Categories
The six seats on the LD by-election watch list – politicalbetting.com
The six seats on the LD by-election watch list – politicalbetting.com
NEW: After Surrey Heath excitement, five more seats where the Lib Dems are getting ready for potential by-elections.— Tamworth— Uxbridge— NE Somerset— Mid Beds— Selby & Ainsty pic.twitter.com/OSqBTwg2aA
0
This discussion has been closed.
Comments
https://www.markpack.org.uk/169542/alasdair-pinkerton-selected-by-lib-dems-in-michael-goves-constituency/
They’ve re-opened the position, less than two months later.
"Sean O’Neill, a senior reporter for The Times, wrote that the pair are “displaying staggering ignorance” and “pandering to the whingeing nimbys in their tiny electorate.” In the Daily Telegraph, the paper’s chief city commentator Ben Marlow wrote, “Britain’s culture wars have reached such epically absurd proportions that even the sun is now the enemy.”
https://cleantechnica.com/2022/08/27/demand-for-solar-explodes-everywhere-in-europe-except-the-uk/
And up here? My son's academy is talking about a three-day week. Which just sends kids home where they won't get heated either.
A sneering "I'm not giving out handouts to the workshy" will not cut it.
https://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/markets/article-11152023/Surrey-challenge-determine-future-British-energy-exploration.html
I think this year in education is going to be absolute chaos. On all levels, for everyone.
''For now, Germany has resorted to firing up its coal power plants to reduce its gas consumption, and ensure the country keeps the lights on, but chancellor Olaf Scholz has made it clear the government isn’t happy about it. “It is bitter that we now have to temporarily use some power plants that we had already shut down because of Russia’s brutal attack on Ukraine. But it’s only for a little while,” he said last month.''
So in other words the main thrust of that article is titanic bullsh*t.
Presumably the author would be happy if Liz re-opened the South Wales coalfield and Didcot Power station, as long as she said it was 'temporary and she wasn't 'happy about it'
Is Uxbridge the sort of seat that could go Lib Dem in a by-election, but which they should expect to lose to one of the bigger parties in the next General Election?
Or, with a view to the much-vaunted 'progressive alliance', should they just go slow in Uxbridge to let Labour win?
The only people (relatively) immune from the difficulties of this winter will be those on high professional salaries with no dependents. Even then they will encounter some inconvenience from the knock-on effects.
And if a byelection there took place at the same time as one in Uxbridge, I suspect that the Lib Dems would concentrate heavily on just one of them.
I say again incidentally that with things as they stand it's very very hard to see 90% of private schools making it to Christmas. Either they will have to push their fees to astronomical levels, or they will run out of cash within hours of turning the heating on.
And what happens to their pupils then?
And yes, I take your point on 'in education.' How do hospitals cope?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-62731923.amp
"There is no constitutional reason why the new PM should not be appointed in Balmoral. Indeed, some might think it pointless for the Queen at her age to travel to London for a purely formal ceremony."
And some don't even question whether it's pointful or not for the person supposedly appointed to run the government to fly 1000 miles to see the monarch in whichever castle happens to be most convenient for her.
No flies on you, Vern.
If there were a president, it could be done by phone.
Reminds me of the 1951 general election - supposedly called because if it had had to be called a few months later there would have been difficulties because a member of the royal family ("king") would have been on holiday abroad ("visiting his Commonwealth realms").
Is this Blackadder or is this reality?
I don't think they're trying to inconvenience Truss particularly. They're trying to poke Johnson in the eye.
This month she was granted permission to appeal to the Supreme Court. A hearing is expected next year.
So even if her case is dismissed then the entire process has been put back 6 months minimum or so. Lawyerocracy UK.
"We're not doing that at the moment because the planning process allows for a single person to object to an onshore wind farm and that closes the whole thing down, so we really need the government to take action and put our country's energy needs first."
Again NIMBY/lawyerocracy restricting our energy. Same story for nuclear and solar.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_Air_Lines_Flight_007 *
So the Cold War in the 1980s was Not A Thing.
*what an unfortunate name for a mass killing involving international diplomacy, by the way.
