexit British prime minister. Right-wing libertarian ideology lives or dies with her.
In which case it's going to die with her because - you wouldn't want to start from here....
Getting through the next 2 years isn't going to be easy and Truss will be blamed for everything as she will be in charge when the bills go up...
FFS - yesterday was as a result of the heavy storms causing overflows, as has happened for a very long time. It doesn't help make arguments to be so disingenuous.
Why allow facts to get in the way of a good rant though?
Not only heavy storms but heavy storms landing on bone dry and rock hard surfaces with very rapid run off as a result. Totally unsurprising and, as usual, Brexit is completely and utterly irrelevant to what happened.
You don't understand.
Brexit is to blame for current weather conditions, Covid, and the war in Ukraine.
You don't understand.
The EU was blamed for everything sub optimal and now the wheel has turned. It's your tiger, ride it.
I was mildly harangued by a Remoaner friend over wine at the Edinburgh Castle in Camden yesterday. “Well, what about Brexit? It’s terrible isn’t it??”
I told him I voted because sovereignty and democracy. And he sat there fuming because: there isn’t any comeback to that. If you voted for those reasons - which I did - then you’re happy with Brexit - which I am (and increasingly so)
So it’s really not hard to defend, indeed I find it a pleasure to do this with Remainers. They simmer with frustrated anger. Twats
I advise you to use this technique if Scotland ever goes Indy in your lifetime and you need to defend the horrendous economic damage
The thing about Brexit is it means no hiding place...
Good.
On the contrary, it has allowed our politicians to postpone any decisions of actual importance for the best part of a decade.
Bad.
Politicians trying to micromanage and intervene in decisions is the root of half our problems.
Them being distracted from doing so and forced to only deal with what they wanted to is therefore ...
Following the University Challenge announcement the comments on the Daily Telegraph story are openly explicitly racist. Extraordinary
Oo I missed that announcement. I hadn't thought of him during the discussions on here the other day but now he is mentioned I think he is a good choice. It needs someone a bit assertive (although Paxman was at times a bit OTT and sneary) and I think Rajan has the right persona for it. Clive Myrie has vastly improved Mastermind and although I don't think UC needs improving hopefully Rajan will have the necessary gravitas.
Fuck the Telegraph readers.
But this is the sort of wokery that vexes the likes of Casino and Leon, it doesn't matter that Myrie and Rajan are probably the right candidates for the job.
Personally I am surprised they didn't give UC to the terminally useless Paddy O'Connell. He seems to get everything else. O'Connell may have been out of his depth, but he'd keep the culture warriors happy.
FFS - yesterday was as a result of the heavy storms causing overflows, as has happened for a very long time. It doesn't help make arguments to be so disingenuous.
Why allow facts to get in the way of a good rant though?
Not only heavy storms but heavy storms landing on bone dry and rock hard surfaces with very rapid run off as a result. Totally unsurprising and, as usual, Brexit is completely and utterly irrelevant to what happened.
You don't understand.
Brexit is to blame for current weather conditions, Covid, and the war in Ukraine.
You don't understand.
The EU was blamed for everything sub optimal and now the wheel has turned. It's your tiger, ride it.
I was mildly harangued by a Remoaner friend over wine at the Edinburgh Castle in Camden yesterday. “Well, what about Brexit? It’s terrible isn’t it??”
I told him I voted because sovereignty and democracy. And he sat there fuming because: there isn’t any comeback to that. If you voted for those reasons - which I did - then you’re happy with Brexit - which I am (and increasingly so)
So it’s really not hard to defend, indeed I find it a pleasure to do this with Remainers. They simmer with frustrated anger. Twats
I advise you to use this technique if Scotland ever goes Indy in your lifetime and you need to defend the horrendous economic damage
The thing about Brexit is it means no hiding place.
Our Parliament is sovereign and our politicians are accountable. IF we're bankrupt that's your fault. If the boats are still coming that's your fault. If there's a giant f8ck up....ditto. If crime soars.....you get the idea.
You can see that this accountability is a massive shock to many MPs, whichever side of the divide you are on politically. Confronted with their own horrendous mistakes in interviews they are often reduced to gabbling, spluttering nonsense or silence. Whatever they came into politics for, it clearly wasn't this.
Good.
Yes. We farmed out so much of our governance to the EU we forgot how to do it
Now we are learning again. It is all up to us. This is painful but in the long run it is seriously good
Liz had better do a bloody good job. She'll be the first truly post-Brexit British prime minister. Right-wing libertarian ideology lives or dies with her.
In which case it's going to die with her because - you wouldn't want to start from here....
Getting through the next 2 years isn't going to be easy and Truss will be blamed for everything as she will be in charge when the bills go up...
That was also the view of many in early 2010. That the next election was a good one to lose and whoever wins it would be hammered next time and out of office for a generation as a result.
Following the University Challenge announcement the comments on the Daily Telegraph story are openly explicitly racist. Extraordinary
Oo I missed that announcement. I hadn't thought of him during the discussions on here the other day but now he is mentioned I think he is a good choice. It needs someone a bit assertive (although Paxman was at times a bit OTT and sneary) and I think Rajan has the right persona for it. Clive Myrie has vastly improved Mastermind and although I don't think UC needs improving hopefully Rajan will have the necessary gravitas.
Fuck the Telegraph readers.
Someone did mention him in the discussion on here, I think. I agree. He comes across well when I've heard him, good choice.
Amol is a decent choice. He wrote an interesting book about spinners and probably showed his own biases towards sub-continental player there, but that's no bad thing. You are damned whatever you do now. Pick an older white male and its an issue for some. Pick a minority candidate and its a problem for some. Why not see how they do the job?
I think he's a very good choice, as he has the requisite speed of thought, sense of humour and verbal dexterity.
I think he's smart but facile. The stushie over his 'special' on Powell's Rivers of Blood speech was telling, not so much because Rajan had done it but his apparently genuine incomprehension of why some people might have a problem with the way it was presented.
I'm quite fond of UC, but in general I think there's far too much picking over these things as if they're massive foundations stones of our culture rather than at most fairly minor ones. The BBC is particularly bad for this, specially when examining its own entrails.
'Peggy Woolley to leave Ambridge, a nation holds its breath!!!'
I thought the attraction of UC was that it's always been a bit naff. Not so much a foundation as a very long lived encrustation.
And don't be mean to June Spencer. 😊
Glaswegian Jazzer who istr plays the bagpipes and let off the first scripted fart on R4.
That's a bit harsh - I love the sound of the bagpipes myself.
Protons contain intrinsic charm quarks, a new study suggests
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/proton-charm-quark-up-down-particle-physics ...In quantum physics, particles don’t take on a definite state until they’re measured — they are instead described by probabilities. If protons contain intrinsic charm, there’d be a small probability to find within a proton not only two up quarks and a down quark, but also a charm quark and antiquark. Since protons aren’t well-defined collections of individual particles, a proton’s mass isn’t a simple sum of its parts (SN: 11/26/18). The small probability means that the full mass of the charm quark and antiquark isn’t added to the proton’s heft, explaining how the proton may contain particles heavier than itself....
