How do you determine who gets the wristbands and in what order?
First come first served, at the wristband distribution point, which is somewhere that is not Westminster Hall.
There would be a queue...
I'm not sure if you are saying it's not a good idea what they have done or it is a good idea.
I don't think they could or should have done it any other way. Perhaps have queue centres in the major cities and then allocate timings based upon that but with a few days to prepare plus no-shows plus people losing their wristbands, surely the easiest way is to get yourself down to London and get in the queue.
No point having the wristband distribution point at Wapping or Wandsworth because that just adds complexity.
If Putin tried to suggest to his high command that it was appropriate to use nuclear weapons (he cannot do it on his own) he knows he will be removed from power faster than a retreating "elite" Russian soldier on the Ukrainian front line.
How the fuck do you know this for a fact?
If Crimea comes into play then I think a full scale mobilisation and all out war is more likely than the nuclear options.
And do you think Russia would win in the end? What would victory entail?
Australian racehorse trainer Chris Waller has to miss the Queen's funeral owing to Covid.
Australian trainer Chris Waller has announced he will be unable to attend the Queen’s state funeral on Monday due to “Covid-19 related circumstances”.
Waller was due to join Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Governor-General David Hurley at Westminster Abbey with senior UK politicians and heads of state from across the world expected to attend.
The Royal Ascot-winning handler was one of 10 Australians invited to attend for their “extraordinary contributions to their communities”.
However, Waller, who counts record-breaker Winx, Melbourne Cup winner Verry Elleegant and sprint sensation Nature Strip among his recent stable stars and currently houses the Queen’s horse Chalk Stream, will not be able to make the trip.
In a statement, he said: “It is an honour and I am extremely grateful to have been given the opportunity by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and the people of Australia to represent the country in farewelling Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. Unfortunately due to Covid-19 related circumstances I am unable to attend the funeral.
“Like so many others, I will live with and cherish for the rest of my life the fond memories I have of Her Majesty; her love of horses and animals, her passion for life and the respect she gave everyday people. My deepest condolences go out to the Royal family and the rest of the world that currently mourn.
He must be crushed! What a time to get covid (are all guests getting tested - I sort of hope not ). Imagine getting an invite and having to miss the funeral
Goodness knows where the peak for US rates is now, after this week's data showed the Fed's hikes have so far not slowed inflation nor killed growth.
UK rates are going to have to follow if we don't sterling to be renamed the Zimbabwe pound. To take those rate increases, fiscal easing and deregulation aren't just the best way for the economy, they are the only way.
‘Experts’ on US media are expecting another 0.75% increase at the next monthly decision point, hence the dramatic fall in share prices earlier this week.
Meanwhile this morning’s adverts are to vote for a primary candidate, and for HIV medication. The big news story is Texas and Florida bussing incoming migrants up to states in the north east and dumping them there. The latest batch flown up to exclusive Martha’s Vineyard yesterday by the Florida Governor, and left at the side of the road.
My prediction is that Truss will turn out to be a lot better than many of us gave her credit for. Boris Johnson is a busted flush. He is yesterday's Clown; someone who achieved a great election victory against a ridiculously weedy opponent and managed very little else of note. His deranged supporters might want him back, but they will hopefully diminish in time, and before long it will be difficult to find anyone to admit they supported him.
I do wonder whether even he has fallen out of love with "Boris" as he always affectionately referred to him.
His posts do not indicate it so far, and I would be delighted if he would join those of us who want Truss to succeed and publicly accept Johnson is toxic and has damaged the party considerably
I support her as leader but she is still 10% behind on the latest poll and this end bankers' bonuses cap now was her decision not Boris'. She and Kwarteng own it
You demonstrate my point perfectly and until you condemn Johnson then you are part of his toxic legacy
I won't condemn the party's most successful leader since Thatcher
Leaving aside the question as to whether he was more successful than either Cameron or Major, looking at the rest of them that isn't exactly a high bar, is it?
Interesting that @HYUFD describes Johnson as "the party's most successful leader since Thatcher". This is a totally ridiculous proposition. He bases "most successful" solely on his election victory over Jeremy fecking Corbyn.
Johnson was responsible for one of the biggest fissures in the Tory Party since the Corn Laws. He became an international laughing stock. He thoroughly trashed the Conservative Party's reputation for sensible governance and found himself heaved out of No10 after only 3 years for dishonesty. Other than TMay you have to go back to 1827 to find a PM with a shorter tenure. He was hopeless. A bad joke. A man totally unfit for office. He was not successful, except in his ability to trounce the most ludicrous LoTO ever to have held that role, and to gull those foolish enough like @HYUFD into thinking he was appropriate to be Party leader and PM.
And yet he unequivocally achieved more than Hague, IDS, Howard and May, so he's at worst in third place since Thatcher.
Having achievements is not necessarily the same as successes.
Analyst on R5L’s wake up to money - tracking a basket of essential goods says price difference between Morrissons and Aldi is now 40%. Explained by Morrisons having to service a gigantic debt.
Shop at Aldi, people.
Good morning
I heard that report as well and it is astonishing that Morrisons apparently have a 7 billion debt
Shop anywhere but Morrisons would be the message
5live also discussed Kwarteng's proposal to abolish city bonuses and it really does make you wonder if the conservative party have lost all it's instincts to govern
It may be the right thing from a business sense, but the optics are shocking and hands yet another gift to labour
It is the right thing from city workers sense. It is a bad thing for shareholders and really bad for government and taxpayers who will eventually have to fund another bailout with years of austerity.
I'm curious about this idea that bankers bonuses caused the subprime mortgage crisis.
I am even more curious about the idea that there will ever be another bank bailout.
Extreme bankers bonuses create incentives for bankers to gamble with the banks money. If they win, fantastic, if they lose its not their money and as long as you can talk the talk and know some of the right people, it is still easy to get another job.
That culture feeds through to the banks to gamble, notionally with their money, but knowing they have a government funded back stop as they are too big to fail.
Take away the controls and regulation and sooner or later we shall be back to bail outs.
Well, it's too bad the Labour government didn't do something about it then...
Of course. Not sure why you think that is relevant when they have not been in power for a long time and it is the current governments policies that will matter.
Well, the view of Labour supporters on the GFC is "it started in America".
That's not the view of Labour supporters, it is a statement of fact.
The global [key word, there] financial crisis started in America. Britain was very poorly placed to weather it because Gordon Brown had spent the previous 6 years [after an admirable initial period of restraint] pissing money up the wall, spending more than he raked in even during times of relative financial health. Personally I couldn't give a fig how big bankers' bonuses are. I don't care at all about the optics, I care about the gap between what we spend and what we earn. That should be the #1 issue for a chancellor of the exchequer to worry about. If this measure narrows that gap (and I am at best agnostic about whether it will) it should be welcomed.
Britain was hit badly because we have a large globally exposed financial sector and one of our biggest banks was in the midst of an ill-advised over-leveraged buying spree at the top of the market. Running a structural deficit of 4% of GDP in 2007 compared to a G7 average of 3% is unlikely to have been a significant factor in explaining why we were hit worse than others, no matter how much people want it to be Gordon Brown's fault.
Running a structural deficit of 4% during pre-crash times is utterly catastrophic as when the crash inevitably comes and you inevitably need countercyclical spending to go with it, then you have nowhere to go.
The fact that some other countries were nearly as bad as the UK doesn't justify or excuse what Brown did.
But it is hard to blame Brown's fiscal policy for us being hit *much worse than others* when Brown's fiscal policy was *pretty much the same as others'*. That was the point I was responding to. Also worth noting that our debt to GDP ratio in 2007 was 41% (down from 43% in 1997) compared to a G7 average of 81%. So we had plenty of space to run countercyclical fiscal policy, certainly compared to other countries, and indeed the increase in our debt to GDP ratio between 2007 and 2010 (33pp) was almost identical to the G7 average (32pp), suggesting that we were indeed able to run a countercyclical fiscal policy just like other economies.
Except it wasn't the same as others, it was via your own figures worse than others. And of course its worth noting that the G7 average includes the UK so the G7 average was itself getting dragged down by Brown's terrible performance.
Debt to GDP isn't the relevant figure, the deficit is, although its worth noting via your own figures again in the span of three years Brown nearly doubled our debt-to-GDP figure whereas G7 nations debt-to-GDP increased by much less than half.
Gordon Brown's peak debt to GDP being around 3% iirc which was on a par with preceding Conservative governments. It was not significant and did not cause or exacerbate the GFC.
Also, aiui Team Truss has determined, as Cheney said of Reagan, that deficits don't matter and that George Osborne's austerity was a mistake that hobbled Britain's economy.
Except....this was a time of unprecedented receipts. The housing market was going bananas, profits were high, and it was a time where debt to GDP didn't need to be as high given the circumstances in the economy. Simply, we were spending too much. I don't think anyone disputes that, no matter what they think the answer (austerity/non-austerity) should have been.
Yes, there is a good deal in that. But as it happened, the GFC came along and rendered it all moot. Then Osborne came along and flatlined the nascent recovery inherited from Labour, and here we are.
The GFC didn't just "come along and render it moot", the GFC was a crash that the Government should have been preparing for as it was overdue. Crashes happen, and the GFC was a classic crash, not some exogenous and unforeseeable shock.
And you repeat the myth that Osborne flatlined the recovery. Don't you realise the UK in the 2010s grew faster than the Eurozone did, both in nominal terms and in per capita terms. "Despite Brexit" supposedly harming the UK during that decade.
If Brexit and Osborne "flatlined" or harmed the UK, then how come the UK grew faster than the Eurozone or the rest of the EU? Just how much faster than them would we have grown in your eyes were it not for Osborne or Brexit, and why?
Osborne's austerity was a mistake as even the current vintage of Tories now acknowledge. The problem is that they have pivoted to pro-growth fiscal policies at precisely the wrong moment, with inflation out of control, and so they will only succeed in pushing up inflation and interest rates. Euro area growth was low because of their sovereign debt crisis and because they followed similar austerity policies to us, and because they had lower population growth.
It was not a mistake, because the deficit was out of control.
Pro-growth policies are good now because the deficit was brought under control prior to the crash, unlike in Brown's time, and so we're in a much better fiscal position than we were then.
The UK grew faster than Europe on a per capita basis too, again despite "austerity" and "Brexit" being both accused of "flatlining" growth. We had our own sovereign debt crisis caused by Brown's borrowing too, which is why Osborne needed to clean up Brown's mess.
The UK deficit is set to grow considerably under Truss, who appears to believe in trickle-down economics, something known not to work. So, deficit up, but no significant improvement in growth.
Your position of saying both Osborne and Truss are right does need an explanation Barty?
Fiscal control on the one hand versus abandoning fiscal control for a dash for growth on the other will sound like chalk and cheese to us non economic, experts until you explain this one to us.
Different stages of the economic cycle.
Brown's deficit spending blew the budget up pre-crash, taking us from a budget surplus to a maxed out deficit before the recession even hit us.
Pre-recession the budget deficit shrank every single year for a decade under the Tories.
A dash for growth now is a viable option as Osborne fixed the roof while the sun was shining. Brown didn't.
So in this analogy, what exactly is “the roof”?
The deficit.
It traditionally goes up during and immediately after a recession due to countercyclical factors, while it comes down in the years of growth. Brown instead took us from budget surplus to maxed out deficit pre-crash meaning we were terribly exposed when the inevitable crash inevitably happened.
So what are the deficit figures from 2007, 2010, 2016, and today to absolutely prove your argument right here right now?
From 2002 to 2007, pre-crash, the Budget deficit increased from a surplus of 1.4% to a deficit of 2.9% . . . a pre-crash worsening of 4.3% of GDP
From 2013 to 2019, pre-crash, the Budget deficit fell from 7.4% to 1.5%, a pre-crash improvement of 5.9% of GDP
The net difference between a 4.3% deterioration in the accounts, and a 5.9% improvement in them, is 10.2% of GDP.
Why have you omitted the period 2007 to 2013?
Because we were discussing what happened in the years pre-crash.
Looking from 2002 to 2010 and 2010 to 2019 would make the deterioration in Labour's accounts and the improvement in Tory accounts even more exaggerated, but I did not consider that to be fair or reasonable.
Prior to the GFC of 2008 the deficit was lower every year under the Labour government than it had been in any year under Major. The deficit increased dramatically in response to the GFC but not as much as out has under The Tories in response to Covid and the CoL crisis.
Your favourite, Truss, is borrowing again rather than taxing the wealthy to cap energy prices, I see.
Again ignoring the economic cycle. 🤦♂️
There was a crash at the start of the 90s, however the UK went into that, as it should, with a budget surplus which was built up during the Thatcher years. So the deficit increased at the start of the 90s, but then was reduced consistently after then building up towards the budget surplus. That was economics as it should be. The deficit expanding then shrinking countercyclically.
Regrettably though, Brown took the budget surplus we had in 2002 and turned into into a mega deficit before the next recession hit. If he'd only kept the surplus as it was, not even made it a bigger surplus, then the UK would have been well placed for the inevitable next recession when it hit, just as we were the previous time.
It was 4.46% of GDP in 2009 according to that link. Though that link uses a much more generous version of deficit which actually had the UK in surplus by 2019, unlike pre-crash in the 00's. Either way the UK was far better placed pre-crash this time than last time.
"Amidst ongoing concerns about services across the UK that will be cancelled or closed next Monday, including operations and funerals, the Scottish government has issued its own guidance.
Whilst it says that school should close as a mark of respect, essential healthcare services should continue, including pre-planned treatments, and the winter vaccination programme.
Most public transport services are currently expected to run as normal."
Our bins not being collected that day - but simply postponed till Saturday.
I'm sure that smelly bins and bicycles unable to be tied to bike racks is what the Queen would have wanted. And Center Parcs and Little Chefs deserted in the rain and silence.
I don't really think she would have wanted any of those things.
"Amidst ongoing concerns about services across the UK that will be cancelled or closed next Monday, including operations and funerals, the Scottish government has issued its own guidance.
Whilst it says that school should close as a mark of respect, essential healthcare services should continue, including pre-planned treatments, and the winter vaccination programme.
Most public transport services are currently expected to run as normal."
Our bins not being collected that day - but simply postponed till Saturday.
The only difference a cigarette paper can be put in I can see at this point is some pre-planned healthcare, so that it presumably what the shouting will be about.
Analyst on R5L’s wake up to money - tracking a basket of essential goods says price difference between Morrissons and Aldi is now 40%. Explained by Morrisons having to service a gigantic debt.
Shop at Aldi, people.
Good morning
I heard that report as well and it is astonishing that Morrisons apparently have a 7 billion debt
Shop anywhere but Morrisons would be the message
5live also discussed Kwarteng's proposal to abolish city bonuses and it really does make you wonder if the conservative party have lost all it's instincts to govern
It may be the right thing from a business sense, but the optics are shocking and hands yet another gift to labour
It is the right thing from city workers sense. It is a bad thing for shareholders and really bad for government and taxpayers who will eventually have to fund another bailout with years of austerity.
I'm curious about this idea that bankers bonuses caused the subprime mortgage crisis.
I am even more curious about the idea that there will ever be another bank bailout.
Extreme bankers bonuses create incentives for bankers to gamble with the banks money. If they win, fantastic, if they lose its not their money and as long as you can talk the talk and know some of the right people, it is still easy to get another job.
That culture feeds through to the banks to gamble, notionally with their money, but knowing they have a government funded back stop as they are too big to fail.
Take away the controls and regulation and sooner or later we shall be back to bail outs.
Well, it's too bad the Labour government didn't do something about it then...
Of course. Not sure why you think that is relevant when they have not been in power for a long time and it is the current governments policies that will matter.
Well, the view of Labour supporters on the GFC is "it started in America".
That's not the view of Labour supporters, it is a statement of fact.
The global [key word, there] financial crisis started in America. Britain was very poorly placed to weather it because Gordon Brown had spent the previous 6 years [after an admirable initial period of restraint] pissing money up the wall, spending more than he raked in even during times of relative financial health. Personally I couldn't give a fig how big bankers' bonuses are. I don't care at all about the optics, I care about the gap between what we spend and what we earn. That should be the #1 issue for a chancellor of the exchequer to worry about. If this measure narrows that gap (and I am at best agnostic about whether it will) it should be welcomed.
Britain was hit badly because we have a large globally exposed financial sector and one of our biggest banks was in the midst of an ill-advised over-leveraged buying spree at the top of the market. Running a structural deficit of 4% of GDP in 2007 compared to a G7 average of 3% is unlikely to have been a significant factor in explaining why we were hit worse than others, no matter how much people want it to be Gordon Brown's fault.
Running a structural deficit of 4% during pre-crash times is utterly catastrophic as when the crash inevitably comes and you inevitably need countercyclical spending to go with it, then you have nowhere to go.
The fact that some other countries were nearly as bad as the UK doesn't justify or excuse what Brown did.
But it is hard to blame Brown's fiscal policy for us being hit *much worse than others* when Brown's fiscal policy was *pretty much the same as others'*. That was the point I was responding to. Also worth noting that our debt to GDP ratio in 2007 was 41% (down from 43% in 1997) compared to a G7 average of 81%. So we had plenty of space to run countercyclical fiscal policy, certainly compared to other countries, and indeed the increase in our debt to GDP ratio between 2007 and 2010 (33pp) was almost identical to the G7 average (32pp), suggesting that we were indeed able to run a countercyclical fiscal policy just like other economies.
Except it wasn't the same as others, it was via your own figures worse than others. And of course its worth noting that the G7 average includes the UK so the G7 average was itself getting dragged down by Brown's terrible performance.
