To be fair to Johnson and his holidays I would have been happier with him immediately leaving Number Ten, even if that meant Raab had a short stint as PM. Also, on the specific issue of the energy crisis, the next increase in residential prices is not due until October, so there's no particular harm in waiting until September for the government to set out further policy steps.
I note that on a more urgent issue, providing support for Ukraine, Wallace has been active and the UK has provided additional support during this period.
However, I do think it says something about Johnson's disdain for the country and the role of PM. There's always been something a little bit desperate and farcical about the actions of a PM in the dying days of their leadership. One remembers how frantic Blair and May were in attempts to secure their legacy, and I'm sure it irked Cameron that he was denied the period of a member's vote to do likewise. But at least it demonstrates that it mattered to them personally. They wanted to do as much of what they thought of as good as they could in the short time that remained.
And Johnson. Why was he so keen to remain PM for another two months? We must assume only for the money and the avoidance of humiliation. But there appears to be nothing to do with the country that he actually cares about. No attempt to tour the country to extol the benefits of levelling-up to protect his legacy. Nothing. Because he only ever wanted to be PM for reasons of self-aggrandisement. He didn't care a jot for the good of the country.
I might have frequently disagreed with the policies and decisions made by previous PMs, but at least I thought that they themselves believed what they were doing was for the best of the country, rather than the best for them individually. Even while it was normal in Stuart England for those in government to use their position to feather their own nest, they at least combined that with a sense of public duty and service. Johnson sinks below even those standards of more than four hundred years ago.
As far as I know no one has asked at the leader hustings how they will cope with a Trump fascist America that is pulling out of NATO and supporting Putin.
Some civil servants might want to have a very close read of the fine print of the Trident contract.
If the United States were to withdraw their cooperation completely, the UK nuclear capability would probably have a life expectancy measured in months rather than years.
We could create our own nuclear weapons pretty quickly if needed, as could Israel and Japan
What are your qualifications and knowledge on fusion weapons and delivery systems to make such a rash statement. Do you know you could launch from existing submarines for instance? If not could you build 3 submarines (the minimum needed to maintain a full time deterent) 'quickly'. How you have the arrogance to come out with statements when you have no knowledge whatsoever is beyond me
If the alternative is risking nuclear destruction by Putin with no deterrent response of course, the government would direct huge resources to it
What resources? What management skills does the current string of Tory governments have?
We are the 5th largest economy in the world, national security is the first job of any government. Billions and billions of pounds would be diverted to it if the US withdrew from NATO
It'd take about 5-10 years - or 20 if the Tories and MoD were involved.
Depends how many funds and scientists are involved
You don't get it. You don't need scientists. You need engineers. Project managers. Trainers.
As I said we have over 5 million engineers
I'vew already pointed ouyt you are counting toilet cleaners, delivery men, secretaries and accountants as "engineers". And you are ignoring that.
The depressing thing is that HYUFD is quite possibly representative of the way a large number of our elected representative are able to reason about complicated issues they don't really understand.
It's not the ignorance, but rather the absurd overconfidence in their own judgment that is most worrying.
The thing is having explained why what he proposed is physically not possible, over and over again, he still persists. We all make assumptions that others can point out are wrong and we learn from that. He never does.
He pulls stuff from the internet and never looks at the context or whether it is just crap. The classic was the national IQ tables. When shown they were nonsense for 3rd world countries he refused to accept they were wrong, even though they put the national average IQ for certain countries at the IQ of a typical 5 - 7 year old and argued that was why these countries were so poor and went down the racist rabbit hole of black people are just thick.
That is not arguing they are wrong for nation, that is you arguing ideologically they are wrong.
I also never said black people were thick, you by implication just did. Of course the Far East nations not the white nations have the highest iq
I wasn't arguing ideologically I was pointing out the stuff was plain wrong. Just cos it is on the internet does not make it correct and stating that numerous countries have an average IQ of a severely disabled person is patently nonsense. But you go on believing anything you read on the web.
I didn't claim they were thick (bizarre!) you did. It is still racist to insist black people are thick even if you think Asians are bright. Even Hitler made a pact with Japan or are you going claim that proved he wasn't racist.
You specifically insisted an IQ table that showed black nations with average IQs of a typical 5 - 7 year old were accurate and that was why those countries were so poor (ie their population was stupid). When others pointed out that it may have something to do with the education system you stated that the education children got in Mali was equivalent to say Israel and that they weren't disadvantaged.
Bonkers beyond belief.
Even in UK schools the best results are got by Chinese and Indian pupils then white then black. Though African pupils do better than the black average and white British in part because they are motivated immigrants. Roma pupils do worst but I assume that means racism against gypsies?
Conservative hustings this week are tomorrow and Thursday.
They seem to take these more seriously than running the country!
So they should, right now.
Parliament is in recess, and this is about choosing the next Prime Minister.
The country is in crisis. The PM has gone awol. The Conservative Party is guilty of criminal negligence.
What part of Parliament being in recess are you finding confusing?
The PM hasn't gone AWOL, he's gone absent as he's on leave not without it. August is the time MPs including the PM have their annual holidays.
Whether its a good idea for Parliament to shut down for an entire month for a summer holiday is an entirely separate question, but there is nothing strange happening there.
What part of the difference between "executive" and "legislature" do you find hard to grasp exactly? The Cabinet, chaired by the Prime Minister, handles day-to-day executive functions on behalf of the Crown. That is entirely separate from the work of the legislature. The executive does not take a recess. He still has that role whether or not Parliament is sitting. This is a crisis, somewhere around the scale of a natural disaster, that he has decided not to handle.
No he hasn't decided not to handle, he's been informed by his colleagues (and the country generally in polls) that they don't want him to handle it.
Boris is a caretaker Prime Minister right now, that was determined when he resigned. He has a role to address any urgent issues that can't wait for the new Prime Minister but addressing things about this winter etc is the new Prime Minister's responsibility, not Boris's.
If Boris had spent every day this summer announcing new policies the same people complaining he's "gone AWOL" would be complaining that he's resigned and has no right to be doing so.
Mate.
Boris is self-serving, a liar, a hypocrite, and only interested in himself and always has been. He does precisely what is good for Boris and no one else. He is and always was manifestly unfit to be Prime Minister.
He did not "get Brexit done"
Still a member of the EU, are we?
As I said, he didn't get it done. The country voted for someone (it could have been a donkey with a straw hat on) to get it done.
Still a member of the EU, are we?
No we have left, but we left in the manner of closing one's bank account whilst leaving one's savings in the account.
As to your earlier savaging of the 2017 to 2019 Parliament, it was legitimate and "Parliament is Sovereign" whether you like it or not. Leavers probably wrote "Parliament is Sovereign" on the side of a bus along with their other declarations to justify Brexit. At least that one is true for most of us.
Morning, tetchy on here over the weekend. Maybe the sun’s getting to everyone?
A big week for Ukraine, and a bad feeling that their Independence Day on Wednesday, the six-month anniversary of the start of the invasion, is going to be a target for a mad Russian leader who sees his army collapsing in front of him, and no way out that isn’t totally humiliating.
The Ukranian attacks on Crimea last week, where many middle-class Russians were on holiday, is waking the average Russian up to what’s actually been going on for the past six months.
There was a call yesterday between Johnson, Biden, Macron and Sholz, who noted Russian escalations in fighting around the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant. I really, really hope that Putin - or at least someone in the inner circle at the Kremlin - has thought through what the Western reaction would be to the war going nuclear.
Conservative hustings this week are tomorrow and Thursday.
They seem to take these more seriously than running the country!
So they should, right now.
Parliament is in recess, and this is about choosing the next Prime Minister.
The country is in crisis. The PM has gone awol. The Conservative Party is guilty of criminal negligence.
What part of Parliament being in recess are you finding confusing?
The PM hasn't gone AWOL, he's gone absent as he's on leave not without it. August is the time MPs including the PM have their annual holidays.
Whether its a good idea for Parliament to shut down for an entire month for a summer holiday is an entirely separate question, but there is nothing strange happening there.
What part of the difference between "executive" and "legislature" do you find hard to grasp exactly? The Cabinet, chaired by the Prime Minister, handles day-to-day executive functions on behalf of the Crown. That is entirely separate from the work of the legislature. The executive does not take a recess. He still has that role whether or not Parliament is sitting. This is a crisis, somewhere around the scale of a natural disaster, that he has decided not to handle.
No he hasn't decided not to handle, he's been informed by his colleagues (and the country generally in polls) that they don't want him to handle it.
Boris is a caretaker Prime Minister right now, that was determined when he resigned. He has a role to address any urgent issues that can't wait for the new Prime Minister but addressing things about this winter etc is the new Prime Minister's responsibility, not Boris's.
If Boris had spent every day this summer announcing new policies the same people complaining he's "gone AWOL" would be complaining that he's resigned and has no right to be doing so.
There's no such constitutional role as "caretaker" Prime Minister. You're the Prime Minister or you're not. "Polls" do not force a PM not to act. That's a concious decision. Not acting because you think your colleagues don't want you to is a decision. He has decisions to make and the decision he's made is to do nothing. Because he was always unsuited to the job.
There absolutely is a constitutional role as a caretaker Prime Minister and that is Boris right now.
Our constitution is unwritten, the fact that Boris has been said to be a caretaker PM makes him a caretaker PM. The principle of a caretaker government is not new and has been around for many years, Brown post-2010 election was a caretaker PM too until Cameron became PM.
He has no decisions to make, unless they can't wait for the new PM, because he's caretaker.
My word. You've just owned yourself spectacularly. You don't have a clue do you? You have no idea about the law or the constitution. You just Google shit and post it without reading it. You quoted an Institute of Government page ( https://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/explainers/caretaker-government ) that says -
The phrase ‘caretaker government’ describes a government that holds office subject to certain temporary restrictions on what it may do, either during the pre-election period known as ‘purdah’ or because it may have lost the confidence of the House of Commons. In other countries, such as New Zealand, this status is more formally termed ‘caretaker’, but the UK has not adopted the phrase.
The UK has not developed comprehensive rules over the formation and operation of caretaker governments. The workings of caretaker governments operate through convention, which has been published in the 2011 Cabinet Manual.
In the UK, government acts in a caretaker capacity in three scenarios:
1.During a general election campaign 2.If a vote of no confidence is passed by the House of Commons 3. If an election produces an unclear result
(Emphasis mine)
So even in the IoG page you yourself cite Johnson is not a "caretaker" Prime Minister because none of the three eventualities they set out, and is set out in the 2011 Cabinet Manual, exists. 'Caretaker' is the wrong term for as the IoG site you yourself cite, this is not a caretaker Prime Minister.
I beg you, please read the stuff you cite from before posting it. It would save you a lot of hassle.
Clueless. Utterly clueless.
Except I've not been "owned" because part of the principle of our unwritten constitution is it evolves over time with new precedent.
You've gone from claiming that Caretaker is not a principle that exists to that it might exist but the current circumstances aren't it because it's not one of the three examples given.
However just because three examples exist doesn't mean a fourth can't arise. Caretaker in the UK operates from convention not written rules and conventions can evolve. It doesn't take legislation to create a fourth, once you accept a principle that caretaker does exist then new circumstances (fourth, fifth or more) can arise whereby the existing precedent is followed and evolved.
As far as I know no one has asked at the leader hustings how they will cope with a Trump fascist America that is pulling out of NATO and supporting Putin.
Some civil servants might want to have a very close read of the fine print of the Trident contract.
If the United States were to withdraw their cooperation completely, the UK nuclear capability would probably have a life expectancy measured in months rather than years.
We could create our own nuclear weapons pretty quickly if needed, as could Israel and Japan
What are your qualifications and knowledge on fusion weapons and delivery systems to make such a rash statement. Do you know you could launch from existing submarines for instance? If not could you build 3 submarines (the minimum needed to maintain a full time deterent) 'quickly'. How you have the arrogance to come out with statements when you have no knowledge whatsoever is beyond me
If the alternative is risking nuclear destruction by Putin with no deterrent response of course, the government would direct huge resources to it
It doesn't matter what resources you apply you can't develop this stuff quickly. It takes a long time to design and build a submarine and you need 3 as a minimum. Stuff will go wrong. Just look at the development time currently. It is in years and decades and there is always a critical path that can't be shortened by additional resources.
FYI the pension group I represent on a voluntary basis are the scientists from the privatised part of the UK Atomic Energy Authority. Many of them worked on this stuff in the 60s and 70s. These people don't exist anymore here, but more importantly the facilities have been sold off and are now science parks. So before you start you have a huge capital build, which takes time (many years).
If the US withdrew from NATO the entire defence and most of the engineering and manufacturing industry in the UK would be directed to the task
For crying out loud do you not understand critical path analysis?
It takes 9 months to produce a baby. If you put 9 women on it you don't get a baby in 1 month.
If it takes 10 men a month to build a house do you think 600 men can build a house by lunchtime?
You ever seen those videos of the Amish putting up a barn?
Yes very good. I have and it is very impressive. However that is a very good example isn't it because they are superb at working to the critical path. Twice as many Amish would put up two barns in the same time, but they couldn't get one barn put up in half the time.
A simple fact that HYUFD can't understand.
Well guess you will just have to be vaporised and destroyed in a Putin nuclear missile attack then given you are clearly not willing to support the necessary national defence measures in the event of a US withdrawal from NATO
I never said I wasn't. I was just pointing out your saying hat we can build this stuff quickly because we have 5 million (dishwasher) engineers is utter nonsense.