Protons contain intrinsic charm quarks, a new study suggests
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/proton-charm-quark-up-down-particle-physics ...In quantum physics, particles don’t take on a definite state until they’re measured — they are instead described by probabilities. If protons contain intrinsic charm, there’d be a small probability to find within a proton not only two up quarks and a down quark, but also a charm quark and antiquark. Since protons aren’t well-defined collections of individual particles, a proton’s mass isn’t a simple sum of its parts (SN: 11/26/18). The small probability means that the full mass of the charm quark and antiquark isn’t added to the proton’s heft, explaining how the proton may contain particles heavier than itself....
My object to Amol Rajan taking over UC is his diction; he speaks with a lazy slur, which I was told on this board some time ago is fashionable. I also find him rather smug but so was Paxo.
Oxford Colleges need to be worried - he's a Cambridge man!
The same applies domestically here, and the Estonian politicians seen as "compromised" are increasingly facing public opprobrium. The former Centre Party PM, Juri Ratas, who attempted to distabilise the coalition a couple of months ago is now facing problems of his own, and far-right figures are getting challenged on their own links to Moscow. Would that certain UK politicians were challenged in the same way. Perhaps some of them will be, after the Conservative leadership election is out of the way.
These digs against the UK are pretty silly.
Estonia has a substantial Russian minority. It's a category error to compare their political 'links to Moscow' with conspiracy theories about figures in Britain.
I would just note that Dominic Cummings lived in Russia, that Aaron Banks had significant connections with Russia, and that quite a few other politicians have had significant business interests in Russia. I think it is either complacent or sinister that you dismiss these undeniable facts as some kind of "conspiracy".
Incidentally most of the Russian speaking minority in Estonia came in the 1960s and 70s to replace the third of the Estonian population that was either killed or fled during or just after the Second World War, or sent to the Russian GULAG after the war, the Russian population before 1940 was less than 3%.
Rishi Sunak tells This Morning that if he goes to McDonald's with his daughters they all get the breakfast wrap... as a breakfast wrap aficionado I can confirm they were taken off the menu in March 2020 due to Covid, and in January it was confirmed they will never return!
FFS - yesterday was as a result of the heavy storms causing overflows, as has happened for a very long time. It doesn't help make arguments to be so disingenuous.
Why allow facts to get in the way of a good rant though?
Not only heavy storms but heavy storms landing on bone dry and rock hard surfaces with very rapid run off as a result. Totally unsurprising and, as usual, Brexit is completely and utterly irrelevant to what happened.
You don't understand.
Brexit is to blame for current weather conditions, Covid, and the war in Ukraine.
You don't understand.
The EU was blamed for everything sub optimal and now the wheel has turned. It's your tiger, ride it.
I was mildly harangued by a Remoaner friend over wine at the Edinburgh Castle in Camden yesterday. “Well, what about Brexit? It’s terrible isn’t it??”
I told him I voted because sovereignty and democracy. And he sat there fuming because: there isn’t any comeback to that. If you voted for those reasons - which I did - then you’re happy with Brexit - which I am (and increasingly so)
So it’s really not hard to defend, indeed I find it a pleasure to do this with Remainers. They simmer with frustrated anger. Twats
I advise you to use this technique if Scotland ever goes Indy in your lifetime and you need to defend the horrendous economic damage
The thing about Brexit is it means no hiding place.
Our Parliament is sovereign and our politicians are accountable. IF we're bankrupt that's your fault. If the boats are still coming that's your fault. If there's a giant f8ck up....ditto. If crime soars.....you get the idea.
You can see that this accountability is a massive shock to many MPs, whichever side of the divide you are on politically. Confronted with their own horrendous mistakes in interviews they are often reduced to gabbling, spluttering nonsense or silence. Whatever they came into politics for, it clearly wasn't this.
Good.
Did British politicians use the EU as a hiding place for their own mistakes until 2020?
FFS - yesterday was as a result of the heavy storms causing overflows, as has happened for a very long time. It doesn't help make arguments to be so disingenuous.
Why allow facts to get in the way of a good rant though?
Not only heavy storms but heavy storms landing on bone dry and rock hard surfaces with very rapid run off as a result. Totally unsurprising and, as usual, Brexit is completely and utterly irrelevant to what happened.
You don't understand.
Brexit is to blame for current weather conditions, Covid, and the war in Ukraine.
You don't understand.
The EU was blamed for everything sub optimal and now the wheel has turned. It's your tiger, ride it.
I was mildly harangued by a Remoaner friend over wine at the Edinburgh Castle in Camden yesterday. “Well, what about Brexit? It’s terrible isn’t it??”
I told him I voted because sovereignty and democracy. And he sat there fuming because: there isn’t any comeback to that. If you voted for those reasons - which I did - then you’re happy with Brexit - which I am (and increasingly so)
So it’s really not hard to defend, indeed I find it a pleasure to do this with Remainers. They simmer with frustrated anger. Twats
I advise you to use this technique if Scotland ever goes Indy in your lifetime and you need to defend the horrendous economic damage
The thing about Brexit is it means no hiding place.
Our Parliament is sovereign and our politicians are accountable. IF we're bankrupt that's your fault. If the boats are still coming that's your fault. If there's a giant f8ck up....ditto. If crime soars.....you get the idea.
You can see that this accountability is a massive shock to many MPs, whichever side of the divide you are on politically. Confronted with their own horrendous mistakes in interviews they are often reduced to gabbling, spluttering nonsense or silence. Whatever they came into politics for, it clearly wasn't this.
Good.
Yes. We farmed out so much of our governance to the EU we forgot how to do it
Now we are learning again. It is all up to us. This is painful but in the long run it is seriously good
Liz had better do a bloody good job. She'll be the first truly post-Brexit British prime minister. Right-wing libertarian ideology lives or dies with her.
In which case it's going to die with her because - you wouldn't want to start from here....
Getting through the next 2 years isn't going to be easy and Truss will be blamed for everything as she will be in charge when the bills go up...
That was also the view of many in early 2010. That the next election was a good one to lose and whoever wins it would be hammered next time and out of office for a generation as a result.
How did that work out?
Nation didn't have 10+% inflation and 5 grand energy bills incoming at that point.
Rishi Sunak tells This Morning that if he goes to McDonald's with his daughters they all get the breakfast wrap... as a breakfast wrap aficionado I can confirm they were taken off the menu in March 2020 due to Covid, and in January it was confirmed they will never return!