Debt to GDP isn't the relevant figure, the deficit is, although its worth noting via your own figures again in the span of three years Brown nearly doubled our debt-to-GDP figure whereas G7 nations debt-to-GDP increased by much less than half.
Gordon Brown's peak debt to GDP being around 3% iirc which was on a par with preceding Conservative governments. It was not significant and did not cause or exacerbate the GFC.
Also, aiui Team Truss has determined, as Cheney said of Reagan, that deficits don't matter and that George Osborne's austerity was a mistake that hobbled Britain's economy.
Except....this was a time of unprecedented receipts. The housing market was going bananas, profits were high, and it was a time where debt to GDP didn't need to be as high given the circumstances in the economy. Simply, we were spending too much. I don't think anyone disputes that, no matter what they think the answer (austerity/non-austerity) should have been.
Yes, there is a good deal in that. But as it happened, the GFC came along and rendered it all moot. Then Osborne came along and flatlined the nascent recovery inherited from Labour, and here we are.
The GFC didn't just "come along and render it moot", the GFC was a crash that the Government should have been preparing for as it was overdue. Crashes happen, and the GFC was a classic crash, not some exogenous and unforeseeable shock.
And you repeat the myth that Osborne flatlined the recovery. Don't you realise the UK in the 2010s grew faster than the Eurozone did, both in nominal terms and in per capita terms. "Despite Brexit" supposedly harming the UK during that decade.
If Brexit and Osborne "flatlined" or harmed the UK, then how come the UK grew faster than the Eurozone or the rest of the EU? Just how much faster than them would we have grown in your eyes were it not for Osborne or Brexit, and why?
Osborne's austerity was a mistake as even the current vintage of Tories now acknowledge. The problem is that they have pivoted to pro-growth fiscal policies at precisely the wrong moment, with inflation out of control, and so they will only succeed in pushing up inflation and interest rates. Euro area growth was low because of their sovereign debt crisis and because they followed similar austerity policies to us, and because they had lower population growth.
It was not a mistake, because the deficit was out of control.
Pro-growth policies are good now because the deficit was brought under control prior to the crash, unlike in Brown's time, and so we're in a much better fiscal position than we were then.
The UK grew faster than Europe on a per capita basis too, again despite "austerity" and "Brexit" being both accused of "flatlining" growth. We had our own sovereign debt crisis caused by Brown's borrowing too, which is why Osborne needed to clean up Brown's mess.
The UK deficit is set to grow considerably under Truss, who appears to believe in trickle-down economics, something known not to work. So, deficit up, but no significant improvement in growth.
Your position of saying both Osborne and Truss are right does need an explanation Barty?
Fiscal control on the one hand versus abandoning fiscal control for a dash for growth on the other will sound like chalk and cheese to us non economic, experts until you explain this one to us.
Different stages of the economic cycle.
Brown's deficit spending blew the budget up pre-crash, taking us from a budget surplus to a maxed out deficit before the recession even hit us.
Pre-recession the budget deficit shrank every single year for a decade under the Tories.
A dash for growth now is a viable option as Osborne fixed the roof while the sun was shining. Brown didn't.
So in this analogy, what exactly is “the roof”?
The deficit.
It traditionally goes up during and immediately after a recession due to countercyclical factors, while it comes down in the years of growth. Brown instead took us from budget surplus to maxed out deficit pre-crash meaning we were terribly exposed when the inevitable crash inevitably happened.
Do we not have a “maxed out deficit” now?
No, the pre-crash deficit was vastly reduced in the years leading up to the crash, rather than increased in the years preceding the crash.
Cyclical expenditure will fall away as Covid fades into history and as the world adapts post-Russia but the structural position is far stronger now than it was pre-GFC as the deficit was reducing not increasing prior to the crash.
During and post-crash is when you're supposed to increase the deficit, not pre-crash.
I’m not defending Brown’s premiership. I’m not talking about pre-crash. I’m talking about now.
Truss wants to increase the deficit to give money to the rich. That is not what people normally mean when they talk about countercyclical spending.
No, she wants to increase the deficit to reduce taxes on corporations and earnings.
That's exactly what should be meant by countercyclical spending.
What tax giveaways are happening to "the rich" and how do you define "the rich"? Are taxes on housing being cut, as opposed to taxes on earnings?
My prediction is that Truss will turn out to be a lot better than many of us gave her credit for. Boris Johnson is a busted flush. He is yesterday's Clown; someone who achieved a great election victory against a ridiculously weedy opponent and managed very little else of note. His deranged supporters might want him back, but they will hopefully diminish in time, and before long it will be difficult to find anyone to admit they supported him.
I do wonder whether even he has fallen out of love with "Boris" as he always affectionately referred to him.
His posts do not indicate it so far, and I would be delighted if he would join those of us who want Truss to succeed and publicly accept Johnson is toxic and has damaged the party considerably
I support her as leader but she is still 10% behind on the latest poll and this end bankers' bonuses cap now was her decision not Boris'. She and Kwarteng own it
You demonstrate my point perfectly and until you condemn Johnson then you are part of his toxic legacy
I won't condemn the party's most successful leader since Thatcher
Leaving aside the question as to whether he was more successful than either Cameron or Major, looking at the rest of them that isn't exactly a high bar, is it?
Interesting that @HYUFD describes Johnson as "the party's most successful leader since Thatcher". This is a totally ridiculous proposition. He bases "most successful" solely on his election victory over Jeremy fecking Corbyn.
Johnson was responsible for one of the biggest fissures in the Tory Party since the Corn Laws. He became an international laughing stock. He thoroughly trashed the Conservative Party's reputation for sensible governance and found himself heaved out of No10 after only 3 years for dishonesty. Other than TMay you have to go back to 1827 to find a PM with a shorter tenure. He was hopeless. A bad joke. A man totally unfit for office. He was not successful, except in his ability to trounce the most ludicrous LoTO ever to have held that role, and to gull those foolish enough like @HYUFD into thinking he was appropriate to be Party leader and PM.
And yet he unequivocally achieved more than Hague, IDS, Howard and May, so he's at worst in third place since Thatcher.
Sometimes what you achieve counts against you. Just think of some of the worlds leading dictators.
Just wait till he has his peerage, or knighthood. No arguments then.
My prediction is that Truss will turn out to be a lot better than many of us gave her credit for. Boris Johnson is a busted flush. He is yesterday's Clown; someone who achieved a great election victory against a ridiculously weedy opponent and managed very little else of note. His deranged supporters might want him back, but they will hopefully diminish in time, and before long it will be difficult to find anyone to admit they supported him.
I do wonder whether even he has fallen out of love with "Boris" as he always affectionately referred to him.
His posts do not indicate it so far, and I would be delighted if he would join those of us who want Truss to succeed and publicly accept Johnson is toxic and has damaged the party considerably
I support her as leader but she is still 10% behind on the latest poll and this end bankers' bonuses cap now was her decision not Boris'. She and Kwarteng own it
You demonstrate my point perfectly and until you condemn Johnson then you are part of his toxic legacy
I won't condemn the party's most successful leader since Thatcher
Leaving aside the question as to whether he was more successful than either Cameron or Major, looking at the rest of them that isn't exactly a high bar, is it?
Interesting that @HYUFD describes Johnson as "the party's most successful leader since Thatcher". This is a totally ridiculous proposition. He bases "most successful" solely on his election victory over Jeremy fecking Corbyn.
Johnson was responsible for one of the biggest fissures in the Tory Party since the Corn Laws. He became an international laughing stock. He thoroughly trashed the Conservative Party's reputation for sensible governance and found himself heaved out of No10 after only 3 years for dishonesty. Other than TMay you have to go back to 1827 to find a PM with a shorter tenure. He was hopeless. A bad joke. A man totally unfit for office. He was not successful, except in his ability to trounce the most ludicrous LoTO ever to have held that role, and to gull those foolish enough like @HYUFD into thinking he was appropriate to be Party leader and PM.
He also delivered Brexit and the vaccines on his watch and of course Theresa was sadly unable to defeat Corbyn.
Once we have gone through the Tory leaderships of Truss, Badenoch, Braverman and Rees Mogg even you might miss Boris!
Mr Johnson is a medical immunologist?
This is a bit divisive. Did Churchill win the second world war (from a British perspective - I know USSR/USA etc)? Yes. Did he fight in Normandy, the Ardennes, Crossing of the Rhine, in a Lancaster over Berlin? No (although he tried to get to Normandy...)
Did Johnson head into the lab, roll up his sleeves and say 'right, we've got the spike sequence, its time to see if mRNA vaccines work...'? Of course not. Did he appoint the right people, let them spend what was needed and keep out of the way? Yes he did.
It is fair to give him credit for things done well just as it is fair to blame for the things that went wrong. Don't let hatred or disdain for Johnson cloud that. There is enough to mock already.
That’s not the story, though, is it?
The reality is that he had to be read the riot act by some of the leading scientists and told that the country could not afford another scandalous f**k up, like we’d just been through with PPE procurement, and hence he and his money-grabbing political mates needed to stay well away from the vaccine rollout and let the scientists and procurement experts get on with the job.
Yes, there’s a smidgin of credit for his having done as he was told (i.e, nothing). But, on a personal level, not much - about as much credit as Leon would deserve for a successful birthday party which he’d been told to stay away from lest he get drunk again and spoil.
Do you have evidence for that being the case? I believe vaccine procurement started very early.
My prediction is that Truss will turn out to be a lot better than many of us gave her credit for. Boris Johnson is a busted flush. He is yesterday's Clown; someone who achieved a great election victory against a ridiculously weedy opponent and managed very little else of note. His deranged supporters might want him back, but they will hopefully diminish in time, and before long it will be difficult to find anyone to admit they supported him.
I do wonder whether even he has fallen out of love with "Boris" as he always affectionately referred to him.
His posts do not indicate it so far, and I would be delighted if he would join those of us who want Truss to succeed and publicly accept Johnson is toxic and has damaged the party considerably
I support her as leader but she is still 10% behind on the latest poll and this end bankers' bonuses cap now was her decision not Boris'. She and Kwarteng own it
You demonstrate my point perfectly and until you condemn Johnson then you are part of his toxic legacy
I won't condemn the party's most successful leader since Thatcher
Leaving aside the question as to whether he was more successful than either Cameron or Major, looking at the rest of them that isn't exactly a high bar, is it?
Interesting that @HYUFD describes Johnson as "the party's most successful leader since Thatcher". This is a totally ridiculous proposition. He bases "most successful" solely on his election victory over Jeremy fecking Corbyn.
Johnson was responsible for one of the biggest fissures in the Tory Party since the Corn Laws. He became an international laughing stock. He thoroughly trashed the Conservative Party's reputation for sensible governance and found himself heaved out of No10 after only 3 years for dishonesty. Other than TMay you have to go back to 1827 to find a PM with a shorter tenure. He was hopeless. A bad joke. A man totally unfit for office. He was not successful, except in his ability to trounce the most ludicrous LoTO ever to have held that role, and to gull those foolish enough like @HYUFD into thinking he was appropriate to be Party leader and PM.
He also delivered Brexit and the vaccines on his watch and of course Theresa was sadly unable to defeat Corbyn.
Once we have gone through the Tory leaderships of Truss, Badenoch, Braverman and Rees Mogg even you might miss Boris!
Mr Johnson is a medical immunologist?
This is a bit divisive. Did Churchill win the second world war (from a British perspective - I know USSR/USA etc)? Yes. Did he fight in Normandy, the Ardennes, Crossing of the Rhine, in a Lancaster over Berlin? No (although he tried to get to Normandy...)
Did Johnson head into the lab, roll up his sleeves and say 'right, we've got the spike sequence, its time to see if mRNA vaccines work...'? Of course not. Did he appoint the right people, let them spend what was needed and keep out of the way? Yes he did.
It is fair to give him credit for things done well just as it is fair to blame for the things that went wrong. Don't let hatred or disdain for Johnson cloud that. There is enough to mock already.
In his leaving speech he claimed he achieved one of his big promises, and fixed social care.
Are we okay to work on the basis that he didn’t and ask, will we ever have a government that will actually fix social care?
@turbotubbs : I am not accusing you of being a fan or even an apologist, but attempts to draw favourable comparison between the Fat Lying Clown that recently (seemingly incredulously) held the position of PM of this great nation and W S Churchill, one of the greatest statesmen to have ever lived in the history of mankind, is risible to say the least.
I was in no way suggesting Johnson was fit to lick Churchill's boot after he'd stepped in a smelly turd, but it was an illustrative point about repsonsibility. Its not right to say all the bad things are down to X, but you also don't get any credit for Y.
More film of the omen and portent last night ((C) MoonRabbit).
"Steve Owens, an astronomer and science communicator at the Glasgow Science Centre, said (...) 'The one last night might have been the size of a golf ball or maybe a cricket ball, maybe bigger than that'."
No way was that object as small as a cricket ball.
Like HY and unlike Leon, I am a big traditionalist at heart - so instead of calling it a UFO I am calling it a dragon. They come from out the void and hide underneath the hill because before banks everyone used to bury their wealth and treasure and dragons love treasure.
The only other explanation is the importance of portents - if you are going to tell the bee’s the master is dead (just smacks of politeness to me but different if you truly superstitious) then what about signs in the sky, leaky pens - OMG 🫣
Personally, I am watching for news items about the sea boiling south of the Hebrides and communication slowly being lost with communities along the West Coast of Scotland....
Hope it's not aliens, they might ask to be taken to our leaders and then where would we be?
Apparently one of Mr Musk's comsats. Beginning to wonder how many more fireballs we'll see, given how many comsats of his there are.
I thought the starlink satellites were a lot larger than the estimated size of the object that caused the fireball.
Depends how flimsy the different bits are and how they disintegrate, I expect. Looks off the top of my head as if the sat stayed more or less in one piece with some bits flaring off?
My prediction is that Truss will turn out to be a lot better than many of us gave her credit for. Boris Johnson is a busted flush. He is yesterday's Clown; someone who achieved a great election victory against a ridiculously weedy opponent and managed very little else of note. His deranged supporters might want him back, but they will hopefully diminish in time, and before long it will be difficult to find anyone to admit they supported him.
I do wonder whether even he has fallen out of love with "Boris" as he always affectionately referred to him.
His posts do not indicate it so far, and I would be delighted if he would join those of us who want Truss to succeed and publicly accept Johnson is toxic and has damaged the party considerably
I support her as leader but she is still 10% behind on the latest poll and this end bankers' bonuses cap now was her decision not Boris'. She and Kwarteng own it
You demonstrate my point perfectly and until you condemn Johnson then you are part of his toxic legacy
I won't condemn the party's most successful leader since Thatcher
Leaving aside the question as to whether he was more successful than either Cameron or Major, looking at the rest of them that isn't exactly a high bar, is it?
Interesting that @HYUFD describes Johnson as "the party's most successful leader since Thatcher". This is a totally ridiculous proposition. He bases "most successful" solely on his election victory over Jeremy fecking Corbyn.
Johnson was responsible for one of the biggest fissures in the Tory Party since the Corn Laws. He became an international laughing stock. He thoroughly trashed the Conservative Party's reputation for sensible governance and found himself heaved out of No10 after only 3 years for dishonesty. Other than TMay you have to go back to 1827 to find a PM with a shorter tenure. He was hopeless. A bad joke. A man totally unfit for office. He was not successful, except in his ability to trounce the most ludicrous LoTO ever to have held that role, and to gull those foolish enough like @HYUFD into thinking he was appropriate to be Party leader and PM.
He also delivered Brexit and the vaccines on his watch and of course Theresa was sadly unable to defeat Corbyn.
Once we have gone through the Tory leaderships of Truss, Badenoch, Braverman and Rees Mogg even you might miss Boris!
Mr Johnson is a medical immunologist?
This is a bit divisive. Did Churchill win the second world war (from a British perspective - I know USSR/USA etc)? Yes. Did he fight in Normandy, the Ardennes, Crossing of the Rhine, in a Lancaster over Berlin? No (although he tried to get to Normandy...)
Did Johnson head into the lab, roll up his sleeves and say 'right, we've got the spike sequence, its time to see if mRNA vaccines work...'? Of course not. Did he appoint the right people, let them spend what was needed and keep out of the way? Yes he did.
It is fair to give him credit for things done well just as it is fair to blame for the things that went wrong. Don't let hatred or disdain for Johnson cloud that. There is enough to mock already.
In his leaving speech he claimed he achieved one of his big promises, and fixed social care.
Are we okay to work on the basis that he didn’t and ask, will we ever have a government that will actually fix social care?
@turbotubbs : I am not accusing you of being a fan or even an apologist, but attempts to draw favourable comparison between the Fat Lying Clown that recently (seemingly incredulously) held the position of PM of this great nation and W S Churchill, one of the greatest statesmen to have ever lived in the history of mankind, is risible to say the least.
I was in no way suggesting Johnson was fit to lick Churchill's boot after he'd stepped in a smelly turd, but it was an illustrative point about repsonsibility. Its not right to say all the bad things are down to X, but you also don't get any credit for Y.
A great Churchillian quote is that "the greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes" is most applicable to any positives that Johnson might have stubbled across and given the order to proceed.
"Amidst ongoing concerns about services across the UK that will be cancelled or closed next Monday, including operations and funerals, the Scottish government has issued its own guidance.
Whilst it says that school should close as a mark of respect, essential healthcare services should continue, including pre-planned treatments, and the winter vaccination programme.
Most public transport services are currently expected to run as normal."
Our bins not being collected that day - but simply postponed till Saturday.
The only difference a cigarette paper can be put in I can see at this point is some pre-planned healthcare, so that it presumably what the shouting will be about.
