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).
OK I left out the word income. In that article it suggests that the top 10% per cent probably pay not far short of 30% of all the indirect taxes as well as the direct ones.
But hey, nitpick. Its better than trying to counter my argument, right?
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).
OK I left out the word income. In that article it suggests that the top 10% per cent probably pay not far short of 30% of all the indirect taxes as well as the direct ones.
But hey, nitpick. Its better than trying to counter my argument, right?
But your argument is, what, that it is morally acceptable for private schools to cheat in order to rectify a perceived bias against them?
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.
I'm with Rajan all the way. He is very good and I suspect will be an excellent host of UC. Paxman but without the condescension.
Still, Rajan is going to resign his BBC Media Editor role later in the year. Paddy O'Connell is surely a shoo-in.
I am sure a couple of posters can put you right on exactly what wokery means in the 2020s. All I know it is very big and very bad.
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.
"Things that annoy me" is a splendid descriptor, much more flexible and meaningful than labels like "woke". Stick to it.
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.
I thought they were forced to get rid of the moderation, after the algorithm that applied it was revealed to have been written by Gavin Williamson?
The final grades for 2020, and the grades for 2021 (which is presumably the starting point for the graphic), were then based solely on teacher assessment. So, the extent to which grades have declined this year is largely a reflection on how optimistic different cohorts of teachers were last year.
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 told him I voted because sovereignty and democracy. And he sat there fuming because: there isn’t any comeback to that..."
is @Leon's safe space. I would hate to wrench him out of it.
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.
...I am sure a couple of posters can put you right on exactly what wokery means in the 2020s. All I know it is very big and very bad.
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.
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.
Nationalisation of the middleman sector is only a couple of billion though as everyone has pointed out. The expensive bit is the subsequent subsidy, but we did it for banks and since we're moving to a renewable/nuclear mix it's not err structural...
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).
OK I left out the word income. In that article it suggests that the top 10% per cent probably pay not far short of 30% of all the indirect taxes as well as the direct ones.
But hey, nitpick. Its better than trying to counter my argument, right?
The top 10% paying 30% sounds quite fair and not extreme at all. The top 1% paying 30% would be a very different scenario. It is not nit picking.
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 told him I voted because sovereignty and democracy. And he sat there fuming because: there isn’t any comeback to that..."
is @Leon's safe space. I would hate to wrench him out of it.
It’s an interesting conclusion for Leon because it’s an admission there is certainly no - and never was - any case on the grounds of economics, social services, geopolitics, or even - it now seems - on immigration.
In my opinion, Brexit will succeed if it is understood as a project of democratic renewal. If not, it will come to be framed as a great betrayal.
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).
OK I left out the word income. In that article it suggests that the top 10% per cent probably pay not far short of 30% of all the indirect taxes as well as the direct ones.
But hey, nitpick. Its better than trying to counter my argument, right?
The top 10% paying 30% sounds quite fair and not extreme at all. The top 1% paying 30% would be a very different scenario. It is not nit picking.
A more interesting question is what the top 10% and 1% of wealth holders are paying in taxes. In many cases it will be literally nothing.
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).
OK I left out the word income. In that article it suggests that the top 10% per cent probably pay not far short of 30% of all the indirect taxes as well as the direct ones.
But hey, nitpick. Its better than trying to counter my argument, right?
But your argument is, what, that it is morally acceptable for private schools to cheat in order to rectify a perceived bias against them?
Isn't it simply that private schools with more affluent pupils and better resources did better than state schools in lockdown, so the estimated grades benefited them more?
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).
OK I left out the word income. In that article it suggests that the top 10% per cent probably pay not far short of 30% of all the indirect taxes as well as the direct ones.
But hey, nitpick. Its better than trying to counter my argument, right?
The top 10% paying 30% sounds quite fair and not extreme at all. The top 1% paying 30% would be a very different scenario. It is not nit picking.
A more interesting question is what the top 10% and 1% of wealth holders are paying in taxes. In many cases it will be literally nothing.
Pretty unlikely literally. But far from enough for sure.
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 told him I voted because sovereignty and democracy. And he sat there fuming because: there isn’t any comeback to that..."
is @Leon's safe space. I would hate to wrench him out of it.
It’s an interesting conclusion for Leon because it’s an admission there is certainly no - and never was - any case on the grounds of economics, social services, geopolitics, or even - it now seems - on immigration.
In my opinion, Brexit will succeed if it is understood as a project of democratic renewal. If not, it will come to be framed as a great betrayal.
“ Thirdly, there will be blood. Brexit is going to be painful, like childbirth. It just is. The Leave quacks who promised a brisk and blissful delivery don’t have enough diamorphine to dull the nerves. We might need epidurals from the Treasury. We will swear a lot, and not care. It might be rather embarrassing but again, we probably won’t care, because we’ll be concentrating on the pain. Other countries will look at us and think 'I’m never going through that'. Immediately after Brexit, we will likely appear reduced, saggy, wrinkled.
Then comes the depression. It’s unavoidable. Overnight, your horizons have shrunk to a nursery room, some cheap Lidl shiraz, and the sound of a fiendishly annoying plastic toy which sings 'Froggy goes a courting he did ride uh-huh' over and over again. The house is a mess, all the time, in every way. You haven’t slept properly for several economic quarters. And so, at one point you will stare at a bowl of mushed baby food, and then you’ll soulfully ask yourself: Why did I ever do this?
But lastly, cheer up. In the end, no matter how bad the depressions, or how annoying the nappies, very few people regret becoming a parent. It will be the same for Brexit. In ten years’ time we’ll look through the kitchen window of renewed prosperity, watch the laughing Remainers playing football with our smiling Brexit child, and we’ll quietly sip tea from a Union Jack mug, and we’ll think: best thing I ever 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...
@TOPPING regularly contradicts you on that odd claim.
"I told him I voted because sovereignty and democracy. And he sat there fuming because: there isn’t any comeback to that..."
is @Leon's safe space. I would hate to wrench him out of it.
It’s an interesting conclusion for Leon because it’s an admission there is certain - and never was - any case on the grounds of economics, social services, geopolitics, or even - it now seems - on immigration.
In my opinion, Brexit will succeed if it is understood as a project of democratic renewal. If not, it will come to be framed as a great betrayal.
I don't mind there being no other reason for an action save its democratic import. The problem that Leavers such as @Leon face is that they cannot define it and hence, like UFOs, god and Santa, they can always say "no we weren't".
Rishi would not be able to offer to cut VAT on home energy supplies if we were still in the EU. It is a major policy tool and one that would not have been possible within the EU. But we as a sovereign democratic nation decided to be part of an organisation wherein it was not possible and then decided to leave that organisation so it was possible. To say that while we were in, of our own volition and with a democratic mandate, we were not sovereign is to misunderstand democracy and global relations today.
But as I said, it is @Leon's comfort blanket and I don't expect him to argue the toss.
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 told him I voted because sovereignty and democracy. And he sat there fuming because: there isn’t any comeback to that..."
is @Leon's safe space. I would hate to wrench him out of it.
It’s an interesting conclusion for Leon because it’s an admission there is certainly no - and never was - any case on the grounds of economics, social services, geopolitics, or even - it now seems - on immigration.
In my opinion, Brexit will succeed if it is understood as a project of democratic renewal. If not, it will come to be framed as a great betrayal.
And since 2016 do the British people feel more enfranchisement? I don't think so, just the same oligarchs fleecing us and featherbedding their cronies.
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.
Yes, and to similarly laughable effect
No more laughable than your claims about Brexit. 'Pregnancy', etc.
Fact is that the sane among us have agreed to disagree. You're still at war.
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."
On occasions both parties used Brussels as cover as a way to do unpopular anti-civil liberties things, on the basis that Brussels Insists. IIRC there were some things wrapped up in the European Arrest Warrant, for example.
On the above, that's just a bog standard (sorry) slur from Alex Taylor.
Compare things that aren't comparable, as long as they give you a reason for a pop at the UK multiple times a day. Never mention anything that the UK did to achieve desirable objectives. Never mention when the same thing is happening in EU countries, if it points up the reality. What a waste of a life.
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
There is a lot other than that that we can do. We have capacity to incinerate 71% of our residual waste at present. Germany has capacity for 91%. Netherlands it's 120% and Sweden it's 160%. These countries import others' waste to burn. The alternative for residual waste is landfill (where the carbon will leach out of it eventually), or exporting it. That remaining 30% could be a vast boost to power generation. Let's fast track all incinerator schemes, and revisit cancelled ones.