Read Jim Miller's Post earlier, it could certainly be done in a year
I did and you didn't read the posts in reply to it, because we can't and you ignore all the evidence everyone is giving you here as to why it isn't possible to do in under decades. We can build an H bomb very quickly, because we already do and have done for decades, and to be honest that isn't that complicated. Good god even I know how they work. However the rest isn't easy and requires decades of capital infrastructure to work. For instance in Jim's example they just dropped the two A bombs from a plane (and they only had 2). Don't do that anymore as it won't get to its destination. They get shot down. And when dropped from a plane it can be big. Again not anymore if launching from a sub. These subs take up to 2 decades to design from scratch and build.
OK here are somethings you can't shorten. Lots of things that need testing, need testing over time. So for instance when software testing or pressure testing if that takes 3 months you can't shorten it by doubling the staff. By its nature it must take that long. Eg you can't pressure test a tank for 10 hours by pressure testing 2 for 5 hours. This is the critical path stuff. You can't train an engineer quicker. It takes as long as it takes and engineers can't just transfer over from one subject to another if it is complicated. So a dishwasher engineer can fix a cooker with maybe a couple of weeks training, but a fluids engineer can't become a fusion engineer with out years of training and then possibly not at all.
How you don't understand this I don't know.
We can. Just as usual wet liberals like you have to find excuses why we can't. Otherwise Putin will of course destroy you and your family with a nuclear missile if we don't
Oh god this is mind boggling.
Try the Amish house example again. A large number of Amish build a barn very quickly. Yes?
If we double the number of Amish can they build the barn quicker?
No they can't. They have optimised the build speed. More people just get in the way.
However if they double the number of people they can build 2 barns in the time it takes to build 1 barn.
The lesson from this. You can optimise the speed of building something, but once you get to the critical path you can't build it any quicker.
Though tbf, as Musk has demonstrated, parallel development of multiple prototypes can sometimes speed things up.
Conservative hustings this week are tomorrow and Thursday.
They seem to take these more seriously than running the country!
So they should, right now.
Parliament is in recess, and this is about choosing the next Prime Minister.
The country is in crisis. The PM has gone awol. The Conservative Party is guilty of criminal negligence.
What part of Parliament being in recess are you finding confusing?
The PM hasn't gone AWOL, he's gone absent as he's on leave not without it. August is the time MPs including the PM have their annual holidays.
Whether its a good idea for Parliament to shut down for an entire month for a summer holiday is an entirely separate question, but there is nothing strange happening there.
What part of the difference between "executive" and "legislature" do you find hard to grasp exactly? The Cabinet, chaired by the Prime Minister, handles day-to-day executive functions on behalf of the Crown. That is entirely separate from the work of the legislature. The executive does not take a recess. He still has that role whether or not Parliament is sitting. This is a crisis, somewhere around the scale of a natural disaster, that he has decided not to handle.
No he hasn't decided not to handle, he's been informed by his colleagues (and the country generally in polls) that they don't want him to handle it.
Boris is a caretaker Prime Minister right now, that was determined when he resigned. He has a role to address any urgent issues that can't wait for the new Prime Minister but addressing things about this winter etc is the new Prime Minister's responsibility, not Boris's.
If Boris had spent every day this summer announcing new policies the same people complaining he's "gone AWOL" would be complaining that he's resigned and has no right to be doing so.
Mate.
Boris is self-serving, a liar, a hypocrite, and only interested in himself and always has been. He does precisely what is good for Boris and no one else. He is and always was manifestly unfit to be Prime Minister.
He did not "get Brexit done"
Still a member of the EU, are we?
As I said, he didn't get it done. The country voted for someone (it could have been a donkey with a straw hat on) to get it done.
Still a member of the EU, are we?
Nope. We left. Brexit was done.
Right. So Topping's denials that Boris got Brexit done (in the sense of the 2019 election slogan) are wrong.
Yes and No. We left the EU. But for so many people that was only the start of Brexit. They remain awaiting their moon on a stick. And keep saying how Brexit remains under threat from [insert threat here]. If it was done and past tense and can't be reversed there would be no threat.
As I posted above, Brexit the legal act is done, BREXIT! the emotional act of obtaining the moon on a stick isn't done. And will never be done.
Conservative hustings this week are tomorrow and Thursday.
They seem to take these more seriously than running the country!
So they should, right now.
Parliament is in recess, and this is about choosing the next Prime Minister.
The country is in crisis. The PM has gone awol. The Conservative Party is guilty of criminal negligence.
What part of Parliament being in recess are you finding confusing?
The PM hasn't gone AWOL, he's gone absent as he's on leave not without it. August is the time MPs including the PM have their annual holidays.
Whether its a good idea for Parliament to shut down for an entire month for a summer holiday is an entirely separate question, but there is nothing strange happening there.
What part of the difference between "executive" and "legislature" do you find hard to grasp exactly? The Cabinet, chaired by the Prime Minister, handles day-to-day executive functions on behalf of the Crown. That is entirely separate from the work of the legislature. The executive does not take a recess. He still has that role whether or not Parliament is sitting. This is a crisis, somewhere around the scale of a natural disaster, that he has decided not to handle.
No he hasn't decided not to handle, he's been informed by his colleagues (and the country generally in polls) that they don't want him to handle it.
Boris is a caretaker Prime Minister right now, that was determined when he resigned. He has a role to address any urgent issues that can't wait for the new Prime Minister but addressing things about this winter etc is the new Prime Minister's responsibility, not Boris's.
If Boris had spent every day this summer announcing new policies the same people complaining he's "gone AWOL" would be complaining that he's resigned and has no right to be doing so.
Mate.
Boris is self-serving, a liar, a hypocrite, and only interested in himself and always has been. He does precisely what is good for Boris and no one else. He is and always was manifestly unfit to be Prime Minister.
He did not "get Brexit done"
Still a member of the EU, are we?
As I said, he didn't get it done. The country voted for someone (it could have been a donkey with a straw hat on) to get it done.
Still a member of the EU, are we?
No we have left, but we left in the manner of closing one's bank account whilst leaving one's savings in the account.
As to your earlier savaging of the 2017 to 2019 Parliament, it was legitimate and "Parliament is Sovereign" whether you like it or not. Leavers probably wrote "Parliament is Sovereign" on the side of a bus along with their other declarations to justify Brexit. At least that one is true for most of us.
Of course it was legitimate, in that they had the right to do what they did. But having the right to do something is not the same as being right to do it, and led to inevitable consequences as soon as the people got the chance to reach a verdict.
Conservative hustings this week are tomorrow and Thursday.
They seem to take these more seriously than running the country!
So they should, right now.
Parliament is in recess, and this is about choosing the next Prime Minister.
The country is in crisis. The PM has gone awol. The Conservative Party is guilty of criminal negligence.
What part of Parliament being in recess are you finding confusing?
The PM hasn't gone AWOL, he's gone absent as he's on leave not without it. August is the time MPs including the PM have their annual holidays.
Whether its a good idea for Parliament to shut down for an entire month for a summer holiday is an entirely separate question, but there is nothing strange happening there.
What part of the difference between "executive" and "legislature" do you find hard to grasp exactly? The Cabinet, chaired by the Prime Minister, handles day-to-day executive functions on behalf of the Crown. That is entirely separate from the work of the legislature. The executive does not take a recess. He still has that role whether or not Parliament is sitting. This is a crisis, somewhere around the scale of a natural disaster, that he has decided not to handle.
No he hasn't decided not to handle, he's been informed by his colleagues (and the country generally in polls) that they don't want him to handle it.
Boris is a caretaker Prime Minister right now, that was determined when he resigned. He has a role to address any urgent issues that can't wait for the new Prime Minister but addressing things about this winter etc is the new Prime Minister's responsibility, not Boris's.
If Boris had spent every day this summer announcing new policies the same people complaining he's "gone AWOL" would be complaining that he's resigned and has no right to be doing so.
Mate.
Boris is self-serving, a liar, a hypocrite, and only interested in himself and always has been. He does precisely what is good for Boris and no one else. He is and always was manifestly unfit to be Prime Minister.
He did not "get Brexit done"
Still a member of the EU, are we?
As I said, he didn't get it done. The country voted for someone (it could have been a donkey with a straw hat on) to get it done.
Still a member of the EU, are we?
Nope. We left. Brexit was done.
Right. So Topping's denials that Boris got Brexit done (in the sense of the 2019 election slogan) are wrong.
Brexit was done we are out of the EU. Boris happened to be in charge of the government when it all happened. He as much "got Brexit done" as he did stop the waves on Brighton beach.
By your logic, without Boris we would still be in the EU. Is that your belief?
Conservative hustings this week are tomorrow and Thursday.
They seem to take these more seriously than running the country!
So they should, right now.
Parliament is in recess, and this is about choosing the next Prime Minister.
The country is in crisis. The PM has gone awol. The Conservative Party is guilty of criminal negligence.
What part of Parliament being in recess are you finding confusing?
The PM hasn't gone AWOL, he's gone absent as he's on leave not without it. August is the time MPs including the PM have their annual holidays.
Whether its a good idea for Parliament to shut down for an entire month for a summer holiday is an entirely separate question, but there is nothing strange happening there.
What part of the difference between "executive" and "legislature" do you find hard to grasp exactly? The Cabinet, chaired by the Prime Minister, handles day-to-day executive functions on behalf of the Crown. That is entirely separate from the work of the legislature. The executive does not take a recess. He still has that role whether or not Parliament is sitting. This is a crisis, somewhere around the scale of a natural disaster, that he has decided not to handle.
No he hasn't decided not to handle, he's been informed by his colleagues (and the country generally in polls) that they don't want him to handle it.
Boris is a caretaker Prime Minister right now, that was determined when he resigned. He has a role to address any urgent issues that can't wait for the new Prime Minister but addressing things about this winter etc is the new Prime Minister's responsibility, not Boris's.
If Boris had spent every day this summer announcing new policies the same people complaining he's "gone AWOL" would be complaining that he's resigned and has no right to be doing so.
Mate.
Boris is self-serving, a liar, a hypocrite, and only interested in himself and always has been. He does precisely what is good for Boris and no one else. He is and always was manifestly unfit to be Prime Minister.
He did not "get Brexit done", the country voted for someone (it could have been anyone) to get Brexit done. Same with beating Corbyn. Any Cons leader would have beaten Corbyn because Corbyn.
And yet even now you cheer him on after he disappointed you once you had your lockdown revelation.
People who actually know him could have told you all this (and many did, publicly) but no you were a cheerleader for him then and you are, just like a useful idiot, cheerleading for him now.
Even...deep breath...even the mighty @HYUFD has stopped praising him because he can see what has been happening and the type of person Boris is. But you continue to fly the flag for him for some unfathomable, bizarre reason.
Have a word with yourself.
He does precisely what is good for Boris and no one else.
Allowing the Downing Street parties wasn't good for Boris.
Protecting Paterson wasn't good for Boris.
If Boris had acted in his own self-interest he wouldn't have been forced out.
Instead he stupidly and weakly pandered to others to his own detriment.
Ironic isn't it.
Those weren't acts of altruism, though. They were things he thought he could get away with as World King and they were the easiest thing to do in the moment.
Then, when they unravelled, he stabbed people in the back to protect himself. With Partygate, he moved in a heartbeat from helping the cover-up to saying he'd known nothing, been horrified by all that had happened, and that deputy heads would roll (which they did). With Paterson, he whipped MPs to support and publicly defend his whitewash scheme, then made a u-turn that made fools and charlatans of every one of them within 24 hours.
You're talking about it as if he paid a price for his loyalty. He didn't - he paid a price for always doing the easiest thing for him to do in any situation. It's fair to say he was awful at judging his own self interest in a strategic way, but it's not at all that he at any point consciously acted against it.
I'm not saying he had any loyalty - he didn't.
It was his inability to see what was in his own self-interest, despite plenty of warnings, that brought him down.
Tolerance at the wrong time followed by ruthlessness at the wrong time.
As far as I know no one has asked at the leader hustings how they will cope with a Trump fascist America that is pulling out of NATO and supporting Putin.
Some civil servants might want to have a very close read of the fine print of the Trident contract.
If the United States were to withdraw their cooperation completely, the UK nuclear capability would probably have a life expectancy measured in months rather than years.
We could create our own nuclear weapons pretty quickly if needed, as could Israel and Japan
What are your qualifications and knowledge on fusion weapons and delivery systems to make such a rash statement. Do you know you could launch from existing submarines for instance? If not could you build 3 submarines (the minimum needed to maintain a full time deterent) 'quickly'. How you have the arrogance to come out with statements when you have no knowledge whatsoever is beyond me
If the alternative is risking nuclear destruction by Putin with no deterrent response of course, the government would direct huge resources to it
It doesn't matter what resources you apply you can't develop this stuff quickly. It takes a long time to design and build a submarine and you need 3 as a minimum. Stuff will go wrong. Just look at the development time currently. It is in years and decades and there is always a critical path that can't be shortened by additional resources.
FYI the pension group I represent on a voluntary basis are the scientists from the privatised part of the UK Atomic Energy Authority. Many of them worked on this stuff in the 60s and 70s. These people don't exist anymore here, but more importantly the facilities have been sold off and are now science parks. So before you start you have a huge capital build, which takes time (many years).
If the US withdrew from NATO the entire defence and most of the engineering and manufacturing industry in the UK would be directed to the task
For crying out loud do you not understand critical path analysis?
It takes 9 months to produce a baby. If you put 9 women on it you don't get a baby in 1 month.
If it takes 10 men a month to build a house do you think 600 men can build a house by lunchtime?
You ever seen those videos of the Amish putting up a barn?
Yes very good. I have and it is very impressive. However that is a very good example isn't it because they are superb at working to the critical path. Twice as many Amish would put up two barns in the same time, but they couldn't get one barn put up in half the time.