Chief Justice Burger was of course called Royale on his NL trip, though this doesn't affect the monarchy point.
https://www.placenorthwest.co.uk/manchesters-debut-this-city-project-up-for-approval/
1.05 Liz Truss 95%
17.5 Rishi Sunak 6%
Next Conservative leader
1.05 Liz Truss 95%
18 Rishi Sunak 6%
https://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/markets/article-11152023/Surrey-challenge-determine-future-British-energy-exploration.html
Should have been a reply to Taz's other post
I would say that we are getting to a place where I can't see how it gets any better unless people kick off. Unless Truss is the perfect Manchurian candidate, trained from birth to get to the seat of power to only then unleash her lefty republican side, and this leadership campaign is all part of the act - we're beyond buggered. The numbers of people who already use food banks, or choose between heating and eating is unacceptable, that number will surge beyond belief. And after people showed that they were willing to do lockdown to save nan and grandad, they won't be happy for them to die in a cold snap because they couldn't afford to turn the heating on without taking money out against the house.
I've heard some civil servants I know say that relief will have to happen - that Truss will see the reports and the analysis and just not be able to do anything but - and I still don't see it.
Read some books about it.
Find me ONE respected author, academic, or politician writing in the mid-1980s who thought the "Cold War" was still going on.
When "Détente" was the thing in the early 1970s, do you think everyone thought it was a stage in the Cold War?
These are words, by the way. I'm talking about how words have been used, and how a word use has changed completely, with the previous use being squashed down the memory hole. And I'm totally right about this.
Literally dozens of prospective staff ready and willing to start, and still many vacancies.
Term begins Tuesday here.
Belgium comes out against an EU-wide visa ban for Russian tourists.
Foreign Minister Hadja Lahbib says the country is against "indiscriminate measures” against Russians.
Before being appointed as FM, Ms Lahbib visited Crimea and said she had been “in Russia”.
https://twitter.com/visegrad24/status/1564946492913229824
https://www.lse.co.uk/ShareChat.asp?ShareTicker=UKOG&share=Uk-Oil-and-Gas
So it's not re-opening the position - it's taking sensible action to make sure they have a candidate who can devote the time and energy to a high-profile by-election campaign, and withstand the accompanying media scrutiny.
People make that journey to go to a wedding. Isn't it worth it to make a constitutional PM? And why shouldn't a direct descendent of Mary Queen of Scots perform this act in Scotland?
NB That is not to support Mrs T who I fear will be terrible.
(What's the mechanism if a MAT goes bust? Some of them must be insanely close to the brink.)
The bigger questions are about what happens after this. First off, is this the "face down in the gutter" moment that forces the UK to ask difficult questions of its choices over the last few decades? It's been coming for a while, but there's been a lot of can-kicking.
Slightly more alarmingly, what answers will be proffered to those questions? One set will be Left-of-centrist Dad, but what will the counterpart look like? Obviously Cameron, May and Johnson weren't Proper Tories, but I hate to imagine what "Truss failed by being insufficiently right-wing" will look like.
Freeze to death?
Live on insects?
Accept a massive fall in living standards that will costs countless lives??
Watch countries still using traditional power sources pass us economically while they p8ss themselves laughing?
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-1983-military-drill-that-nearly-sparked-nuclear-war-with-the-soviets-180979980/
But 1.3 million homes is roughly 1/30th of the population of the country. And presumably business/industrial demand is - order of magnitude guess - about the same. So in the order of 1/60th of UK energy use?
Will our ensuring gas is stored in Germany etc boost our own security? Yes, 100%.
If the Germans run out of gas, what do you think they'll do? They'll bid whatever they have to in order to buy it, eg from imports from the Danes etc that could have come to us instead, either driving up the price we have to pay or leaving us short on supply.
If the Germans can rely upon storage as we've exported gas to them in the summer, then we can better rely upon the Danes etc to send gas to us instead of being outbid by Germany in the winter.
Again, its all interconnected. The market is global/continental and ensuring our neighbours have reliable supplies helps ensure our neighbours aren't trying to outbid us for imports.
Autarky is not going to help us when we have 6x the amount of imports as we do exports.
The last DBS I had done, for an American agency, came through in a fortnight. Mind, they had put the wrong address on it. Don’t know how as there isn’t even a Trafalgar Avenue in Cannock, but doesn’t speak well of efficiency somewhere.
Firstly to state, as I have done before, I do not believe in windfall taxes or caps for private industries, but we are in exceptional and extraordinary times.
Ideally we want to keep power supplies for both residents and business around what they were before the big hikes due the large increase in wholesale prices. Not just for hardship purposes, but to control inflation. We are faffing around with all sorts of schemes that will leave holes all over the place (particularly for businesses) and are very complex.