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).
OK I left out the word income. In that article it suggests that the top 10% per cent probably pay not far short of 30% of all the indirect taxes as well as the direct ones.
But hey, nitpick. Its better than trying to counter my argument, right?
Your argument appears to be we should bias educational achievement to the benefit of the rich in case they stop paying taxes here…? I don’t think that’s going to be an electorally popular position.
The reason the top 10% pay that much of the total tax base is because of wealth inequality. If we had an economy that more fairly distributed wealth, this would be less of an issue. I support moves to decrease inequality.
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 told him I voted because sovereignty and democracy. And he sat there fuming because: there isn’t any comeback to that..."
is @Leon's safe space. I would hate to wrench him out of it.
It’s an interesting conclusion for Leon because it’s an admission there is certainly no - and never was - any case on the grounds of economics, social services, geopolitics, or even - it now seems - on immigration.
In my opinion, Brexit will succeed if it is understood as a project of democratic renewal. If not, it will come to be framed as a great betrayal.
“ Thirdly, there will be blood. Brexit is going to be painful, like childbirth. It just is. The Leave quacks who promised a brisk and blissful delivery don’t have enough diamorphine to dull the nerves. We might need epidurals from the Treasury. We will swear a lot, and not care. It might be rather embarrassing but again, we probably won’t care, because we’ll be concentrating on the pain. Other countries will look at us and think 'I’m never going through that'. Immediately after Brexit, we will likely appear reduced, saggy, wrinkled.
Then comes the depression. It’s unavoidable. Overnight, your horizons have shrunk to a nursery room, some cheap Lidl shiraz, and the sound of a fiendishly annoying plastic toy which sings 'Froggy goes a courting he did ride uh-huh' over and over again. The house is a mess, all the time, in every way. You haven’t slept properly for several economic quarters. And so, at one point you will stare at a bowl of mushed baby food, and then you’ll soulfully ask yourself: Why did I ever do this?
But lastly, cheer up. In the end, no matter how bad the depressions, or how annoying the nappies, very few people regret becoming a parent. It will be the same for Brexit. In ten years’ time we’ll look through the kitchen window of renewed prosperity, watch the laughing Remainers playing football with our smiling Brexit child, and we’ll quietly sip tea from a Union Jack mug, and we’ll think: best thing I ever 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.
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."
On occasions both parties used Brussels as cover as a way to do unpopular anti-civil liberties things, on the basis that Brussels Insists. IIRC there were some things wrapped up in the European Arrest Warrant, for example.
On the above, that's just a bog standard (sorry) slur from Alex Taylor.
Compare things that aren't comparable, as long as they give you a reason for a pop at the UK multiple times a day. Never mention anything that the UK did to achieve desirable objectives. Never mention when the same thing is happening in EU countries, if it points up the reality. What a waste of a life.
He’s a strange cove. He must be a Remainery Brit in the EU I suspect? He does spend an awful lot of time hating on Britain. It is quite sad
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).
OK I left out the word income. In that article it suggests that the top 10% per cent probably pay not far short of 30% of all the indirect taxes as well as the direct ones.
But hey, nitpick. Its better than trying to counter my argument, right?
But your argument is, what, that it is morally acceptable for private schools to cheat in order to rectify a perceived bias against them?
Isn't it simply that private schools with more affluent pupils and better resources did better than state schools in lockdown, so the estimated grades benefited them more?
It is difficult to tease apart that effect from the alternate explanation, that private schools were worse at estimating grades.
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 told him I voted because sovereignty and democracy. And he sat there fuming because: there isn’t any comeback to that..."
is @Leon's safe space. I would hate to wrench him out of it.
It’s an interesting conclusion for Leon because it’s an admission there is certainly no - and never was - any case on the grounds of economics, social services, geopolitics, or even - it now seems - on immigration.
In my opinion, Brexit will succeed if it is understood as a project of democratic renewal. If not, it will come to be framed as a great betrayal.
“ Thirdly, there will be blood. Brexit is going to be painful, like childbirth. It just is. The Leave quacks who promised a brisk and blissful delivery don’t have enough diamorphine to dull the nerves. We might need epidurals from the Treasury. We will swear a lot, and not care. It might be rather embarrassing but again, we probably won’t care, because we’ll be concentrating on the pain. Other countries will look at us and think 'I’m never going through that'. Immediately after Brexit, we will likely appear reduced, saggy, wrinkled.
Then comes the depression. It’s unavoidable. Overnight, your horizons have shrunk to a nursery room, some cheap Lidl shiraz, and the sound of a fiendishly annoying plastic toy which sings 'Froggy goes a courting he did ride uh-huh' over and over again. The house is a mess, all the time, in every way. You haven’t slept properly for several economic quarters. And so, at one point you will stare at a bowl of mushed baby food, and then you’ll soulfully ask yourself: Why did I ever do this?
But lastly, cheer up. In the end, no matter how bad the depressions, or how annoying the nappies, very few people regret becoming a parent. It will be the same for Brexit. In ten years’ time we’ll look through the kitchen window of renewed prosperity, watch the laughing Remainers playing football with our smiling Brexit child, and we’ll quietly sip tea from a Union Jack mug, and we’ll think: best thing I ever 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...
@TOPPING regularly contradicts you on that odd claim.
"I told him I voted because sovereignty and democracy. And he sat there fuming because: there isn’t any comeback to that..."
is @Leon's safe space. I would hate to wrench him out of it.
Don't worry, there's very little danger of your Shrodinger's Brexit argument shifting anyone's existing views on the matter, however frequently it gets the fresh air on it.
Plus - is *that* really what the likes of @Leon have really been blathering on about as though the rumour and video was of BoJo snorting coke off the bare bottom of Vladimir Putin?
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 told him I voted because sovereignty and democracy. And he sat there fuming because: there isn’t any comeback to that..."
is @Leon's safe space. I would hate to wrench him out of it.
It’s an interesting conclusion for Leon because it’s an admission there is certainly no - and never was - any case on the grounds of economics, social services, geopolitics, or even - it now seems - on immigration.
In my opinion, Brexit will succeed if it is understood as a project of democratic renewal. If not, it will come to be framed as a great betrayal.
“ Thirdly, there will be blood. Brexit is going to be painful, like childbirth. It just is. The Leave quacks who promised a brisk and blissful delivery don’t have enough diamorphine to dull the nerves. We might need epidurals from the Treasury. We will swear a lot, and not care. It might be rather embarrassing but again, we probably won’t care, because we’ll be concentrating on the pain. Other countries will look at us and think 'I’m never going through that'. Immediately after Brexit, we will likely appear reduced, saggy, wrinkled.
Then comes the depression. It’s unavoidable. Overnight, your horizons have shrunk to a nursery room, some cheap Lidl shiraz, and the sound of a fiendishly annoying plastic toy which sings 'Froggy goes a courting he did ride uh-huh' over and over again. The house is a mess, all the time, in every way. You haven’t slept properly for several economic quarters. And so, at one point you will stare at a bowl of mushed baby food, and then you’ll soulfully ask yourself: Why did I ever do this?
But lastly, cheer up. In the end, no matter how bad the depressions, or how annoying the nappies, very few people regret becoming a parent. It will be the same for Brexit. In ten years’ time we’ll look through the kitchen window of renewed prosperity, watch the laughing Remainers playing football with our smiling Brexit child, and we’ll quietly sip tea from a Union Jack mug, and we’ll think: best thing I ever did.”
So with the English batsmen (Pope excepted) having totally forgotten how to bat on a pitch that seams and swings a bit, it seems that our bowlers have totally forgotten how to bowl on such a pitch as well... South Africa to be ahead by tea for only 1 wicket?
I found the story from months back about her going clubbing and forgetting to take along a phone more incredible - young and fun though she may be, she is PM and should have been contactable! Plus who doesn't keep their phone on them, honestly.
I do wonder if she really is super cool though, or simply more normal seeming than many other young politicians, who we tend to expect to be a bit, er, Rees-Moggy to rise high so young.
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 told him I voted because sovereignty and democracy. And he sat there fuming because: there isn’t any comeback to that..."
is @Leon's safe space. I would hate to wrench him out of it.