The same applies domestically here, and the Estonian politicians seen as "compromised" are increasingly facing public opprobrium. The former Centre Party PM, Juri Ratas, who attempted to distabilise the coalition a couple of months ago is now facing problems of his own, and far-right figures are getting challenged on their own links to Moscow. Would that certain UK politicians were challenged in the same way. Perhaps some of them will be, after the Conservative leadership election is out of the way.
These digs against the UK are pretty silly.
Estonia has a substantial Russian minority. It's a category error to compare their political 'links to Moscow' with conspiracy theories about figures in Britain.
I would just note that Dominic Cummings lived in Russia, that Aaron Banks had significant connections with Russia, and that quite a few other politicians have had significant business interests in Russia. I think it is either complacent or sinister that you dismiss these undeniable facts as some kind of "conspiracy".
Incidentally most of the Russian speaking minority in Estonia came in the 1960s and 70s to replace the third of the Estonian population that was either killed or fled during or just after the Second World War, or sent to the Russian GULAG after the war, the Russian population before 1940 was less than 3%.
“I would just note that Aaron Banks is Jewish”
Too many Old Estonians is the traditional jibe, I believe.
FFS - yesterday was as a result of the heavy storms causing overflows, as has happened for a very long time. It doesn't help make arguments to be so disingenuous.
Why allow facts to get in the way of a good rant though?
Not only heavy storms but heavy storms landing on bone dry and rock hard surfaces with very rapid run off as a result. Totally unsurprising and, as usual, Brexit is completely and utterly irrelevant to what happened.
You don't understand.
Brexit is to blame for current weather conditions, Covid, and the war in Ukraine.
You don't understand.
The EU was blamed for everything sub optimal and now the wheel has turned. It's your tiger, ride it.
I was mildly harangued by a Remoaner friend over wine at the Edinburgh Castle in Camden yesterday. “Well, what about Brexit? It’s terrible isn’t it??”
I told him I voted because sovereignty and democracy. And he sat there fuming because: there isn’t any comeback to that. If you voted for those reasons - which I did - then you’re happy with Brexit - which I am (and increasingly so)
So it’s really not hard to defend, indeed I find it a pleasure to do this with Remainers. They simmer with frustrated anger. Twats
I advise you to use this technique if Scotland ever goes Indy in your lifetime and you need to defend the horrendous economic damage
The thing about Brexit is it means no hiding place.
Our Parliament is sovereign and our politicians are accountable. IF we're bankrupt that's your fault. If the boats are still coming that's your fault. If there's a giant f8ck up....ditto. If crime soars.....you get the idea.
You can see that this accountability is a massive shock to many MPs, whichever side of the divide you are on politically. Confronted with their own horrendous mistakes in interviews they are often reduced to gabbling, spluttering nonsense or silence. Whatever they came into politics for, it clearly wasn't this.
Good.
Did British politicians use the EU as a hiding place for their own mistakes until 2020?
The relationship between the EU and the UK governments, who did what and who decided what, was deliberately kept opaque or buried in complexity.
Now, there is no doubt. Its on you. And its clear many of our politicians detest it.
Rishi Sunak tells This Morning that if he goes to McDonald's with his daughters they all get the breakfast wrap... as a breakfast wrap aficionado I can confirm they were taken off the menu in March 2020 due to Covid, and in January it was confirmed they will never return!
Cummings was very young when he went to Russia to help run an airline.
It’s not obvious how he got this opportunity. I don’t remember anyone approaching me to run an airline when I left university.
I don’t think there’s a conspiracy here, just another underqualified member of the elite getting opportunities that others don’t.
I have left wing Remainery friends who went to Russia after the fall of communism for the same reason Cummings did. It was a wild place, almost lawless, with money to be made (and then some). The sort of place where - with a bit of audacity and acumen - you could end up running an airline age 24
Weirdly the Russians ignored these Remainers and only recruited the brexiteers even tho this was all 30 years before Brexit?
@cicero is a ludicrous Remainer twit who is indulging himself in tragic conspiratorial bollocks
Well, we do know the KGB tried (and failed) to recruit David Cameron so why is it such a stretch to try Dominic Cummings? Even the initials are the same. For decades it has been Russian SOP to recruit young Establishment types in the hope they will land up running something important.
We know Russia tries to interfere in our politics; you (and others) settle for refuting its reductio ad absurdum that no-one at all would have voted for Brexit if it weren't for those pesky Russkies.
In which case it's going to die with her because - you wouldn't want to start from here....
Getting through the next 2 years isn't going to be easy and Truss will be blamed for everything as she will be in charge when the bills go up...
It's quite likely that inflation will dip at some point next year, though, so I presume Truss will claim that that reflects her splendid policies.
Unless we get some deflation rather than lower inflation, there will still be a cost of living crisis if people are a few grand short of their annual expenditure.
My object to Amol Rajan taking over UC is his diction; he speaks with a lazy slur, which I was told on this board some time ago is fashionable. I also find him rather smug but so was Paxo.
He is excellent, but if the habit of saying 2020 as 'twenny twenny' (he doesn't even try a glottal stop) could be overcome he would be better still.
Protons contain intrinsic charm quarks, a new study suggests
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/proton-charm-quark-up-down-particle-physics ...In quantum physics, particles don’t take on a definite state until they’re measured — they are instead described by probabilities. If protons contain intrinsic charm, there’d be a small probability to find within a proton not only two up quarks and a down quark, but also a charm quark and antiquark. Since protons aren’t well-defined collections of individual particles, a proton’s mass isn’t a simple sum of its parts (SN: 11/26/18). The small probability means that the full mass of the charm quark and antiquark isn’t added to the proton’s heft, explaining how the proton may contain particles heavier than itself....
The same applies domestically here, and the Estonian politicians seen as "compromised" are increasingly facing public opprobrium. The former Centre Party PM, Juri Ratas, who attempted to distabilise the coalition a couple of months ago is now facing problems of his own, and far-right figures are getting challenged on their own links to Moscow. Would that certain UK politicians were challenged in the same way. Perhaps some of them will be, after the Conservative leadership election is out of the way.
These digs against the UK are pretty silly.
Estonia has a substantial Russian minority. It's a category error to compare their political 'links to Moscow' with conspiracy theories about figures in Britain.
I would just note that Dominic Cummings lived in Russia, that Aaron Banks had significant connections with Russia, and that quite a few other politicians have had significant business interests in Russia. I think it is either complacent or sinister that you dismiss these undeniable facts as some kind of "conspiracy".
Incidentally most of the Russian speaking minority in Estonia came in the 1960s and 70s to replace the third of the Estonian population that was either killed or fled during or just after the Second World War, or sent to the Russian GULAG after the war, the Russian population before 1940 was less than 3%.
“I would just note that Aaron Banks is Jewish”
Too many Old Estonians is the traditional jibe, I believe.
Is Banks Jewish? He certainly likes a good antisemitic trope.
I think there are more obvious Russian connections to highlight.