A simple fact that HYUFD can't understand.
Well guess you will just have to be vaporised and destroyed in a Putin nuclear missile attack then given you are clearly not willing to support the necessary national defence measures in the event of a US withdrawal from NATO
I never said I wasn't. I was just pointing out your saying hat we can build this stuff quickly because we have 5 million (dishwasher) engineers is utter nonsense.
Read Jim Miller's Post earlier, it could certainly be done in a year
I did and you didn't read the posts in reply to it, because we can't and you ignore all the evidence everyone is giving you here as to why it isn't possible to do in under decades. We can build an H bomb very quickly, because we already do and have done for decades, and to be honest that isn't that complicated. Good god even I know how they work. However the rest isn't easy and requires decades of capital infrastructure to work. For instance in Jim's example they just dropped the two A bombs from a plane (and they only had 2). Don't do that anymore as it won't get to its destination. They get shot down. And when dropped from a plane it can be big. Again not anymore if launching from a sub. These subs take up to 2 decades to design from scratch and build.
OK here are somethings you can't shorten. Lots of things that need testing, need testing over time. So for instance when software testing or pressure testing if that takes 3 months you can't shorten it by doubling the staff. By its nature it must take that long. Eg you can't pressure test a tank for 10 hours by pressure testing 2 for 5 hours. This is the critical path stuff. You can't train an engineer quicker. It takes as long as it takes and engineers can't just transfer over from one subject to another if it is complicated. So a dishwasher engineer can fix a cooker with maybe a couple of weeks training, but a fluids engineer can't become a fusion engineer with out years of training and then possibly not at all.
How you don't understand this I don't know.
We can. Just as usual wet liberals like you have to find excuses why we can't. Otherwise Putin will of course destroy you and your family with a nuclear missile if we don't
Oh god this is mind boggling.
Try the Amish house example again. A large number of Amish build a barn very quickly. Yes?
If we double the number of Amish can they build the barn quicker?
No they can't. They have optimised the build speed. More people just get in the way.
However if they double the number of people they can build 2 barns in the time it takes to build 1 barn.
The lesson from this. You can optimise the speed of building something, but once you get to the critical path you can't build it any quicker.
So you are unwilling to do the necessary in terms of funds and people and ready to be destroyed by a nuclear bomb from Putin. Thanks for confirming
Conservative hustings this week are tomorrow and Thursday.
They seem to take these more seriously than running the country!
So they should, right now.
Parliament is in recess, and this is about choosing the next Prime Minister.
The country is in crisis. The PM has gone awol. The Conservative Party is guilty of criminal negligence.
What part of Parliament being in recess are you finding confusing?
The PM hasn't gone AWOL, he's gone absent as he's on leave not without it. August is the time MPs including the PM have their annual holidays.
Whether its a good idea for Parliament to shut down for an entire month for a summer holiday is an entirely separate question, but there is nothing strange happening there.
What part of the difference between "executive" and "legislature" do you find hard to grasp exactly? The Cabinet, chaired by the Prime Minister, handles day-to-day executive functions on behalf of the Crown. That is entirely separate from the work of the legislature. The executive does not take a recess. He still has that role whether or not Parliament is sitting. This is a crisis, somewhere around the scale of a natural disaster, that he has decided not to handle.
No he hasn't decided not to handle, he's been informed by his colleagues (and the country generally in polls) that they don't want him to handle it.
Boris is a caretaker Prime Minister right now, that was determined when he resigned. He has a role to address any urgent issues that can't wait for the new Prime Minister but addressing things about this winter etc is the new Prime Minister's responsibility, not Boris's.
If Boris had spent every day this summer announcing new policies the same people complaining he's "gone AWOL" would be complaining that he's resigned and has no right to be doing so.
Mate.
Boris is self-serving, a liar, a hypocrite, and only interested in himself and always has been. He does precisely what is good for Boris and no one else. He is and always was manifestly unfit to be Prime Minister.
He did not "get Brexit done"
Still a member of the EU, are we?
As I said, he didn't get it done. The country voted for someone (it could have been a donkey with a straw hat on) to get it done.
Still a member of the EU, are we?
Nope. We left. Brexit was done.
Right. So Topping's denials that Boris got Brexit done (in the sense of the 2019 election slogan) are wrong.
Yes and No. We left the EU. But for so many people that was only the start of Brexit..
Irrelevant to my point, which is merely about the slogan as used at the 2019 election, which had no other meaning but to end the blockage of the previous parliament and complete the process of leaving the EU.
Conservative hustings this week are tomorrow and Thursday.
They seem to take these more seriously than running the country!
So they should, right now.
Parliament is in recess, and this is about choosing the next Prime Minister.
The country is in crisis. The PM has gone awol. The Conservative Party is guilty of criminal negligence.
What part of Parliament being in recess are you finding confusing?
The PM hasn't gone AWOL, he's gone absent as he's on leave not without it. August is the time MPs including the PM have their annual holidays.
Whether its a good idea for Parliament to shut down for an entire month for a summer holiday is an entirely separate question, but there is nothing strange happening there.
What part of the difference between "executive" and "legislature" do you find hard to grasp exactly? The Cabinet, chaired by the Prime Minister, handles day-to-day executive functions on behalf of the Crown. That is entirely separate from the work of the legislature. The executive does not take a recess. He still has that role whether or not Parliament is sitting. This is a crisis, somewhere around the scale of a natural disaster, that he has decided not to handle.
No he hasn't decided not to handle, he's been informed by his colleagues (and the country generally in polls) that they don't want him to handle it.
Boris is a caretaker Prime Minister right now, that was determined when he resigned. He has a role to address any urgent issues that can't wait for the new Prime Minister but addressing things about this winter etc is the new Prime Minister's responsibility, not Boris's.
If Boris had spent every day this summer announcing new policies the same people complaining he's "gone AWOL" would be complaining that he's resigned and has no right to be doing so.
Mate.
Boris is self-serving, a liar, a hypocrite, and only interested in himself and always has been. He does precisely what is good for Boris and no one else. He is and always was manifestly unfit to be Prime Minister.
He did not "get Brexit done"
Still a member of the EU, are we?
As I said, he didn't get it done. The country voted for someone (it could have been a donkey with a straw hat on) to get it done.
Still a member of the EU, are we?
Nope. We left. Brexit was done.
Right. So Topping's denials that Boris got Brexit done (in the sense of the 2019 election slogan) are wrong.
But the problem is the means to that end.
Promising to lose a stone in weight by New Year's Day is admirable, if by Christmas one remains at the same weight, sawing one's leg off achieves the goal, but at what cost?
Conservative hustings this week are tomorrow and Thursday.
They seem to take these more seriously than running the country!
So they should, right now.
Parliament is in recess, and this is about choosing the next Prime Minister.
The country is in crisis. The PM has gone awol. The Conservative Party is guilty of criminal negligence.
What part of Parliament being in recess are you finding confusing?
The PM hasn't gone AWOL, he's gone absent as he's on leave not without it. August is the time MPs including the PM have their annual holidays.
Whether its a good idea for Parliament to shut down for an entire month for a summer holiday is an entirely separate question, but there is nothing strange happening there.
What part of the difference between "executive" and "legislature" do you find hard to grasp exactly? The Cabinet, chaired by the Prime Minister, handles day-to-day executive functions on behalf of the Crown. That is entirely separate from the work of the legislature. The executive does not take a recess. He still has that role whether or not Parliament is sitting. This is a crisis, somewhere around the scale of a natural disaster, that he has decided not to handle.
No he hasn't decided not to handle, he's been informed by his colleagues (and the country generally in polls) that they don't want him to handle it.
Boris is a caretaker Prime Minister right now, that was determined when he resigned. He has a role to address any urgent issues that can't wait for the new Prime Minister but addressing things about this winter etc is the new Prime Minister's responsibility, not Boris's.
If Boris had spent every day this summer announcing new policies the same people complaining he's "gone AWOL" would be complaining that he's resigned and has no right to be doing so.
Mate.
Boris is self-serving, a liar, a hypocrite, and only interested in himself and always has been. He does precisely what is good for Boris and no one else. He is and always was manifestly unfit to be Prime Minister.
He did not "get Brexit done"
Still a member of the EU, are we?
As I said, he didn't get it done. The country voted for someone (it could have been a donkey with a straw hat on) to get it done.
Still a member of the EU, are we?
Nope. We left. Brexit was done.
Right. So Topping's denials that Boris got Brexit done (in the sense of the 2019 election slogan) are wrong.
Brexit was done we are out of the EU. Boris happened to be in charge of the government when it all happened. He as much "got Brexit done" as he did stop the waves on Brighton beach.
By your logic, without Boris we would still be in the EU. Is that your belief?
Conservative hustings this week are tomorrow and Thursday.
They seem to take these more seriously than running the country!
So they should, right now.
Parliament is in recess, and this is about choosing the next Prime Minister.
The country is in crisis. The PM has gone awol. The Conservative Party is guilty of criminal negligence.
What part of Parliament being in recess are you finding confusing?
The PM hasn't gone AWOL, he's gone absent as he's on leave not without it. August is the time MPs including the PM have their annual holidays.
Whether its a good idea for Parliament to shut down for an entire month for a summer holiday is an entirely separate question, but there is nothing strange happening there.
What part of the difference between "executive" and "legislature" do you find hard to grasp exactly? The Cabinet, chaired by the Prime Minister, handles day-to-day executive functions on behalf of the Crown. That is entirely separate from the work of the legislature. The executive does not take a recess. He still has that role whether or not Parliament is sitting. This is a crisis, somewhere around the scale of a natural disaster, that he has decided not to handle.
No he hasn't decided not to handle, he's been informed by his colleagues (and the country generally in polls) that they don't want him to handle it.
Boris is a caretaker Prime Minister right now, that was determined when he resigned. He has a role to address any urgent issues that can't wait for the new Prime Minister but addressing things about this winter etc is the new Prime Minister's responsibility, not Boris's.
If Boris had spent every day this summer announcing new policies the same people complaining he's "gone AWOL" would be complaining that he's resigned and has no right to be doing so.
Mate.
Boris is self-serving, a liar, a hypocrite, and only interested in himself and always has been. He does precisely what is good for Boris and no one else. He is and always was manifestly unfit to be Prime Minister.
He did not "get Brexit done"
Still a member of the EU, are we?
As I said, he didn't get it done. The country voted for someone (it could have been a donkey with a straw hat on) to get it done.
Still a member of the EU, are we?
Nope. We left. Brexit was done.
Right. So Topping's denials that Boris got Brexit done (in the sense of the 2019 election slogan) are wrong.
But the problem is the means to that end.
Promising to lose a stone in weight by New Year's Day is admirable, if by Christmas one remains at the same weight, sawing one's leg off achieves the goal, but at what cost?
The interesting (distressing? Wholly predictable?) element of this is that the very same people who got behind TMay and Boris over Brexit are now lining up to support Truss. IDS et al are trotting out the line that Communism Brexit is a great idea just that it hasn't been executed properly. I fear they are about to learn that the concept is fundamentally flawed.
There is a growing face-off between the two polar opposite visions of Brexit. On one side Mick Lynch et al want their hugely increased pay and better conditions now that the forrin have gone home. On the other side IDS et al want to cut workers pay and conditions and safety now that the EU can't stop them.
BREXIT! supposedly would deliver a workers paradise against the exploitative bosses by boosting pay and conditions, AND deliver a management share price bonanza by cutting pay and conditions.
Shocking as it is, this isn't possible to achieve to the satisfaction of all. Hence Lynch and Smith both arguing to keep the BREXIT! faith and for One More Heave to deliver their prize of finally demolishing Smith or Lynch and all they stand for.
There was some (rather odd) glee yesterday that No was leading Yes by 51% to 49%.
Perhaps not so gleeful now that the subsidiary finding is published:
- “If Liz Truss becomes PM?”
Yes 52% No 48%
Overwhelming. Unionists may as well give up given they might trail by a (checks post) massive 2% when a contingent event happens. I'm sure Sturgeon would love to ride into a referendum with that kind of commanding lead. All over for the (checks latest vocab) "yoons".
There used to be an element of the SNP that were all for waiting for the settled will of the Scottish people before going for another referendum (60%, or thereabouts, maybe stable leads of 55%). Angus Robertson, I believe, was one. The idea was that good governance would make the argument. I admit I quite like the philosophy, but as a Unionist I would! I think Sturgeon is instinctively in this camp also.
The rest would be happy for 50%+1 vote, and that's, barring any change to the rules, their right to continue on that basis. As we've all seen, however, embarking on a difficult and divisive political project with only whisker of a majority is a recipe for all kinds of difficulty. Going for a referendum where at best 52% are supportive of the outcome could be a real strategic blunder for the SNP and potentially cause problems for an iScotland.
Depends whether you think Bettertogether II can sustain or even increase their current poll standing by pointing out the fantasic record of the Union over the last 8 years and finding credible & popular people to speak on behalf of it. They lost support in the lead up to 2014 despite sort of managing the latter last time out but now they'll have a rump of Galloway, Neil Oliver and the These Islands weirdos. I would enjoy seeing Gordon Brown explaining why the last 12 years of Tory misrule still make staying with Big U worth it mind.
I think that's the hope of the settled willers, that they can scrape a stronger mandate through the campaign. They might be right, hell of a risk in my opinion (though I'll freely admit that my appetite for independence-based risk is not high).
The hypothetical campaign would be important. If the Unionist campaign lines up as you say, with a helping dose of Truss acting imperiously, then the chances of running up support for independence increases. If it happens after 4 years of fair consensual unionism with Starmer, a growing economy etc... But now I'm speculating a bit!