It’s an interesting conclusion for Leon because it’s an admission there is certainly no - and never was - any case on the grounds of economics, social services, geopolitics, or even - it now seems - on immigration.
In my opinion, Brexit will succeed if it is understood as a project of democratic renewal. If not, it will come to be framed as a great betrayal.
“ Thirdly, there will be blood. Brexit is going to be painful, like childbirth. It just is. The Leave quacks who promised a brisk and blissful delivery don’t have enough diamorphine to dull the nerves. We might need epidurals from the Treasury. We will swear a lot, and not care. It might be rather embarrassing but again, we probably won’t care, because we’ll be concentrating on the pain. Other countries will look at us and think 'I’m never going through that'. Immediately after Brexit, we will likely appear reduced, saggy, wrinkled.
Then comes the depression. It’s unavoidable. Overnight, your horizons have shrunk to a nursery room, some cheap Lidl shiraz, and the sound of a fiendishly annoying plastic toy which sings 'Froggy goes a courting he did ride uh-huh' over and over again. The house is a mess, all the time, in every way. You haven’t slept properly for several economic quarters. And so, at one point you will stare at a bowl of mushed baby food, and then you’ll soulfully ask yourself: Why did I ever do this?
But lastly, cheer up. In the end, no matter how bad the depressions, or how annoying the nappies, very few people regret becoming a parent. It will be the same for Brexit. In ten years’ time we’ll look through the kitchen window of renewed prosperity, watch the laughing Remainers playing football with our smiling Brexit child, and we’ll quietly sip tea from a Union Jack mug, and we’ll think: best thing I ever did.”
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.
I found the story from months back about her going clubbing and forgetting to take along a phone more incredible - young and fun though she may be, she is PM and should have been contactable! Plus who doesn't keep their phone on them, honestly.
I do wonder if she really is super cool though, or simply more normal seeming than many other young politicians, who we tend to be a bit, er, Rees-Moggy to rise high so young.
I thought she had deliberately left her prime ministerial phone at home in order not to be contactable that night?
I found the story from months back about her going clubbing and forgetting to take along a phone more incredible - young and fun though she may be, she is PM and should have been contactable! Plus who doesn't keep their phone on them, honestly.
I do wonder if she really is super cool though, or simply more normal seeming than many other young politicians...
It is, let's face it, a less unattractive spectacle than Michael Gove in vaguely comparable circumstances. ...dancing exuberantly.... *shudders*
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.
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.
I thought they were forced to get rid of the moderation, after the algorithm that applied it was revealed to have been written by Gavin Williamson?
The final grades for 2020, and the grades for 2021 (which is presumably the starting point for the graphic), were then based solely on teacher assessment. So, the extent to which grades have declined this year is largely a reflection on how optimistic different cohorts of teachers were last year.
The original plan was to feed those school grades plus secret sauce into another process and award what came out of that.
However, I believe there had been some QA of the teacher grades, except that only really worked in colleges.
I don’t have a sub, but I’ve seen the video. Has it been confirmed there were drugs in the actual video?
It’s not sensible to confirm or deny such a thing on a public forum I would say.
The missing piece of the Telegraph / BBC story is the apparent link to a British cabinet member
Don’t be silly. There’s no secrecy to the story about the Finnish PM, indeed she has had to come out and deny the use of drugs.
My question is simply whether there are drugs present in the video, there were some freeze frames on Twitter but not from reliable sources.
Dunno but from the story
"In the leaked video footage, unidentified people are heard shouting about "flour", which is a slang term for cocaine in Finland."
I suggest aspiring politicians should take courses on how to maintain illegal drug use discreetly if they should be elected. No sense ruining a promising career.
I found the story from months back about her going clubbing and forgetting to take along a phone more incredible - young and fun though she may be, she is PM and should have been contactable! Plus who doesn't keep their phone on them, honestly.
I do wonder if she really is super cool though, or simply more normal seeming than many other young politicians, who we tend to be a bit, er, Rees-Moggy to rise high so young.
I thought she had deliberately left her prime ministerial phone at home in order not to be contactable that night?
Her position on NATO and Russia suggest she is “making all the big calls correctly”.
It would to hear from Finns whether she is actually up to snuff, or whether - like Jacinda Ardern - she is a PR puff-piece masquerading as a politician.
https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/3605889-who-is-mary-peltola-the-democrat-outperforming-expectations-in-alaska/ ...Palin responded to Tuesday’s results by lambasting the new ranked-choice system, calling it “crazy,” “convoluted” and “undesirable.” “Voters are confused and angry, and feel disenfranchised by this cockamamie system that makes it impossible to trust that your vote will even be counted the way you intended. We’ll keep fighting to equip Alaskans with the information they need to make sure their voices are heard amidst this Leftist-crafted system – no matter how hard the corrupt political establishment works to silence us,” Palin said in a statement. ...
So with the English batsmen (Pope excepted) having totally forgotten how to bat on a pitch that seams and swings a bit, it seems that our bowlers have totally forgotten how to bowl on such a pitch as well... South Africa to be ahead by tea for only 1 wicket?
I found the story from months back about her going clubbing and forgetting to take along a phone more incredible - young and fun though she may be, she is PM and should have been contactable! Plus who doesn't keep their phone on them, honestly.
I do wonder if she really is super cool though, or simply more normal seeming than many other young politicians, who we tend to be a bit, er, Rees-Moggy to rise high so young.
I thought she had deliberately left her prime ministerial phone at home in order not to be contactable that night?
Even worse! Thank god Russia didn't choose that night I suppose.
I found the story from months back about her going clubbing and forgetting to take along a phone more incredible - young and fun though she may be, she is PM and should have been contactable! Plus who doesn't keep their phone on them, honestly.
I do wonder if she really is super cool though, or simply more normal seeming than many other young politicians...
It is, let's face it, a less unattractive spectacle than Michael Gove in vaguely comparable circumstances. ...dancing exuberantly.... *shudders*
Now now, we must treat all equally and make no value judgements. If a 30 something PM and a 50 something Cabinet Member each want to shake it on the dance floor, we must celebrate both.
So with the English batsmen (Pope excepted) having totally forgotten how to bat on a pitch that seams and swings a bit, it seems that our bowlers have totally forgotten how to bowl on such a pitch as well... South Africa to be ahead by tea for only 1 wicket?
Look, in order to wow everyone with heroic second innings performances it is necessary to completely mess up the first innings, this is just part of the new narrative approach.
Phatboi seems to have gone to Finland in May which is about right for the party. Truss not, and I can only see this as even vaguely interesting if she or Sunak had been there.
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.
That's a valid, and interesting point.
The increase in fuel prices from Dec 20 to Dec 21 was £1.20 to £1.50 per litre (ie 25%), and a further increase of £1.50 to £2.00 between Jane 22 and Jun 22 (ie 33%). https://heycar.co.uk/blog/latest-fuel-prices
So how much will that boost a) living cost, and b) the inflation rate?
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 told him I voted because sovereignty and democracy. And he sat there fuming because: there isn’t any comeback to that..."
is @Leon's safe space. I would hate to wrench him out of it.
It’s an interesting conclusion for Leon because it’s an admission there is certainly no - and never was - any case on the grounds of economics, social services, geopolitics, or even - it now seems - on immigration.
In my opinion, Brexit will succeed if it is understood as a project of democratic renewal. If not, it will come to be framed as a great betrayal.
Can you have a programme not democratic renewal when the demos are saying "hmm, we're not sure about this, and keep that thing away from me, we're not having another baby"?
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 told him I voted because sovereignty and democracy. And he sat there fuming because: there isn’t any comeback to that..."
is @Leon's safe space. I would hate to wrench him out of it.
It’s an interesting conclusion for Leon because it’s an admission there is certainly no - and never was - any case on the grounds of economics, social services, geopolitics, or even - it now seems - on immigration.
In my opinion, Brexit will succeed if it is understood as a project of democratic renewal. If not, it will come to be framed as a great betrayal.
“ Thirdly, there will be blood. Brexit is going to be painful, like childbirth. It just is. The Leave quacks who promised a brisk and blissful delivery don’t have enough diamorphine to dull the nerves. We might need epidurals from the Treasury. We will swear a lot, and not care. It might be rather embarrassing but again, we probably won’t care, because we’ll be concentrating on the pain. Other countries will look at us and think 'I’m never going through that'. Immediately after Brexit, we will likely appear reduced, saggy, wrinkled.