'In 2001, Banks married Russian Ekaterina Paderina, with whom he has two sons and a daughter. Paderina previously overstayed her visa but married merchant seaman Eric Butler, over twice her age. The three-month marriage was investigated due to suspicions it was a sham. She is reported to have received help to remain in the UK from Mike Hancock while he was an MP. It was suggested that Paderina was a spy.'
Protons contain intrinsic charm quarks, a new study suggests
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/proton-charm-quark-up-down-particle-physics ...In quantum physics, particles don’t take on a definite state until they’re measured — they are instead described by probabilities. If protons contain intrinsic charm, there’d be a small probability to find within a proton not only two up quarks and a down quark, but also a charm quark and antiquark. Since protons aren’t well-defined collections of individual particles, a proton’s mass isn’t a simple sum of its parts (SN: 11/26/18). The small probability means that the full mass of the charm quark and antiquark isn’t added to the proton’s heft, explaining how the proton may contain particles heavier than itself....
Horseracing has that same interesting characteristic, as do most things that interest PB followers.
The same applies domestically here, and the Estonian politicians seen as "compromised" are increasingly facing public opprobrium. The former Centre Party PM, Juri Ratas, who attempted to distabilise the coalition a couple of months ago is now facing problems of his own, and far-right figures are getting challenged on their own links to Moscow. Would that certain UK politicians were challenged in the same way. Perhaps some of them will be, after the Conservative leadership election is out of the way.
These digs against the UK are pretty silly.
Estonia has a substantial Russian minority. It's a category error to compare their political 'links to Moscow' with conspiracy theories about figures in Britain.
I would just note that Dominic Cummings lived in Russia, that Aaron Banks had significant connections with Russia, and that quite a few other politicians have had significant business interests in Russia. I think it is either complacent or sinister that you dismiss these undeniable facts as some kind of "conspiracy".
Incidentally most of the Russian speaking minority in Estonia came in the 1960s and 70s to replace the third of the Estonian population that was either killed or fled during or just after the Second World War, or sent to the Russian GULAG after the war, the Russian population before 1940 was less than 3%.
“I would just note that Aaron Banks is Jewish”
It's Arron Banks, not Aaron, whether or not he is Jewish; Wikipedia is silent on the matter.
FFS - yesterday was as a result of the heavy storms causing overflows, as has happened for a very long time. It doesn't help make arguments to be so disingenuous.
Why allow facts to get in the way of a good rant though?
Not only heavy storms but heavy storms landing on bone dry and rock hard surfaces with very rapid run off as a result. Totally unsurprising and, as usual, Brexit is completely and utterly irrelevant to what happened.
You don't understand.
Brexit is to blame for current weather conditions, Covid, and the war in Ukraine.
You don't understand.
The EU was blamed for everything sub optimal and now the wheel has turned. It's your tiger, ride it.
I was mildly harangued by a Remoaner friend over wine at the Edinburgh Castle in Camden yesterday. “Well, what about Brexit? It’s terrible isn’t it??”
I told him I voted because sovereignty and democracy. And he sat there fuming because: there isn’t any comeback to that. If you voted for those reasons - which I did - then you’re happy with Brexit - which I am (and increasingly so)
So it’s really not hard to defend, indeed I find it a pleasure to do this with Remainers. They simmer with frustrated anger. Twats
I advise you to use this technique if Scotland ever goes Indy in your lifetime and you need to defend the horrendous economic damage
The thing about Brexit is it means no hiding place.
Our Parliament is sovereign and our politicians are accountable. IF we're bankrupt that's your fault. If the boats are still coming that's your fault. If there's a giant f8ck up....ditto. If crime soars.....you get the idea.
You can see that this accountability is a massive shock to many MPs, whichever side of the divide you are on politically. Confronted with their own horrendous mistakes in interviews they are often reduced to gabbling, spluttering nonsense or silence. Whatever they came into politics for, it clearly wasn't this.
Good.
Did British politicians use the EU as a hiding place for their own mistakes until 2020?
There is a good book on the subject. Called Blaming Europe published in 2014.
It asserts that overall there was not much overt blaming of the EU - not least because the majority of those in power were concerned about anti-EU sentiment in the general public. But there was a lot of covert shifting of responsibility. Less of the 'This is the fault of the EU' and a lot more of the 'We would like to do this but I am afraid we can't'
"By analysing over 200 political speeches made by national leaders in Britain, Germany, and Ireland over the course of the financial and economic crisis, it considers how politicians credit and blame the EU. Interestingly it finds that politicians rarely seek to scapegoat the EU and blame it for the economic situation. Rather prime ministers use the EU to diffuse responsibility and to redefine issues in a way that makes them less damaging in the eyes of their domestic electorates."
My object to Amol Rajan taking over UC is his diction; he speaks with a lazy slur, which I was told on this board some time ago is fashionable. I also find him rather smug but so was Paxo.
He is excellent, but if the habit of saying 2020 as 'twenny twenny' (he doesn't even try a glottal stop) could be overcome he would be better still.
FFS - yesterday was as a result of the heavy storms causing overflows, as has happened for a very long time. It doesn't help make arguments to be so disingenuous.
Why allow facts to get in the way of a good rant though?
Not only heavy storms but heavy storms landing on bone dry and rock hard surfaces with very rapid run off as a result. Totally unsurprising and, as usual, Brexit is completely and utterly irrelevant to what happened.
You don't understand.
Brexit is to blame for current weather conditions, Covid, and the war in Ukraine.
You don't understand.
The EU was blamed for everything sub optimal and now the wheel has turned. It's your tiger, ride it.
I was mildly harangued by a Remoaner friend over wine at the Edinburgh Castle in Camden yesterday. “Well, what about Brexit? It’s terrible isn’t it??”
I told him I voted because sovereignty and democracy. And he sat there fuming because: there isn’t any comeback to that. If you voted for those reasons - which I did - then you’re happy with Brexit - which I am (and increasingly so)
So it’s really not hard to defend, indeed I find it a pleasure to do this with Remainers. They simmer with frustrated anger. Twats
I advise you to use this technique if Scotland ever goes Indy in your lifetime and you need to defend the horrendous economic damage
The thing about Brexit is it means no hiding place.
Our Parliament is sovereign and our politicians are accountable. IF we're bankrupt that's your fault. If the boats are still coming that's your fault. If there's a giant f8ck up....ditto. If crime soars.....you get the idea.
You can see that this accountability is a massive shock to many MPs, whichever side of the divide you are on politically. Confronted with their own horrendous mistakes in interviews they are often reduced to gabbling, spluttering nonsense or silence. Whatever they came into politics for, it clearly wasn't this.
Good.
Did British politicians use the EU as a hiding place for their own mistakes until 2020?
There is a good book on the subject. Called Blaming Europe published in 2014.