Quite, it was the booked hospital stuff that I noticed. Like the old Presbyterian Sabbath, where only "acts of necessity or mercy" could be carried out other than worship and devotion.
Bit shit though to find cosplay 19thc Sabbatarianism at Center Parcs. One hopes the wi-fi is working. Makes a change from reading improving stories for children and Chambers's Family Journal.
Funnily enough, they all say its ghastly yet memorable yet gruelling, and they all conclude it is worth it
As I said, it is becoming a thing in itself. The Queue
Didn't you read Apsley Cherry-Garrard's classic, *The Worst Queue in the World*? Triumph of British pluck, frostbite, seal blubber, etc. etc, all to get some penguin eggs IIRC.
Analyst on R5L’s wake up to money - tracking a basket of essential goods says price difference between Morrissons and Aldi is now 40%. Explained by Morrisons having to service a gigantic debt.
Shop at Aldi, people.
Good morning
I heard that report as well and it is astonishing that Morrisons apparently have a 7 billion debt
Shop anywhere but Morrisons would be the message
5live also discussed Kwarteng's proposal to abolish city bonuses and it really does make you wonder if the conservative party have lost all it's instincts to govern
It may be the right thing from a business sense, but the optics are shocking and hands yet another gift to labour
It is the right thing from city workers sense. It is a bad thing for shareholders and really bad for government and taxpayers who will eventually have to fund another bailout with years of austerity.
I'm curious about this idea that bankers bonuses caused the subprime mortgage crisis.
I am even more curious about the idea that there will ever be another bank bailout.
Extreme bankers bonuses create incentives for bankers to gamble with the banks money. If they win, fantastic, if they lose its not their money and as long as you can talk the talk and know some of the right people, it is still easy to get another job.
That culture feeds through to the banks to gamble, notionally with their money, but knowing they have a government funded back stop as they are too big to fail.
Take away the controls and regulation and sooner or later we shall be back to bail outs.
Well, it's too bad the Labour government didn't do something about it then...
Of course. Not sure why you think that is relevant when they have not been in power for a long time and it is the current governments policies that will matter.
Well, the view of Labour supporters on the GFC is "it started in America".
That's not the view of Labour supporters, it is a statement of fact.
The global [key word, there] financial crisis started in America. Britain was very poorly placed to weather it because Gordon Brown had spent the previous 6 years [after an admirable initial period of restraint] pissing money up the wall, spending more than he raked in even during times of relative financial health. Personally I couldn't give a fig how big bankers' bonuses are. I don't care at all about the optics, I care about the gap between what we spend and what we earn. That should be the #1 issue for a chancellor of the exchequer to worry about. If this measure narrows that gap (and I am at best agnostic about whether it will) it should be welcomed.
Britain was hit badly because we have a large globally exposed financial sector and one of our biggest banks was in the midst of an ill-advised over-leveraged buying spree at the top of the market. Running a structural deficit of 4% of GDP in 2007 compared to a G7 average of 3% is unlikely to have been a significant factor in explaining why we were hit worse than others, no matter how much people want it to be Gordon Brown's fault.
Running a structural deficit of 4% during pre-crash times is utterly catastrophic as when the crash inevitably comes and you inevitably need countercyclical spending to go with it, then you have nowhere to go.
The fact that some other countries were nearly as bad as the UK doesn't justify or excuse what Brown did.
But it is hard to blame Brown's fiscal policy for us being hit *much worse than others* when Brown's fiscal policy was *pretty much the same as others'*. That was the point I was responding to. Also worth noting that our debt to GDP ratio in 2007 was 41% (down from 43% in 1997) compared to a G7 average of 81%. So we had plenty of space to run countercyclical fiscal policy, certainly compared to other countries, and indeed the increase in our debt to GDP ratio between 2007 and 2010 (33pp) was almost identical to the G7 average (32pp), suggesting that we were indeed able to run a countercyclical fiscal policy just like other economies.
Except it wasn't the same as others, it was via your own figures worse than others. And of course its worth noting that the G7 average includes the UK so the G7 average was itself getting dragged down by Brown's terrible performance.
Debt to GDP isn't the relevant figure, the deficit is, although its worth noting via your own figures again in the span of three years Brown nearly doubled our debt-to-GDP figure whereas G7 nations debt-to-GDP increased by much less than half.
Gordon Brown's peak debt to GDP being around 3% iirc which was on a par with preceding Conservative governments. It was not significant and did not cause or exacerbate the GFC.
Also, aiui Team Truss has determined, as Cheney said of Reagan, that deficits don't matter and that George Osborne's austerity was a mistake that hobbled Britain's economy.
Except....this was a time of unprecedented receipts. The housing market was going bananas, profits were high, and it was a time where debt to GDP didn't need to be as high given the circumstances in the economy. Simply, we were spending too much. I don't think anyone disputes that, no matter what they think the answer (austerity/non-austerity) should have been.
Yes, there is a good deal in that. But as it happened, the GFC came along and rendered it all moot. Then Osborne came along and flatlined the nascent recovery inherited from Labour, and here we are.
The GFC didn't just "come along and render it moot", the GFC was a crash that the Government should have been preparing for as it was overdue. Crashes happen, and the GFC was a classic crash, not some exogenous and unforeseeable shock.
And you repeat the myth that Osborne flatlined the recovery. Don't you realise the UK in the 2010s grew faster than the Eurozone did, both in nominal terms and in per capita terms. "Despite Brexit" supposedly harming the UK during that decade.
If Brexit and Osborne "flatlined" or harmed the UK, then how come the UK grew faster than the Eurozone or the rest of the EU? Just how much faster than them would we have grown in your eyes were it not for Osborne or Brexit, and why?
Osborne's austerity was a mistake as even the current vintage of Tories now acknowledge. The problem is that they have pivoted to pro-growth fiscal policies at precisely the wrong moment, with inflation out of control, and so they will only succeed in pushing up inflation and interest rates. Euro area growth was low because of their sovereign debt crisis and because they followed similar austerity policies to us, and because they had lower population growth.
It was not a mistake, because the deficit was out of control.
Pro-growth policies are good now because the deficit was brought under control prior to the crash, unlike in Brown's time, and so we're in a much better fiscal position than we were then.
The UK grew faster than Europe on a per capita basis too, again despite "austerity" and "Brexit" being both accused of "flatlining" growth. We had our own sovereign debt crisis caused by Brown's borrowing too, which is why Osborne needed to clean up Brown's mess.
The UK deficit is set to grow considerably under Truss, who appears to believe in trickle-down economics, something known not to work. So, deficit up, but no significant improvement in growth.
Amused by your claim that trickle-down economics is "known not to work", it absolutely does work.
Cutting taxes in both the UK and the USA in the 80s led to significant growth and eventual budget surpluses in the 90s.
That the growth and surplus such tax cutting brought about was subsequently pissed away, is not a problem with "trickle down economics".
Cutting UK taxes in the 80s? Not according to The World Bank. Tax take rose from 22% of GDP in 1978 and 1979 to 26% of GDP in 1982 and it averaged >24% through the 80s. Doubling VAT may have had something to do with that.
Should it not be THE venerable Westminster Hall ? perhaps?
It probably would be if it were in Cambridge, cf. "the Senate House", as opposed to "Senate House".
I stopped reading at "the British get this right". That is so fawning and parochial.
Please, no-one tell the king about how the same pattern appears at Gobleki Tepe, in Australian aboriginal body-painting, and in the Cosmati pavement in the Abbey.
Re. the latter, I was quite perturbed by Donald Trump's interest in that.
Analyst on R5L’s wake up to money - tracking a basket of essential goods says price difference between Morrissons and Aldi is now 40%. Explained by Morrisons having to service a gigantic debt.
Shop at Aldi, people.
Good morning
I heard that report as well and it is astonishing that Morrisons apparently have a 7 billion debt
Shop anywhere but Morrisons would be the message
5live also discussed Kwarteng's proposal to abolish city bonuses and it really does make you wonder if the conservative party have lost all it's instincts to govern
It may be the right thing from a business sense, but the optics are shocking and hands yet another gift to labour
It is the right thing from city workers sense. It is a bad thing for shareholders and really bad for government and taxpayers who will eventually have to fund another bailout with years of austerity.
I'm curious about this idea that bankers bonuses caused the subprime mortgage crisis.
I am even more curious about the idea that there will ever be another bank bailout.
Extreme bankers bonuses create incentives for bankers to gamble with the banks money. If they win, fantastic, if they lose its not their money and as long as you can talk the talk and know some of the right people, it is still easy to get another job.
That culture feeds through to the banks to gamble, notionally with their money, but knowing they have a government funded back stop as they are too big to fail.
Take away the controls and regulation and sooner or later we shall be back to bail outs.
Well, it's too bad the Labour government didn't do something about it then...
Of course. Not sure why you think that is relevant when they have not been in power for a long time and it is the current governments policies that will matter.
Well, the view of Labour supporters on the GFC is "it started in America".
That's not the view of Labour supporters, it is a statement of fact.
The global [key word, there] financial crisis started in America. Britain was very poorly placed to weather it because Gordon Brown had spent the previous 6 years [after an admirable initial period of restraint] pissing money up the wall, spending more than he raked in even during times of relative financial health. Personally I couldn't give a fig how big bankers' bonuses are. I don't care at all about the optics, I care about the gap between what we spend and what we earn. That should be the #1 issue for a chancellor of the exchequer to worry about. If this measure narrows that gap (and I am at best agnostic about whether it will) it should be welcomed.
Britain was hit badly because we have a large globally exposed financial sector and one of our biggest banks was in the midst of an ill-advised over-leveraged buying spree at the top of the market. Running a structural deficit of 4% of GDP in 2007 compared to a G7 average of 3% is unlikely to have been a significant factor in explaining why we were hit worse than others, no matter how much people want it to be Gordon Brown's fault.
Running a structural deficit of 4% during pre-crash times is utterly catastrophic as when the crash inevitably comes and you inevitably need countercyclical spending to go with it, then you have nowhere to go.
The fact that some other countries were nearly as bad as the UK doesn't justify or excuse what Brown did.
But it is hard to blame Brown's fiscal policy for us being hit *much worse than others* when Brown's fiscal policy was *pretty much the same as others'*. That was the point I was responding to. Also worth noting that our debt to GDP ratio in 2007 was 41% (down from 43% in 1997) compared to a G7 average of 81%. So we had plenty of space to run countercyclical fiscal policy, certainly compared to other countries, and indeed the increase in our debt to GDP ratio between 2007 and 2010 (33pp) was almost identical to the G7 average (32pp), suggesting that we were indeed able to run a countercyclical fiscal policy just like other economies.
Except it wasn't the same as others, it was via your own figures worse than others. And of course its worth noting that the G7 average includes the UK so the G7 average was itself getting dragged down by Brown's terrible performance.
Debt to GDP isn't the relevant figure, the deficit is, although its worth noting via your own figures again in the span of three years Brown nearly doubled our debt-to-GDP figure whereas G7 nations debt-to-GDP increased by much less than half.
Gordon Brown's peak debt to GDP being around 3% iirc which was on a par with preceding Conservative governments. It was not significant and did not cause or exacerbate the GFC.
Also, aiui Team Truss has determined, as Cheney said of Reagan, that deficits don't matter and that George Osborne's austerity was a mistake that hobbled Britain's economy.
Except....this was a time of unprecedented receipts. The housing market was going bananas, profits were high, and it was a time where debt to GDP didn't need to be as high given the circumstances in the economy. Simply, we were spending too much. I don't think anyone disputes that, no matter what they think the answer (austerity/non-austerity) should have been.
Yes, there is a good deal in that. But as it happened, the GFC came along and rendered it all moot. Then Osborne came along and flatlined the nascent recovery inherited from Labour, and here we are.
The GFC didn't just "come along and render it moot", the GFC was a crash that the Government should have been preparing for as it was overdue. Crashes happen, and the GFC was a classic crash, not some exogenous and unforeseeable shock.
And you repeat the myth that Osborne flatlined the recovery. Don't you realise the UK in the 2010s grew faster than the Eurozone did, both in nominal terms and in per capita terms. "Despite Brexit" supposedly harming the UK during that decade.
If Brexit and Osborne "flatlined" or harmed the UK, then how come the UK grew faster than the Eurozone or the rest of the EU? Just how much faster than them would we have grown in your eyes were it not for Osborne or Brexit, and why?
Osborne's austerity was a mistake as even the current vintage of Tories now acknowledge. The problem is that they have pivoted to pro-growth fiscal policies at precisely the wrong moment, with inflation out of control, and so they will only succeed in pushing up inflation and interest rates. Euro area growth was low because of their sovereign debt crisis and because they followed similar austerity policies to us, and because they had lower population growth.
It was not a mistake, because the deficit was out of control.
Pro-growth policies are good now because the deficit was brought under control prior to the crash, unlike in Brown's time, and so we're in a much better fiscal position than we were then.
The UK grew faster than Europe on a per capita basis too, again despite "austerity" and "Brexit" being both accused of "flatlining" growth. We had our own sovereign debt crisis caused by Brown's borrowing too, which is why Osborne needed to clean up Brown's mess.
The UK deficit is set to grow considerably under Truss, who appears to believe in trickle-down economics, something known not to work. So, deficit up, but no significant improvement in growth.
Amused by your claim that trickle-down economics is "known not to work", it absolutely does work.
Cutting taxes in both the UK and the USA in the 80s led to significant growth and eventual budget surpluses in the 90s.
That the growth and surplus such tax cutting brought about was subsequently pissed away, is not a problem with "trickle down economics".
Cutting UK taxes in the 80s? Not according to The World Bank. Tax take rose from 22% of GDP in 1978 and 1979 to 26% of GDP in 1982 and it averaged >24% through the 80s. Doubling VAT may have had something to do with that.
More film of the omen and portent last night ((C) MoonRabbit).
"Steve Owens, an astronomer and science communicator at the Glasgow Science Centre, said (...) 'The one last night might have been the size of a golf ball or maybe a cricket ball, maybe bigger than that'."
No way was that object as small as a cricket ball.
Like HY and unlike Leon, I am a big traditionalist at heart - so instead of calling it a UFO I am calling it a dragon. They come from out the void and hide underneath the hill because before banks everyone used to bury their wealth and treasure and dragons love treasure.
The only other explanation is the importance of portents - if you are going to tell the bee’s the master is dead (just smacks of politeness to me but different if you truly superstitious) then what about signs in the sky, leaky pens - OMG 🫣
Personally, I am watching for news items about the sea boiling south of the Hebrides and communication slowly being lost with communities along the West Coast of Scotland....
Hope it's not aliens, they might ask to be taken to our leaders and then where would we be?
Apparently one of Mr Musk's comsats. Beginning to wonder how many more fireballs we'll see, given how many comsats of his there are.
I thought the starlink satellites were a lot larger than the estimated size of the object that caused the fireball.
Depends how flimsy the different bits are and how they disintegrate, I expect. Looks off the top of my head as if the sat stayed more or less in one piece with some bits flaring off?
Let us hope they are sufficiently flimsy to burn up before they finish they descent through the atmosphere. Can you imagine the bills Mr Musk (or his insurance) would get if one of those hit something on the ground?
Of course, if it hit Putin's house he would likely get a medal and the rest of us would get WW3
My prediction is that Truss will turn out to be a lot better than many of us gave her credit for. Boris Johnson is a busted flush. He is yesterday's Clown; someone who achieved a great election victory against a ridiculously weedy opponent and managed very little else of note. His deranged supporters might want him back, but they will hopefully diminish in time, and before long it will be difficult to find anyone to admit they supported him.
I do wonder whether even he has fallen out of love with "Boris" as he always affectionately referred to him.
His posts do not indicate it so far, and I would be delighted if he would join those of us who want Truss to succeed and publicly accept Johnson is toxic and has damaged the party considerably
I support her as leader but she is still 10% behind on the latest poll and this end bankers' bonuses cap now was her decision not Boris'. She and Kwarteng own it
You demonstrate my point perfectly and until you condemn Johnson then you are part of his toxic legacy
I won't condemn the party's most successful leader since Thatcher
Leaving aside the question as to whether he was more successful than either Cameron or Major, looking at the rest of them that isn't exactly a high bar, is it?
Interesting that @HYUFD describes Johnson as "the party's most successful leader since Thatcher". This is a totally ridiculous proposition. He bases "most successful" solely on his election victory over Jeremy fecking Corbyn.
Johnson was responsible for one of the biggest fissures in the Tory Party since the Corn Laws. He became an international laughing stock. He thoroughly trashed the Conservative Party's reputation for sensible governance and found himself heaved out of No10 after only 3 years for dishonesty. Other than TMay you have to go back to 1827 to find a PM with a shorter tenure. He was hopeless. A bad joke. A man totally unfit for office. He was not successful, except in his ability to trounce the most ludicrous LoTO ever to have held that role, and to gull those foolish enough like @HYUFD into thinking he was appropriate to be Party leader and PM.
He also delivered Brexit and the vaccines on his watch and of course Theresa was sadly unable to defeat Corbyn.
Once we have gone through the Tory leaderships of Truss, Badenoch, Braverman and Rees Mogg even you might miss Boris!
HY, old chap. We have one of the biggest and best pharmaceutical sectors in the known universe, and that has nothing to do with Johnson. When I last looked Boris Johnson has no scientific credential. If the decision relating to the procurement was his (which I doubt he took on his own) it was a good call. The rest of the whole pandemic was a mixture of bad and very very bad. On top of that we have a man that presided over a culture of partying at No10 while knowing other people were making great sacrifices. He is without doubt the worst PM in recent history, if not the whole of history. There are no circumstances where I will miss having such a lying cretinous clown as our PM. It is a shame that you are an apologist for him, as it demonstrates that you, by association, must be as dishonest as he.
the post starts of well enough and each sentence then gets more unreasonable than the one before!