Then comes the depression. It’s unavoidable. Overnight, your horizons have shrunk to a nursery room, some cheap Lidl shiraz, and the sound of a fiendishly annoying plastic toy which sings 'Froggy goes a courting he did ride uh-huh' over and over again. The house is a mess, all the time, in every way. You haven’t slept properly for several economic quarters. And so, at one point you will stare at a bowl of mushed baby food, and then you’ll soulfully ask yourself: Why did I ever do this?
But lastly, cheer up. In the end, no matter how bad the depressions, or how annoying the nappies, very few people regret becoming a parent. It will be the same for Brexit. In ten years’ time we’ll look through the kitchen window of renewed prosperity, watch the laughing Remainers playing football with our smiling Brexit child, and we’ll quietly sip tea from a Union Jack mug, and we’ll think: best thing I ever 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...
@TOPPING regularly contradicts you on that odd claim.
"I told him I voted because sovereignty and democracy. And he sat there fuming because: there isn’t any comeback to that..."
is @Leon's safe space. I would hate to wrench him out of it.
It’s an interesting conclusion for Leon because it’s an admission there is certainly no - and never was - any case on the grounds of economics, social services, geopolitics, or even - it now seems - on immigration.
In my opinion, Brexit will succeed if it is understood as a project of democratic renewal. If not, it will come to be framed as a great betrayal.
“ Thirdly, there will be blood. Brexit is going to be painful, like childbirth. It just is. The Leave quacks who promised a brisk and blissful delivery don’t have enough diamorphine to dull the nerves. We might need epidurals from the Treasury. We will swear a lot, and not care. It might be rather embarrassing but again, we probably won’t care, because we’ll be concentrating on the pain. Other countries will look at us and think 'I’m never going through that'. Immediately after Brexit, we will likely appear reduced, saggy, wrinkled.
Then comes the depression. It’s unavoidable. Overnight, your horizons have shrunk to a nursery room, some cheap Lidl shiraz, and the sound of a fiendishly annoying plastic toy which sings 'Froggy goes a courting he did ride uh-huh' over and over again. The house is a mess, all the time, in every way. You haven’t slept properly for several economic quarters. And so, at one point you will stare at a bowl of mushed baby food, and then you’ll soulfully ask yourself: Why did I ever do this?
But lastly, cheer up. In the end, no matter how bad the depressions, or how annoying the nappies, very few people regret becoming a parent. It will be the same for Brexit. In ten years’ time we’ll look through the kitchen window of renewed prosperity, watch the laughing Remainers playing football with our smiling Brexit child, and we’ll quietly sip tea from a Union Jack mug, and we’ll think: best thing I ever did.”
The leaking of this Finland video seems like great news to me. Shows just how desperate Vlad is getting, with the war now coming to Russian occupied Crimea.
Not much of a scandal though is it, the grave tones others talked in indicate this is only a small part of the story.
So with the English batsmen (Pope excepted) having totally forgotten how to bat on a pitch that seams and swings a bit, it seems that our bowlers have totally forgotten how to bowl on such a pitch as well... South Africa to be ahead by tea for only 1 wicket?
Do you think we'll get a wicket?
Good chance that boredom will strike at some point, surely?
The leaking of this Finland video seems like great news to me. Shows just how desperate Vlad is getting, with the war now coming to Russian occupied Crimea.
Not much of a scandal though is it, the grave tones others talked in indicate this is only a small part of the story.
It's pathetic. Even good quality footage of her and Boris doing lines would be pretty meh, because he's gone anyway and who gets excited about a change of Finnish PM?
I found the story from months back about her going clubbing and forgetting to take along a phone more incredible - young and fun though she may be, she is PM and should have been contactable! Plus who doesn't keep their phone on them, honestly.
I do wonder if she really is super cool though, or simply more normal seeming than many other young politicians, who we tend to be a bit, er, Rees-Moggy to rise high so young.
I thought she had deliberately left her prime ministerial phone at home in order not to be contactable that night?
Even worse! Thank god Russia didn't choose that night I suppose.
I found the story from months back about her going clubbing and forgetting to take along a phone more incredible - young and fun though she may be, she is PM and should have been contactable! Plus who doesn't keep their phone on them, honestly.
I do wonder if she really is super cool though, or simply more normal seeming than many other young politicians...
It is, let's face it, a less unattractive spectacle than Michael Gove in vaguely comparable circumstances. ...dancing exuberantly.... *shudders*
Now now, we must treat all equally and make no value judgements. If a 30 something PM and a 50 something Cabinet Member each want to shake it on the dance floor, we must celebrate both.
Agreed on the ethics, not so much on the aesthetics.
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."
On occasions both parties used Brussels as cover as a way to do unpopular anti-civil liberties things, on the basis that Brussels Insists. IIRC there were some things wrapped up in the European Arrest Warrant, for example.
On the above, that's just a bog standard (sorry) slur from Alex Taylor.
Compare things that aren't comparable, as long as they give you a reason for a pop at the UK multiple times a day. Never mention anything that the UK did to achieve desirable objectives. Never mention when the same thing is happening in EU countries, if it points up the reality. What a waste of a life.
He’s a strange cove. He must be a Remainery Brit in the EU I suspect? He does spend an awful lot of time hating on Britain. It is quite sad
Sort of ex-Brit media-politics overlap figure revolving around EU-France. Presenting, moderating conferences, newspaper reviews - that sort of thing.
Alex Taylor @AlexTaylorNews French TV's Mr Europe 30 yrs Host international events (+1 500) Write books on languages Teach journalism at Sorbonne
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.
Did you spot me?
Are you above the g and the a in the white top ?
No but good guess - that could well have been me. I'm sat down and more to the left. Legs crossed, anorak, baseball cap, gazing in the opposite direction, thinking about going to the bar, all alone, my wife having left me momentarily.
I don’t have a sub, but I’ve seen the video. Has it been confirmed there were drugs in the actual video?
It’s not sensible to confirm or deny such a thing on a public forum I would say.
The missing piece of the Telegraph / BBC story is the apparent link to a British cabinet member
Don’t be silly. There’s no secrecy to the story about the Finnish PM, indeed she has had to come out and deny the use of drugs.
My question is simply whether there are drugs present in the video, there were some freeze frames on Twitter but not from reliable sources.
Dunno but from the story
"In the leaked video footage, unidentified people are heard shouting about "flour", which is a slang term for cocaine in Finland."
I suggest aspiring politicians should take courses on how to maintain illegal drug use discreetly if they should be elected. No sense ruining a promising career.
Trouble is if you had to give a one word answer to Cocaine makes you more..., indiscreet would be a strong contender
Plus - is *that* really what the likes of @Leon have really been blathering on about as though the rumour and video was of BoJo snorting coke off the bare bottom of Vladimir Putin?
JFC.
No, this here vid is not THE FINLAND RUMOUR come to life. I can tell you that
So with the English batsmen (Pope excepted) having totally forgotten how to bat on a pitch that seams and swings a bit, it seems that our bowlers have totally forgotten how to bowl on such a pitch as well... South Africa to be ahead by tea for only 1 wicket?
Do you think we'll get a wicket?
Good chance that boredom will strike at some point, surely?
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 told him I voted because sovereignty and democracy. And he sat there fuming because: there isn’t any comeback to that..."
is @Leon's safe space. I would hate to wrench him out of it.
It’s an interesting conclusion for Leon because it’s an admission there is certainly no - and never was - any case on the grounds of economics, social services, geopolitics, or even - it now seems - on immigration.
In my opinion, Brexit will succeed if it is understood as a project of democratic renewal. If not, it will come to be framed as a great betrayal.
“ Thirdly, there will be blood. Brexit is going to be painful, like childbirth. It just is. The Leave quacks who promised a brisk and blissful delivery don’t have enough diamorphine to dull the nerves. We might need epidurals from the Treasury. We will swear a lot, and not care. It might be rather embarrassing but again, we probably won’t care, because we’ll be concentrating on the pain. Other countries will look at us and think 'I’m never going through that'. Immediately after Brexit, we will likely appear reduced, saggy, wrinkled.
Then comes the depression. It’s unavoidable. Overnight, your horizons have shrunk to a nursery room, some cheap Lidl shiraz, and the sound of a fiendishly annoying plastic toy which sings 'Froggy goes a courting he did ride uh-huh' over and over again. The house is a mess, all the time, in every way. You haven’t slept properly for several economic quarters. And so, at one point you will stare at a bowl of mushed baby food, and then you’ll soulfully ask yourself: Why did I ever do this?