Conservative hustings this week are tomorrow and Thursday.
They seem to take these more seriously than running the country!
So they should, right now.
Parliament is in recess, and this is about choosing the next Prime Minister.
The country is in crisis. The PM has gone awol. The Conservative Party is guilty of criminal negligence.
What part of Parliament being in recess are you finding confusing?
The PM hasn't gone AWOL, he's gone absent as he's on leave not without it. August is the time MPs including the PM have their annual holidays.
Whether its a good idea for Parliament to shut down for an entire month for a summer holiday is an entirely separate question, but there is nothing strange happening there.
What part of the difference between "executive" and "legislature" do you find hard to grasp exactly? The Cabinet, chaired by the Prime Minister, handles day-to-day executive functions on behalf of the Crown. That is entirely separate from the work of the legislature. The executive does not take a recess. He still has that role whether or not Parliament is sitting. This is a crisis, somewhere around the scale of a natural disaster, that he has decided not to handle.
No he hasn't decided not to handle, he's been informed by his colleagues (and the country generally in polls) that they don't want him to handle it.
Boris is a caretaker Prime Minister right now, that was determined when he resigned. He has a role to address any urgent issues that can't wait for the new Prime Minister but addressing things about this winter etc is the new Prime Minister's responsibility, not Boris's.
If Boris had spent every day this summer announcing new policies the same people complaining he's "gone AWOL" would be complaining that he's resigned and has no right to be doing so.
Mate.
Boris is self-serving, a liar, a hypocrite, and only interested in himself and always has been. He does precisely what is good for Boris and no one else. He is and always was manifestly unfit to be Prime Minister.
He did not "get Brexit done"
Still a member of the EU, are we?
As I said, he didn't get it done. The country voted for someone (it could have been a donkey with a straw hat on) to get it done.
Still a member of the EU, are we?
Nope. We left. Brexit was done.
Right. So Topping's denials that Boris got Brexit done (in the sense of the 2019 election slogan) are wrong.
Yes and No. We left the EU. But for so many people that was only the start of Brexit..
Irrelevant to my point, which is merely about the slogan as used at the 2019 election, which had no other meaning but to end the blockage of the previous parliament and complete the process of leaving the EU.
You are taking a fabulously narrow position and claiming supremacy over all the people who are absolutely indignant that Brexit isn't done and is under increased threat.
It isn't former remainers saying this, its former leavers. The Daily Express makes a good living printing story after story about the latest threat to delivering Brexit.
The interesting (distressing? Wholly predictable?) element of this is that the very same people who got behind TMay and Boris over Brexit are now lining up to support Truss. IDS et al are trotting out the line that Communism Brexit is a great idea just that it hasn't been executed properly. I fear they are about to learn that the concept is fundamentally flawed.
There is a growing face-off between the two polar opposite visions of Brexit. On one side Mick Lynch et al want their hugely increased pay and better conditions now that the forrin have gone home. On the other side IDS et al want to cut workers pay and conditions and safety now that the EU can't stop them.
BREXIT! supposedly would deliver a workers paradise against the exploitative bosses by boosting pay and conditions, AND deliver a management share price bonanza by cutting pay and conditions.
Shocking as it is, this isn't possible to achieve to the satisfaction of all. Hence Lynch and Smith both arguing to keep the BREXIT! faith and for One More Heave to deliver their prize of finally demolishing Smith or Lynch and all they stand for.
What you appear to be saying is that we're able to have a political debate of the sort we couldn't have had before we left the EU.
As far as I know no one has asked at the leader hustings how they will cope with a Trump fascist America that is pulling out of NATO and supporting Putin.
Some civil servants might want to have a very close read of the fine print of the Trident contract.
If the United States were to withdraw their cooperation completely, the UK nuclear capability would probably have a life expectancy measured in months rather than years.
We could create our own nuclear weapons pretty quickly if needed, as could Israel and Japan
What are your qualifications and knowledge on fusion weapons and delivery systems to make such a rash statement. Do you know you could launch from existing submarines for instance? If not could you build 3 submarines (the minimum needed to maintain a full time deterent) 'quickly'. How you have the arrogance to come out with statements when you have no knowledge whatsoever is beyond me
If the alternative is risking nuclear destruction by Putin with no deterrent response of course, the government would direct huge resources to it
It doesn't matter what resources you apply you can't develop this stuff quickly. It takes a long time to design and build a submarine and you need 3 as a minimum. Stuff will go wrong. Just look at the development time currently. It is in years and decades and there is always a critical path that can't be shortened by additional resources.
FYI the pension group I represent on a voluntary basis are the scientists from the privatised part of the UK Atomic Energy Authority. Many of them worked on this stuff in the 60s and 70s. These people don't exist anymore here, but more importantly the facilities have been sold off and are now science parks. So before you start you have a huge capital build, which takes time (many years).
If the US withdrew from NATO the entire defence and most of the engineering and manufacturing industry in the UK would be directed to the task
For crying out loud do you not understand critical path analysis?
It takes 9 months to produce a baby. If you put 9 women on it you don't get a baby in 1 month.
If it takes 10 men a month to build a house do you think 600 men can build a house by lunchtime?
You ever seen those videos of the Amish putting up a barn?
Yes very good. I have and it is very impressive. However that is a very good example isn't it because they are superb at working to the critical path. Twice as many Amish would put up two barns in the same time, but they couldn't get one barn put up in half the time.
A simple fact that HYUFD can't understand.
Well guess you will just have to be vaporised and destroyed in a Putin nuclear missile attack then given you are clearly not willing to support the necessary national defence measures in the event of a US withdrawal from NATO
I never said I wasn't. I was just pointing out your saying hat we can build this stuff quickly because we have 5 million (dishwasher) engineers is utter nonsense.
Read Jim Miller's Post earlier, it could certainly be done in a year
I did and you didn't read the posts in reply to it, because we can't and you ignore all the evidence everyone is giving you here as to why it isn't possible to do in under decades. We can build an H bomb very quickly, because we already do and have done for decades, and to be honest that isn't that complicated. Good god even I know how they work. However the rest isn't easy and requires decades of capital infrastructure to work. For instance in Jim's example they just dropped the two A bombs from a plane (and they only had 2). Don't do that anymore as it won't get to its destination. They get shot down. And when dropped from a plane it can be big. Again not anymore if launching from a sub. These subs take up to 2 decades to design from scratch and build.
OK here are somethings you can't shorten. Lots of things that need testing, need testing over time. So for instance when software testing or pressure testing if that takes 3 months you can't shorten it by doubling the staff. By its nature it must take that long. Eg you can't pressure test a tank for 10 hours by pressure testing 2 for 5 hours. This is the critical path stuff. You can't train an engineer quicker. It takes as long as it takes and engineers can't just transfer over from one subject to another if it is complicated. So a dishwasher engineer can fix a cooker with maybe a couple of weeks training, but a fluids engineer can't become a fusion engineer with out years of training and then possibly not at all.
How you don't understand this I don't know.
We can. Just as usual wet liberals like you have to find excuses why we can't. Otherwise Putin will of course destroy you and your family with a nuclear missile if we don't
Oh god this is mind boggling.
Try the Amish house example again. A large number of Amish build a barn very quickly. Yes?
If we double the number of Amish can they build the barn quicker?
No they can't. They have optimised the build speed. More people just get in the way.
However if they double the number of people they can build 2 barns in the time it takes to build 1 barn.
The lesson from this. You can optimise the speed of building something, but once you get to the critical path you can't build it any quicker.
So you are unwilling to do the necessary in terms of funds and people and ready to be destroyed by a nuclear bomb from Putin. Thanks for confirming
Conservative hustings this week are tomorrow and Thursday.
They seem to take these more seriously than running the country!
So they should, right now.
Parliament is in recess, and this is about choosing the next Prime Minister.
The country is in crisis. The PM has gone awol. The Conservative Party is guilty of criminal negligence.
What part of Parliament being in recess are you finding confusing?
The PM hasn't gone AWOL, he's gone absent as he's on leave not without it. August is the time MPs including the PM have their annual holidays.
Whether its a good idea for Parliament to shut down for an entire month for a summer holiday is an entirely separate question, but there is nothing strange happening there.
What part of the difference between "executive" and "legislature" do you find hard to grasp exactly? The Cabinet, chaired by the Prime Minister, handles day-to-day executive functions on behalf of the Crown. That is entirely separate from the work of the legislature. The executive does not take a recess. He still has that role whether or not Parliament is sitting. This is a crisis, somewhere around the scale of a natural disaster, that he has decided not to handle.
No he hasn't decided not to handle, he's been informed by his colleagues (and the country generally in polls) that they don't want him to handle it.
Boris is a caretaker Prime Minister right now, that was determined when he resigned. He has a role to address any urgent issues that can't wait for the new Prime Minister but addressing things about this winter etc is the new Prime Minister's responsibility, not Boris's.
If Boris had spent every day this summer announcing new policies the same people complaining he's "gone AWOL" would be complaining that he's resigned and has no right to be doing so.
Mate.
Boris is self-serving, a liar, a hypocrite, and only interested in himself and always has been. He does precisely what is good for Boris and no one else. He is and always was manifestly unfit to be Prime Minister.
He did not "get Brexit done"
Still a member of the EU, are we?
As I said, he didn't get it done. The country voted for someone (it could have been a donkey with a straw hat on) to get it done.
Still a member of the EU, are we?
Nope. We left. Brexit was done.
Right. So Topping's denials that Boris got Brexit done (in the sense of the 2019 election slogan) are wrong.
Brexit was done we are out of the EU. Boris happened to be in charge of the government when it all happened. He as much "got Brexit done" as he did stop the waves on Brighton beach.
By your logic, without Boris we would still be in the EU. Is that your belief?
Wow, that's a total failure of logical thinking.
So answer the question - do you think without Boris we would have left the EU?
Conservative hustings this week are tomorrow and Thursday.
They seem to take these more seriously than running the country!
So they should, right now.
Parliament is in recess, and this is about choosing the next Prime Minister.
The country is in crisis. The PM has gone awol. The Conservative Party is guilty of criminal negligence.
What part of Parliament being in recess are you finding confusing?
The PM hasn't gone AWOL, he's gone absent as he's on leave not without it. August is the time MPs including the PM have their annual holidays.
Whether its a good idea for Parliament to shut down for an entire month for a summer holiday is an entirely separate question, but there is nothing strange happening there.
What part of the difference between "executive" and "legislature" do you find hard to grasp exactly? The Cabinet, chaired by the Prime Minister, handles day-to-day executive functions on behalf of the Crown. That is entirely separate from the work of the legislature. The executive does not take a recess. He still has that role whether or not Parliament is sitting. This is a crisis, somewhere around the scale of a natural disaster, that he has decided not to handle.
No he hasn't decided not to handle, he's been informed by his colleagues (and the country generally in polls) that they don't want him to handle it.
Boris is a caretaker Prime Minister right now, that was determined when he resigned. He has a role to address any urgent issues that can't wait for the new Prime Minister but addressing things about this winter etc is the new Prime Minister's responsibility, not Boris's.
If Boris had spent every day this summer announcing new policies the same people complaining he's "gone AWOL" would be complaining that he's resigned and has no right to be doing so.
Mate.
Boris is self-serving, a liar, a hypocrite, and only interested in himself and always has been. He does precisely what is good for Boris and no one else. He is and always was manifestly unfit to be Prime Minister.
He did not "get Brexit done"
Still a member of the EU, are we?
As I said, he didn't get it done. The country voted for someone (it could have been a donkey with a straw hat on) to get it done.
Still a member of the EU, are we?
Nope. We left. Brexit was done.
Right. So Topping's denials that Boris got Brexit done (in the sense of the 2019 election slogan) are wrong.
Yes and No. We left the EU. But for so many people that was only the start of Brexit..
Irrelevant to my point, which is merely about the slogan as used at the 2019 election, which had no other meaning but to end the blockage of the previous parliament and complete the process of leaving the EU.
You are taking a fabulously narrow position and claiming supremacy over all the people who are absolutely indignant that Brexit isn't done and is under increased threat.
It isn't former remainers saying this, its former leavers. The Daily Express makes a good living printing story after story about the latest threat to delivering Brexit.
I'm merely arguing with Topping's incorrect assertion that the slogan "get Brexit done" as used in the 2019 election wasn't delivered.
The interesting (distressing? Wholly predictable?) element of this is that the very same people who got behind TMay and Boris over Brexit are now lining up to support Truss. IDS et al are trotting out the line that Communism Brexit is a great idea just that it hasn't been executed properly. I fear they are about to learn that the concept is fundamentally flawed.
Unlikely to happen, unfortunately. That's not how people's minds work. Unless they are brought up against a really painful failure (such as defeat and occupation in a shooting war), people generally don't confront the possibility that they were wrong in their beliefs. It was just about the execution, or personal pecadilloes of the leaders.
As physicists put it, bad ideas die out one funeral at a time.
As far as I know no one has asked at the leader hustings how they will cope with a Trump fascist America that is pulling out of NATO and supporting Putin.
Some civil servants might want to have a very close read of the fine print of the Trident contract.
If the United States were to withdraw their cooperation completely, the UK nuclear capability would probably have a life expectancy measured in months rather than years.
We could create our own nuclear weapons pretty quickly if needed, as could Israel and Japan
What are your qualifications and knowledge on fusion weapons and delivery systems to make such a rash statement. Do you know you could launch from existing submarines for instance? If not could you build 3 submarines (the minimum needed to maintain a full time deterent) 'quickly'. How you have the arrogance to come out with statements when you have no knowledge whatsoever is beyond me
If the alternative is risking nuclear destruction by Putin with no deterrent response of course, the government would direct huge resources to it
It doesn't matter what resources you apply you can't develop this stuff quickly. It takes a long time to design and build a submarine and you need 3 as a minimum. Stuff will go wrong. Just look at the development time currently. It is in years and decades and there is always a critical path that can't be shortened by additional resources.