It asserts that overall there was not much overt blaming of the EU - not least because the majority of those in power were concerned about anti-EU sentiment in the general public. But there was a lot of covert shifting of responsibility. Less of the 'This is the fault of the EU' and a lot more of the 'We would like to do this but I am afraid we can't'
"By analysing over 200 political speeches made by national leaders in Britain, Germany, and Ireland over the course of the financial and economic crisis, it considers how politicians credit and blame the EU. Interestingly it finds that politicians rarely seek to scapegoat the EU and blame it for the economic situation. Rather prime ministers use the EU to diffuse responsibility and to redefine issues in a way that makes them less damaging in the eyes of their domestic electorates."
And given that's how often politicians did that, one has to wonder how often Sir Humphrey mandarins did the same thing, in discussions with Ministers?
In which case it's going to die with her because - you wouldn't want to start from here....
Getting through the next 2 years isn't going to be easy and Truss will be blamed for everything as she will be in charge when the bills go up...
It's quite likely that inflation will dip at some point next year, though, so I presume Truss will claim that that reflects her splendid policies.
Unless we get some deflation rather than lower inflation, there will still be a cost of living crisis if people are a few grand short of their annual expenditure.
Fuel rose so fast and so high at the start of 2022 to close to £2 a litre for diesel and north of £1.80 for petrol. Even if it stays static, it will in and of itself cause a dramatic drop in inflation as that component falls out the system.
If it is coupled with actual significant falls off those highs, it will be very dramatic. WTI is now down to mid-$80's.
You could see a dramatic decline in inflation UNLESS the costs of electricity/gas negate that effect. That would surely need to be the need for Govt. to prevent that. Otherwise, wage inflation will replace the falling fuel component.
I've said before that Government should aim to have partial increases (c4-5%) covering say 9 months, well short of the inflation spike, with a second later top-up if inflation stays in double digits into next spring/summer.
Great news about Amol Rajan. The big shame is I think he was an excellent interviewer, quietly forensic and politely and determinedly ruthless in not letting his interviewees off the hook. I hope he'll continue to do some Today work.
Following the University Challenge announcement the comments on the Daily Telegraph story are openly explicitly racist. Extraordinary
Oo I missed that announcement. I hadn't thought of him during the discussions on here the other day but now he is mentioned I think he is a good choice. It needs someone a bit assertive (although Paxman was at times a bit OTT and sneary) and I think Rajan has the right persona for it. Clive Myrie has vastly improved Mastermind and although I don't think UC needs improving hopefully Rajan will have the necessary gravitas.
Fuck the Telegraph readers.
But this is the sort of wokery that vexes the likes of Casino and Leon, it doesn't matter that Myrie and Rajan are probably the right candidates for the job.
Personally I am surprised they didn't give UC to the terminally useless Paddy O'Connell. He seems to get everything else. O'Connell may have been out of his depth, but he'd keep the culture warriors happy.
I got the impression from his comments that Rajan was the exact opposite of woke. At least in this context. He seems to thoroughly endorse elitism when practiced by means of meritocracy.
But then I have kind of lost track of what is supposed to be woke and what isn't. I know what things annoy me but I am not sure what the label is for them these days.
What's the point of paying for a thumb on the scales if you don't get a thumb on the scales?
Well, some of us pointed out at the time that using estimated grades was a cheat's charter.
But curious that sixth-form colleges tended to not fiddle. Perhaps the teachers at those don't have quite the same pressures on them, but not sure.
Grammars being best of the rest is presumably because they tend to get a lot of As anyway, so less scope to cheat.
If affluent middle class people can't get their children into top academic institutions they will create their own top academic institutions or send their kids to other countries' top academic institutions.
They will also start to question paying their taxes into to a system that does not work for them, as many are starting to do with the NHS.
In which case it's going to die with her because - you wouldn't want to start from here....
Getting through the next 2 years isn't going to be easy and Truss will be blamed for everything as she will be in charge when the bills go up...
It's quite likely that inflation will dip at some point next year, though, so I presume Truss will claim that that reflects her splendid policies.
Unless we get some deflation rather than lower inflation, there will still be a cost of living crisis if people are a few grand short of their annual expenditure.
Fuel rose so fast and so high at the start of 2022 to close to £2 a litre for diesel and north of £1.80 for petrol. Even if it stays static, it will in and of itself cause a dramatic drop in inflation as that component falls out the system.
If it is coupled with actual significant falls off those highs, it will be very dramatic. WTI is now down to mid-$80's.
You could see a dramatic decline in inflation UNLESS the costs of electricity/gas negate that effect. That would surely need to be the need for Govt. to prevent that. Otherwise, wage inflation will replace the falling fuel component.
I've said before that Government should aim to have partial increases (c4-5%) covering say 9 months, well short of the inflation spike, with a second later top-up if inflation stays in double digits into next spring/summer.
Just need to find some cheap gas now and we're A-OK
FFS - yesterday was as a result of the heavy storms causing overflows, as has happened for a very long time. It doesn't help make arguments to be so disingenuous.
Why allow facts to get in the way of a good rant though?
Not only heavy storms but heavy storms landing on bone dry and rock hard surfaces with very rapid run off as a result. Totally unsurprising and, as usual, Brexit is completely and utterly irrelevant to what happened.
You don't understand.
Brexit is to blame for current weather conditions, Covid, and the war in Ukraine.
You don't understand.
The EU was blamed for everything sub optimal and now the wheel has turned. It's your tiger, ride it.
I was mildly harangued by a Remoaner friend over wine at the Edinburgh Castle in Camden yesterday. “Well, what about Brexit? It’s terrible isn’t it??”
I told him I voted because sovereignty and democracy. And he sat there fuming because: there isn’t any comeback to that. If you voted for those reasons - which I did - then you’re happy with Brexit - which I am (and increasingly so)
So it’s really not hard to defend, indeed I find it a pleasure to do this with Remainers. They simmer with frustrated anger. Twats
I advise you to use this technique if Scotland ever goes Indy in your lifetime and you need to defend the horrendous economic damage
The thing about Brexit is it means no hiding place.
Our Parliament is sovereign and our politicians are accountable. IF we're bankrupt that's your fault. If the boats are still coming that's your fault. If there's a giant f8ck up....ditto. If crime soars.....you get the idea.
You can see that this accountability is a massive shock to many MPs, whichever side of the divide you are on politically. Confronted with their own horrendous mistakes in interviews they are often reduced to gabbling, spluttering nonsense or silence. Whatever they came into politics for, it clearly wasn't this.
Good.
Did British politicians use the EU as a hiding place for their own mistakes until 2020?
There is a good book on the subject. Called Blaming Europe published in 2014.