But lastly, cheer up. In the end, no matter how bad the depressions, or how annoying the nappies, very few people regret becoming a parent. It will be the same for Brexit. In ten years’ time we’ll look through the kitchen window of renewed prosperity, watch the laughing Remainers playing football with our smiling Brexit child, and we’ll quietly sip tea from a Union Jack mug, and we’ll think: best thing I ever did.”
Plus - is *that* really what the likes of @Leon have really been blathering on about as though the rumour and video was of BoJo snorting coke off the bare bottom of Vladimir Putin?
JFC.
No, this here vid is not THE FINLAND RUMOUR come to life. I can tell you that
Finland rumour, Santa, aliens, god, the Tooth Fairy...it is all getting a bit much to believe tbh.
UNLESS YOU TELL US WHAT YOU THINK THE FINLAND RUMOUR IS.
It cannot be claimed that the people of Belfast awaited with bated breath the arrival of Truss and Sunak, the two squabbling representatives of what is now less a political party than a trade union for affluent pensioners in southeast England.
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 told him I voted because sovereignty and democracy. And he sat there fuming because: there isn’t any comeback to that..."
is @Leon's safe space. I would hate to wrench him out of it.
It’s an interesting conclusion for Leon because it’s an admission there is certainly no - and never was - any case on the grounds of economics, social services, geopolitics, or even - it now seems - on immigration.
In my opinion, Brexit will succeed if it is understood as a project of democratic renewal. If not, it will come to be framed as a great betrayal.
“ Thirdly, there will be blood. Brexit is going to be painful, like childbirth. It just is. The Leave quacks who promised a brisk and blissful delivery don’t have enough diamorphine to dull the nerves. We might need epidurals from the Treasury. We will swear a lot, and not care. It might be rather embarrassing but again, we probably won’t care, because we’ll be concentrating on the pain. Other countries will look at us and think 'I’m never going through that'. Immediately after Brexit, we will likely appear reduced, saggy, wrinkled.
Then comes the depression. It’s unavoidable. Overnight, your horizons have shrunk to a nursery room, some cheap Lidl shiraz, and the sound of a fiendishly annoying plastic toy which sings 'Froggy goes a courting he did ride uh-huh' over and over again. The house is a mess, all the time, in every way. You haven’t slept properly for several economic quarters. And so, at one point you will stare at a bowl of mushed baby food, and then you’ll soulfully ask yourself: Why did I ever do this?
But lastly, cheer up. In the end, no matter how bad the depressions, or how annoying the nappies, very few people regret becoming a parent. It will be the same for Brexit. In ten years’ time we’ll look through the kitchen window of renewed prosperity, watch the laughing Remainers playing football with our smiling Brexit child, and we’ll quietly sip tea from a Union Jack mug, and we’ll think: best thing I ever did.”
The analogy works perfectly as long as the mother in question is Mia Farrow in Rosemary's Baby.
It's where the metaphor breaks down, very few parents regret their newborn like Brits regret Brexit.
But it does reveal the mad intensity of the would-be grandparent, desperate for offspring because they won't be the ones changing the nappies.
Lots of parents regret having a baby when, right from the beginning, the father never wanted it. That's just part of the genius that is @SeanT's analogy
I hate praising him, because - apart from anything else - he was a smug git, but he genuinely nailed it there
Read the piece. Marvel at the brilliance. The Remainers are a father who gave the Leavers a pity fuck - that's David Cameron granting a referendum - AKA a one night stand with the plebs. Then life goes back to normal, or so the suave Lothario assumed
Instead, she got pregnant and said "I'm keeping it" and "you'll have to pay for it"
Cue the incendiary outrage, and the angry questions to the Tory leadership - you said she was on The Pill! Then came the attempt to induce a dangerous late stage abortion by forcing gin on the expectant mother and pushing her downstairs - that's the attempted 2nd referendum
Nonetheless, the baby was born. In the analogy it's now about 18 months old, squirting poo on @Scott_xP and @foxy, who have fervent daydreams about smothering it
But the mother? After sleepless months of listening to the baby yowling and @foxy and @topping calling her a stupid slut, she's definitely had her doubts. But then she looks at the baby. And smiles
Plus - is *that* really what the likes of @Leon have really been blathering on about as though the rumour and video was of BoJo snorting coke off the bare bottom of Vladimir Putin?
JFC.
No, this here vid is not THE FINLAND RUMOUR come to life. I can tell you that
Finland rumour, Santa, aliens, god, the Tooth Fairy...it is all getting a bit much to believe tbh.
UNLESS YOU TELL US WHAT YOU THINK THE FINLAND RUMOUR IS.
That is.
Ahahahaha
You'll just have to suffer the eternal torment of knowing that I KNOW THE FINLAND RUMOUR and I'm not telling you
Sorry
BTW I probably would tell you THE FINLAND RUMOUR but the person who told me expressly instructed me to stay shtoom, and there it is. He was adamant. ADAMANT
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 told him I voted because sovereignty and democracy. And he sat there fuming because: there isn’t any comeback to that..."
is @Leon's safe space. I would hate to wrench him out of it.
It’s an interesting conclusion for Leon because it’s an admission there is certainly no - and never was - any case on the grounds of economics, social services, geopolitics, or even - it now seems - on immigration.
In my opinion, Brexit will succeed if it is understood as a project of democratic renewal. If not, it will come to be framed as a great betrayal.
“ Thirdly, there will be blood. Brexit is going to be painful, like childbirth. It just is. The Leave quacks who promised a brisk and blissful delivery don’t have enough diamorphine to dull the nerves. We might need epidurals from the Treasury. We will swear a lot, and not care. It might be rather embarrassing but again, we probably won’t care, because we’ll be concentrating on the pain. Other countries will look at us and think 'I’m never going through that'. Immediately after Brexit, we will likely appear reduced, saggy, wrinkled.
Then comes the depression. It’s unavoidable. Overnight, your horizons have shrunk to a nursery room, some cheap Lidl shiraz, and the sound of a fiendishly annoying plastic toy which sings 'Froggy goes a courting he did ride uh-huh' over and over again. The house is a mess, all the time, in every way. You haven’t slept properly for several economic quarters. And so, at one point you will stare at a bowl of mushed baby food, and then you’ll soulfully ask yourself: Why did I ever do this?
But lastly, cheer up. In the end, no matter how bad the depressions, or how annoying the nappies, very few people regret becoming a parent. It will be the same for Brexit. In ten years’ time we’ll look through the kitchen window of renewed prosperity, watch the laughing Remainers playing football with our smiling Brexit child, and we’ll quietly sip tea from a Union Jack mug, and we’ll think: best thing I ever did.”
The analogy works perfectly as long as the mother in question is Mia Farrow in Rosemary's Baby.
It's where the metaphor breaks down, very few parents regret their newborn like Brits regret Brexit.
But it does reveal the mad intensity of the would-be grandparent, desperate for offspring because they won't be the ones changing the nappies.
Lots of parents regret having a baby when, right from the beginning, the father never wanted it. That's just part of the genius that is @SeanT's analogy
I hate praising him, because - apart from anything else - he was a smug git, but he genuinely nailed it there
Read the piece. Marvel at the brilliance. The Remainers are a father who gave the Leavers a pity fuck - that's David Cameron granting a referendum - AKA a one night stand with the plebs. Then life goes back to normal, or so the suave Lothario assumed
Instead, she got pregnant and said "I'm keeping it" and "you'll have to pay for it"
Cue the incendiary outrage, and the angry questions to the Tory leadership - you said she was on The Pill! Then came the attempt to induce a dangerous late stage abortion by forcing gin on the expectant mother and pushing her downstairs - that's the attempted 2nd referendum
Nonetheless, the baby was born. In the analogy it's now about 18 months old, squirting poo on @Scott_xP and @foxy, who have fervent daydreams about smothering it
But the mother? After sleepless months of listening to the baby yowling and @foxy and @topping calling her a stupid slut, she's definitely had her doubts. But then she looks at the baby. And smiles
Then there is the audience it was written for. There is no weak, grasping metaphor which suits their putrid world view, nor casual discriminatory slur that Spectator readers won't lap up.
The decoupling of the direction of the US and European economies seems rather pronounced.