FYI the pension group I represent on a voluntary basis are the scientists from the privatised part of the UK Atomic Energy Authority. Many of them worked on this stuff in the 60s and 70s. These people don't exist anymore here, but more importantly the facilities have been sold off and are now science parks. So before you start you have a huge capital build, which takes time (many years).
If the US withdrew from NATO the entire defence and most of the engineering and manufacturing industry in the UK would be directed to the task
For crying out loud do you not understand critical path analysis?
It takes 9 months to produce a baby. If you put 9 women on it you don't get a baby in 1 month.
If it takes 10 men a month to build a house do you think 600 men can build a house by lunchtime?
You ever seen those videos of the Amish putting up a barn?
Yes very good. I have and it is very impressive. However that is a very good example isn't it because they are superb at working to the critical path. Twice as many Amish would put up two barns in the same time, but they couldn't get one barn put up in half the time.
A simple fact that HYUFD can't understand.
Well guess you will just have to be vaporised and destroyed in a Putin nuclear missile attack then given you are clearly not willing to support the necessary national defence measures in the event of a US withdrawal from NATO
I never said I wasn't. I was just pointing out your saying hat we can build this stuff quickly because we have 5 million (dishwasher) engineers is utter nonsense.
Read Jim Miller's Post earlier, it could certainly be done in a year
I did and you didn't read the posts in reply to it, because we can't and you ignore all the evidence everyone is giving you here as to why it isn't possible to do in under decades. We can build an H bomb very quickly, because we already do and have done for decades, and to be honest that isn't that complicated. Good god even I know how they work. However the rest isn't easy and requires decades of capital infrastructure to work. For instance in Jim's example they just dropped the two A bombs from a plane (and they only had 2). Don't do that anymore as it won't get to its destination. They get shot down. And when dropped from a plane it can be big. Again not anymore if launching from a sub. These subs take up to 2 decades to design from scratch and build.
OK here are somethings you can't shorten. Lots of things that need testing, need testing over time. So for instance when software testing or pressure testing if that takes 3 months you can't shorten it by doubling the staff. By its nature it must take that long. Eg you can't pressure test a tank for 10 hours by pressure testing 2 for 5 hours. This is the critical path stuff. You can't train an engineer quicker. It takes as long as it takes and engineers can't just transfer over from one subject to another if it is complicated. So a dishwasher engineer can fix a cooker with maybe a couple of weeks training, but a fluids engineer can't become a fusion engineer with out years of training and then possibly not at all.
How you don't understand this I don't know.
We can. Just as usual wet liberals like you have to find excuses why we can't. Otherwise Putin will of course destroy you and your family with a nuclear missile if we don't
Oh god this is mind boggling.
Try the Amish house example again. A large number of Amish build a barn very quickly. Yes?
If we double the number of Amish can they build the barn quicker?
No they can't. They have optimised the build speed. More people just get in the way.
However if they double the number of people they can build 2 barns in the time it takes to build 1 barn.
The lesson from this. You can optimise the speed of building something, but once you get to the critical path you can't build it any quicker.
So you are unwilling to do the necessary in terms of funds and people and ready to be destroyed by a nuclear bomb from Putin. Thanks for confirming
Thanks for confirming you've lost the argument.
Far from it, if the US withdrew from NATO we would have to create our own nukes asap or you me and kle4 would be at risk of nuclear armageddon, destruction and vaporisation by Putin's nuclear weapons without response. If you are not up to the task then that would be your fate, most of the manufacturing economy would have to be diverted by the government to it as well as our scientific research and it would be done
As far as I know no one has asked at the leader hustings how they will cope with a Trump fascist America that is pulling out of NATO and supporting Putin.
Some civil servants might want to have a very close read of the fine print of the Trident contract.
If the United States were to withdraw their cooperation completely, the UK nuclear capability would probably have a life expectancy measured in months rather than years.
We could create our own nuclear weapons pretty quickly if needed, as could Israel and Japan
What are your qualifications and knowledge on fusion weapons and delivery systems to make such a rash statement. Do you know you could launch from existing submarines for instance? If not could you build 3 submarines (the minimum needed to maintain a full time deterent) 'quickly'. How you have the arrogance to come out with statements when you have no knowledge whatsoever is beyond me
If the alternative is risking nuclear destruction by Putin with no deterrent response of course, the government would direct huge resources to it
What resources? What management skills does the current string of Tory governments have?
We are the 5th largest economy in the world, national security is the first job of any government. Billions and billions of pounds would be diverted to it if the US withdrew from NATO
It'd take about 5-10 years - or 20 if the Tories and MoD were involved.
Depends how many funds and scientists are involved
You don't get it. You don't need scientists. You need engineers. Project managers. Trainers.
As I said we have over 5 million engineers
I'vew already pointed ouyt you are counting toilet cleaners, delivery men, secretaries and accountants as "engineers". And you are ignoring that.
"engineering workforce" is the wording they use. Not "professional engineers".
BAe has plenty of workers - but only a relative minority will be engineers.
I think that's a very blurry line, and you can go far too far the other way and say only people who know how to change a head gasket are 'engineers'. In which case neither myself or Mrs J would count.
A mechanic changes a head gasket, not an engineer. Engineering is a profession, at least it is in countries like Germany. We don’t understand the difference between engineers and mechanics, which is why we underrate engineers and engineering. Maybe that’s why we don’t make things any more?
There was some (rather odd) glee yesterday that No was leading Yes by 51% to 49%.
Perhaps not so gleeful now that the subsidiary finding is published:
- “If Liz Truss becomes PM?”
Yes 52% No 48%
Overwhelming. Unionists may as well give up given they might trail by a (checks post) massive 2% when a contingent event happens. I'm sure Sturgeon would love to ride into a referendum with that kind of commanding lead. All over for the (checks latest vocab) "yoons".
There used to be an element of the SNP that were all for waiting for the settled will of the Scottish people before going for another referendum (60%, or thereabouts, maybe stable leads of 55%). Angus Robertson, I believe, was one. The idea was that good governance would make the argument. I admit I quite like the philosophy, but as a Unionist I would! I think Sturgeon is instinctively in this camp also.
The rest would be happy for 50%+1 vote, and that's, barring any change to the rules, their right to continue on that basis. As we've all seen, however, embarking on a difficult and divisive political project with only whisker of a majority is a recipe for all kinds of difficulty. Going for a referendum where at best 52% are supportive of the outcome could be a real strategic blunder for the SNP and potentially cause problems for an iScotland.
Depends whether you think Bettertogether II can sustain or even increase their current poll standing by pointing out the fantasic record of the Union over the last 8 years and finding credible & popular people to speak on behalf of it. They lost support in the lead up to 2014 despite sort of managing the latter last time out but now they'll have a rump of Galloway, Neil Oliver and the These Islands weirdos. I would enjoy seeing Gordon Brown explaining why the last 12 years of Tory misrule still make staying with Big U worth it mind.
I think that's the hope of the settled willers, that they can scrape a stronger mandate through the campaign. They might be right, hell of a risk in my opinion (though I'll freely admit that my appetite for independence-based risk is not high).
The hypothetical campaign would be important. If the Unionist campaign lines up as you say, with a helping dose of Truss acting imperiously, then the chances of running up support for independence increases. If it happens after 4 years of fair consensual unionism with Starmer, a growing economy etc... But now I'm speculating a bit!
It would only ever be the latter anyway as Truss would refuse indyref2
Conservative hustings this week are tomorrow and Thursday.
They seem to take these more seriously than running the country!
So they should, right now.
Parliament is in recess, and this is about choosing the next Prime Minister.
The country is in crisis. The PM has gone awol. The Conservative Party is guilty of criminal negligence.
What part of Parliament being in recess are you finding confusing?
The PM hasn't gone AWOL, he's gone absent as he's on leave not without it. August is the time MPs including the PM have their annual holidays.
Whether its a good idea for Parliament to shut down for an entire month for a summer holiday is an entirely separate question, but there is nothing strange happening there.
What part of the difference between "executive" and "legislature" do you find hard to grasp exactly? The Cabinet, chaired by the Prime Minister, handles day-to-day executive functions on behalf of the Crown. That is entirely separate from the work of the legislature. The executive does not take a recess. He still has that role whether or not Parliament is sitting. This is a crisis, somewhere around the scale of a natural disaster, that he has decided not to handle.
No he hasn't decided not to handle, he's been informed by his colleagues (and the country generally in polls) that they don't want him to handle it.
Boris is a caretaker Prime Minister right now, that was determined when he resigned. He has a role to address any urgent issues that can't wait for the new Prime Minister but addressing things about this winter etc is the new Prime Minister's responsibility, not Boris's.
If Boris had spent every day this summer announcing new policies the same people complaining he's "gone AWOL" would be complaining that he's resigned and has no right to be doing so.
Mate.
Boris is self-serving, a liar, a hypocrite, and only interested in himself and always has been. He does precisely what is good for Boris and no one else. He is and always was manifestly unfit to be Prime Minister.
He did not "get Brexit done"
Still a member of the EU, are we?
As I said, he didn't get it done. The country voted for someone (it could have been a donkey with a straw hat on) to get it done.
Still a member of the EU, are we?
Nope. We left. Brexit was done.
Right. So Topping's denials that Boris got Brexit done (in the sense of the 2019 election slogan) are wrong.
Brexit was done we are out of the EU. Boris happened to be in charge of the government when it all happened. He as much "got Brexit done" as he did stop the waves on Brighton beach.
By your logic, without Boris we would still be in the EU. Is that your belief?
Wow, that's a total failure of logical thinking.
So answer the question - do you think without Boris we would have left the EU?
There are some alternatives to Boris under whom we would have, and some under whom we wouldn't have.
But it's entirely irrelevant to my point, which I can't understand why you're trying to cloud - Boris was in charge, so he gets the credit and the blame for everything that happened when he was in charge - in particular, he gets the credit for delivering things that were his key election pledges.
There was some (rather odd) glee yesterday that No was leading Yes by 51% to 49%.
Perhaps not so gleeful now that the subsidiary finding is published:
- “If Liz Truss becomes PM?”
Yes 52% No 48%
Overwhelming. Unionists may as well give up given they might trail by a (checks post) massive 2% when a contingent event happens. I'm sure Sturgeon would love to ride into a referendum with that kind of commanding lead. All over for the (checks latest vocab) "yoons".
There used to be an element of the SNP that were all for waiting for the settled will of the Scottish people before going for another referendum (60%, or thereabouts, maybe stable leads of 55%). Angus Robertson, I believe, was one. The idea was that good governance would make the argument. I admit I quite like the philosophy, but as a Unionist I would! I think Sturgeon is instinctively in this camp also.
The rest would be happy for 50%+1 vote, and that's, barring any change to the rules, their right to continue on that basis. As we've all seen, however, embarking on a difficult and divisive political project with only whisker of a majority is a recipe for all kinds of difficulty. Going for a referendum where at best 52% are supportive of the outcome could be a real strategic blunder for the SNP and potentially cause problems for an iScotland.
Depends whether you think Bettertogether II can sustain or even increase their current poll standing by pointing out the fantasic record of the Union over the last 8 years and finding credible & popular people to speak on behalf of it. They lost support in the lead up to 2014 despite sort of managing the latter last time out but now they'll have a rump of Galloway, Neil Oliver and the These Islands weirdos. I would enjoy seeing Gordon Brown explaining why the last 12 years of Tory misrule still make staying with Big U worth it mind.
I think that's the hope of the settled willers, that they can scrape a stronger mandate through the campaign. They might be right, hell of a risk in my opinion (though I'll freely admit that my appetite for independence-based risk is not high).
The hypothetical campaign would be important. If the Unionist campaign lines up as you say, with a helping dose of Truss acting imperiously, then the chances of running up support for independence increases. If it happens after 4 years of fair consensual unionism with Starmer, a growing economy etc... But now I'm speculating a bit!
Och, we're all speculating at this point!
I am intrigued by the possibility of the Unionist parties running separate campaigns. It's pretty much generally accepted that SLab screwed themselves electorally by signing up to Bettertogether but I wonder if it was that unified approach that contributed most to getting No over the line? The sight of maw and paw bickering over who was the more crap while trying to persuade us to stay in the family home may not have been entirely persuasive.
Conservative hustings this week are tomorrow and Thursday.
They seem to take these more seriously than running the country!
So they should, right now.
Parliament is in recess, and this is about choosing the next Prime Minister.
The country is in crisis. The PM has gone awol. The Conservative Party is guilty of criminal negligence.
What part of Parliament being in recess are you finding confusing?
The PM hasn't gone AWOL, he's gone absent as he's on leave not without it. August is the time MPs including the PM have their annual holidays.
Whether its a good idea for Parliament to shut down for an entire month for a summer holiday is an entirely separate question, but there is nothing strange happening there.
What part of the difference between "executive" and "legislature" do you find hard to grasp exactly? The Cabinet, chaired by the Prime Minister, handles day-to-day executive functions on behalf of the Crown. That is entirely separate from the work of the legislature. The executive does not take a recess. He still has that role whether or not Parliament is sitting. This is a crisis, somewhere around the scale of a natural disaster, that he has decided not to handle.
No he hasn't decided not to handle, he's been informed by his colleagues (and the country generally in polls) that they don't want him to handle it.