It asserts that overall there was not much overt blaming of the EU - not least because the majority of those in power were concerned about anti-EU sentiment in the general public. But there was a lot of covert shifting of responsibility. Less of the 'This is the fault of the EU' and a lot more of the 'We would like to do this but I am afraid we can't'
"By analysing over 200 political speeches made by national leaders in Britain, Germany, and Ireland over the course of the financial and economic crisis, it considers how politicians credit and blame the EU. Interestingly it finds that politicians rarely seek to scapegoat the EU and blame it for the economic situation. Rather prime ministers use the EU to diffuse responsibility and to redefine issues in a way that makes them less damaging in the eyes of their domestic electorates."
Also, politicians smuggled policies into being via EU directives, policies which they would not dare to run past actual voters in a manifesto
The EU is a hideous malformed quasi-abortion of democracy
FFS - yesterday was as a result of the heavy storms causing overflows, as has happened for a very long time. It doesn't help make arguments to be so disingenuous.
Why allow facts to get in the way of a good rant though?
Not only heavy storms but heavy storms landing on bone dry and rock hard surfaces with very rapid run off as a result. Totally unsurprising and, as usual, Brexit is completely and utterly irrelevant to what happened.
You don't understand.
Brexit is to blame for current weather conditions, Covid, and the war in Ukraine.
You don't understand.
The EU was blamed for everything sub optimal and now the wheel has turned. It's your tiger, ride it.
I was mildly harangued by a Remoaner friend over wine at the Edinburgh Castle in Camden yesterday. “Well, what about Brexit? It’s terrible isn’t it??”
I told him I voted because sovereignty and democracy. And he sat there fuming because: there isn’t any comeback to that. If you voted for those reasons - which I did - then you’re happy with Brexit - which I am (and increasingly so)
So it’s really not hard to defend, indeed I find it a pleasure to do this with Remainers. They simmer with frustrated anger. Twats
I advise you to use this technique if Scotland ever goes Indy in your lifetime and you need to defend the horrendous economic damage
The thing about Brexit is it means no hiding place.
Our Parliament is sovereign and our politicians are accountable. IF we're bankrupt that's your fault. If the boats are still coming that's your fault. If there's a giant f8ck up....ditto. If crime soars.....you get the idea.
You can see that this accountability is a massive shock to many MPs, whichever side of the divide you are on politically. Confronted with their own horrendous mistakes in interviews they are often reduced to gabbling, spluttering nonsense or silence. Whatever they came into politics for, it clearly wasn't this.
Good.
And yet, governments so far have sought to reduce accountability to Parliament.
Boris didn’t see Brexit as a democratic project.
Only parliament can reduce accountability to itself. Governments have no such power. Neither have the courts. Parliament is the supreme authority. How it uses it is for voters to judge. Perhaps both voters and parliament are sleeping giants, but giants they still are.
I guess one thing the Gov't could do is say raise the cap to 2500, pray that wholesale gas and leccy falls long term then just keep the cap there to pay back the operators long after we have the cheaper leccy ? Stabilisation mechanism
My object to Amol Rajan taking over UC is his diction; he speaks with a lazy slur, which I was told on this board some time ago is fashionable. I also find him rather smug but so was Paxo.
He is excellent, but if the habit of saying 2020 as 'twenny twenny' (he doesn't even try a glottal stop) could be overcome he would be better still.
What's the point of paying for a thumb on the scales if you don't get a thumb on the scales?
Well, some of us pointed out at the time that using estimated grades was a cheat's charter.
But curious that sixth-form colleges tended to not fiddle. Perhaps the teachers at those don't have quite the same pressures on them, but not sure.
Grammars being best of the rest is presumably because they tend to get a lot of As anyway, so less scope to cheat.
If affluent middle class people can't get their children into top academic institutions they will create their own top academic institutions or send their kids to other countries' top academic institutions.
They will also start to question paying their taxes into to a system that does not work for them, as many are starting to do with the NHS.
Hint: 30% of the taxes come from the top 1%.
Hint: People who suggest 30% of the taxes come from the top 1% are either economically illiterate or deliberately misleading (the combination is possible as well of course).
What's the point of paying for a thumb on the scales if you don't get a thumb on the scales?
Well, some of us pointed out at the time that using estimated grades was a cheat's charter.
But curious that sixth-form colleges tended to not fiddle. Perhaps the teachers at those don't have quite the same pressures on them, but not sure.
Grammars being best of the rest is presumably because they tend to get a lot of As anyway, so less scope to cheat.
If affluent middle class people can't get their children into top academic institutions they will create their own top academic institutions or send their kids to other countries' top academic institutions.
They will also start to question paying their taxes into to a system that does not work for them, as many are starting to do with the NHS.
Hint: 30% of the taxes come from the top 1%.
Possible point there, but does it justify balls-out cheating?
Also the Let's fuck off to the Ivy League card is getting a bit less playable for UK whiteys unless ( and I don't know) woke quotas do not apply to overseas students?
What's the point of paying for a thumb on the scales if you don't get a thumb on the scales?
Well, some of us pointed out at the time that using estimated grades was a cheat's charter.
But curious that sixth-form colleges tended to not fiddle. Perhaps the teachers at those don't have quite the same pressures on them, but not sure.
Grammars being best of the rest is presumably because they tend to get a lot of As anyway, so less scope to cheat.
There was a technical reason for that.
To reduce the scale of the inflation, the exam boards tried to moderate each school/college's results for each subject based on what the candidates got at GCSE and how the school had done at A Level recently. (Becuase, despite what others might tell you, attainment on entry affects results a lot more than anything the school does.)
Trouble was, that only worked for institutions with fairly large cohorts. Everyone recognised that if there are only 2 or 3 candidates at a school doing a subject, you can't apply statistics without massive unfairness. So those results were largely waved through.
Colleges have big cohorts- that's their point. Indy schools often have tiny cohorts. 11-18 schools are somewhere in between (those middle four blocks aren't that much different to each other).
I don't know what it tells us about morality vs. opportunity, but the practical effect was a bad one.
FFS - yesterday was as a result of the heavy storms causing overflows, as has happened for a very long time. It doesn't help make arguments to be so disingenuous.
Why allow facts to get in the way of a good rant though?
Not only heavy storms but heavy storms landing on bone dry and rock hard surfaces with very rapid run off as a result. Totally unsurprising and, as usual, Brexit is completely and utterly irrelevant to what happened.
You don't understand.
Brexit is to blame for current weather conditions, Covid, and the war in Ukraine.
You don't understand.
The EU was blamed for everything sub optimal and now the wheel has turned. It's your tiger, ride it.
I was mildly harangued by a Remoaner friend over wine at the Edinburgh Castle in Camden yesterday. “Well, what about Brexit? It’s terrible isn’t it??”
I told him I voted because sovereignty and democracy. And he sat there fuming because: there isn’t any comeback to that. If you voted for those reasons - which I did - then you’re happy with Brexit - which I am (and increasingly so)
So it’s really not hard to defend, indeed I find it a pleasure to do this with Remainers. They simmer with frustrated anger. Twats
I advise you to use this technique if Scotland ever goes Indy in your lifetime and you need to defend the horrendous economic damage
The thing about Brexit is it means no hiding place.