Inadvertently or not, Biden seems to have played economic rope-a-dope with the Republican opposition. If US inflation has already peaked, and there's decent growth this quarter, November's elections could be very interesting.
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 told him I voted because sovereignty and democracy. And he sat there fuming because: there isn’t any comeback to that..."
is @Leon's safe space. I would hate to wrench him out of it.
It’s an interesting conclusion for Leon because it’s an admission there is certainly no - and never was - any case on the grounds of economics, social services, geopolitics, or even - it now seems - on immigration.
In my opinion, Brexit will succeed if it is understood as a project of democratic renewal. If not, it will come to be framed as a great betrayal.
“ Thirdly, there will be blood. Brexit is going to be painful, like childbirth. It just is. The Leave quacks who promised a brisk and blissful delivery don’t have enough diamorphine to dull the nerves. We might need epidurals from the Treasury. We will swear a lot, and not care. It might be rather embarrassing but again, we probably won’t care, because we’ll be concentrating on the pain. Other countries will look at us and think 'I’m never going through that'. Immediately after Brexit, we will likely appear reduced, saggy, wrinkled.
Then comes the depression. It’s unavoidable. Overnight, your horizons have shrunk to a nursery room, some cheap Lidl shiraz, and the sound of a fiendishly annoying plastic toy which sings 'Froggy goes a courting he did ride uh-huh' over and over again. The house is a mess, all the time, in every way. You haven’t slept properly for several economic quarters. And so, at one point you will stare at a bowl of mushed baby food, and then you’ll soulfully ask yourself: Why did I ever do this?
But lastly, cheer up. In the end, no matter how bad the depressions, or how annoying the nappies, very few people regret becoming a parent. It will be the same for Brexit. In ten years’ time we’ll look through the kitchen window of renewed prosperity, watch the laughing Remainers playing football with our smiling Brexit child, and we’ll quietly sip tea from a Union Jack mug, and we’ll think: best thing I ever did.”
The analogy works perfectly as long as the mother in question is Mia Farrow in Rosemary's Baby.
It's where the metaphor breaks down, very few parents regret their newborn like Brits regret Brexit.
But it does reveal the mad intensity of the would-be grandparent, desperate for offspring because they won't be the ones changing the nappies.
The main problem for me is that this 'baby' is like the lovechild of Giles Coren and Giles Coren. I put considerable effort into dodging his weekly "lol at woke" tripe in the Saturday Times so it's frustrating to stumble across a facsimile on here. Grrr.
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 told him I voted because sovereignty and democracy. And he sat there fuming because: there isn’t any comeback to that..."
is @Leon's safe space. I would hate to wrench him out of it.
It’s an interesting conclusion for Leon because it’s an admission there is certainly no - and never was - any case on the grounds of economics, social services, geopolitics, or even - it now seems - on immigration.
In my opinion, Brexit will succeed if it is understood as a project of democratic renewal. If not, it will come to be framed as a great betrayal.
“ Thirdly, there will be blood. Brexit is going to be painful, like childbirth. It just is. The Leave quacks who promised a brisk and blissful delivery don’t have enough diamorphine to dull the nerves. We might need epidurals from the Treasury. We will swear a lot, and not care. It might be rather embarrassing but again, we probably won’t care, because we’ll be concentrating on the pain. Other countries will look at us and think 'I’m never going through that'. Immediately after Brexit, we will likely appear reduced, saggy, wrinkled.
Then comes the depression. It’s unavoidable. Overnight, your horizons have shrunk to a nursery room, some cheap Lidl shiraz, and the sound of a fiendishly annoying plastic toy which sings 'Froggy goes a courting he did ride uh-huh' over and over again. The house is a mess, all the time, in every way. You haven’t slept properly for several economic quarters. And so, at one point you will stare at a bowl of mushed baby food, and then you’ll soulfully ask yourself: Why did I ever do this?
But lastly, cheer up. In the end, no matter how bad the depressions, or how annoying the nappies, very few people regret becoming a parent. It will be the same for Brexit. In ten years’ time we’ll look through the kitchen window of renewed prosperity, watch the laughing Remainers playing football with our smiling Brexit child, and we’ll quietly sip tea from a Union Jack mug, and we’ll think: best thing I ever did.”
The analogy works perfectly as long as the mother in question is Mia Farrow in Rosemary's Baby.
It's where the metaphor breaks down, very few parents regret their newborn like Brits regret Brexit.
But it does reveal the mad intensity of the would-be grandparent, desperate for offspring because they won't be the ones changing the nappies.
Lots of parents regret having a baby when, right from the beginning, the father never wanted it. That's just part of the genius that is @SeanT's analogy
I hate praising him, because - apart from anything else - he was a smug git, but he genuinely nailed it there
Read the piece. Marvel at the brilliance. The Remainers are a father who gave the Leavers a pity fuck - that's David Cameron granting a referendum - AKA a one night stand with the plebs. Then life goes back to normal, or so the suave Lothario assumed
Instead, she got pregnant and said "I'm keeping it" and "you'll have to pay for it"
Cue the incendiary outrage, and the angry questions to the Tory leadership - you said she was on The Pill! Then came the attempt to induce a dangerous late stage abortion by forcing gin on the expectant mother and pushing her downstairs - that's the attempted 2nd referendum
Nonetheless, the baby was born. In the analogy it's now about 18 months old, squirting poo on @Scott_xP and @foxy, who have fervent daydreams about smothering it
But the mother? After sleepless months of listening to the baby yowling and @foxy and @topping calling her a stupid slut, she's definitely had her doubts. But then she looks at the baby. And smiles
Then there is the audience it was written for. There is no weak, grasping metaphor which suits their putrid world view, nor casual discriminatory slur that Spectator readers won't lap up.
"Their putrid world view"
You do know I love to provoke this kind of futile anger, don't you? It's caviar to the general
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 told him I voted because sovereignty and democracy. And he sat there fuming because: there isn’t any comeback to that..."
is @Leon's safe space. I would hate to wrench him out of it.
It’s an interesting conclusion for Leon because it’s an admission there is certainly no - and never was - any case on the grounds of economics, social services, geopolitics, or even - it now seems - on immigration.
In my opinion, Brexit will succeed if it is understood as a project of democratic renewal. If not, it will come to be framed as a great betrayal.
“ Thirdly, there will be blood. Brexit is going to be painful, like childbirth. It just is. The Leave quacks who promised a brisk and blissful delivery don’t have enough diamorphine to dull the nerves. We might need epidurals from the Treasury. We will swear a lot, and not care. It might be rather embarrassing but again, we probably won’t care, because we’ll be concentrating on the pain. Other countries will look at us and think 'I’m never going through that'. Immediately after Brexit, we will likely appear reduced, saggy, wrinkled.
Then comes the depression. It’s unavoidable. Overnight, your horizons have shrunk to a nursery room, some cheap Lidl shiraz, and the sound of a fiendishly annoying plastic toy which sings 'Froggy goes a courting he did ride uh-huh' over and over again. The house is a mess, all the time, in every way. You haven’t slept properly for several economic quarters. And so, at one point you will stare at a bowl of mushed baby food, and then you’ll soulfully ask yourself: Why did I ever do this?
But lastly, cheer up. In the end, no matter how bad the depressions, or how annoying the nappies, very few people regret becoming a parent. It will be the same for Brexit. In ten years’ time we’ll look through the kitchen window of renewed prosperity, watch the laughing Remainers playing football with our smiling Brexit child, and we’ll quietly sip tea from a Union Jack mug, and we’ll think: best thing I ever 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...
@TOPPING regularly contradicts you on that odd claim.
"I told him I voted because sovereignty and democracy. And he sat there fuming because: there isn’t any comeback to that..."
is @Leon's safe space. I would hate to wrench him out of it.
It’s an interesting conclusion for Leon because it’s an admission there is certainly no - and never was - any case on the grounds of economics, social services, geopolitics, or even - it now seems - on immigration.
In my opinion, Brexit will succeed if it is understood as a project of democratic renewal. If not, it will come to be framed as a great betrayal.
“ Thirdly, there will be blood. Brexit is going to be painful, like childbirth. It just is. The Leave quacks who promised a brisk and blissful delivery don’t have enough diamorphine to dull the nerves. We might need epidurals from the Treasury. We will swear a lot, and not care. It might be rather embarrassing but again, we probably won’t care, because we’ll be concentrating on the pain. Other countries will look at us and think 'I’m never going through that'. Immediately after Brexit, we will likely appear reduced, saggy, wrinkled.