Boris is a caretaker Prime Minister right now, that was determined when he resigned. He has a role to address any urgent issues that can't wait for the new Prime Minister but addressing things about this winter etc is the new Prime Minister's responsibility, not Boris's.
If Boris had spent every day this summer announcing new policies the same people complaining he's "gone AWOL" would be complaining that he's resigned and has no right to be doing so.
Mate.
Boris is self-serving, a liar, a hypocrite, and only interested in himself and always has been. He does precisely what is good for Boris and no one else. He is and always was manifestly unfit to be Prime Minister.
He did not "get Brexit done"
Still a member of the EU, are we?
As I said, he didn't get it done. The country voted for someone (it could have been a donkey with a straw hat on) to get it done.
Still a member of the EU, are we?
Nope. We left. Brexit was done.
Right. So Topping's denials that Boris got Brexit done (in the sense of the 2019 election slogan) are wrong.
Brexit was done we are out of the EU. Boris happened to be in charge of the government when it all happened. He as much "got Brexit done" as he did stop the waves on Brighton beach.
By your logic, without Boris we would still be in the EU. Is that your belief?
Wow, that's a total failure of logical thinking.
So answer the question - do you think without Boris we would have left the EU?
No. Rational discussion of the method and of the consequences would've meant that we came to our senses and remained!
Edit. After, of course, a second referendum! Old men are allowed to dream dreams!
Conservative hustings this week are tomorrow and Thursday.
They seem to take these more seriously than running the country!
So they should, right now.
Parliament is in recess, and this is about choosing the next Prime Minister.
The country is in crisis. The PM has gone awol. The Conservative Party is guilty of criminal negligence.
What part of Parliament being in recess are you finding confusing?
The PM hasn't gone AWOL, he's gone absent as he's on leave not without it. August is the time MPs including the PM have their annual holidays.
Whether its a good idea for Parliament to shut down for an entire month for a summer holiday is an entirely separate question, but there is nothing strange happening there.
What part of the difference between "executive" and "legislature" do you find hard to grasp exactly? The Cabinet, chaired by the Prime Minister, handles day-to-day executive functions on behalf of the Crown. That is entirely separate from the work of the legislature. The executive does not take a recess. He still has that role whether or not Parliament is sitting. This is a crisis, somewhere around the scale of a natural disaster, that he has decided not to handle.
No he hasn't decided not to handle, he's been informed by his colleagues (and the country generally in polls) that they don't want him to handle it.
Boris is a caretaker Prime Minister right now, that was determined when he resigned. He has a role to address any urgent issues that can't wait for the new Prime Minister but addressing things about this winter etc is the new Prime Minister's responsibility, not Boris's.
If Boris had spent every day this summer announcing new policies the same people complaining he's "gone AWOL" would be complaining that he's resigned and has no right to be doing so.
There's no such constitutional role as "caretaker" Prime Minister. You're the Prime Minister or you're not. "Polls" do not force a PM not to act. That's a concious decision. Not acting because you think your colleagues don't want you to is a decision. He has decisions to make and the decision he's made is to do nothing. Because he was always unsuited to the job.
There absolutely is a constitutional role as a caretaker Prime Minister and that is Boris right now.
Our constitution is unwritten, the fact that Boris has been said to be a caretaker PM makes him a caretaker PM. The principle of a caretaker government is not new and has been around for many years, Brown post-2010 election was a caretaker PM too until Cameron became PM.
He has no decisions to make, unless they can't wait for the new PM, because he's caretaker.
My word. You've just owned yourself spectacularly. You don't have a clue do you? You have no idea about the law or the constitution. You just Google shit and post it without reading it. You quoted an Institute of Government page ( https://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/explainers/caretaker-government ) that says -
The phrase ‘caretaker government’ describes a government that holds office subject to certain temporary restrictions on what it may do, either during the pre-election period known as ‘purdah’ or because it may have lost the confidence of the House of Commons. In other countries, such as New Zealand, this status is more formally termed ‘caretaker’, but the UK has not adopted the phrase.
The UK has not developed comprehensive rules over the formation and operation of caretaker governments. The workings of caretaker governments operate through convention, which has been published in the 2011 Cabinet Manual.
In the UK, government acts in a caretaker capacity in three scenarios:
1.During a general election campaign 2.If a vote of no confidence is passed by the House of Commons 3. If an election produces an unclear result
(Emphasis mine)
So even in the IoG page you yourself cite Johnson is not a "caretaker" Prime Minister because none of the three eventualities they set out, and is set out in the 2011 Cabinet Manual, exists. 'Caretaker' is the wrong term for as the IoG site you yourself cite, this is not a caretaker Prime Minister.
I beg you, please read the stuff you cite from before posting it. It would save you a lot of hassle.
Clueless. Utterly clueless.
Except I've not been "owned" because part of the principle of our unwritten constitution is it evolves over time with new precedent.
You've gone from claiming that Caretaker is not a principle that exists to that it might exist but the current circumstances aren't it because it's not one of the three examples given.
However just because three examples exist doesn't mean a fourth can't arise. Caretaker in the UK operates from convention not written rules and conventions can evolve. It doesn't take legislation to create a fourth, once you accept a principle that caretaker does exist then new circumstances (fourth, fifth or more) can arise whereby the existing precedent is followed and evolved.
Top Googling but, again, you miss the point, and completely misrepresent me. "Caretaker Prime Minister" is not defined in the constitution. That much is confirmed by the IoG source, which in any event refers to "Caretaker Governments" not PMs, that you are now running from with as much haste as you Googed and posted it. The relevant part is the Cabinet Manual, generally regarded as being part of our uncodified constitution, which has greater force than a single quote from Robert Buckland in a report that also says "Foreign Secretary Liz Truss - a possible leadership contender who has remained silent for days - says her party needs to keep governing until a new leader is found" - which they're not doing
For the final time. It's not an unwritten constitution. It's uncodified. It does not "evolve", it is changed by consent, and, even if it did, that does not mean making shit up as you go along. The Cabinet Manual beats a BBC report. Just admit it when you're wrong. It's not hard for most of us.
As far as I know no one has asked at the leader hustings how they will cope with a Trump fascist America that is pulling out of NATO and supporting Putin.
Some civil servants might want to have a very close read of the fine print of the Trident contract.
If the United States were to withdraw their cooperation completely, the UK nuclear capability would probably have a life expectancy measured in months rather than years.
We could create our own nuclear weapons pretty quickly if needed, as could Israel and Japan
What are your qualifications and knowledge on fusion weapons and delivery systems to make such a rash statement. Do you know you could launch from existing submarines for instance? If not could you build 3 submarines (the minimum needed to maintain a full time deterent) 'quickly'. How you have the arrogance to come out with statements when you have no knowledge whatsoever is beyond me
If the alternative is risking nuclear destruction by Putin with no deterrent response of course, the government would direct huge resources to it
It doesn't matter what resources you apply you can't develop this stuff quickly. It takes a long time to design and build a submarine and you need 3 as a minimum. Stuff will go wrong. Just look at the development time currently. It is in years and decades and there is always a critical path that can't be shortened by additional resources.
FYI the pension group I represent on a voluntary basis are the scientists from the privatised part of the UK Atomic Energy Authority. Many of them worked on this stuff in the 60s and 70s. These people don't exist anymore here, but more importantly the facilities have been sold off and are now science parks. So before you start you have a huge capital build, which takes time (many years).
If the US withdrew from NATO the entire defence and most of the engineering and manufacturing industry in the UK would be directed to the task
For crying out loud do you not understand critical path analysis?
It takes 9 months to produce a baby. If you put 9 women on it you don't get a baby in 1 month.
If it takes 10 men a month to build a house do you think 600 men can build a house by lunchtime?
You ever seen those videos of the Amish putting up a barn?
Yes very good. I have and it is very impressive. However that is a very good example isn't it because they are superb at working to the critical path. Twice as many Amish would put up two barns in the same time, but they couldn't get one barn put up in half the time.
A simple fact that HYUFD can't understand.
Well guess you will just have to be vaporised and destroyed in a Putin nuclear missile attack then given you are clearly not willing to support the necessary national defence measures in the event of a US withdrawal from NATO
I never said I wasn't. I was just pointing out your saying hat we can build this stuff quickly because we have 5 million (dishwasher) engineers is utter nonsense.
Read Jim Miller's Post earlier, it could certainly be done in a year
I did and you didn't read the posts in reply to it, because we can't and you ignore all the evidence everyone is giving you here as to why it isn't possible to do in under decades. We can build an H bomb very quickly, because we already do and have done for decades, and to be honest that isn't that complicated. Good god even I know how they work. However the rest isn't easy and requires decades of capital infrastructure to work. For instance in Jim's example they just dropped the two A bombs from a plane (and they only had 2). Don't do that anymore as it won't get to its destination. They get shot down. And when dropped from a plane it can be big. Again not anymore if launching from a sub. These subs take up to 2 decades to design from scratch and build.
OK here are somethings you can't shorten. Lots of things that need testing, need testing over time. So for instance when software testing or pressure testing if that takes 3 months you can't shorten it by doubling the staff. By its nature it must take that long. Eg you can't pressure test a tank for 10 hours by pressure testing 2 for 5 hours. This is the critical path stuff. You can't train an engineer quicker. It takes as long as it takes and engineers can't just transfer over from one subject to another if it is complicated. So a dishwasher engineer can fix a cooker with maybe a couple of weeks training, but a fluids engineer can't become a fusion engineer with out years of training and then possibly not at all.
How you don't understand this I don't know.
We can. Just as usual wet liberals like you have to find excuses why we can't. Otherwise Putin will of course destroy you and your family with a nuclear missile if we don't
Oh god this is mind boggling.
Try the Amish house example again. A large number of Amish build a barn very quickly. Yes?
If we double the number of Amish can they build the barn quicker?
No they can't. They have optimised the build speed. More people just get in the way.
However if they double the number of people they can build 2 barns in the time it takes to build 1 barn.
The lesson from this. You can optimise the speed of building something, but once you get to the critical path you can't build it any quicker.
So you are unwilling to do the necessary in terms of funds and people and ready to be destroyed by a nuclear bomb from Putin. Thanks for confirming
That is an absurd scenario in so many ways that it is hard to know where to start.
If Trumpite America withdrew from NATO there would undoubtedly be difficulties, but the idea that we would have to build our own nuclear deterrent in a sort of scrapheap challenge is one of the most absurd.
Putin is losing a war in Ukraine with half his usable armoured forces obliterated in six months. He isn't going to be a threat to anyone soon.
As far as I know no one has asked at the leader hustings how they will cope with a Trump fascist America that is pulling out of NATO and supporting Putin.
Some civil servants might want to have a very close read of the fine print of the Trident contract.
If the United States were to withdraw their cooperation completely, the UK nuclear capability would probably have a life expectancy measured in months rather than years.
We could create our own nuclear weapons pretty quickly if needed, as could Israel and Japan
What are your qualifications and knowledge on fusion weapons and delivery systems to make such a rash statement. Do you know you could launch from existing submarines for instance? If not could you build 3 submarines (the minimum needed to maintain a full time deterent) 'quickly'. How you have the arrogance to come out with statements when you have no knowledge whatsoever is beyond me
If the alternative is risking nuclear destruction by Putin with no deterrent response of course, the government would direct huge resources to it
What resources? What management skills does the current string of Tory governments have?
We are the 5th largest economy in the world, national security is the first job of any government. Billions and billions of pounds would be diverted to it if the US withdrew from NATO
It'd take about 5-10 years - or 20 if the Tories and MoD were involved.
Depends how many funds and scientists are involved
You don't get it. You don't need scientists. You need engineers. Project managers. Trainers.
As I said we have over 5 million engineers
I'vew already pointed ouyt you are counting toilet cleaners, delivery men, secretaries and accountants as "engineers". And you are ignoring that.
"engineering workforce" is the wording they use. Not "professional engineers".
BAe has plenty of workers - but only a relative minority will be engineers.
I think that's a very blurry line, and you can go far too far the other way and say only people who know how to change a head gasket are 'engineers'. In which case neither myself or Mrs J would count.
A mechanic changes a head gasket, not an engineer. Engineering is a profession, at least it is in countries like Germany. We don’t understand the difference between engineers and mechanics, which is why we underrate engineers and engineering. Maybe that’s why we don’t make things any more?
I would say that distinction is rather out of date nowadays, given the technology in cars. Mechanics is a form of engineering imo. Was Daniel Gooch mechanic, an engineer, or both?
As far as I know no one has asked at the leader hustings how they will cope with a Trump fascist America that is pulling out of NATO and supporting Putin.
Some civil servants might want to have a very close read of the fine print of the Trident contract.
If the United States were to withdraw their cooperation completely, the UK nuclear capability would probably have a life expectancy measured in months rather than years.
We could create our own nuclear weapons pretty quickly if needed, as could Israel and Japan
What are your qualifications and knowledge on fusion weapons and delivery systems to make such a rash statement. Do you know you could launch from existing submarines for instance? If not could you build 3 submarines (the minimum needed to maintain a full time deterent) 'quickly'. How you have the arrogance to come out with statements when you have no knowledge whatsoever is beyond me
If the alternative is risking nuclear destruction by Putin with no deterrent response of course, the government would direct huge resources to it
What resources? What management skills does the current string of Tory governments have?
We are the 5th largest economy in the world, national security is the first job of any government. Billions and billions of pounds would be diverted to it if the US withdrew from NATO
It'd take about 5-10 years - or 20 if the Tories and MoD were involved.
Depends how many funds and scientists are involved
You don't get it. You don't need scientists. You need engineers. Project managers. Trainers.