Our Parliament is sovereign and our politicians are accountable. IF we're bankrupt that's your fault. If the boats are still coming that's your fault. If there's a giant f8ck up....ditto. If crime soars.....you get the idea.
You can see that this accountability is a massive shock to many MPs, whichever side of the divide you are on politically. Confronted with their own horrendous mistakes in interviews they are often reduced to gabbling, spluttering nonsense or silence. Whatever they came into politics for, it clearly wasn't this.
Good.
And yet, governments so far have sought to reduce accountability to Parliament.
Boris didn’t see Brexit as a democratic project.
Only parliament can reduce accountability to itself. Governments have no such power. Neither have the courts. Parliament is the supreme authority. How it uses it is for voters to judge. Perhaps both voters and parliament are sleeping giants, but giants they still are.
This is the democratic equivalent of the idea that the free market works perfectly and is never out of equilibrium.
Great news about Amol Rajan. The big shame is I think he was an excellent interviewer, quietly forensic and politely and determinedly ruthless in not letting his interviewees off the hook. I hope he'll continue to do some Today work.
I believe it's been confirmed that he'll continue current roles, other than stepping down as media editor (mabe not correct title, but I think that was already announced some time back)
What's the point of paying for a thumb on the scales if you don't get a thumb on the scales?
Well, some of us pointed out at the time that using estimated grades was a cheat's charter.
But curious that sixth-form colleges tended to not fiddle. Perhaps the teachers at those don't have quite the same pressures on them, but not sure.
Grammars being best of the rest is presumably because they tend to get a lot of As anyway, so less scope to cheat.
If affluent middle class people can't get their children into top academic institutions they will create their own top academic institutions or send their kids to other countries' top academic institutions.
They will also start to question paying their taxes into to a system that does not work for them, as many are starting to do with the NHS.
Hint: 30% of the taxes come from the top 1%.
Hint: People who suggest 30% of the taxes come from the top 1% are either economically illiterate or deliberately misleading (the combination is possible as well of course).
Great news about Amol Rajan. The big shame is I think he was an excellent interviewer, quietly forensic and politely and determinedly ruthless in not letting his interviewees off the hook. I hope he'll continue to do some Today work.
He's also not above being (very politely) rude to political interviewees when they are being perverse. Which I approve.
My object to Amol Rajan taking over UC is his diction; he speaks with a lazy slur, which I was told on this board some time ago is fashionable. I also find him rather smug but so was Paxo.
He is excellent, but if the habit of saying 2020 as 'twenny twenny' (he doesn't even try a glottal stop) could be overcome he would be better still.
I like twennytwenny.
You are Tony Blair - and I claim the return of my million quid bung.
FFS - yesterday was as a result of the heavy storms causing overflows, as has happened for a very long time. It doesn't help make arguments to be so disingenuous.
Why allow facts to get in the way of a good rant though?
Not only heavy storms but heavy storms landing on bone dry and rock hard surfaces with very rapid run off as a result. Totally unsurprising and, as usual, Brexit is completely and utterly irrelevant to what happened.
You don't understand.
Brexit is to blame for current weather conditions, Covid, and the war in Ukraine.
You don't understand.
The EU was blamed for everything sub optimal and now the wheel has turned. It's your tiger, ride it.
I was mildly harangued by a Remoaner friend over wine at the Edinburgh Castle in Camden yesterday. “Well, what about Brexit? It’s terrible isn’t it??”
I told him I voted because sovereignty and democracy. And he sat there fuming because: there isn’t any comeback to that...
@TOPPING regularly contradicts you on that odd claim.
I guess one thing the Gov't could do is say raise the cap to 2500, pray that wholesale gas and leccy falls long term then just keep the cap there to pay back the operators long after we have the cheaper leccy ? Stabilisation mechanism
Would need to be more than just a cap though. Otherwise you get new entrants without the accumulated debt entering, when wholesale prices fall, outcompeting the existing companies, who go bust.
Hmm, not entirely unappealing But without a minimum price guarantee (price 'shoe'?) the banks that would keep the energy companies afloat with a £2.5k cap in the short term but a promise of bein able to efffectively overcharge later would surely not extend credit. And further bankruptcies among the actually more competent suppliers might cause more problems... Would need nationalisation.
Comments
I told him I voted because sovereignty and democracy. And he sat there fuming because: there isn’t any comeback to that. If you voted for those reasons - which I did - then you’re happy with Brexit - which I am (and increasingly so)
So it’s really not hard to defend, indeed I find it a pleasure to do this with Remainers. They simmer with frustrated anger. Twats
I advise you to use this technique if Scotland ever goes Indy in your lifetime and you need to defend the horrendous economic damage
Biden won power by focussing on the myriad shortfalls in Trump's personality, and the Sunak wing of the Tories managed to oust Johnson by doing the same to his many shortfalls. Starmer hopes to gain power by focussing on the personality and morals of the Tories - and he may well do so. However, in all these cases there's a complete absence of new ideas, a complete refusal to admit that Brexit and Trump might have happened because too many of the political ideals of the previous 20 years have been showed to be less than ideal.
Going after the people who have the temerity to win against the status quo cannot work in perpetuity. Thanks to Trump and Johnson, it's worked a couple of times, but not every leader will make it so easy. Call it what you want, but the Blairite/Cameronite/Neoliberal/Neoconservative/Sunakite/Starmerite political ideas remain unpopular, and judging by the Biden administration in the USA, increasingly ineffective. Sooner or later, somebody is going to need to come up with some new ideas.
I see little in Truss to suggest she will be a success, but at least compared to Sunak she seems to get this to a very small degree, which is, I would suggest, why she is likely to become the next PM.
Betfair next prime minister
1.05 Liz Truss 95%
19.5 Rishi Sunak 5%
Next Conservative leader
1.04 Liz Truss 96%
20 Rishi Sunak 5%
Incidentally most of the Russian speaking minority in Estonia came in the 1960s and 70s to replace the third of the Estonian population that was either killed or fled during or just after the Second World War, or sent to the Russian GULAG after the war, the Russian population before 1940 was less than 3%.
Not so much a foundation as a very long lived encrustation.
And don't be mean to June Spencer. 😊
Brexit was the UK voters telling our elected leaders they were unhappy with the direction being taken, rejected the arguments made by the Government of the day (and it's predecessors of all major parties) and demanding a change of action freely at the ballot box.
Whether you agree with Brexit or not, that we can peacefully do that is a course for celebration not regret or mourning and is the antithesis of Putinism.
In Putin's Russia the equivalent of Brexiteers demanding a change in the countries direction would be dead or imprisoned. That is what emboldens Putin, not democratic choices freely made.