Then comes the depression. It’s unavoidable. Overnight, your horizons have shrunk to a nursery room, some cheap Lidl shiraz, and the sound of a fiendishly annoying plastic toy which sings 'Froggy goes a courting he did ride uh-huh' over and over again. The house is a mess, all the time, in every way. You haven’t slept properly for several economic quarters. And so, at one point you will stare at a bowl of mushed baby food, and then you’ll soulfully ask yourself: Why did I ever do this?
But lastly, cheer up. In the end, no matter how bad the depressions, or how annoying the nappies, very few people regret becoming a parent. It will be the same for Brexit. In ten years’ time we’ll look through the kitchen window of renewed prosperity, watch the laughing Remainers playing football with our smiling Brexit child, and we’ll quietly sip tea from a Union Jack mug, and we’ll think: best thing I ever did.”
The analogy works perfectly as long as the mother in question is Mia Farrow in Rosemary's Baby.
It's where the metaphor breaks down, very few parents regret their newborn like Brits regret Brexit.
But it does reveal the mad intensity of the would-be grandparent, desperate for offspring because they won't be the ones changing the nappies.
Lots of parents regret having a baby when, right from the beginning, the father never wanted it. That's just part of the genius that is @SeanT's analogy
I hate praising him, because - apart from anything else - he was a smug git, but he genuinely nailed it there
Read the piece. Marvel at the brilliance. The Remainers are a father who gave the Leavers a pity fuck - that's David Cameron granting a referendum - AKA a one night stand with the plebs. Then life goes back to normal, or so the suave Lothario assumed
Instead, she got pregnant and said "I'm keeping it" and "you'll have to pay for it"
Cue the incendiary outrage, and the angry questions to the Tory leadership - you said she was on The Pill! Then came the attempt to induce a dangerous late stage abortion by forcing gin on the expectant mother and pushing her downstairs - that's the attempted 2nd referendum
Nonetheless, the baby was born. In the analogy it's now about 18 months old, squirting poo on @Scott_xP and @foxy, who have fervent daydreams about smothering it
But the mother? After sleepless months of listening to the baby yowling and @foxy and @topping calling her a stupid slut, she's definitely had her doubts. But then she looks at the baby. And smiles
It's one of those babies which American fundamentalists bring to term despite everyone having told them ever since the 12 week scan it would be born with no head and never attain sentience, and then plaster photos of it all over Facebook for the 2 years of its miserable existence as evidence of God's loving ways.
Plus - is *that* really what the likes of @Leon have really been blathering on about as though the rumour and video was of BoJo snorting coke off the bare bottom of Vladimir Putin?
JFC.
No, this here vid is not THE FINLAND RUMOUR come to life. I can tell you that
Finland rumour, Santa, aliens, god, the Tooth Fairy...it is all getting a bit much to believe tbh.
UNLESS YOU TELL US WHAT YOU THINK THE FINLAND RUMOUR IS.
That is.
Ahahahaha
You'll just have to suffer the eternal torment...
Eternal ? Seems rather pointless, if it's more than a couple of months.
Will be as tedious as the Roswell stuff became about four decades back.
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 told him I voted because sovereignty and democracy. And he sat there fuming because: there isn’t any comeback to that..."
is @Leon's safe space. I would hate to wrench him out of it.
It’s an interesting conclusion for Leon because it’s an admission there is certainly no - and never was - any case on the grounds of economics, social services, geopolitics, or even - it now seems - on immigration.
In my opinion, Brexit will succeed if it is understood as a project of democratic renewal. If not, it will come to be framed as a great betrayal.
“ Thirdly, there will be blood. Brexit is going to be painful, like childbirth. It just is. The Leave quacks who promised a brisk and blissful delivery don’t have enough diamorphine to dull the nerves. We might need epidurals from the Treasury. We will swear a lot, and not care. It might be rather embarrassing but again, we probably won’t care, because we’ll be concentrating on the pain. Other countries will look at us and think 'I’m never going through that'. Immediately after Brexit, we will likely appear reduced, saggy, wrinkled.
Then comes the depression. It’s unavoidable. Overnight, your horizons have shrunk to a nursery room, some cheap Lidl shiraz, and the sound of a fiendishly annoying plastic toy which sings 'Froggy goes a courting he did ride uh-huh' over and over again. The house is a mess, all the time, in every way. You haven’t slept properly for several economic quarters. And so, at one point you will stare at a bowl of mushed baby food, and then you’ll soulfully ask yourself: Why did I ever do this?
But lastly, cheer up. In the end, no matter how bad the depressions, or how annoying the nappies, very few people regret becoming a parent. It will be the same for Brexit. In ten years’ time we’ll look through the kitchen window of renewed prosperity, watch the laughing Remainers playing football with our smiling Brexit child, and we’ll quietly sip tea from a Union Jack mug, and we’ll think: best thing I ever did.”
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).
OK I left out the word income. In that article it suggests that the top 10% per cent probably pay not far short of 30% of all the indirect taxes as well as the direct ones.
But hey, nitpick. Its better than trying to counter my argument, right?
Your argument appears to be we should bias educational achievement to the benefit of the rich in case they stop paying taxes here…? I don’t think that’s going to be an electorally popular position.
The reason the top 10% pay that much of the total tax base is because of wealth inequality. If we had an economy that more fairly distributed wealth, this would be less of an issue. I support moves to decrease inequality.
No my argument is that candidates should be selected for university places based merit and not discriminated against because they have wealthy parents. Almost everybody is on board with that, I would have thought.
I get it that you don't like middle class people, but the fact is they pay the bills. They always have, they always will. So snort it 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...
@TOPPING regularly contradicts you on that odd claim.
"I told him I voted because sovereignty and democracy. And he sat there fuming because: there isn’t any comeback to that..."
is @Leon's safe space. I would hate to wrench him out of it.
It’s an interesting conclusion for Leon because it’s an admission there is certainly no - and never was - any case on the grounds of economics, social services, geopolitics, or even - it now seems - on immigration.
In my opinion, Brexit will succeed if it is understood as a project of democratic renewal. If not, it will come to be framed as a great betrayal.
“ Thirdly, there will be blood. Brexit is going to be painful, like childbirth. It just is. The Leave quacks who promised a brisk and blissful delivery don’t have enough diamorphine to dull the nerves. We might need epidurals from the Treasury. We will swear a lot, and not care. It might be rather embarrassing but again, we probably won’t care, because we’ll be concentrating on the pain. Other countries will look at us and think 'I’m never going through that'. Immediately after Brexit, we will likely appear reduced, saggy, wrinkled.
Then comes the depression. It’s unavoidable. Overnight, your horizons have shrunk to a nursery room, some cheap Lidl shiraz, and the sound of a fiendishly annoying plastic toy which sings 'Froggy goes a courting he did ride uh-huh' over and over again. The house is a mess, all the time, in every way. You haven’t slept properly for several economic quarters. And so, at one point you will stare at a bowl of mushed baby food, and then you’ll soulfully ask yourself: Why did I ever do this?
But lastly, cheer up. In the end, no matter how bad the depressions, or how annoying the nappies, very few people regret becoming a parent. It will be the same for Brexit. In ten years’ time we’ll look through the kitchen window of renewed prosperity, watch the laughing Remainers playing football with our smiling Brexit child, and we’ll quietly sip tea from a Union Jack mug, and we’ll think: best thing I ever 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...
@TOPPING regularly contradicts you on that odd claim.
"I told him I voted because sovereignty and democracy. And he sat there fuming because: there isn’t any comeback to that..."
is @Leon's safe space. I would hate to wrench him out of it.
It’s an interesting conclusion for Leon because it’s an admission there is certainly no - and never was - any case on the grounds of economics, social services, geopolitics, or even - it now seems - on immigration.
In my opinion, Brexit will succeed if it is understood as a project of democratic renewal. If not, it will come to be framed as a great betrayal.
“ Thirdly, there will be blood. Brexit is going to be painful, like childbirth. It just is. The Leave quacks who promised a brisk and blissful delivery don’t have enough diamorphine to dull the nerves. We might need epidurals from the Treasury. We will swear a lot, and not care. It might be rather embarrassing but again, we probably won’t care, because we’ll be concentrating on the pain. Other countries will look at us and think 'I’m never going through that'. Immediately after Brexit, we will likely appear reduced, saggy, wrinkled.