Please go ahead and make a reasoned critique of my critique? Be my guest. I have fact checked where possible. The last one was perhaps the only one that was not filled with pretty strong reasoning, many are facts. For ease I have put them out in bullet points for you:
* We have one of the biggest and best pharmaceutical sectors in the known universe, and that has nothing to do with Johnson. FACT
* When I last looked Boris Johnson has no scientific credential FACT
* If the decision relating to the procurement was his (which I doubt he took on his own) it was a good call. VERY LIKELY
* The rest of the whole pandemic was a mixture of bad and very very bad. SUBJECTIVE
* On top of that we have a man that presided over a culture of partying at No10 while knowing other people were making great sacrifices FACT
* He is without doubt the worst PM in recent history, if not the whole of history. SUBJECTIVE (but pretty accurate)
* There are no circumstances where I will miss having such a lying cretinous clown as our PM ABSOLUTE FACT
* It is a shame that you are an apologist for him, as it demonstrates that you, by association, must be as dishonest as he SUBJECTIVE
At the heart of the case Mermaids is taking against LGB Alliance, trying to get them deregistered as a charity. Are LGB Alliance entitled to their definition of what it means to be a lesbian, ie a female attracted to other females?
MG: other ppl have different understanding of SE and lesbian? U saw PR and his understanding KH: u mean a lesbian can be a man with a penis?
Funnily enough, they all say its ghastly yet memorable yet gruelling, and they all conclude it is worth it
As I said, it is becoming a thing in itself. The Queue
Didn't you read Apsley Cherry-Garrard's classic, *The Worst Queue in the World*? Triumph of British pluck, frostbite, seal blubber, etc. etc, all to get some penguin eggs IIRC.
Poor old A C-G, there's a coda to that where he goes to the NHM to see his eggs, and can you believe it they had chucked them in the basement reserved for uninformative junk? The flaw in the anecdote being they were uninformative junk and only a complete arse would send a party in the Antarctic winter to get them.
Of all Scott's victims I hate him for A C-G more than anyone else, even Oates and the ponies. Put in a position by Scott's incompetence where he blamed himself for the rest of his life for not having gone on from One Ton Camp to rescue the posturing old fraud, and could only function with heroic bursts of ECT.
Funnily enough, they all say its ghastly yet memorable yet gruelling, and they all conclude it is worth it
As I said, it is becoming a thing in itself. The Queue
Didn't you read Apsley Cherry-Garrard's classic, *The Worst Queue in the World*? Triumph of British pluck, frostbite, seal blubber, etc. etc, all to get some penguin eggs IIRC.
Analyst on R5L’s wake up to money - tracking a basket of essential goods says price difference between Morrissons and Aldi is now 40%. Explained by Morrisons having to service a gigantic debt.
Shop at Aldi, people.
Good morning
I heard that report as well and it is astonishing that Morrisons apparently have a 7 billion debt
Shop anywhere but Morrisons would be the message
5live also discussed Kwarteng's proposal to abolish city bonuses and it really does make you wonder if the conservative party have lost all it's instincts to govern
It may be the right thing from a business sense, but the optics are shocking and hands yet another gift to labour
It is the right thing from city workers sense. It is a bad thing for shareholders and really bad for government and taxpayers who will eventually have to fund another bailout with years of austerity.
I'm curious about this idea that bankers bonuses caused the subprime mortgage crisis.
I am even more curious about the idea that there will ever be another bank bailout.
Extreme bankers bonuses create incentives for bankers to gamble with the banks money. If they win, fantastic, if they lose its not their money and as long as you can talk the talk and know some of the right people, it is still easy to get another job.
That culture feeds through to the banks to gamble, notionally with their money, but knowing they have a government funded back stop as they are too big to fail.
Take away the controls and regulation and sooner or later we shall be back to bail outs.
Well, it's too bad the Labour government didn't do something about it then...
Of course. Not sure why you think that is relevant when they have not been in power for a long time and it is the current governments policies that will matter.
Well, the view of Labour supporters on the GFC is "it started in America".
That's not the view of Labour supporters, it is a statement of fact.
The global [key word, there] financial crisis started in America. Britain was very poorly placed to weather it because Gordon Brown had spent the previous 6 years [after an admirable initial period of restraint] pissing money up the wall, spending more than he raked in even during times of relative financial health. Personally I couldn't give a fig how big bankers' bonuses are. I don't care at all about the optics, I care about the gap between what we spend and what we earn. That should be the #1 issue for a chancellor of the exchequer to worry about. If this measure narrows that gap (and I am at best agnostic about whether it will) it should be welcomed.
Britain was hit badly because we have a large globally exposed financial sector and one of our biggest banks was in the midst of an ill-advised over-leveraged buying spree at the top of the market. Running a structural deficit of 4% of GDP in 2007 compared to a G7 average of 3% is unlikely to have been a significant factor in explaining why we were hit worse than others, no matter how much people want it to be Gordon Brown's fault.
Running a structural deficit of 4% during pre-crash times is utterly catastrophic as when the crash inevitably comes and you inevitably need countercyclical spending to go with it, then you have nowhere to go.
The fact that some other countries were nearly as bad as the UK doesn't justify or excuse what Brown did.
But it is hard to blame Brown's fiscal policy for us being hit *much worse than others* when Brown's fiscal policy was *pretty much the same as others'*. That was the point I was responding to. Also worth noting that our debt to GDP ratio in 2007 was 41% (down from 43% in 1997) compared to a G7 average of 81%. So we had plenty of space to run countercyclical fiscal policy, certainly compared to other countries, and indeed the increase in our debt to GDP ratio between 2007 and 2010 (33pp) was almost identical to the G7 average (32pp), suggesting that we were indeed able to run a countercyclical fiscal policy just like other economies.
Except it wasn't the same as others, it was via your own figures worse than others. And of course its worth noting that the G7 average includes the UK so the G7 average was itself getting dragged down by Brown's terrible performance.
Debt to GDP isn't the relevant figure, the deficit is, although its worth noting via your own figures again in the span of three years Brown nearly doubled our debt-to-GDP figure whereas G7 nations debt-to-GDP increased by much less than half.
Gordon Brown's peak debt to GDP being around 3% iirc which was on a par with preceding Conservative governments. It was not significant and did not cause or exacerbate the GFC.
Also, aiui Team Truss has determined, as Cheney said of Reagan, that deficits don't matter and that George Osborne's austerity was a mistake that hobbled Britain's economy.
Except....this was a time of unprecedented receipts. The housing market was going bananas, profits were high, and it was a time where debt to GDP didn't need to be as high given the circumstances in the economy. Simply, we were spending too much. I don't think anyone disputes that, no matter what they think the answer (austerity/non-austerity) should have been.
Yes, there is a good deal in that. But as it happened, the GFC came along and rendered it all moot. Then Osborne came along and flatlined the nascent recovery inherited from Labour, and here we are.
The GFC didn't just "come along and render it moot", the GFC was a crash that the Government should have been preparing for as it was overdue. Crashes happen, and the GFC was a classic crash, not some exogenous and unforeseeable shock.
And you repeat the myth that Osborne flatlined the recovery. Don't you realise the UK in the 2010s grew faster than the Eurozone did, both in nominal terms and in per capita terms. "Despite Brexit" supposedly harming the UK during that decade.
If Brexit and Osborne "flatlined" or harmed the UK, then how come the UK grew faster than the Eurozone or the rest of the EU? Just how much faster than them would we have grown in your eyes were it not for Osborne or Brexit, and why?
Osborne's austerity was a mistake as even the current vintage of Tories now acknowledge. The problem is that they have pivoted to pro-growth fiscal policies at precisely the wrong moment, with inflation out of control, and so they will only succeed in pushing up inflation and interest rates. Euro area growth was low because of their sovereign debt crisis and because they followed similar austerity policies to us, and because they had lower population growth.
It was not a mistake, because the deficit was out of control.
Pro-growth policies are good now because the deficit was brought under control prior to the crash, unlike in Brown's time, and so we're in a much better fiscal position than we were then.
The UK grew faster than Europe on a per capita basis too, again despite "austerity" and "Brexit" being both accused of "flatlining" growth. We had our own sovereign debt crisis caused by Brown's borrowing too, which is why Osborne needed to clean up Brown's mess.
The UK deficit is set to grow considerably under Truss, who appears to believe in trickle-down economics, something known not to work. So, deficit up, but no significant improvement in growth.
Amused by your claim that trickle-down economics is "known not to work", it absolutely does work.
Cutting taxes in both the UK and the USA in the 80s led to significant growth and eventual budget surpluses in the 90s.
That the growth and surplus such tax cutting brought about was subsequently pissed away, is not a problem with "trickle down economics".
Cutting UK taxes in the 80s? Not according to The World Bank. Tax take rose from 22% of GDP in 1978 and 1979 to 26% of GDP in 1982 and it averaged >24% through the 80s. Doubling VAT may have had something to do with that.
Plus the massive tax take from North Sea Oil. At one point in the 1980s almost 10% of UK tax revenue was from North Sea Oil revenue.
The ONS data on the debt GDP/ratio is quite instructive.
It goes down from the mid 70s-79. Stabilises through the early and mid 80s, drops off dramatically in the 2-3 years prior to the 90s recession, then jumps up dramatically; It stabilises after 1997, and drops again, until it rockets up to a new baseline in 2008-2012, where it stays virtually unchanged until the new-new baseline in 2021.
Basically, the colour of the government doesn't seem to have much effect, and the arguments everyone has are based on picking arbitrary start and end points and discussing a few percentage points either way; the big changes massively outweigh any of the minutiae.
More film of the omen and portent last night ((C) MoonRabbit).
"Steve Owens, an astronomer and science communicator at the Glasgow Science Centre, said (...) 'The one last night might have been the size of a golf ball or maybe a cricket ball, maybe bigger than that'."
No way was that object as small as a cricket ball.
Like HY and unlike Leon, I am a big traditionalist at heart - so instead of calling it a UFO I am calling it a dragon. They come from out the void and hide underneath the hill because before banks everyone used to bury their wealth and treasure and dragons love treasure.
The only other explanation is the importance of portents - if you are going to tell the bee’s the master is dead (just smacks of politeness to me but different if you truly superstitious) then what about signs in the sky, leaky pens - OMG 🫣
Personally, I am watching for news items about the sea boiling south of the Hebrides and communication slowly being lost with communities along the West Coast of Scotland....
Hope it's not aliens, they might ask to be taken to our leaders and then where would we be?
Personally, I am more concerned we would be faced with the next 10 years of Leon saying 'I told you so'.
More film of the omen and portent last night ((C) MoonRabbit).
"Steve Owens, an astronomer and science communicator at the Glasgow Science Centre, said (...) 'The one last night might have been the size of a golf ball or maybe a cricket ball, maybe bigger than that'."
No way was that object as small as a cricket ball.
Like HY and unlike Leon, I am a big traditionalist at heart - so instead of calling it a UFO I am calling it a dragon. They come from out the void and hide underneath the hill because before banks everyone used to bury their wealth and treasure and dragons love treasure.
The only other explanation is the importance of portents - if you are going to tell the bee’s the master is dead (just smacks of politeness to me but different if you truly superstitious) then what about signs in the sky, leaky pens - OMG 🫣
Personally, I am watching for news items about the sea boiling south of the Hebrides and communication slowly being lost with communities along the West Coast of Scotland....
Hope it's not aliens, they might ask to be taken to our leaders and then where would we be?
Apparently one of Mr Musk's comsats. Beginning to wonder how many more fireballs we'll see, given how many comsats of his there are.
I thought the starlink satellites were a lot larger than the estimated size of the object that caused the fireball.
Depends how flimsy the different bits are and how they disintegrate, I expect. Looks off the top of my head as if the sat stayed more or less in one piece with some bits flaring off?
Let us hope they are sufficiently flimsy to burn up before they finish they descent through the atmosphere. Can you imagine the bills Mr Musk (or his insurance) would get if one of those hit something on the ground?
Of course, if it hit Putin's house he would likely get a medal and the rest of us would get WW3
SpaceX/Starlink designed the satellites to completely burn up in the upper atmosphere. This is in excess of the general design criteria for satellites which quite often have bits surviving re-entry.
It’s not about flimsiness - it’s matching components drag profile vs the materials they are made from.
If you Google you will see quite a lot is stuff makes it to the ground from satellites each year.
My prediction is that Truss will turn out to be a lot better than many of us gave her credit for. Boris Johnson is a busted flush. He is yesterday's Clown; someone who achieved a great election victory against a ridiculously weedy opponent and managed very little else of note. His deranged supporters might want him back, but they will hopefully diminish in time, and before long it will be difficult to find anyone to admit they supported him.
I do wonder whether even he has fallen out of love with "Boris" as he always affectionately referred to him.
His posts do not indicate it so far, and I would be delighted if he would join those of us who want Truss to succeed and publicly accept Johnson is toxic and has damaged the party considerably
I support her as leader but she is still 10% behind on the latest poll and this end bankers' bonuses cap now was her decision not Boris'. She and Kwarteng own it
You demonstrate my point perfectly and until you condemn Johnson then you are part of his toxic legacy
I won't condemn the party's most successful leader since Thatcher
Leaving aside the question as to whether he was more successful than either Cameron or Major, looking at the rest of them that isn't exactly a high bar, is it?
Interesting that @HYUFD describes Johnson as "the party's most successful leader since Thatcher". This is a totally ridiculous proposition. He bases "most successful" solely on his election victory over Jeremy fecking Corbyn.
Johnson was responsible for one of the biggest fissures in the Tory Party since the Corn Laws. He became an international laughing stock. He thoroughly trashed the Conservative Party's reputation for sensible governance and found himself heaved out of No10 after only 3 years for dishonesty. Other than TMay you have to go back to 1827 to find a PM with a shorter tenure. He was hopeless. A bad joke. A man totally unfit for office. He was not successful, except in his ability to trounce the most ludicrous LoTO ever to have held that role, and to gull those foolish enough like @HYUFD into thinking he was appropriate to be Party leader and PM.
He also delivered Brexit and the vaccines on his watch and of course Theresa was sadly unable to defeat Corbyn.
Once we have gone through the Tory leaderships of Truss, Badenoch, Braverman and Rees Mogg even you might miss Boris!
HY, old chap. We have one of the biggest and best pharmaceutical sectors in the known universe, and that has nothing to do with Johnson. When I last looked Boris Johnson has no scientific credential. If the decision relating to the procurement was his (which I doubt he took on his own) it was a good call. The rest of the whole pandemic was a mixture of bad and very very bad. On top of that we have a man that presided over a culture of partying at No10 while knowing other people were making great sacrifices. He is without doubt the worst PM in recent history, if not the whole of history. There are no circumstances where I will miss having such a lying cretinous clown as our PM. It is a shame that you are an apologist for him, as it demonstrates that you, by association, must be as dishonest as he.
the post starts of well enough and each sentence then gets more unreasonable than the one before!
Please go ahead and make a reasoned critique of my critique? Be my guest. I have fact checked where possible. The last one was perhaps the only one that was not filled with pretty strong reasoning, many are facts. For ease I have put them out in bullet points for you:
* We have one of the biggest and best pharmaceutical sectors in the known universe, and that has nothing to do with Johnson. FACT
* When I last looked Boris Johnson has no scientific credential FACT
* If the decision relating to the procurement was his (which I doubt he took on his own) it was a good call. VERY LIKELY
* The rest of the whole pandemic was a mixture of bad and very very bad. SUBJECTIVE
* On top of that we have a man that presided over a culture of partying at No10 while knowing other people were making great sacrifices FACT
* He is without doubt the worst PM in recent history, if not the whole of history. SUBJECTIVE (but pretty accurate)
* There are no circumstances where I will miss having such a lying cretinous clown as our PM ABSOLUTE FACT
* It is a shame that you are an apologist for him, as it demonstrates that you, by association, must be as dishonest as he SUBJECTIVE
even by your labellings in capitals it kinda proves my statement!
Funnily enough, they all say its ghastly yet memorable yet gruelling, and they all conclude it is worth it
As I said, it is becoming a thing in itself. The Queue
That is a very funny and quite cultivated timeline. Did she run out of power and phone charge ? The grand narrative worthy of the Nabokov books she's researching seems to dry up about 10 hours ago, disappointingly.
Finland alone would crush Russian forces. Lithuania/Poland would smother Kaliningrad in a week. Russian Navy hiding behind Crimea even though Ukraine has no Navy.
Of course Ukraine has a f***ing navy.
Give it a few months and they’ll have a much bigger one. Based out of Sevastopol.
They were at Sevastopol until 2014, alongside the much bigger Russian navy. Can you see the Russian navy leaving Sevastopol without the war turning nuclear?
What target would Russia nuke and how would it improve their strategic position?
You don't believe in nukes as a deterrent then? Kiev? NATO capital cities? Cue escalation with mega-destruction and large losses on both sides.
Losing Sevastopol completely so that a Ukraine in NATO could welcome in the US navy (and screw the Montreux convention) would mark a major change in the balance of power.
What's the scenario for Russia being forced to cede Sevastopol without reaching for the nukes and hello WW3? That's what I'd like to know.
This could be an interesting discussion. Sevastopol is a much bigger prize than the Donbas.
If Putin tried to suggest to his high command that it was appropriate to use nuclear weapons (he cannot do it on his own) he knows he will be removed from power faster than a retreating "elite" Russian soldier on the Ukrainian front line.