As I said we have over 5 million engineers
I'vew already pointed ouyt you are counting toilet cleaners, delivery men, secretaries and accountants as "engineers". And you are ignoring that.
"engineering workforce" is the wording they use. Not "professional engineers".
BAe has plenty of workers - but only a relative minority will be engineers.
I think that's a very blurry line, and you can go far too far the other way and say only people who know how to change a head gasket are 'engineers'. In which case neither myself or Mrs J would count.
A mechanic changes a head gasket, not an engineer. Engineering is a profession, at least it is in countries like Germany. We don’t understand the difference between engineers and mechanics, which is why we underrate engineers and engineering. Maybe that’s why we don’t make things any more?
I think mechanics are underrated in the UK too. Perhaps they always will be until someone provides an endowment for an Oxbridge college with a focus on technical skills.
Seems like an extraordinary amount of cash, if true.
https://twitter.com/minna_alander/status/1561354139464044544 Only a week after a @welt report reveals that the so-called “Umweltstiftung” (environmental foundation) Schwesig founder received €192 million from the Gazprom subsidiary Nord Stream 2 AG from Feb till Nov 2021, Schwesig is re-elected as leader of SPD Mecklenburg-Vorpommern...
There was some (rather odd) glee yesterday that No was leading Yes by 51% to 49%.
Perhaps not so gleeful now that the subsidiary finding is published:
- “If Liz Truss becomes PM?”
Yes 52% No 48%
Why? Truss has made clear she will never allow indyref2 on her watch anyway.
If Starmer gets in ironically he was the leader Scots thought least likely to lead to independence even if he allowed indyref2 due to reliance on the SNP in a hung parliament
Perhaps - and its just possible - the thought processes of voters aren't limited only to the latest replacement Tory MP for their final few months in office.
You cling to Starmer's occasional statements on this like a life jacket. As if you care what he thinks or trust what he says.
Well as there will never be an indyref2 allowed by a Conservative PM it doesn't matter how popular they are in Scotland.
Starmer might allow indyref2 though if he needs SNP support in a hung parliament so his support in Scotland is more relevant
Sure. And thats the answer to your question "why" are Scottish voters more in favour of independence with Truss as PM. Because they know they will be tret with the sneering disdain you endlessly display on this subject and they are sick of it.
It doesn't legally or constitutionally matter if 99% of Scots want independence if we have a Tory Government that can still refuse indyref2. As I said it only matters for a Labour PM how popular they are in Scotland as they would be the only ones granting indyref2 if reliant on SNP support
Even with 99%? Proof that you are not a democrat, just a tory fascist.
As far as I know no one has asked at the leader hustings how they will cope with a Trump fascist America that is pulling out of NATO and supporting Putin.
Some civil servants might want to have a very close read of the fine print of the Trident contract.
If the United States were to withdraw their cooperation completely, the UK nuclear capability would probably have a life expectancy measured in months rather than years.
We could create our own nuclear weapons pretty quickly if needed, as could Israel and Japan
What are your qualifications and knowledge on fusion weapons and delivery systems to make such a rash statement. Do you know you could launch from existing submarines for instance? If not could you build 3 submarines (the minimum needed to maintain a full time deterent) 'quickly'. How you have the arrogance to come out with statements when you have no knowledge whatsoever is beyond me
If the alternative is risking nuclear destruction by Putin with no deterrent response of course, the government would direct huge resources to it
It doesn't matter what resources you apply you can't develop this stuff quickly. It takes a long time to design and build a submarine and you need 3 as a minimum. Stuff will go wrong. Just look at the development time currently. It is in years and decades and there is always a critical path that can't be shortened by additional resources.
FYI the pension group I represent on a voluntary basis are the scientists from the privatised part of the UK Atomic Energy Authority. Many of them worked on this stuff in the 60s and 70s. These people don't exist anymore here, but more importantly the facilities have been sold off and are now science parks. So before you start you have a huge capital build, which takes time (many years).
If the US withdrew from NATO the entire defence and most of the engineering and manufacturing industry in the UK would be directed to the task
For crying out loud do you not understand critical path analysis?
It takes 9 months to produce a baby. If you put 9 women on it you don't get a baby in 1 month.
If it takes 10 men a month to build a house do you think 600 men can build a house by lunchtime?
You ever seen those videos of the Amish putting up a barn?
Yes very good. I have and it is very impressive. However that is a very good example isn't it because they are superb at working to the critical path. Twice as many Amish would put up two barns in the same time, but they couldn't get one barn put up in half the time.
A simple fact that HYUFD can't understand.
Well guess you will just have to be vaporised and destroyed in a Putin nuclear missile attack then given you are clearly not willing to support the necessary national defence measures in the event of a US withdrawal from NATO
I never said I wasn't. I was just pointing out your saying hat we can build this stuff quickly because we have 5 million (dishwasher) engineers is utter nonsense.
Read Jim Miller's Post earlier, it could certainly be done in a year
I did and you didn't read the posts in reply to it, because we can't and you ignore all the evidence everyone is giving you here as to why it isn't possible to do in under decades. We can build an H bomb very quickly, because we already do and have done for decades, and to be honest that isn't that complicated. Good god even I know how they work. However the rest isn't easy and requires decades of capital infrastructure to work. For instance in Jim's example they just dropped the two A bombs from a plane (and they only had 2). Don't do that anymore as it won't get to its destination. They get shot down. And when dropped from a plane it can be big. Again not anymore if launching from a sub. These subs take up to 2 decades to design from scratch and build.
OK here are somethings you can't shorten. Lots of things that need testing, need testing over time. So for instance when software testing or pressure testing if that takes 3 months you can't shorten it by doubling the staff. By its nature it must take that long. Eg you can't pressure test a tank for 10 hours by pressure testing 2 for 5 hours. This is the critical path stuff. You can't train an engineer quicker. It takes as long as it takes and engineers can't just transfer over from one subject to another if it is complicated. So a dishwasher engineer can fix a cooker with maybe a couple of weeks training, but a fluids engineer can't become a fusion engineer with out years of training and then possibly not at all.
How you don't understand this I don't know.
We can. Just as usual wet liberals like you have to find excuses why we can't. Otherwise Putin will of course destroy you and your family with a nuclear missile if we don't
Oh god this is mind boggling.
Try the Amish house example again. A large number of Amish build a barn very quickly. Yes?
If we double the number of Amish can they build the barn quicker?
No they can't. They have optimised the build speed. More people just get in the way.
However if they double the number of people they can build 2 barns in the time it takes to build 1 barn.
The lesson from this. You can optimise the speed of building something, but once you get to the critical path you can't build it any quicker.
So you are unwilling to do the necessary in terms of funds and people and ready to be destroyed by a nuclear bomb from Putin. Thanks for confirming
That is an absurd scenario in so many ways that it is hard to know where to start.
If Trumpite America withdrew from NATO there would undoubtedly be difficulties, but the idea that we would have to build our own nuclear deterrent in a sort of scrapheap challenge is one of the most absurd.
Putin is losing a war in Ukraine with half his usable armoured forces obliterated in six months. He isn't going to be a threat to anyone soon.
It’s exceedingly unlikely that the USA would withdraw from NATO, but more likely that their focus moves from Russia to China as the most likely next enemy. The USA, even under Trump, is not suddenly become an unfriendly nation, to whom we can’t trust to maintain shared projects.
One of few things that Trump was right about, was that the US and UK were the only countries pulling their weight in NATO, and that everyone else needed to meet the 2% defence spending target - especially the Germans.
Even today, we see German equivocation about arming Ukraine, although it does appear to be finally dawning on Herr Sholz that his fence-sitting isn’t going to make the gas flow this winter.
Conservative hustings this week are tomorrow and Thursday.
They seem to take these more seriously than running the country!
So they should, right now.
Parliament is in recess, and this is about choosing the next Prime Minister.
The country is in crisis. The PM has gone awol. The Conservative Party is guilty of criminal negligence.
What part of Parliament being in recess are you finding confusing?
The PM hasn't gone AWOL, he's gone absent as he's on leave not without it. August is the time MPs including the PM have their annual holidays.
Whether its a good idea for Parliament to shut down for an entire month for a summer holiday is an entirely separate question, but there is nothing strange happening there.
What part of the difference between "executive" and "legislature" do you find hard to grasp exactly? The Cabinet, chaired by the Prime Minister, handles day-to-day executive functions on behalf of the Crown. That is entirely separate from the work of the legislature. The executive does not take a recess. He still has that role whether or not Parliament is sitting. This is a crisis, somewhere around the scale of a natural disaster, that he has decided not to handle.
No he hasn't decided not to handle, he's been informed by his colleagues (and the country generally in polls) that they don't want him to handle it.
Boris is a caretaker Prime Minister right now, that was determined when he resigned. He has a role to address any urgent issues that can't wait for the new Prime Minister but addressing things about this winter etc is the new Prime Minister's responsibility, not Boris's.
If Boris had spent every day this summer announcing new policies the same people complaining he's "gone AWOL" would be complaining that he's resigned and has no right to be doing so.
Mate.
Boris is self-serving, a liar, a hypocrite, and only interested in himself and always has been. He does precisely what is good for Boris and no one else. He is and always was manifestly unfit to be Prime Minister.
He did not "get Brexit done"
Still a member of the EU, are we?
To be blunt, that had fuck all to do with Johnson. We left because we voted to leave. The form of leaving was dictated by circumstance not Johnson. That was and still is a mess and probably more of a mess because of Johnson than it would otherwise have been. It was extremely badly handled by all sides, including Johnson, and we just muddled through to a solution, mostly because those involved - May and Johnson primarily - had no interest in and understanding of Brexit beyond as a means of obtaining and retaining power.
Personally I think we are far better off now than we would have been had we stayed in but again that has bugger all to do with Johnson.
Conservative hustings this week are tomorrow and Thursday.
They seem to take these more seriously than running the country!
So they should, right now.
Parliament is in recess, and this is about choosing the next Prime Minister.
The country is in crisis. The PM has gone awol. The Conservative Party is guilty of criminal negligence.
What part of Parliament being in recess are you finding confusing?
The PM hasn't gone AWOL, he's gone absent as he's on leave not without it. August is the time MPs including the PM have their annual holidays.
Whether its a good idea for Parliament to shut down for an entire month for a summer holiday is an entirely separate question, but there is nothing strange happening there.
What part of the difference between "executive" and "legislature" do you find hard to grasp exactly? The Cabinet, chaired by the Prime Minister, handles day-to-day executive functions on behalf of the Crown. That is entirely separate from the work of the legislature. The executive does not take a recess. He still has that role whether or not Parliament is sitting. This is a crisis, somewhere around the scale of a natural disaster, that he has decided not to handle.
No he hasn't decided not to handle, he's been informed by his colleagues (and the country generally in polls) that they don't want him to handle it.
Boris is a caretaker Prime Minister right now, that was determined when he resigned. He has a role to address any urgent issues that can't wait for the new Prime Minister but addressing things about this winter etc is the new Prime Minister's responsibility, not Boris's.
If Boris had spent every day this summer announcing new policies the same people complaining he's "gone AWOL" would be complaining that he's resigned and has no right to be doing so.
Mate.
Boris is self-serving, a liar, a hypocrite, and only interested in himself and always has been. He does precisely what is good for Boris and no one else. He is and always was manifestly unfit to be Prime Minister.
He did not "get Brexit done"
Still a member of the EU, are we?
As I said, he didn't get it done. The country voted for someone (it could have been a donkey with a straw hat on) to get it done.
Still a member of the EU, are we?
Nope. We left. Brexit was done.
Right. So Topping's denials that Boris got Brexit done (in the sense of the 2019 election slogan) are wrong.
Yes and No. We left the EU. But for so many people that was only the start of Brexit..
Irrelevant to my point, which is merely about the slogan as used at the 2019 election, which had no other meaning but to end the blockage of the previous parliament and complete the process of leaving the EU.
You are taking a fabulously narrow position and claiming supremacy over all the people who are absolutely indignant that Brexit isn't done and is under increased threat.
It isn't former remainers saying this, its former leavers. The Daily Express makes a good living printing story after story about the latest threat to delivering Brexit.
I'm merely arguing with Topping's incorrect assertion that the slogan "get Brexit done" as used in the 2019 election wasn't delivered.
And millions of leave voters passionately agree with @TOPPING
Conservative hustings this week are tomorrow and Thursday.
They seem to take these more seriously than running the country!
So they should, right now.
Parliament is in recess, and this is about choosing the next Prime Minister.
The country is in crisis. The PM has gone awol. The Conservative Party is guilty of criminal negligence.
What part of Parliament being in recess are you finding confusing?
The PM hasn't gone AWOL, he's gone absent as he's on leave not without it. August is the time MPs including the PM have their annual holidays.
Whether its a good idea for Parliament to shut down for an entire month for a summer holiday is an entirely separate question, but there is nothing strange happening there.
What part of the difference between "executive" and "legislature" do you find hard to grasp exactly? The Cabinet, chaired by the Prime Minister, handles day-to-day executive functions on behalf of the Crown. That is entirely separate from the work of the legislature. The executive does not take a recess. He still has that role whether or not Parliament is sitting. This is a crisis, somewhere around the scale of a natural disaster, that he has decided not to handle.
No he hasn't decided not to handle, he's been informed by his colleagues (and the country generally in polls) that they don't want him to handle it.
Boris is a caretaker Prime Minister right now, that was determined when he resigned. He has a role to address any urgent issues that can't wait for the new Prime Minister but addressing things about this winter etc is the new Prime Minister's responsibility, not Boris's.
If Boris had spent every day this summer announcing new policies the same people complaining he's "gone AWOL" would be complaining that he's resigned and has no right to be doing so.