Then comes the depression. It’s unavoidable. Overnight, your horizons have shrunk to a nursery room, some cheap Lidl shiraz, and the sound of a fiendishly annoying plastic toy which sings 'Froggy goes a courting he did ride uh-huh' over and over again. The house is a mess, all the time, in every way. You haven’t slept properly for several economic quarters. And so, at one point you will stare at a bowl of mushed baby food, and then you’ll soulfully ask yourself: Why did I ever do this?
But lastly, cheer up. In the end, no matter how bad the depressions, or how annoying the nappies, very few people regret becoming a parent. It will be the same for Brexit. In ten years’ time we’ll look through the kitchen window of renewed prosperity, watch the laughing Remainers playing football with our smiling Brexit child, and we’ll quietly sip tea from a Union Jack mug, and we’ll think: best thing I ever did.”
Comments
But hey, nitpick. Its better than trying to counter my argument, right?
Still, Rajan is going to resign his BBC Media Editor role later in the year. Paddy O'Connell is surely a shoo-in.
I am sure a couple of posters can put you right on exactly what wokery means in the 2020s. All I know it is very big and very bad.
The final grades for 2020, and the grades for 2021 (which is presumably the starting point for the graphic), were then based solely on teacher assessment. So, the extent to which grades have declined this year is largely a reflection on how optimistic different cohorts of teachers were last year.
It’s closer to 90% for single parents of two, and pensioner couples.
is @Leon's safe space. I would hate to wrench him out of it.
In my opinion, Brexit will succeed if it is understood as a project of democratic renewal. If not, it will come to be framed as a great betrayal.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2022/08/18/finlands-pm-sanna-marin-denies-taking-drugs-video-leaked-partying/
Has it been confirmed there were drugs in the actual video?
Then comes the depression. It’s unavoidable. Overnight, your horizons have shrunk to a nursery room, some cheap Lidl shiraz, and the sound of a fiendishly annoying plastic toy which sings 'Froggy goes a courting he did ride uh-huh' over and over again. The house is a mess, all the time, in every way. You haven’t slept properly for several economic quarters. And so, at one point you will stare at a bowl of mushed baby food, and then you’ll soulfully ask yourself: Why did I ever do this?
But lastly, cheer up. In the end, no matter how bad the depressions, or how annoying the nappies, very few people regret becoming a parent. It will be the same for Brexit. In ten years’ time we’ll look through the kitchen window of renewed prosperity, watch the laughing Remainers playing football with our smiling Brexit child, and we’ll quietly sip tea from a Union Jack mug, and we’ll think: best thing I ever did.”
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/why-brexit-is-just-like-having-a-baby
Rishi would not be able to offer to cut VAT on home energy supplies if we were still in the EU. It is a major policy tool and one that would not have been possible within the EU. But we as a sovereign democratic nation decided to be part of an organisation wherein it was not possible and then decided to leave that organisation so it was possible. To say that while we were in, of our own volition and with a democratic mandate, we were not sovereign is to misunderstand democracy and global relations today.
But as I said, it is @Leon's comfort blanket and I don't expect him to argue the toss.
'Pregnancy', etc.
Fact is that the sane among us have agreed to disagree. You're still at war.
The missing piece of the Telegraph / BBC story is the apparent link to a British cabinet member
Man, you should get a sub. They’re the best
On the above, that's just a bog standard (sorry) slur from Alex Taylor.
Compare things that aren't comparable, as long as they give you a reason for a pop at the UK multiple times a day. Never mention anything that the UK did to achieve desirable objectives. Never mention when the same thing is happening in EU countries, if it points up the reality. What a waste of a life.
Petteri Järvinen, a security expert, told the Iltalehti newspaper that Russia could have had a hand in the leaking of the videos.
Ms Marin angered Vladimir Putin after ending decades of Finnish non-alignment to apply to join Nato after Russia invaded Ukraine.
The reason the top 10% pay that much of the total tax base is because of wealth inequality. If we had an economy that more fairly distributed wealth, this would be less of an issue. I support moves to decrease inequality.
And you have been trading on that flawed article for years.
There’s no secrecy to the story about the Finnish PM, indeed she has had to come out and deny the use of drugs.
My question is simply whether there are drugs present in the video, there were some freeze frames on Twitter but not from reliable sources.
...seen dancing exuberantly... horrors.
JFC.
Brexit as the unflushable turd of British politics is more accurate. Just bobbing there, stinking the place out, and attracting flies.
I do wonder if she really is super cool though, or simply more normal seeming than many other young politicians, who we tend to expect to be a bit, er, Rees-Moggy to rise high so young.
"In the leaked video footage, unidentified people are heard shouting about "flour", which is a slang term for cocaine in Finland."
...dancing exuberantly.... *shudders*
What happened to the previous Finland rumour?
However, I believe there had been some QA of the teacher grades, except that only really worked in colleges.
It would to hear from Finns whether she is actually up to snuff, or whether - like Jacinda Ardern - she is a PR puff-piece masquerading as a politician.
https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/3605889-who-is-mary-peltola-the-democrat-outperforming-expectations-in-alaska/
...Palin responded to Tuesday’s results by lambasting the new ranked-choice system, calling it “crazy,” “convoluted” and “undesirable.”
“Voters are confused and angry, and feel disenfranchised by this cockamamie system that makes it impossible to trust that your vote will even be counted the way you intended. We’ll keep fighting to equip Alaskans with the information they need to make sure their voices are heard amidst this Leftist-crafted system – no matter how hard the corrupt political establishment works to silence us,” Palin said in a statement. ...
Phatboi seems to have gone to Finland in May which is about right for the party. Truss not, and I can only see this as even vaguely interesting if she or Sunak had been there.
The increase in fuel prices from Dec 20 to Dec 21 was £1.20 to £1.50 per litre (ie 25%), and a further increase of £1.50 to £2.00 between Jane 22 and Jun 22 (ie 33%).
https://heycar.co.uk/blog/latest-fuel-prices
So how much will that boost a) living cost, and b) the inflation rate?
Not much of a scandal though is it, the grave tones others talked in indicate this is only a small part of the story.
Alex Taylor
@AlexTaylorNews
French TV's Mr Europe 30 yrs
Host international events (+1 500)
Write books on languages
Teach journalism at Sorbonne
But it does reveal the mad intensity of the would-be grandparent, desperate for offspring because they won't be the ones changing the nappies.
UNLESS YOU TELL US WHAT YOU THINK THE FINLAND RUMOUR IS.
That is.
https://twitter.com/conorsen/status/1560245698947387392
I hate praising him, because - apart from anything else - he was a smug git, but he genuinely nailed it there
Read the piece. Marvel at the brilliance. The Remainers are a father who gave the Leavers a pity fuck - that's David Cameron granting a referendum - AKA a one night stand with the plebs. Then life goes back to normal, or so the suave Lothario assumed
Instead, she got pregnant and said "I'm keeping it" and "you'll have to pay for it"
Cue the incendiary outrage, and the angry questions to the Tory leadership - you said she was on The Pill! Then came the attempt to induce a dangerous late stage abortion by forcing gin on the expectant mother and pushing her downstairs - that's the attempted 2nd referendum
Nonetheless, the baby was born. In the analogy it's now about 18 months old, squirting poo on @Scott_xP and @foxy, who have fervent daydreams about smothering it
But the mother? After sleepless months of listening to the baby yowling and @foxy and @topping calling her a stupid slut, she's definitely had her doubts. But then she looks at the baby. And smiles
You'll just have to suffer the eternal torment of knowing that I KNOW THE FINLAND RUMOUR and I'm not telling you
Sorry
BTW I probably would tell you THE FINLAND RUMOUR but the person who told me expressly instructed me to stay shtoom, and there it is. He was adamant. ADAMANT
Inadvertently or not, Biden seems to have played economic rope-a-dope with the Republican opposition. If US inflation has already peaked, and there's decent growth this quarter, November's elections could be very interesting.
You do know I love to provoke this kind of futile anger, don't you? It's caviar to the general
The plumber is the Rejoin movement who will sort out the stinky mess.
Seems rather pointless, if it's more than a couple of months.
Will be as tedious as the Roswell stuff became about four decades back.
I get it that you don't like middle class people, but the fact is they pay the bills. They always have, they always will. So snort it up.