Stop scaremongering, you just make yourself look like a Putin paid troll.
"look like" ...
What a pair of idiots you both are, in effect screaming "Enemy agent!" (or is it "Non-believer"? - can you even distinguish?) when somebody suggests that aiming to conquer the main base of nuclear-armed Russia's Black Sea fleet might trigger a nuclear response. Kenny Everett and all true patriots realised all along that the other side's nuclear arsenal was a paper tiger, right?
I wouldn't want either of you bug-eyed loons on my side in a conflict - you can't consider possible consequences.
Interestingly (and scarily) the understanding that right-wingers here are showing of the different roads along which this war might develop has plummeted since February.
But that's enough counter-insults from me. This is a site where people discuss probabilities of eventualities, yes?
Here's a question then.
What's the probability of nuclear war breaking out between Russia and the West before say the end of next year?
From the top of my head (because who really knows?): 30% and rising.
More film of the omen and portent last night ((C) MoonRabbit).
"Steve Owens, an astronomer and science communicator at the Glasgow Science Centre, said (...) 'The one last night might have been the size of a golf ball or maybe a cricket ball, maybe bigger than that'."
No way was that object as small as a cricket ball.
Like HY and unlike Leon, I am a big traditionalist at heart - so instead of calling it a UFO I am calling it a dragon. They come from out the void and hide underneath the hill because before banks everyone used to bury their wealth and treasure and dragons love treasure.
The only other explanation is the importance of portents - if you are going to tell the bee’s the master is dead (just smacks of politeness to me but different if you truly superstitious) then what about signs in the sky, leaky pens - OMG 🫣
Personally, I am watching for news items about the sea boiling south of the Hebrides and communication slowly being lost with communities along the West Coast of Scotland....
Hope it's not aliens, they might ask to be taken to our leaders and then where would we be?
Apparently one of Mr Musk's comsats. Beginning to wonder how many more fireballs we'll see, given how many comsats of his there are.
I thought the starlink satellites were a lot larger than the estimated size of the object that caused the fireball.
Depends how flimsy the different bits are and how they disintegrate, I expect. Looks off the top of my head as if the sat stayed more or less in one piece with some bits flaring off?
Let us hope they are sufficiently flimsy to burn up before they finish they descent through the atmosphere. Can you imagine the bills Mr Musk (or his insurance) would get if one of those hit something on the ground?
Of course, if it hit Putin's house he would likely get a medal and the rest of us would get WW3
My prediction is that Truss will turn out to be a lot better than many of us gave her credit for. Boris Johnson is a busted flush. He is yesterday's Clown; someone who achieved a great election victory against a ridiculously weedy opponent and managed very little else of note. His deranged supporters might want him back, but they will hopefully diminish in time, and before long it will be difficult to find anyone to admit they supported him.
I do wonder whether even he has fallen out of love with "Boris" as he always affectionately referred to him.
His posts do not indicate it so far, and I would be delighted if he would join those of us who want Truss to succeed and publicly accept Johnson is toxic and has damaged the party considerably
I support her as leader but she is still 10% behind on the latest poll and this end bankers' bonuses cap now was her decision not Boris'. She and Kwarteng own it
You demonstrate my point perfectly and until you condemn Johnson then you are part of his toxic legacy
I won't condemn the party's most successful leader since Thatcher
Leaving aside the question as to whether he was more successful than either Cameron or Major, looking at the rest of them that isn't exactly a high bar, is it?
Interesting that @HYUFD describes Johnson as "the party's most successful leader since Thatcher". This is a totally ridiculous proposition. He bases "most successful" solely on his election victory over Jeremy fecking Corbyn.
Johnson was responsible for one of the biggest fissures in the Tory Party since the Corn Laws. He became an international laughing stock. He thoroughly trashed the Conservative Party's reputation for sensible governance and found himself heaved out of No10 after only 3 years for dishonesty. Other than TMay you have to go back to 1827 to find a PM with a shorter tenure. He was hopeless. A bad joke. A man totally unfit for office. He was not successful, except in his ability to trounce the most ludicrous LoTO ever to have held that role, and to gull those foolish enough like @HYUFD into thinking he was appropriate to be Party leader and PM.
He also delivered Brexit and the vaccines on his watch and of course Theresa was sadly unable to defeat Corbyn.
Once we have gone through the Tory leaderships of Truss, Badenoch, Braverman and Rees Mogg even you might miss Boris!
Mr Johnson is a medical immunologist?
This is a bit divisive. Did Churchill win the second world war (from a British perspective - I know USSR/USA etc)? Yes. Did he fight in Normandy, the Ardennes, Crossing of the Rhine, in a Lancaster over Berlin? No (although he tried to get to Normandy...)
Did Johnson head into the lab, roll up his sleeves and say 'right, we've got the spike sequence, its time to see if mRNA vaccines work...'? Of course not. Did he appoint the right people, let them spend what was needed and keep out of the way? Yes he did.
It is fair to give him credit for things done well just as it is fair to blame for the things that went wrong. Don't let hatred or disdain for Johnson cloud that. There is enough to mock already.
In his leaving speech he claimed he achieved one of his big promises, and fixed social care.
Are we okay to work on the basis that he didn’t and ask, will we ever have a government that will actually fix social care?
The last person going into an election promising to fix social care and with a tax raising plan to do it, was widely perceived to have lost (albeit they formed a government). Its really hard to do. Ultimately I think we don't do well in the country as don't expect to look after our own family when they get old - we regard that as the job of the state. We also don't want to pay the state to do it. Then there is the bizarre fixation about passing on wealth to your children. If I don't inherit a penny from my folks it won't matter - if they need the money to be comfortable as they age then so be it. Its not MY money - it's theirs. Yet some like @HYUFD are obsessed with the idea that inheritance is sacrosanct.
For Tories it is, a core Tory value is maintaining estates and inherited wealth within the family and has been since the 18th century when the party was the party of the landowning interest and the Whigs the party of the merchant class
Finland alone would crush Russian forces. Lithuania/Poland would smother Kaliningrad in a week. Russian Navy hiding behind Crimea even though Ukraine has no Navy.
Of course Ukraine has a f***ing navy.
Give it a few months and they’ll have a much bigger one. Based out of Sevastopol.
They were at Sevastopol until 2014, alongside the much bigger Russian navy. Can you see the Russian navy leaving Sevastopol without the war turning nuclear?
AIUI UA scuttled most of their own navy, including the flagship, to keep it away from the Russians.
They also scuttled the flagship of the Black Sea Fleet, to save the Russians the trouble of having to do it themselves.
But I was under the impression that most of the Black Sea Fleet had run away to Novorossiysk.
More film of the omen and portent last night ((C) MoonRabbit).
"Steve Owens, an astronomer and science communicator at the Glasgow Science Centre, said (...) 'The one last night might have been the size of a golf ball or maybe a cricket ball, maybe bigger than that'."
No way was that object as small as a cricket ball.
Like HY and unlike Leon, I am a big traditionalist at heart - so instead of calling it a UFO I am calling it a dragon. They come from out the void and hide underneath the hill because before banks everyone used to bury their wealth and treasure and dragons love treasure.
The only other explanation is the importance of portents - if you are going to tell the bee’s the master is dead (just smacks of politeness to me but different if you truly superstitious) then what about signs in the sky, leaky pens - OMG 🫣
Personally, I am watching for news items about the sea boiling south of the Hebrides and communication slowly being lost with communities along the West Coast of Scotland....
Hope it's not aliens, they might ask to be taken to our leaders and then where would we be?
Apparently one of Mr Musk's comsats. Beginning to wonder how many more fireballs we'll see, given how many comsats of his there are.
I thought the starlink satellites were a lot larger than the estimated size of the object that caused the fireball.
Depends how flimsy the different bits are and how they disintegrate, I expect. Looks off the top of my head as if the sat stayed more or less in one piece with some bits flaring off?
Let us hope they are sufficiently flimsy to burn up before they finish they descent through the atmosphere. Can you imagine the bills Mr Musk (or his insurance) would get if one of those hit something on the ground?
Of course, if it hit Putin's house he would likely get a medal and the rest of us would get WW3
SpaceX/Starlink designed the satellites to completely burn up in the upper atmosphere. This is in excess of the general design criteria for satellites which quite often have bits surviving re-entry.
It’s not about flimsiness - it’s matching components drag profile vs the materials they are made from.
If you Google you will see quite a lot is stuff makes it to the ground from satellites each year.
I know a lot of stuff makes it down. It is a reason no one visits Point Nemo by boat or plane. The ocean bottom down there must look like the "after" of a Star Wars battle
Funnily enough, they all say its ghastly yet memorable yet gruelling, and they all conclude it is worth it
As I said, it is becoming a thing in itself. The Queue
Didn't you read Apsley Cherry-Garrard's classic, *The Worst Queue in the World*? Triumph of British pluck, frostbite, seal blubber, etc. etc, all to get some penguin eggs IIRC.
Poor old A C-G, there's a coda to that where he goes to the NHM to see his eggs, and can you believe it they had chucked them in the basement reserved for uninformative junk? The flaw in the anecdote being they were uninformative junk and only a complete arse would send a party in the Antarctic winter to get them.
Of all Scott's victims I hate him for A C-G more than anyone else, even Oates and the ponies. Put in a position by Scott's incompetence where he blamed himself for the rest of his life for not having gone on from One Ton Camp to rescue the posturing old fraud, and could only function with heroic bursts of ECT.
IIRC the reason the penguin eggs were no longer of use was that the scientific consensus on the value of the embryos for understanding evolution had changed. *After* they had got them - when the expedition let they had been considered a valuable potential prize.
More film of the omen and portent last night ((C) MoonRabbit).
"Steve Owens, an astronomer and science communicator at the Glasgow Science Centre, said (...) 'The one last night might have been the size of a golf ball or maybe a cricket ball, maybe bigger than that'."
No way was that object as small as a cricket ball.
Like HY and unlike Leon, I am a big traditionalist at heart - so instead of calling it a UFO I am calling it a dragon. They come from out the void and hide underneath the hill because before banks everyone used to bury their wealth and treasure and dragons love treasure.
The only other explanation is the importance of portents - if you are going to tell the bee’s the master is dead (just smacks of politeness to me but different if you truly superstitious) then what about signs in the sky, leaky pens - OMG 🫣
Personally, I am watching for news items about the sea boiling south of the Hebrides and communication slowly being lost with communities along the West Coast of Scotland....
Hope it's not aliens, they might ask to be taken to our leaders and then where would we be?
Personally, I am more concerned we would be faced with the next 10 years of Leon saying 'I told you so'.
Don't worry, the MTB (mean time to banhammer) for Leons is a lot shorter than ten years, I believe. And if any reincarnations claim to have told us so, we can simply say they weren't even posting before the great alien invasion
Analyst on R5L’s wake up to money - tracking a basket of essential goods says price difference between Morrissons and Aldi is now 40%. Explained by Morrisons having to service a gigantic debt.
Shop at Aldi, people.
Good morning
I heard that report as well and it is astonishing that Morrisons apparently have a 7 billion debt
Shop anywhere but Morrisons would be the message
5live also discussed Kwarteng's proposal to abolish city bonuses and it really does make you wonder if the conservative party have lost all it's instincts to govern
It may be the right thing from a business sense, but the optics are shocking and hands yet another gift to labour
It is the right thing from city workers sense. It is a bad thing for shareholders and really bad for government and taxpayers who will eventually have to fund another bailout with years of austerity.
I'm curious about this idea that bankers bonuses caused the subprime mortgage crisis.
I am even more curious about the idea that there will ever be another bank bailout.
Extreme bankers bonuses create incentives for bankers to gamble with the banks money. If they win, fantastic, if they lose its not their money and as long as you can talk the talk and know some of the right people, it is still easy to get another job.
That culture feeds through to the banks to gamble, notionally with their money, but knowing they have a government funded back stop as they are too big to fail.
Take away the controls and regulation and sooner or later we shall be back to bail outs.
Well, it's too bad the Labour government didn't do something about it then...
Of course. Not sure why you think that is relevant when they have not been in power for a long time and it is the current governments policies that will matter.
Well, the view of Labour supporters on the GFC is "it started in America".
That's not the view of Labour supporters, it is a statement of fact.
The global [key word, there] financial crisis started in America. Britain was very poorly placed to weather it because Gordon Brown had spent the previous 6 years [after an admirable initial period of restraint] pissing money up the wall, spending more than he raked in even during times of relative financial health. Personally I couldn't give a fig how big bankers' bonuses are. I don't care at all about the optics, I care about the gap between what we spend and what we earn. That should be the #1 issue for a chancellor of the exchequer to worry about. If this measure narrows that gap (and I am at best agnostic about whether it will) it should be welcomed.
Britain was hit badly because we have a large globally exposed financial sector and one of our biggest banks was in the midst of an ill-advised over-leveraged buying spree at the top of the market. Running a structural deficit of 4% of GDP in 2007 compared to a G7 average of 3% is unlikely to have been a significant factor in explaining why we were hit worse than others, no matter how much people want it to be Gordon Brown's fault.
Running a structural deficit of 4% during pre-crash times is utterly catastrophic as when the crash inevitably comes and you inevitably need countercyclical spending to go with it, then you have nowhere to go.
The fact that some other countries were nearly as bad as the UK doesn't justify or excuse what Brown did.
But it is hard to blame Brown's fiscal policy for us being hit *much worse than others* when Brown's fiscal policy was *pretty much the same as others'*. That was the point I was responding to. Also worth noting that our debt to GDP ratio in 2007 was 41% (down from 43% in 1997) compared to a G7 average of 81%. So we had plenty of space to run countercyclical fiscal policy, certainly compared to other countries, and indeed the increase in our debt to GDP ratio between 2007 and 2010 (33pp) was almost identical to the G7 average (32pp), suggesting that we were indeed able to run a countercyclical fiscal policy just like other economies.
Except it wasn't the same as others, it was via your own figures worse than others. And of course its worth noting that the G7 average includes the UK so the G7 average was itself getting dragged down by Brown's terrible performance.
Debt to GDP isn't the relevant figure, the deficit is, although its worth noting via your own figures again in the span of three years Brown nearly doubled our debt-to-GDP figure whereas G7 nations debt-to-GDP increased by much less than half.
Gordon Brown's peak debt to GDP being around 3% iirc which was on a par with preceding Conservative governments. It was not significant and did not cause or exacerbate the GFC.
Also, aiui Team Truss has determined, as Cheney said of Reagan, that deficits don't matter and that George Osborne's austerity was a mistake that hobbled Britain's economy.
Except....this was a time of unprecedented receipts. The housing market was going bananas, profits were high, and it was a time where debt to GDP didn't need to be as high given the circumstances in the economy. Simply, we were spending too much. I don't think anyone disputes that, no matter what they think the answer (austerity/non-austerity) should have been.
Yes, there is a good deal in that. But as it happened, the GFC came along and rendered it all moot. Then Osborne came along and flatlined the nascent recovery inherited from Labour, and here we are.
The GFC didn't just "come along and render it moot", the GFC was a crash that the Government should have been preparing for as it was overdue. Crashes happen, and the GFC was a classic crash, not some exogenous and unforeseeable shock.
And you repeat the myth that Osborne flatlined the recovery. Don't you realise the UK in the 2010s grew faster than the Eurozone did, both in nominal terms and in per capita terms. "Despite Brexit" supposedly harming the UK during that decade.
If Brexit and Osborne "flatlined" or harmed the UK, then how come the UK grew faster than the Eurozone or the rest of the EU? Just how much faster than them would we have grown in your eyes were it not for Osborne or Brexit, and why?
Osborne's austerity was a mistake as even the current vintage of Tories now acknowledge. The problem is that they have pivoted to pro-growth fiscal policies at precisely the wrong moment, with inflation out of control, and so they will only succeed in pushing up inflation and interest rates. Euro area growth was low because of their sovereign debt crisis and because they followed similar austerity policies to us, and because they had lower population growth.
It was not a mistake, because the deficit was out of control.
Pro-growth policies are good now because the deficit was brought under control prior to the crash, unlike in Brown's time, and so we're in a much better fiscal position than we were then.
The UK grew faster than Europe on a per capita basis too, again despite "austerity" and "Brexit" being both accused of "flatlining" growth. We had our own sovereign debt crisis caused by Brown's borrowing too, which is why Osborne needed to clean up Brown's mess.
The UK deficit is set to grow considerably under Truss, who appears to believe in trickle-down economics, something known not to work. So, deficit up, but no significant improvement in growth.
Amused by your claim that trickle-down economics is "known not to work", it absolutely does work.
Cutting taxes in both the UK and the USA in the 80s led to significant growth and eventual budget surpluses in the 90s.
That the growth and surplus such tax cutting brought about was subsequently pissed away, is not a problem with "trickle down economics".
Cutting UK taxes in the 80s? Not according to The World Bank. Tax take rose from 22% of GDP in 1978 and 1979 to 26% of GDP in 1982 and it averaged >24% through the 80s. Doubling VAT may have had something to do with that.
This has caused me no end of grief recently. I suppose like others on here I quite like going to look at the real numbers around things, whether it is UK tax take vs GDP or the number of Elon Musk Satellites currently in orbit and pop them on here in a generally neutral manner as I think it adds to the discussion to have the official figures.
But when I went last week to look at tax take vs GDP for the UK and the EU countries, the huge variance between numbers on supposedly official websites of reputable organisations was so vast that it made the whole exercise pointless. What is the point in arguing about a difference of 2% between tax take/GDP in the UK and France when the World Bank quotes a set of figures that are 10 points different from the ONS?
SO maybe those with real economic insight on here could let me know whose figures we are supposed to use for these things because the variations are so large, they make all discussion of comparative rates pointless.