“I would just note that Dominic Cummings lived in Russia”
Omfg. I actually flew over Russia once. Maybe they recruited me as well
You are an imbecile
As I recall he did his usual thing - winged it without knowing what he was doing so it all crashed.
Our Parliament is sovereign and our politicians are accountable. IF we're bankrupt that's your fault. If the boats are still coming that's your fault. If there's a giant f8ck up....ditto. If crime soars.....you get the idea.
You can see that this accountability is a massive shock to many MPs, whichever side of the divide you are on politically. Confronted with their own horrendous mistakes in interviews they are often reduced to gabbling, spluttering nonsense or silence. Whatever they came into politics for, it clearly wasn't this.
Good.
It’s not obvious how he got this opportunity.
I don’t remember anyone approaching me to run an airline when I left university.
I don’t think there’s a conspiracy here, just another underqualified member of the elite getting opportunities that others don’t.
Now we are learning again. It is all up to us. This is painful but in the long run it is seriously good
What on earth is the conspiracy supposed to be about Cummings? Whether you agree with him or not, he has a perfectly legible set of political opinions and it's very obvious why he thought Britain would be better off without the EU institutions. Are we supposed to imagine that if he hadn't once breathed the air in Russia, Brexit wouldn't have happened and we'd all have lived happily ever after under the benevolent rule of Brussels?
Boris didn’t see Brexit as a democratic project.
In any event, even HMQ tends to speak that way these days.
Weirdly the Russians ignored these Remainers and only recruited the brexiteers even tho this was all 30 years before Brexit?
@cicero is a ludicrous Remainer twit who is indulging himself in tragic conspiratorial bollocks
The service is much worse, and the accountability is no better.
Awesome...
Bad.
This poll was out yesterday.
I grabbed some 14.5 to sink Rishi down to the level I've got Mogg, Javid, Starmer and the rest of the no hopers at anyway.
And what Boris did or didn't see is neither here nor there. Parliament has ousted Boris, not the other way around.
Britain's Parliament, sovereignty and self rule is bigger than any politician including Boris.
Getting through the next 2 years isn't going to be easy and Truss will be blamed for everything as she will be in charge when the bills go up...
Them being distracted from doing so and forced to only deal with what they wanted to is therefore ...
Good.
Personally I am surprised they didn't give UC to the terminally useless Paddy O'Connell. He seems to get everything else. O'Connell may have been out of his depth, but he'd keep the culture warriors happy.
How did that work out?
Protons contain intrinsic charm quarks, a new study suggests
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/proton-charm-quark-up-down-particle-physics
...In quantum physics, particles don’t take on a definite state until they’re measured — they are instead described by probabilities. If protons contain intrinsic charm, there’d be a small probability to find within a proton not only two up quarks and a down quark, but also a charm quark and antiquark. Since protons aren’t well-defined collections of individual particles, a proton’s mass isn’t a simple sum of its parts (SN: 11/26/18). The small probability means that the full mass of the charm quark and antiquark isn’t added to the proton’s heft, explaining how the proton may contain particles heavier than itself....
https://twitter.com/Geri_E_L_Scott/status/1560200949687255041
Getting silly now
We didn't build enough customs posts. Fucking French...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NYqSUJq3vqo
The relationship between the EU and the UK governments, who did what and who decided what, was deliberately kept opaque or buried in complexity.
Now, there is no doubt. Its on you. And its clear many of our politicians detest it.
We know Russia tries to interfere in our politics; you (and others) settle for refuting its reductio ad absurdum that no-one at all would have voted for Brexit if it weren't for those pesky Russkies.
I think there are more obvious Russian connections to highlight.
'In 2001, Banks married Russian Ekaterina Paderina, with whom he has two sons and a daughter. Paderina previously overstayed her visa but married merchant seaman Eric Butler, over twice her age. The three-month marriage was investigated due to suspicions it was a sham. She is reported to have received help to remain in the UK from Mike Hancock while he was an MP. It was suggested that Paderina was a spy.'
But curious that sixth-form colleges tended to not fiddle. Perhaps the teachers at those don't have quite the same pressures on them, but not sure.
Grammars being best of the rest is presumably because they tend to get a lot of As anyway, so less scope to cheat.
It asserts that overall there was not much overt blaming of the EU - not least because the majority of those in power were concerned about anti-EU sentiment in the general public. But there was a lot of covert shifting of responsibility. Less of the 'This is the fault of the EU' and a lot more of the 'We would like to do this but I am afraid we can't'
"By analysing over 200 political speeches made by national leaders in Britain, Germany, and Ireland over the course of the financial and economic crisis, it considers how politicians credit and blame the EU. Interestingly it finds that politicians rarely seek to scapegoat the EU and blame it for the economic situation. Rather prime ministers use the EU to diffuse responsibility and to redefine issues in a way that makes them less damaging in the eyes of their domestic electorates."
If it is coupled with actual significant falls off those highs, it will be very dramatic. WTI is now down to mid-$80's.
You could see a dramatic decline in inflation UNLESS the costs of electricity/gas negate that effect. That would surely need to be the need for Govt. to prevent that. Otherwise, wage inflation will replace the falling fuel component.
I've said before that Government should aim to have partial increases (c4-5%) covering say 9 months, well short of the inflation spike, with a second later top-up if inflation stays in double digits into next spring/summer.
But then I have kind of lost track of what is supposed to be woke and what isn't. I know what things annoy me but I am not sure what the label is for them these days.
They will also start to question paying their taxes into to a system that does not work for them, as many are starting to do with the NHS.
Hint: 30% of the taxes come from the top 1%.
The EU is a hideous malformed quasi-abortion of democracy
Stabilisation mechanism
Also the Let's fuck off to the Ivy League card is getting a bit less playable for UK whiteys unless ( and I don't know) woke quotas do not apply to overseas students?
To reduce the scale of the inflation, the exam boards tried to moderate each school/college's results for each subject based on what the candidates got at GCSE and how the school had done at A Level recently. (Becuase, despite what others might tell you, attainment on entry affects results a lot more than anything the school does.)
Trouble was, that only worked for institutions with fairly large cohorts. Everyone recognised that if there are only 2 or 3 candidates at a school doing a subject, you can't apply statistics without massive unfairness. So those results were largely waved through.
Colleges have big cohorts- that's their point. Indy schools often have tiny cohorts. 11-18 schools are somewhere in between (those middle four blocks aren't that much different to each other).
I don't know what it tells us about morality vs. opportunity, but the practical effect was a bad one.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wi5SJKI6RpU
Which I approve.
Fuck this shit I’m off to Tuscany
Hmm, not entirely unappealing
https://en-gb.facebook.com/BBCQuestionTime/videos/one-of-tonights-bbcqt-panellists-comes-with-some-pedigree-conservatives-mp-kwasi/1420615914618796/