Mate.
Boris is self-serving, a liar, a hypocrite, and only interested in himself and always has been. He does precisely what is good for Boris and no one else. He is and always was manifestly unfit to be Prime Minister.
He did not "get Brexit done"
Still a member of the EU, are we?
As I said, he didn't get it done. The country voted for someone (it could have been a donkey with a straw hat on) to get it done.
Still a member of the EU, are we?
Nope. We left. Brexit was done.
Right. So Topping's denials that Boris got Brexit done (in the sense of the 2019 election slogan) are wrong.
Yes and No. We left the EU. But for so many people that was only the start of Brexit..
Irrelevant to my point, which is merely about the slogan as used at the 2019 election, which had no other meaning but to end the blockage of the previous parliament and complete the process of leaving the EU.
You are taking a fabulously narrow position and claiming supremacy over all the people who are absolutely indignant that Brexit isn't done and is under increased threat.
It isn't former remainers saying this, its former leavers. The Daily Express makes a good living printing story after story about the latest threat to delivering Brexit.
I'm merely arguing with Topping's incorrect assertion that the slogan "get Brexit done" as used in the 2019 election wasn't delivered.
And millions of leave voters passionately agree with @TOPPING
As far as I know no one has asked at the leader hustings how they will cope with a Trump fascist America that is pulling out of NATO and supporting Putin.
Some civil servants might want to have a very close read of the fine print of the Trident contract.
If the United States were to withdraw their cooperation completely, the UK nuclear capability would probably have a life expectancy measured in months rather than years.
We could create our own nuclear weapons pretty quickly if needed, as could Israel and Japan
What are your qualifications and knowledge on fusion weapons and delivery systems to make such a rash statement. Do you know you could launch from existing submarines for instance? If not could you build 3 submarines (the minimum needed to maintain a full time deterent) 'quickly'. How you have the arrogance to come out with statements when you have no knowledge whatsoever is beyond me
If the alternative is risking nuclear destruction by Putin with no deterrent response of course, the government would direct huge resources to it
What resources? What management skills does the current string of Tory governments have?
We are the 5th largest economy in the world, national security is the first job of any government. Billions and billions of pounds would be diverted to it if the US withdrew from NATO
It'd take about 5-10 years - or 20 if the Tories and MoD were involved.
Depends how many funds and scientists are involved
You don't get it. You don't need scientists. You need engineers. Project managers. Trainers.
As I said we have over 5 million engineers
I'vew already pointed ouyt you are counting toilet cleaners, delivery men, secretaries and accountants as "engineers". And you are ignoring that.
"engineering workforce" is the wording they use. Not "professional engineers".
BAe has plenty of workers - but only a relative minority will be engineers.
I think that's a very blurry line, and you can go far too far the other way and say only people who know how to change a head gasket are 'engineers'. In which case neither myself or Mrs J would count.
A mechanic changes a head gasket, not an engineer. Engineering is a profession, at least it is in countries like Germany. We don’t understand the difference between engineers and mechanics, which is why we underrate engineers and engineering. Maybe that’s why we don’t make things any more?
I think mechanics are underrated in the UK too. Perhaps they always will be until someone provides an endowment for an Oxbridge college with a focus on technical skills.
As far as I know no one has asked at the leader hustings how they will cope with a Trump fascist America that is pulling out of NATO and supporting Putin.
Some civil servants might want to have a very close read of the fine print of the Trident contract.
If the United States were to withdraw their cooperation completely, the UK nuclear capability would probably have a life expectancy measured in months rather than years.
We could create our own nuclear weapons pretty quickly if needed, as could Israel and Japan
What are your qualifications and knowledge on fusion weapons and delivery systems to make such a rash statement. Do you know you could launch from existing submarines for instance? If not could you build 3 submarines (the minimum needed to maintain a full time deterent) 'quickly'. How you have the arrogance to come out with statements when you have no knowledge whatsoever is beyond me
If the alternative is risking nuclear destruction by Putin with no deterrent response of course, the government would direct huge resources to it
What resources? What management skills does the current string of Tory governments have?
We are the 5th largest economy in the world, national security is the first job of any government. Billions and billions of pounds would be diverted to it if the US withdrew from NATO
It'd take about 5-10 years - or 20 if the Tories and MoD were involved.
Depends how many funds and scientists are involved
You don't get it. You don't need scientists. You need engineers. Project managers. Trainers.
As I said we have over 5 million engineers
I'vew already pointed ouyt you are counting toilet cleaners, delivery men, secretaries and accountants as "engineers". And you are ignoring that.
"engineering workforce" is the wording they use. Not "professional engineers".
BAe has plenty of workers - but only a relative minority will be engineers.
I think that's a very blurry line, and you can go far too far the other way and say only people who know how to change a head gasket are 'engineers'. In which case neither myself or Mrs J would count.
A mechanic changes a head gasket, not an engineer. Engineering is a profession, at least it is in countries like Germany. We don’t understand the difference between engineers and mechanics, which is why we underrate engineers and engineering. Maybe that’s why we don’t make things any more?
I think mechanics are underrated in the UK too. Perhaps they always will be until someone provides an endowment for an Oxbridge college with a focus on technical skills.
Conservative hustings this week are tomorrow and Thursday.
They seem to take these more seriously than running the country!
So they should, right now.
Parliament is in recess, and this is about choosing the next Prime Minister.
The country is in crisis. The PM has gone awol. The Conservative Party is guilty of criminal negligence.
What part of Parliament being in recess are you finding confusing?
The PM hasn't gone AWOL, he's gone absent as he's on leave not without it. August is the time MPs including the PM have their annual holidays.
Whether its a good idea for Parliament to shut down for an entire month for a summer holiday is an entirely separate question, but there is nothing strange happening there.
What part of the difference between "executive" and "legislature" do you find hard to grasp exactly? The Cabinet, chaired by the Prime Minister, handles day-to-day executive functions on behalf of the Crown. That is entirely separate from the work of the legislature. The executive does not take a recess. He still has that role whether or not Parliament is sitting. This is a crisis, somewhere around the scale of a natural disaster, that he has decided not to handle.
No he hasn't decided not to handle, he's been informed by his colleagues (and the country generally in polls) that they don't want him to handle it.
Boris is a caretaker Prime Minister right now, that was determined when he resigned. He has a role to address any urgent issues that can't wait for the new Prime Minister but addressing things about this winter etc is the new Prime Minister's responsibility, not Boris's.
If Boris had spent every day this summer announcing new policies the same people complaining he's "gone AWOL" would be complaining that he's resigned and has no right to be doing so.
Mate.
Boris is self-serving, a liar, a hypocrite, and only interested in himself and always has been. He does precisely what is good for Boris and no one else. He is and always was manifestly unfit to be Prime Minister.
He did not "get Brexit done"
Still a member of the EU, are we?
As I said, he didn't get it done. The country voted for someone (it could have been a donkey with a straw hat on) to get it done.
Still a member of the EU, are we?
Nope. We left. Brexit was done.
Right. So Topping's denials that Boris got Brexit done (in the sense of the 2019 election slogan) are wrong.
But the problem is the means to that end.
Promising to lose a stone in weight by New Year's Day is admirable, if by Christmas one remains at the same weight, sawing one's leg off achieves the goal, but at what cost?
Irrelevant to my point.
No it is not. You said Johnson's key achievement is getting Brexit done. I am saying achieving a goal at any cost is not necessarily optimal. Johnson's Brexit is not optimal.
Comments
I note that on a more urgent issue, providing support for Ukraine, Wallace has been active and the UK has provided additional support during this period.
However, I do think it says something about Johnson's disdain for the country and the role of PM. There's always been something a little bit desperate and farcical about the actions of a PM in the dying days of their leadership. One remembers how frantic Blair and May were in attempts to secure their legacy, and I'm sure it irked Cameron that he was denied the period of a member's vote to do likewise. But at least it demonstrates that it mattered to them personally. They wanted to do as much of what they thought of as good as they could in the short time that remained.
And Johnson. Why was he so keen to remain PM for another two months? We must assume only for the money and the avoidance of humiliation. But there appears to be nothing to do with the country that he actually cares about. No attempt to tour the country to extol the benefits of levelling-up to protect his legacy. Nothing. Because he only ever wanted to be PM for reasons of self-aggrandisement. He didn't care a jot for the good of the country.
I might have frequently disagreed with the policies and decisions made by previous PMs, but at least I thought that they themselves believed what they were doing was for the best of the country, rather than the best for them individually. Even while it was normal in Stuart England for those in government to use their position to feather their own nest, they at least combined that with a sense of public duty and service. Johnson sinks below even those standards of more than four hundred years ago.
https://www.ethnicity-facts-figures.service.gov.uk/education-skills-and-training/11-to-16-years-old/gcse-results-attainment-8-for-children-aged-14-to-16-key-stage-4/latest
As to your earlier savaging of the 2017 to 2019 Parliament, it was legitimate and "Parliament is Sovereign" whether you like it or not. Leavers probably wrote "Parliament is Sovereign" on the side of a bus along with their other declarations to justify Brexit. At least that one is true for most of us.
A big week for Ukraine, and a bad feeling that their Independence Day on Wednesday, the six-month anniversary of the start of the invasion, is going to be a target for a mad Russian leader who sees his army collapsing in front of him, and no way out that isn’t totally humiliating.
The Ukranian attacks on Crimea last week, where many middle-class Russians were on holiday, is waking the average Russian up to what’s actually been going on for the past six months.
There was a call yesterday between Johnson, Biden, Macron and Sholz, who noted Russian escalations in fighting around the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant. I really, really hope that Putin - or at least someone in the inner circle at the Kremlin - has thought through what the Western reaction would be to the war going nuclear.
You've gone from claiming that Caretaker is not a principle that exists to that it might exist but the current circumstances aren't it because it's not one of the three examples given.
However just because three examples exist doesn't mean a fourth can't arise. Caretaker in the UK operates from convention not written rules and conventions can evolve. It doesn't take legislation to create a fourth, once you accept a principle that caretaker does exist then new circumstances (fourth, fifth or more) can arise whereby the existing precedent is followed and evolved.
The Cabinet agreed that Boris is only caretaker Prime Minister. That means he is one, that is the decision of the Cabinet. You were wrong: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/uk-politics-62072419
As I posted above, Brexit the legal act is done, BREXIT! the emotional act of obtaining the moon on a stick isn't done. And will never be done.
By your logic, without Boris we would still be in the EU. Is that your belief?
It was his inability to see what was in his own self-interest, despite plenty of warnings, that brought him down.
Tolerance at the wrong time followed by ruthlessness at the wrong time.
Promising to lose a stone in weight by New Year's Day is admirable, if by Christmas one remains at the same weight, sawing one's leg off achieves the goal, but at what cost?
BREXIT! supposedly would deliver a workers paradise against the exploitative bosses by boosting pay and conditions, AND deliver a management share price bonanza by cutting pay and conditions.
Shocking as it is, this isn't possible to achieve to the satisfaction of all. Hence Lynch and Smith both arguing to keep the BREXIT! faith and for One More Heave to deliver their prize of finally demolishing Smith or Lynch and all they stand for.
The hypothetical campaign would be important. If the Unionist campaign lines up as you say, with a helping dose of Truss acting imperiously, then the chances of running up support for independence increases. If it happens after 4 years of fair consensual unionism with Starmer, a growing economy etc... But now I'm speculating a bit!
It isn't former remainers saying this, its former leavers. The Daily Express makes a good living printing story after story about the latest threat to delivering Brexit.
BTW, IDS's surname is not "Smith".
As physicists put it, bad ideas die out one funeral at a time.
(As operated by Ukraine.)
https://twitter.com/GuyPlopsky/status/1561615794697834496
But it's entirely irrelevant to my point, which I can't understand why you're trying to cloud - Boris was in charge, so he gets the credit and the blame for everything that happened when he was in charge - in particular, he gets the credit for delivering things that were his key election pledges.
I am intrigued by the possibility of the Unionist parties running separate campaigns. It's pretty much generally accepted that SLab screwed themselves electorally by signing up to Bettertogether but I wonder if it was that unified approach that contributed most to getting No over the line? The sight of maw and paw bickering over who was the more crap while trying to persuade us to stay in the family home may not have been entirely persuasive.
Edit. After, of course, a second referendum!
Old men are allowed to dream dreams!
For the final time. It's not an unwritten constitution. It's uncodified. It does not "evolve", it is changed by consent, and, even if it did, that does not mean making shit up as you go along. The Cabinet Manual beats a BBC report. Just admit it when you're wrong. It's not hard for most of us.
If Trumpite America withdrew from NATO there would undoubtedly be difficulties, but the idea that we would have to build our own nuclear deterrent in a sort of scrapheap challenge is one of the most absurd.
Putin is losing a war in Ukraine with half his usable armoured forces obliterated in six months. He isn't going to be a threat to anyone soon.
https://twitter.com/minna_alander/status/1561354139464044544
Only a week after a @welt report reveals that the so-called “Umweltstiftung” (environmental foundation) Schwesig founder received €192 million from the Gazprom subsidiary Nord Stream 2 AG from Feb till Nov 2021, Schwesig is re-elected as leader of SPD Mecklenburg-Vorpommern...
One of few things that Trump was right about, was that the US and UK were the only countries pulling their weight in NATO, and that everyone else needed to meet the 2% defence spending target - especially the Germans.
Even today, we see German equivocation about arming Ukraine, although it does appear to be finally dawning on Herr Sholz that his fence-sitting isn’t going to make the gas flow this winter.
Personally I think we are far better off now than we would have been had we stayed in but again that has bugger all to do with Johnson.