More film of the omen and portent last night ((C) MoonRabbit).
"Steve Owens, an astronomer and science communicator at the Glasgow Science Centre, said (...) 'The one last night might have been the size of a golf ball or maybe a cricket ball, maybe bigger than that'."
No way was that object as small as a cricket ball.
Like HY and unlike Leon, I am a big traditionalist at heart - so instead of calling it a UFO I am calling it a dragon. They come from out the void and hide underneath the hill because before banks everyone used to bury their wealth and treasure and dragons love treasure.
The only other explanation is the importance of portents - if you are going to tell the bee’s the master is dead (just smacks of politeness to me but different if you truly superstitious) then what about signs in the sky, leaky pens - OMG 🫣
Personally, I am watching for news items about the sea boiling south of the Hebrides and communication slowly being lost with communities along the West Coast of Scotland....
Hope it's not aliens, they might ask to be taken to our leaders and then where would we be?
Personally, I am more concerned we would be faced with the next 10 years of Leon saying 'I told you so'.
Totally off-topic, and treat with appropriate caution, but from the Washington Post on Utah's Senate race:
A internal McMullin campaign poll memo from Impact Research shared exclusively with [the Washington Post] reports, “Among likely voters in Utah, McMullin receives 47% of the vote while Lee gets 46%, and just 7% of the vote remains undecided.” Moreover, the McMullin pollsters found that “Lee’s job rating has dropped a net 11 points since June and it is now underwater by a 3-point margin (47% positive / 50% negative).” When accounting for other minor candidates in the race, McMullin winds up with 44 percent and Lee with 45 percent.
Analyst on R5L’s wake up to money - tracking a basket of essential goods says price difference between Morrissons and Aldi is now 40%. Explained by Morrisons having to service a gigantic debt.
Shop at Aldi, people.
Good morning
I heard that report as well and it is astonishing that Morrisons apparently have a 7 billion debt
Shop anywhere but Morrisons would be the message
5live also discussed Kwarteng's proposal to abolish city bonuses and it really does make you wonder if the conservative party have lost all it's instincts to govern
It may be the right thing from a business sense, but the optics are shocking and hands yet another gift to labour
It is the right thing from city workers sense. It is a bad thing for shareholders and really bad for government and taxpayers who will eventually have to fund another bailout with years of austerity.
I'm curious about this idea that bankers bonuses caused the subprime mortgage crisis.
I am even more curious about the idea that there will ever be another bank bailout.
Extreme bankers bonuses create incentives for bankers to gamble with the banks money. If they win, fantastic, if they lose its not their money and as long as you can talk the talk and know some of the right people, it is still easy to get another job.
That culture feeds through to the banks to gamble, notionally with their money, but knowing they have a government funded back stop as they are too big to fail.
Take away the controls and regulation and sooner or later we shall be back to bail outs.
Well, it's too bad the Labour government didn't do something about it then...
Of course. Not sure why you think that is relevant when they have not been in power for a long time and it is the current governments policies that will matter.
Well, the view of Labour supporters on the GFC is "it started in America".
That's not the view of Labour supporters, it is a statement of fact.
The global [key word, there] financial crisis started in America. Britain was very poorly placed to weather it because Gordon Brown had spent the previous 6 years [after an admirable initial period of restraint] pissing money up the wall, spending more than he raked in even during times of relative financial health. Personally I couldn't give a fig how big bankers' bonuses are. I don't care at all about the optics, I care about the gap between what we spend and what we earn. That should be the #1 issue for a chancellor of the exchequer to worry about. If this measure narrows that gap (and I am at best agnostic about whether it will) it should be welcomed.
Britain was hit badly because we have a large globally exposed financial sector and one of our biggest banks was in the midst of an ill-advised over-leveraged buying spree at the top of the market. Running a structural deficit of 4% of GDP in 2007 compared to a G7 average of 3% is unlikely to have been a significant factor in explaining why we were hit worse than others, no matter how much people want it to be Gordon Brown's fault.
Running a structural deficit of 4% during pre-crash times is utterly catastrophic as when the crash inevitably comes and you inevitably need countercyclical spending to go with it, then you have nowhere to go.
The fact that some other countries were nearly as bad as the UK doesn't justify or excuse what Brown did.
But it is hard to blame Brown's fiscal policy for us being hit *much worse than others* when Brown's fiscal policy was *pretty much the same as others'*. That was the point I was responding to. Also worth noting that our debt to GDP ratio in 2007 was 41% (down from 43% in 1997) compared to a G7 average of 81%. So we had plenty of space to run countercyclical fiscal policy, certainly compared to other countries, and indeed the increase in our debt to GDP ratio between 2007 and 2010 (33pp) was almost identical to the G7 average (32pp), suggesting that we were indeed able to run a countercyclical fiscal policy just like other economies.
Except it wasn't the same as others, it was via your own figures worse than others. And of course its worth noting that the G7 average includes the UK so the G7 average was itself getting dragged down by Brown's terrible performance.
Debt to GDP isn't the relevant figure, the deficit is, although its worth noting via your own figures again in the span of three years Brown nearly doubled our debt-to-GDP figure whereas G7 nations debt-to-GDP increased by much less than half.
Gordon Brown's peak debt to GDP being around 3% iirc which was on a par with preceding Conservative governments. It was not significant and did not cause or exacerbate the GFC.
Also, aiui Team Truss has determined, as Cheney said of Reagan, that deficits don't matter and that George Osborne's austerity was a mistake that hobbled Britain's economy.
Except....this was a time of unprecedented receipts. The housing market was going bananas, profits were high, and it was a time where debt to GDP didn't need to be as high given the circumstances in the economy. Simply, we were spending too much. I don't think anyone disputes that, no matter what they think the answer (austerity/non-austerity) should have been.
Yes, there is a good deal in that. But as it happened, the GFC came along and rendered it all moot. Then Osborne came along and flatlined the nascent recovery inherited from Labour, and here we are.
The GFC didn't just "come along and render it moot", the GFC was a crash that the Government should have been preparing for as it was overdue. Crashes happen, and the GFC was a classic crash, not some exogenous and unforeseeable shock.
And you repeat the myth that Osborne flatlined the recovery. Don't you realise the UK in the 2010s grew faster than the Eurozone did, both in nominal terms and in per capita terms. "Despite Brexit" supposedly harming the UK during that decade.
If Brexit and Osborne "flatlined" or harmed the UK, then how come the UK grew faster than the Eurozone or the rest of the EU? Just how much faster than them would we have grown in your eyes were it not for Osborne or Brexit, and why?
Osborne's austerity was a mistake as even the current vintage of Tories now acknowledge. The problem is that they have pivoted to pro-growth fiscal policies at precisely the wrong moment, with inflation out of control, and so they will only succeed in pushing up inflation and interest rates. Euro area growth was low because of their sovereign debt crisis and because they followed similar austerity policies to us, and because they had lower population growth.
It was not a mistake, because the deficit was out of control.
Pro-growth policies are good now because the deficit was brought under control prior to the crash, unlike in Brown's time, and so we're in a much better fiscal position than we were then.
The UK grew faster than Europe on a per capita basis too, again despite "austerity" and "Brexit" being both accused of "flatlining" growth. We had our own sovereign debt crisis caused by Brown's borrowing too, which is why Osborne needed to clean up Brown's mess.
The UK deficit is set to grow considerably under Truss, who appears to believe in trickle-down economics, something known not to work. So, deficit up, but no significant improvement in growth.
Your position of saying both Osborne and Truss are right does need an explanation Barty?
Fiscal control on the one hand versus abandoning fiscal control for a dash for growth on the other will sound like chalk and cheese to us non economic, experts until you explain this one to us.
Different stages of the economic cycle.
Brown's deficit spending blew the budget up pre-crash, taking us from a budget surplus to a maxed out deficit before the recession even hit us.
Pre-recession the budget deficit shrank every single year for a decade under the Tories.
A dash for growth now is a viable option as Osborne fixed the roof while the sun was shining. Brown didn't.
So in this analogy, what exactly is “the roof”?
The deficit.
It traditionally goes up during and immediately after a recession due to countercyclical factors, while it comes down in the years of growth. Brown instead took us from budget surplus to maxed out deficit pre-crash meaning we were terribly exposed when the inevitable crash inevitably happened.
So what are the deficit figures from 2007, 2010, 2016, and today to absolutely prove your argument right here right now?
From 2002 to 2007, pre-crash, the Budget deficit increased from a surplus of 1.4% to a deficit of 2.9% . . . a pre-crash worsening of 4.3% of GDP
From 2013 to 2019, pre-crash, the Budget deficit fell from 7.4% to 1.5%, a pre-crash improvement of 5.9% of GDP
The net difference between a 4.3% deterioration in the accounts, and a 5.9% improvement in them, is 10.2% of GDP.
Why have you omitted the period 2007 to 2013?
Because we were discussing what happened in the years pre-crash.
Looking from 2002 to 2010 and 2010 to 2019 would make the deterioration in Labour's accounts and the improvement in Tory accounts even more exaggerated, but I did not consider that to be fair or reasonable.
Prior to the GFC of 2008 the deficit was lower every year under the Labour government than it had been in any year under Major. The deficit increased dramatically in response to the GFC but not as much as out has under The Tories in response to Covid and the CoL crisis.
Your favourite, Truss, is borrowing again rather than taxing the wealthy to cap energy prices, I see.
Again ignoring the economic cycle. 🤦♂️
There was a crash at the start of the 90s, however the UK went into that, as it should, with a budget surplus which was built up during the Thatcher years. So the deficit increased at the start of the 90s, but then was reduced consistently after then building up towards the budget surplus. That was economics as it should be. The deficit expanding then shrinking countercyclically.
Regrettably though, Brown took the budget surplus we had in 2002 and turned into into a mega deficit before the next recession hit. If he'd only kept the surplus as it was, not even made it a bigger surplus, then the UK would have been well placed for the inevitable next recession when it hit, just as we were the previous time.
But he didn't, and the rest is history.
The UK went into the 1990 recession with a surplus not because of sound macroeconomic management but because of the opposite, an unsustainable housing boom and surging inflation fuelled by inappropriate monetary policy, which temporarily boosted revenues. The 1990 recession that followed was a direct consequence of that poor stewardship of the economy. In structural, cyclically adjusted, terms, the deficit was 3% of GDP in 1989, similar to the 4% of GDP seen in 2007, when the UK economy was hit by a global shock.
My prediction is that Truss will turn out to be a lot better than many of us gave her credit for. Boris Johnson is a busted flush. He is yesterday's Clown; someone who achieved a great election victory against a ridiculously weedy opponent and managed very little else of note. His deranged supporters might want him back, but they will hopefully diminish in time, and before long it will be difficult to find anyone to admit they supported him.
I do wonder whether even he has fallen out of love with "Boris" as he always affectionately referred to him.
His posts do not indicate it so far, and I would be delighted if he would join those of us who want Truss to succeed and publicly accept Johnson is toxic and has damaged the party considerably
I support her as leader but she is still 10% behind on the latest poll and this end bankers' bonuses cap now was her decision not Boris'. She and Kwarteng own it
You demonstrate my point perfectly and until you condemn Johnson then you are part of his toxic legacy
I won't condemn the party's most successful leader since Thatcher
Leaving aside the question as to whether he was more successful than either Cameron or Major, looking at the rest of them that isn't exactly a high bar, is it?
Interesting that @HYUFD describes Johnson as "the party's most successful leader since Thatcher". This is a totally ridiculous proposition. He bases "most successful" solely on his election victory over Jeremy fecking Corbyn.
Johnson was responsible for one of the biggest fissures in the Tory Party since the Corn Laws. He became an international laughing stock. He thoroughly trashed the Conservative Party's reputation for sensible governance and found himself heaved out of No10 after only 3 years for dishonesty. Other than TMay you have to go back to 1827 to find a PM with a shorter tenure. He was hopeless. A bad joke. A man totally unfit for office. He was not successful, except in his ability to trounce the most ludicrous LoTO ever to have held that role, and to gull those foolish enough like @HYUFD into thinking he was appropriate to be Party leader and PM.
And yet he unequivocally achieved more than Hague, IDS, Howard and May, so he's at worst in third place since Thatcher.
Having achievements is not necessarily the same as successes.
Sure, most things that are achieved aren't liked by everyone, that's the very nature of making decisions.
My prediction is that Truss will turn out to be a lot better than many of us gave her credit for. Boris Johnson is a busted flush. He is yesterday's Clown; someone who achieved a great election victory against a ridiculously weedy opponent and managed very little else of note. His deranged supporters might want him back, but they will hopefully diminish in time, and before long it will be difficult to find anyone to admit they supported him.
I do wonder whether even he has fallen out of love with "Boris" as he always affectionately referred to him.
His posts do not indicate it so far, and I would be delighted if he would join those of us who want Truss to succeed and publicly accept Johnson is toxic and has damaged the party considerably
I support her as leader but she is still 10% behind on the latest poll and this end bankers' bonuses cap now was her decision not Boris'. She and Kwarteng own it
You demonstrate my point perfectly and until you condemn Johnson then you are part of his toxic legacy
I won't condemn the party's most successful leader since Thatcher
Leaving aside the question as to whether he was more successful than either Cameron or Major, looking at the rest of them that isn't exactly a high bar, is it?
Interesting that @HYUFD describes Johnson as "the party's most successful leader since Thatcher". This is a totally ridiculous proposition. He bases "most successful" solely on his election victory over Jeremy fecking Corbyn.
Johnson was responsible for one of the biggest fissures in the Tory Party since the Corn Laws. He became an international laughing stock. He thoroughly trashed the Conservative Party's reputation for sensible governance and found himself heaved out of No10 after only 3 years for dishonesty. Other than TMay you have to go back to 1827 to find a PM with a shorter tenure. He was hopeless. A bad joke. A man totally unfit for office. He was not successful, except in his ability to trounce the most ludicrous LoTO ever to have held that role, and to gull those foolish enough like @HYUFD into thinking he was appropriate to be Party leader and PM.
He also delivered Brexit and the vaccines on his watch and of course Theresa was sadly unable to defeat Corbyn.
Once we have gone through the Tory leaderships of Truss, Badenoch, Braverman and Rees Mogg even you might miss Boris!
Mr Johnson is a medical immunologist?
This is a bit divisive. Did Churchill win the second world war (from a British perspective - I know USSR/USA etc)? Yes. Did he fight in Normandy, the Ardennes, Crossing of the Rhine, in a Lancaster over Berlin? No (although he tried to get to Normandy...)
Did Johnson head into the lab, roll up his sleeves and say 'right, we've got the spike sequence, its time to see if mRNA vaccines work...'? Of course not. Did he appoint the right people, let them spend what was needed and keep out of the way? Yes he did.
It is fair to give him credit for things done well just as it is fair to blame for the things that went wrong. Don't let hatred or disdain for Johnson cloud that. There is enough to mock already.
In his leaving speech he claimed he achieved one of his big promises, and fixed social care.
Are we okay to work on the basis that he didn’t and ask, will we ever have a government that will actually fix social care?
The last person going into an election promising to fix social care and with a tax raising plan to do it, was widely perceived to have lost (albeit they formed a government). Its really hard to do. Ultimately I think we don't do well in the country as don't expect to look after our own family when they get old - we regard that as the job of the state. We also don't want to pay the state to do it. Then there is the bizarre fixation about passing on wealth to your children. If I don't inherit a penny from my folks it won't matter - if they need the money to be comfortable as they age then so be it. Its not MY money - it's theirs. Yet some like @HYUFD are obsessed with the idea that inheritance is sacrosanct.
For Tories it is, a core Tory value is maintaining estates and inherited wealth within the family and has been since the 18th century when the party was the party of the landowning interest and the Whigs the party of the merchant class
That was then, this is now. Perhaps try to extract a core philosophy, perhaps (going right out on a limb here) an unselfish one, maybe even one within hailing distance of Christian values (meaning acting justly and kindly towards everyone, even the poor, rather than bullying gays and the unwantedly pregnant), from the history of Conservativism, rather than harking back to the golden age of rottern boroughs and workhouses?
More film of the omen and portent last night ((C) MoonRabbit).
"Steve Owens, an astronomer and science communicator at the Glasgow Science Centre, said (...) 'The one last night might have been the size of a golf ball or maybe a cricket ball, maybe bigger than that'."
No way was that object as small as a cricket ball.
Like HY and unlike Leon, I am a big traditionalist at heart - so instead of calling it a UFO I am calling it a dragon. They come from out the void and hide underneath the hill because before banks everyone used to bury their wealth and treasure and dragons love treasure.
The only other explanation is the importance of portents - if you are going to tell the bee’s the master is dead (just smacks of politeness to me but different if you truly superstitious) then what about signs in the sky, leaky pens - OMG 🫣
Personally, I am watching for news items about the sea boiling south of the Hebrides and communication slowly being lost with communities along the West Coast of Scotland....
Hope it's not aliens, they might ask to be taken to our leaders and then where would we be?
Apparently one of Mr Musk's comsats. Beginning to wonder how many more fireballs we'll see, given how many comsats of his there are.
I thought the starlink satellites were a lot larger than the estimated size of the object that caused the fireball.
Depends how flimsy the different bits are and how they disintegrate, I expect. Looks off the top of my head as if the sat stayed more or less in one piece with some bits flaring off?
Let us hope they are sufficiently flimsy to burn up before they finish they descent through the atmosphere. Can you imagine the bills Mr Musk (or his insurance) would get if one of those hit something on the ground?