Why not windfall tax the wholesale supplies equivalent to the difference in current commodity price over the more normal price they would have charged before the commodity price increased and pass that onto the retail suppliers so they are basing their retail prices on the previous normal price rather than the higher wholesale price they are paying.
Suspect there are all sorts of flaws in that in terms of complexity and also issue with wholesale providers that aren't UK based.
OK standing by for the flak.
Plus given Truss was a republican in her youth makes it clear to her from day 1 she is still Her Majesty's chief minister not a President
Losing 30% of their energy due to a war would make you take drastic actions. That's no reason to let up on transitioning to renewables (especially if you're in coalition with the Greens).
Come on, use a little logic!
Martin McCauley
Mary MacAuley
Geoffrey Hosking
Alec Nove
John Lewis Gaddis
Jeremy Isaacs
Mikhail Gorbachev
Yuri Andropov
Jimmy Carter
Ronald Reagan
George H. Bush (who declared the Cold War was over on New Year’s Eve 1991)
Margaret Thatcher
That’s without even making an effort.
It’s ironic you accuse others of ignorance and not reading books when it’s clear you’ve not only not read any books at all but have no idea what you’re talking about.
The invasion of Afghanistan shocked many people into realising that moderation had not been met with moderation. We have no wish to return to the so-called “cold war” of the early 1950s. It is not we who have imperial ambitions. We are not imposing our will on other countries by force of arms. We respect the sovereignty of others. We welcome the strong reassertion of this principle by the non-aligned movement in the wake of the invasion of Afghanistan. Margaret Thatcher, 16 April 1981
A number of years ago, I heard a young father, a very prominent young man in the entertainment world, addressing a tremendous gathering in California. It was during the time of the Cold War, and communism and our own way of life were very much on people’s minds. And he was speaking to that subject. Ronald Reagan, 8 March 1983
With that said, I understand entirely (and broadly support) the revision of the term "Cold War" to refer to the entire period of ideological conflict between Communism and democratic/capitalist powers, rather than just the early period. In the 1980s, they didn't have the benefit of hindsight to know they wouldn't need to use the term Third World War at any point.
To be re-assured I wasn't an outlier in the slightest was simultaneously both comforting and deeply disturbing.
https://voicesofdemocracy.umd.edu/reagan-evil-empire-speech-text/
The idea that the monarch should be able to inconvenience an elected politician, because of their supposed lack of mandate or their political views, is absurd.
I personally have some sympathy for a 90 yo who doesn't want to leave their house due to health issues; that describes my grandfather pretty well. But he also understood doing that meant giving up a lot of things he liked or wanted to do. Lizzie should abdicate, for herself, and for the country. Preferably there would be no new monarch and we could decide to be a republic, and leave the Windsor family with their favourite estate and nationalise the rest.
https://www.emrsettlement.co.uk/about-emr/contracts-for-difference/
https://www.lowcarboncontracts.uk/contracts-for-difference-cfd
https://www.lowcarboncontracts.uk/sites/default/files/2020-09/LCCC Annual Report 2019-20.pdf
they've sold - and hence the revenues from the generators as the wholesale price of electricity will be miles above the strike price.
Just plug it all into an excel spreadsheet taking care to eliminate circular errors and hey presto a slightly cheaper electricity price.
Unless I'm misunderstanding this isn't how it's done at the moment with the price simply being set by the final and most expensive element, gas.
That. Is. The End of Times.
A clear indication of peace and reconciliation between east and west
https://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/102939
And while you wouldn't build as high as offshore, even if unregulated, there would otherwise be quite a bit of headroom.
Have had numerous ones.
Have lived in the same Police Authority ever since and moved house once.
The stage I am stuck at, for forty days and counting is the one where they check the Police computer for any criminal record or other breach (which I don't have).
The administration, ID, List 99 has all been done.
We are talking about the Cold War in the context of Gorbachev's death, you would surely realise that most people, like 99% of them, consider the Cold War to be the period from the end of the Second World War to the disolution of the USSR.
Yes the meaning has changed, because events moved on, and most people recognise the continuity of the rivalry of the super powers, even if the termperature of that rivalry varied at times.
Ronald Reagan, June 1988
I certainly remember the Cold War happening in the 1980s, and everyone calling it that at the time.