Of course, if it hit Putin's house he would likely get a medal and the rest of us would get WW3
SpaceX/Starlink designed the satellites to completely burn up in the upper atmosphere. This is in excess of the general design criteria for satellites which quite often have bits surviving re-entry.
It’s not about flimsiness - it’s matching components drag profile vs the materials they are made from.
If you Google you will see quite a lot is stuff makes it to the ground from satellites each year.
I know a lot of stuff makes it down. It is a reason no one visits Point Nemo by boat or plane. The ocean bottom down there must look like the "after" of a Star Wars battle
The after of some Star Wars battles is pretty harsh…
Funnily enough, they all say its ghastly yet memorable yet gruelling, and they all conclude it is worth it
As I said, it is becoming a thing in itself. The Queue
Didn't you read Apsley Cherry-Garrard's classic, *The Worst Queue in the World*? Triumph of British pluck, frostbite, seal blubber, etc. etc, all to get some penguin eggs IIRC.
Poor old A C-G, there's a coda to that where he goes to the NHM to see his eggs, and can you believe it they had chucked them in the basement reserved for uninformative junk? The flaw in the anecdote being they were uninformative junk and only a complete arse would send a party in the Antarctic winter to get them.
Of all Scott's victims I hate him for A C-G more than anyone else, even Oates and the ponies. Put in a position by Scott's incompetence where he blamed himself for the rest of his life for not having gone on from One Ton Camp to rescue the posturing old fraud, and could only function with heroic bursts of ECT.
IIRC the reason the penguin eggs were no longer of use was that the scientific consensus on the value of the embryos for understanding evolution had changed. *After* they had got them - when the expedition let they had been considered a valuable potential prize.
Part of the problem was reportedly that the relevant specialist died before he could work them up. But I've not fouind a detailed peer-reviewed historical account.
Funnily enough, they all say its ghastly yet memorable yet gruelling, and they all conclude it is worth it
As I said, it is becoming a thing in itself. The Queue
Didn't you read Apsley Cherry-Garrard's classic, *The Worst Queue in the World*? Triumph of British pluck, frostbite, seal blubber, etc. etc, all to get some penguin eggs IIRC.
Poor old A C-G, there's a coda to that where he goes to the NHM to see his eggs, and can you believe it they had chucked them in the basement reserved for uninformative junk? The flaw in the anecdote being they were uninformative junk and only a complete arse would send a party in the Antarctic winter to get them.
Of all Scott's victims I hate him for A C-G more than anyone else, even Oates and the ponies. Put in a position by Scott's incompetence where he blamed himself for the rest of his life for not having gone on from One Ton Camp to rescue the posturing old fraud, and could only function with heroic bursts of ECT.
IIRC the reason the penguin eggs were no longer of use was that the scientific consensus on the value of the embryos for understanding evolution had changed. *After* they had got them - when the expedition let they had been considered a valuable potential prize.
That may be right except that I think the consensus did not change overnight and after Scott had sailed; Haeckel's Law was already widely regarded as pretty iffy, and Scott was just not up to speed.
Finland alone would crush Russian forces. Lithuania/Poland would smother Kaliningrad in a week. Russian Navy hiding behind Crimea even though Ukraine has no Navy.
Of course Ukraine has a f***ing navy.
Give it a few months and they’ll have a much bigger one. Based out of Sevastopol.
They were at Sevastopol until 2014, alongside the much bigger Russian navy. Can you see the Russian navy leaving Sevastopol without the war turning nuclear?
What target would Russia nuke and how would it improve their strategic position?
You don't believe in nukes as a deterrent then? Kiev? NATO capital cities? Cue escalation with mega-destruction and large losses on both sides.
Losing Sevastopol completely so that a Ukraine in NATO could welcome in the US navy (and screw the Montreux convention) would mark a major change in the balance of power.
What's the scenario for Russia being forced to cede Sevastopol without reaching for the nukes and hello WW3? That's what I'd like to know.
This could be an interesting discussion. Sevastopol is a much bigger prize than the Donbas.
If Putin tried to suggest to his high command that it was appropriate to use nuclear weapons (he cannot do it on his own) he knows he will be removed from power faster than a retreating "elite" Russian soldier on the Ukrainian front line.
Stop scaremongering, you just make yourself look like a Putin paid troll.
"look like" ...
What a pair of idiots you both are, in effect screaming "Enemy agent!" (or is it "Non-believer"? - can you even distinguish?) when somebody suggests that aiming to conquer the main base of nuclear-armed Russia's Black Sea fleet might trigger a nuclear response. Kenny Everett and all true patriots realised all along that the other side's nuclear arsenal was a paper tiger, right?
I wouldn't want either of you bug-eyed loons on my side in a conflict - you can't consider possible consequences.
Interestingly (and scarily) the understanding that right-wingers here are showing of the different roads along which this war might develop has plummeted since February.
But that's enough counter-insults from me. This is a site where people discuss probabilities of eventualities, yes?
Here's a question then.
What's the probability of nuclear war breaking out between Russia and the West before say the end of next year?
From the top of my head (because who really knows?): 30% and rising.
No need to screw the Montreux Convention; Turkey's building a Bosphorus Canal round it that is big enough to take a supercarrier.
Due to open in 1-2 years - allegedly.
Since Sevastopol is part of Ukraine occupied by Russian forces, the concept of 'forcing Russia to cede Sevastopol', with the undertones of 'legally surrender', is an interesting one.
The New York attorney general’s office has rebuffed an offer from Donald J. Trump’s lawyers to settle a contentious civil investigation into the former president and his family real estate business, setting the stage for a lawsuit that would accuse Mr. Trump of fraud, according to three people with knowledge of the matter.
The attorney general, Letitia James, is also considering suing at least one of Mr. Trump’s adult children, the people said. Ivanka, Eric and Donald Trump Jr., have all been senior executives at Mr. Trump’s company, the Trump Organization.
Finland alone would crush Russian forces. Lithuania/Poland would smother Kaliningrad in a week. Russian Navy hiding behind Crimea even though Ukraine has no Navy.
Of course Ukraine has a f***ing navy.
Give it a few months and they’ll have a much bigger one. Based out of Sevastopol.
They were at Sevastopol until 2014, alongside the much bigger Russian navy. Can you see the Russian navy leaving Sevastopol without the war turning nuclear?
What target would Russia nuke and how would it improve their strategic position?
You don't believe in nukes as a deterrent then? Kiev? NATO capital cities? Cue escalation with mega-destruction and large losses on both sides.
Losing Sevastopol completely so that a Ukraine in NATO could welcome in the US navy (and screw the Montreux convention) would mark a major change in the balance of power.
What's the scenario for Russia being forced to cede Sevastopol without reaching for the nukes and hello WW3? That's what I'd like to know.
This could be an interesting discussion. Sevastopol is a much bigger prize than the Donbas.
If Putin tried to suggest to his high command that it was appropriate to use nuclear weapons (he cannot do it on his own) he knows he will be removed from power faster than a retreating "elite" Russian soldier on the Ukrainian front line.
Stop scaremongering, you just make yourself look like a Putin paid troll.
"look like" ...
What a pair of idiots you both are, in effect screaming "Enemy agent!" (or is it "Non-believer"? - can you even distinguish?) when somebody suggests that aiming to conquer the main base of nuclear-armed Russia's Black Sea fleet might trigger a nuclear response. Kenny Everett and all true patriots realised all along that the other side's nuclear arsenal was a paper tiger, right?
I wouldn't want either of you bug-eyed loons on my side in a conflict - you can't consider possible consequences.
Interestingly (and scarily) the understanding that right-wingers here are showing of the different roads along which this war might develop has plummeted since February.
But that's enough counter-insults from me. This is a site where people discuss probabilities of eventualities, yes?
Here's a question then.
What's the probability of nuclear war breaking out between Russia and the West before say the end of next year?
From the top of my head (because who really knows?): 30% and rising.
The Russians so want us to believe this but the domestic situation in Russia is now beginning to change very rapidly. The news of the disaster of the past few days has broken across the country and there is now an increasing questioning of the official Putin narrative. The West will not intervene directly, and it will not have to, as long as Ukraine can hold its own.
The collapse of CSTO, the pressure on Armenia are all signs that the Russo-North Korean led torturers alliance is in bits. Still further Russian defeats in Ukraine are coming and after that the Rusky Mir won´t even include Rossiya.
Looking at it from window of your troll house, even you must see that the Putinist cause is lost? There is no 7th cavalry, or even 91st guards than can save the "Special operation" now. If Putin mobilized tomorrow he´d still be defeated, it would take minimum 3-6 months to even get Russian basic training done, and that´s to a Russian standard. Iranian drones or North Korean shells are no match for the modern equipment that the UAF now has and which it is getting much much more of.
Meanwhile the Ukrainians are moving from weak post Soviet to NATO standard tactics, training and equipment.
Young people in Russia increasingly know that the war is lost. When that reality can no longer be avoided, Putin will be either on his way to the Hague, the Gulf or the grave.
Pace @IshmaelZ' comments recently, the crowds shuffling past the CATAFALQUE of the queen are far from his picture of a homogenous bunch of little old white ladies from the provinces
The diversity is striking. Old young, fat thin, White Black Asian Muslim Chinese African Indian Korean whatever, disabled people uniformed people, shoppers and nuns, joggers, students and businessmen in suits. Clearly plenty of Londoners
Analyst on R5L’s wake up to money - tracking a basket of essential goods says price difference between Morrissons and Aldi is now 40%. Explained by Morrisons having to service a gigantic debt.
Shop at Aldi, people.
Good morning
I heard that report as well and it is astonishing that Morrisons apparently have a 7 billion debt
Shop anywhere but Morrisons would be the message
5live also discussed Kwarteng's proposal to abolish city bonuses and it really does make you wonder if the conservative party have lost all it's instincts to govern
It may be the right thing from a business sense, but the optics are shocking and hands yet another gift to labour
It is the right thing from city workers sense. It is a bad thing for shareholders and really bad for government and taxpayers who will eventually have to fund another bailout with years of austerity.
I'm curious about this idea that bankers bonuses caused the subprime mortgage crisis.
I am even more curious about the idea that there will ever be another bank bailout.
Extreme bankers bonuses create incentives for bankers to gamble with the banks money. If they win, fantastic, if they lose its not their money and as long as you can talk the talk and know some of the right people, it is still easy to get another job.
That culture feeds through to the banks to gamble, notionally with their money, but knowing they have a government funded back stop as they are too big to fail.
Take away the controls and regulation and sooner or later we shall be back to bail outs.
Well, it's too bad the Labour government didn't do something about it then...
Of course. Not sure why you think that is relevant when they have not been in power for a long time and it is the current governments policies that will matter.
Well, the view of Labour supporters on the GFC is "it started in America".
That's not the view of Labour supporters, it is a statement of fact.
The global [key word, there] financial crisis started in America. Britain was very poorly placed to weather it because Gordon Brown had spent the previous 6 years [after an admirable initial period of restraint] pissing money up the wall, spending more than he raked in even during times of relative financial health. Personally I couldn't give a fig how big bankers' bonuses are. I don't care at all about the optics, I care about the gap between what we spend and what we earn. That should be the #1 issue for a chancellor of the exchequer to worry about. If this measure narrows that gap (and I am at best agnostic about whether it will) it should be welcomed.
Britain was hit badly because we have a large globally exposed financial sector and one of our biggest banks was in the midst of an ill-advised over-leveraged buying spree at the top of the market. Running a structural deficit of 4% of GDP in 2007 compared to a G7 average of 3% is unlikely to have been a significant factor in explaining why we were hit worse than others, no matter how much people want it to be Gordon Brown's fault.
Running a structural deficit of 4% during pre-crash times is utterly catastrophic as when the crash inevitably comes and you inevitably need countercyclical spending to go with it, then you have nowhere to go.
The fact that some other countries were nearly as bad as the UK doesn't justify or excuse what Brown did.
But it is hard to blame Brown's fiscal policy for us being hit *much worse than others* when Brown's fiscal policy was *pretty much the same as others'*. That was the point I was responding to. Also worth noting that our debt to GDP ratio in 2007 was 41% (down from 43% in 1997) compared to a G7 average of 81%. So we had plenty of space to run countercyclical fiscal policy, certainly compared to other countries, and indeed the increase in our debt to GDP ratio between 2007 and 2010 (33pp) was almost identical to the G7 average (32pp), suggesting that we were indeed able to run a countercyclical fiscal policy just like other economies.
Except it wasn't the same as others, it was via your own figures worse than others. And of course its worth noting that the G7 average includes the UK so the G7 average was itself getting dragged down by Brown's terrible performance.
Debt to GDP isn't the relevant figure, the deficit is, although its worth noting via your own figures again in the span of three years Brown nearly doubled our debt-to-GDP figure whereas G7 nations debt-to-GDP increased by much less than half.
Gordon Brown's peak debt to GDP being around 3% iirc which was on a par with preceding Conservative governments. It was not significant and did not cause or exacerbate the GFC.
Also, aiui Team Truss has determined, as Cheney said of Reagan, that deficits don't matter and that George Osborne's austerity was a mistake that hobbled Britain's economy.
Except....this was a time of unprecedented receipts. The housing market was going bananas, profits were high, and it was a time where debt to GDP didn't need to be as high given the circumstances in the economy. Simply, we were spending too much. I don't think anyone disputes that, no matter what they think the answer (austerity/non-austerity) should have been.
Yes, there is a good deal in that. But as it happened, the GFC came along and rendered it all moot. Then Osborne came along and flatlined the nascent recovery inherited from Labour, and here we are.
The GFC didn't just "come along and render it moot", the GFC was a crash that the Government should have been preparing for as it was overdue. Crashes happen, and the GFC was a classic crash, not some exogenous and unforeseeable shock.
And you repeat the myth that Osborne flatlined the recovery. Don't you realise the UK in the 2010s grew faster than the Eurozone did, both in nominal terms and in per capita terms. "Despite Brexit" supposedly harming the UK during that decade.
If Brexit and Osborne "flatlined" or harmed the UK, then how come the UK grew faster than the Eurozone or the rest of the EU? Just how much faster than them would we have grown in your eyes were it not for Osborne or Brexit, and why?
Osborne's austerity was a mistake as even the current vintage of Tories now acknowledge. The problem is that they have pivoted to pro-growth fiscal policies at precisely the wrong moment, with inflation out of control, and so they will only succeed in pushing up inflation and interest rates. Euro area growth was low because of their sovereign debt crisis and because they followed similar austerity policies to us, and because they had lower population growth.
It was not a mistake, because the deficit was out of control.
Pro-growth policies are good now because the deficit was brought under control prior to the crash, unlike in Brown's time, and so we're in a much better fiscal position than we were then.
The UK grew faster than Europe on a per capita basis too, again despite "austerity" and "Brexit" being both accused of "flatlining" growth. We had our own sovereign debt crisis caused by Brown's borrowing too, which is why Osborne needed to clean up Brown's mess.
The UK deficit is set to grow considerably under Truss, who appears to believe in trickle-down economics, something known not to work. So, deficit up, but no significant improvement in growth.
Amused by your claim that trickle-down economics is "known not to work", it absolutely does work.
Cutting taxes in both the UK and the USA in the 80s led to significant growth and eventual budget surpluses in the 90s.
That the growth and surplus such tax cutting brought about was subsequently pissed away, is not a problem with "trickle down economics".
Cutting UK taxes in the 80s? Not according to The World Bank. Tax take rose from 22% of GDP in 1978 and 1979 to 26% of GDP in 1982 and it averaged >24% through the 80s. Doubling VAT may have had something to do with that.
This has caused me no end of grief recently. I suppose like others on here I quite like going to look at the real numbers around things, whether it is UK tax take vs GDP or the number of Elon Musk Satellites currently in orbit and pop them on here in a generally neutral manner as I think it adds to the discussion to have the official figures.
But when I went last week to look at tax take vs GDP for the UK and the EU countries, the huge variance between numbers on supposedly official websites of reputable organisations was so vast that it made the whole exercise pointless. What is the point in arguing about a difference of 2% between tax take/GDP in the UK and France when the World Bank quotes a set of figures that are 10 points different from the ONS?
SO maybe those with real economic insight on here could let me know whose figures we are supposed to use for these things because the variations are so large, they make all discussion of comparative rates pointless.
The spec on that number on worldbank.org is written:
Source: International Monetary Fund, Government Finance Statistics Yearbook and data files, and World Bank and OECD GDP estimates.
More film of the omen and portent last night ((C) MoonRabbit).
"Steve Owens, an astronomer and science communicator at the Glasgow Science Centre, said (...) 'The one last night might have been the size of a golf ball or maybe a cricket ball, maybe bigger than that'."
No way was that object as small as a cricket ball.
Like HY and unlike Leon, I am a big traditionalist at heart - so instead of calling it a UFO I am calling it a dragon. They come from out the void and hide underneath the hill because before banks everyone used to bury their wealth and treasure and dragons love treasure.
The only other explanation is the importance of portents - if you are going to tell the bee’s the master is dead (just smacks of politeness to me but different if you truly superstitious) then what about signs in the sky, leaky pens - OMG 🫣
Personally, I am watching for news items about the sea boiling south of the Hebrides and communication slowly being lost with communities along the West Coast of Scotland....
Hope it's not aliens, they might ask to be taken to our leaders and then where would we be?
Apparently one of Mr Musk's comsats. Beginning to wonder how many more fireballs we'll see, given how many comsats of his there are.
I thought the starlink satellites were a lot larger than the estimated size of the object that caused the fireball.
Depends how flimsy the different bits are and how they disintegrate, I expect. Looks off the top of my head as if the sat stayed more or less in one piece with some bits flaring off?
Let us hope they are sufficiently flimsy to burn up before they finish they descent through the atmosphere. Can you imagine the bills Mr Musk (or his insurance) would get if one of those hit something on the ground?
Of course, if it hit Putin's house he would likely get a medal and the rest of us would get WW3
SpaceX/Starlink designed the satellites to completely burn up in the upper atmosphere. This is in excess of the general design criteria for satellites which quite often have bits surviving re-entry.
It’s not about flimsiness - it’s matching components drag profile vs the materials they are made from.
If you Google you will see quite a lot is stuff makes it to the ground from satellites each year.
I know a lot of stuff makes it down. It is a reason no one visits Point Nemo by boat or plane. The ocean bottom down there must look like the "after" of a Star Wars battle
I think the reason is more, you need a range of 3,360 miles to get there and back again, and there's nothing to see when you get there anyway.
Analyst on R5L’s wake up to money - tracking a basket of essential goods says price difference between Morrissons and Aldi is now 40%. Explained by Morrisons having to service a gigantic debt.
Shop at Aldi, people.
Good morning
I heard that report as well and it is astonishing that Morrisons apparently have a 7 billion debt
Shop anywhere but Morrisons would be the message
5live also discussed Kwarteng's proposal to abolish city bonuses and it really does make you wonder if the conservative party have lost all it's instincts to govern
It may be the right thing from a business sense, but the optics are shocking and hands yet another gift to labour
It is the right thing from city workers sense. It is a bad thing for shareholders and really bad for government and taxpayers who will eventually have to fund another bailout with years of austerity.
I'm curious about this idea that bankers bonuses caused the subprime mortgage crisis.
I am even more curious about the idea that there will ever be another bank bailout.
Extreme bankers bonuses create incentives for bankers to gamble with the banks money. If they win, fantastic, if they lose its not their money and as long as you can talk the talk and know some of the right people, it is still easy to get another job.
That culture feeds through to the banks to gamble, notionally with their money, but knowing they have a government funded back stop as they are too big to fail.
Take away the controls and regulation and sooner or later we shall be back to bail outs.
Well, it's too bad the Labour government didn't do something about it then...
Of course. Not sure why you think that is relevant when they have not been in power for a long time and it is the current governments policies that will matter.
Well, the view of Labour supporters on the GFC is "it started in America".
That's not the view of Labour supporters, it is a statement of fact.
The global [key word, there] financial crisis started in America. Britain was very poorly placed to weather it because Gordon Brown had spent the previous 6 years [after an admirable initial period of restraint] pissing money up the wall, spending more than he raked in even during times of relative financial health. Personally I couldn't give a fig how big bankers' bonuses are. I don't care at all about the optics, I care about the gap between what we spend and what we earn. That should be the #1 issue for a chancellor of the exchequer to worry about. If this measure narrows that gap (and I am at best agnostic about whether it will) it should be welcomed.
Britain was hit badly because we have a large globally exposed financial sector and one of our biggest banks was in the midst of an ill-advised over-leveraged buying spree at the top of the market. Running a structural deficit of 4% of GDP in 2007 compared to a G7 average of 3% is unlikely to have been a significant factor in explaining why we were hit worse than others, no matter how much people want it to be Gordon Brown's fault.
Running a structural deficit of 4% during pre-crash times is utterly catastrophic as when the crash inevitably comes and you inevitably need countercyclical spending to go with it, then you have nowhere to go.
The fact that some other countries were nearly as bad as the UK doesn't justify or excuse what Brown did.
But it is hard to blame Brown's fiscal policy for us being hit *much worse than others* when Brown's fiscal policy was *pretty much the same as others'*. That was the point I was responding to. Also worth noting that our debt to GDP ratio in 2007 was 41% (down from 43% in 1997) compared to a G7 average of 81%. So we had plenty of space to run countercyclical fiscal policy, certainly compared to other countries, and indeed the increase in our debt to GDP ratio between 2007 and 2010 (33pp) was almost identical to the G7 average (32pp), suggesting that we were indeed able to run a countercyclical fiscal policy just like other economies.
Except it wasn't the same as others, it was via your own figures worse than others. And of course its worth noting that the G7 average includes the UK so the G7 average was itself getting dragged down by Brown's terrible performance.
Debt to GDP isn't the relevant figure, the deficit is, although its worth noting via your own figures again in the span of three years Brown nearly doubled our debt-to-GDP figure whereas G7 nations debt-to-GDP increased by much less than half.
Gordon Brown's peak debt to GDP being around 3% iirc which was on a par with preceding Conservative governments. It was not significant and did not cause or exacerbate the GFC.
Also, aiui Team Truss has determined, as Cheney said of Reagan, that deficits don't matter and that George Osborne's austerity was a mistake that hobbled Britain's economy.
Except....this was a time of unprecedented receipts. The housing market was going bananas, profits were high, and it was a time where debt to GDP didn't need to be as high given the circumstances in the economy. Simply, we were spending too much. I don't think anyone disputes that, no matter what they think the answer (austerity/non-austerity) should have been.
Yes, there is a good deal in that. But as it happened, the GFC came along and rendered it all moot. Then Osborne came along and flatlined the nascent recovery inherited from Labour, and here we are.
The GFC didn't just "come along and render it moot", the GFC was a crash that the Government should have been preparing for as it was overdue. Crashes happen, and the GFC was a classic crash, not some exogenous and unforeseeable shock.
And you repeat the myth that Osborne flatlined the recovery. Don't you realise the UK in the 2010s grew faster than the Eurozone did, both in nominal terms and in per capita terms. "Despite Brexit" supposedly harming the UK during that decade.
If Brexit and Osborne "flatlined" or harmed the UK, then how come the UK grew faster than the Eurozone or the rest of the EU? Just how much faster than them would we have grown in your eyes were it not for Osborne or Brexit, and why?
Osborne's austerity was a mistake as even the current vintage of Tories now acknowledge. The problem is that they have pivoted to pro-growth fiscal policies at precisely the wrong moment, with inflation out of control, and so they will only succeed in pushing up inflation and interest rates. Euro area growth was low because of their sovereign debt crisis and because they followed similar austerity policies to us, and because they had lower population growth.
It was not a mistake, because the deficit was out of control.
Pro-growth policies are good now because the deficit was brought under control prior to the crash, unlike in Brown's time, and so we're in a much better fiscal position than we were then.
The UK grew faster than Europe on a per capita basis too, again despite "austerity" and "Brexit" being both accused of "flatlining" growth. We had our own sovereign debt crisis caused by Brown's borrowing too, which is why Osborne needed to clean up Brown's mess.
The UK deficit is set to grow considerably under Truss, who appears to believe in trickle-down economics, something known not to work. So, deficit up, but no significant improvement in growth.
Your position of saying both Osborne and Truss are right does need an explanation Barty?
Fiscal control on the one hand versus abandoning fiscal control for a dash for growth on the other will sound like chalk and cheese to us non economic, experts until you explain this one to us.
Different stages of the economic cycle.
Brown's deficit spending blew the budget up pre-crash, taking us from a budget surplus to a maxed out deficit before the recession even hit us.
Pre-recession the budget deficit shrank every single year for a decade under the Tories.
A dash for growth now is a viable option as Osborne fixed the roof while the sun was shining. Brown didn't.
So in this analogy, what exactly is “the roof”?
The deficit.
It traditionally goes up during and immediately after a recession due to countercyclical factors, while it comes down in the years of growth. Brown instead took us from budget surplus to maxed out deficit pre-crash meaning we were terribly exposed when the inevitable crash inevitably happened.
So what are the deficit figures from 2007, 2010, 2016, and today to absolutely prove your argument right here right now?
From 2002 to 2007, pre-crash, the Budget deficit increased from a surplus of 1.4% to a deficit of 2.9% . . . a pre-crash worsening of 4.3% of GDP
From 2013 to 2019, pre-crash, the Budget deficit fell from 7.4% to 1.5%, a pre-crash improvement of 5.9% of GDP
The net difference between a 4.3% deterioration in the accounts, and a 5.9% improvement in them, is 10.2% of GDP.
Why have you omitted the period 2007 to 2013?
Because we were discussing what happened in the years pre-crash.
Looking from 2002 to 2010 and 2010 to 2019 would make the deterioration in Labour's accounts and the improvement in Tory accounts even more exaggerated, but I did not consider that to be fair or reasonable.
Prior to the GFC of 2008 the deficit was lower every year under the Labour government than it had been in any year under Major. The deficit increased dramatically in response to the GFC but not as much as out has under The Tories in response to Covid and the CoL crisis.
Your favourite, Truss, is borrowing again rather than taxing the wealthy to cap energy prices, I see.
Again ignoring the economic cycle. 🤦♂️
There was a crash at the start of the 90s, however the UK went into that, as it should, with a budget surplus which was built up during the Thatcher years. So the deficit increased at the start of the 90s, but then was reduced consistently after then building up towards the budget surplus. That was economics as it should be. The deficit expanding then shrinking countercyclically.
Regrettably though, Brown took the budget surplus we had in 2002 and turned into into a mega deficit before the next recession hit. If he'd only kept the surplus as it was, not even made it a bigger surplus, then the UK would have been well placed for the inevitable next recession when it hit, just as we were the previous time.
It was 4.46% of GDP in 2009 according to that link. Though that link uses a much more generous version of deficit which actually had the UK in surplus by 2019, unlike pre-crash in the 00's. Either way the UK was far better placed pre-crash this time than last time.
Yes, sorry, my mistake - I've got too many charts open! - but the figure before the crash was 1.14% which again, is hardly a mega deficit.
Anyway, neither of us is likely to convince the other, so let's see how robust the 'low-tax' economy under Truss looks by the time of the next GE!
Pace @IshmaelZ' comments recently, the crowds shuffling past the CATAFALQUE of the queen are far from his picture of a homogenous bunch of little old white ladies from the provinces
The diversity is striking. Old young, fat thin, White Black Asian Muslim Chinese African Indian Korean whatever, disabled people uniformed people, shoppers and nuns, joggers, students and businessmen in suits. Clearly plenty of Londoners
I am hoping some enterprising young Gonzo journalist is going to drop a LOT of acid and do the whole queue on that. But yes I am now seeing a Sikh and a few other non WASP types, huzzah.
Funnily enough, they all say its ghastly yet memorable yet gruelling, and they all conclude it is worth it
As I said, it is becoming a thing in itself. The Queue
That is a very funny and quite cultivated timeline. Did she run out of power and phone charge ? The grand narrative worthy of the Nabokov books she's researching seems to dry up about 10 hours ago, disappointingly.
Ah - she did post just one short observation for the end.
"Fin. It was very quiet and beautiful and humbling. I think worth it. #TheQueue"
Pace @IshmaelZ' comments recently, the crowds shuffling past the CATAFALQUE of the queen are far from his picture of a homogenous bunch of little old white ladies from the provinces
The diversity is striking. Old young, fat thin, White Black Asian Muslim Chinese African Indian Korean whatever, disabled people uniformed people, shoppers and nuns, joggers, students and businessmen in suits. Clearly plenty of Londoners
I am hoping some enterprising young Gonzo journalist is going to drop a LOT of acid and do the whole queue on that. But yes I am now seeing a Sikh and a few other non WASP types, huzzah.
Was looking at the very beginning of the queue yesterday (or rather the first few people in) and dominating was what looked like a family of black guys (in top hats for some reason), an asian woman, a pasty-faced white couple where she tried to bow, he looked at her, realised he should bow also but the moment had passed, and all colours and shapes and sizes in between, plus another black guy in what looked like some kind of garish green and white outfit.
So from the off it was pretty diverse.
Probably more diverse than tomorrow which will be my first day out at 0630hrs god help me.
Or, release a Desert Bus type video game of the experience, in which you queue in real time for 10 hours and get sent back to the beginning for any mistakes. The beeb says its stream is for "for people who want to pay their respects virtually" but I don't think just dipping in and out really cuts it.
My prediction is that Truss will turn out to be a lot better than many of us gave her credit for. Boris Johnson is a busted flush. He is yesterday's Clown; someone who achieved a great election victory against a ridiculously weedy opponent and managed very little else of note. His deranged supporters might want him back, but they will hopefully diminish in time, and before long it will be difficult to find anyone to admit they supported him.
I do wonder whether even he has fallen out of love with "Boris" as he always affectionately referred to him.
His posts do not indicate it so far, and I would be delighted if he would join those of us who want Truss to succeed and publicly accept Johnson is toxic and has damaged the party considerably
I support her as leader but she is still 10% behind on the latest poll and this end bankers' bonuses cap now was her decision not Boris'. She and Kwarteng own it
You demonstrate my point perfectly and until you condemn Johnson then you are part of his toxic legacy
I won't condemn the party's most successful leader since Thatcher
Leaving aside the question as to whether he was more successful than either Cameron or Major, looking at the rest of them that isn't exactly a high bar, is it?
Interesting that @HYUFD describes Johnson as "the party's most successful leader since Thatcher". This is a totally ridiculous proposition. He bases "most successful" solely on his election victory over Jeremy fecking Corbyn.
Johnson was responsible for one of the biggest fissures in the Tory Party since the Corn Laws. He became an international laughing stock. He thoroughly trashed the Conservative Party's reputation for sensible governance and found himself heaved out of No10 after only 3 years for dishonesty. Other than TMay you have to go back to 1827 to find a PM with a shorter tenure. He was hopeless. A bad joke. A man totally unfit for office. He was not successful, except in his ability to trounce the most ludicrous LoTO ever to have held that role, and to gull those foolish enough like @HYUFD into thinking he was appropriate to be Party leader and PM.
He also delivered Brexit and the vaccines on his watch and of course Theresa was sadly unable to defeat Corbyn.
Once we have gone through the Tory leaderships of Truss, Badenoch, Braverman and Rees Mogg even you might miss Boris!
Mr Johnson is a medical immunologist?
This is a bit divisive. Did Churchill win the second world war (from a British perspective - I know USSR/USA etc)? Yes. Did he fight in Normandy, the Ardennes, Crossing of the Rhine, in a Lancaster over Berlin? No (although he tried to get to Normandy...)
Did Johnson head into the lab, roll up his sleeves and say 'right, we've got the spike sequence, its time to see if mRNA vaccines work...'? Of course not. Did he appoint the right people, let them spend what was needed and keep out of the way? Yes he did.
It is fair to give him credit for things done well just as it is fair to blame for the things that went wrong. Don't let hatred or disdain for Johnson cloud that. There is enough to mock already.
In his leaving speech he claimed he achieved one of his big promises, and fixed social care.
Are we okay to work on the basis that he didn’t and ask, will we ever have a government that will actually fix social care?
The last person going into an election promising to fix social care and with a tax raising plan to do it, was widely perceived to have lost (albeit they formed a government). Its really hard to do. Ultimately I think we don't do well in the country as don't expect to look after our own family when they get old - we regard that as the job of the state. We also don't want to pay the state to do it. Then there is the bizarre fixation about passing on wealth to your children. If I don't inherit a penny from my folks it won't matter - if they need the money to be comfortable as they age then so be it. Its not MY money - it's theirs. Yet some like @HYUFD are obsessed with the idea that inheritance is sacrosanct.
For Tories it is, a core Tory value is maintaining estates and inherited wealth within the family and has been since the 18th century when the party was the party of the landowning interest and the Whigs the party of the merchant class
That was then, this is now. Perhaps try to extract a core philosophy, perhaps (going right out on a limb here) an unselfish one, maybe even one within hailing distance of Christian values (meaning acting justly and kindly towards everyone, even the poor, rather than bullying gays and the unwantedly pregnant), from the history of Conservativism, rather than harking back to the golden age of rottern boroughs and workhouses?
No it is still now, as the Conservative Party is still the heir to the Tory Party. Of course if you knew your history you would have understood that it was the Tory Disraeli who passed patrician acts like the 10 hour workday for women and children opposed by many Liberal factory owners and businessmen. It was also under the Whig government of Earl Grey that legislation was passed that meant relief for the poor could only be provided in the workhouse, not the Tories.
Until all the working classes got the vote and there began the rise of the Labour Party the Tories were often less capitalist and free market than the Liberals and Whigs. The Tories the party of rural areas and landowners, the Whigs and Liberals the party of urban merchants and businessmen
Or, release a Desert Bus type video game of the experience, in which you queue in real time for 10 hours and get sent back to the beginning for any mistakes. The beeb says its stream is for "for people who want to pay their respects virtually" but I don't think just dipping in and out really cuts it.
Failure to shuffle forward in timely fashion? Back of the line.
Leaned out of the queue? Back of the line.
Made eye contact with someone else in the queue? Back of the line.
Analyst on R5L’s wake up to money - tracking a basket of essential goods says price difference between Morrissons and Aldi is now 40%. Explained by Morrisons having to service a gigantic debt.
Shop at Aldi, people.
Good morning
I heard that report as well and it is astonishing that Morrisons apparently have a 7 billion debt
Shop anywhere but Morrisons would be the message
5live also discussed Kwarteng's proposal to abolish city bonuses and it really does make you wonder if the conservative party have lost all it's instincts to govern
It may be the right thing from a business sense, but the optics are shocking and hands yet another gift to labour
It is the right thing from city workers sense. It is a bad thing for shareholders and really bad for government and taxpayers who will eventually have to fund another bailout with years of austerity.
I'm curious about this idea that bankers bonuses caused the subprime mortgage crisis.
I am even more curious about the idea that there will ever be another bank bailout.
Extreme bankers bonuses create incentives for bankers to gamble with the banks money. If they win, fantastic, if they lose its not their money and as long as you can talk the talk and know some of the right people, it is still easy to get another job.
That culture feeds through to the banks to gamble, notionally with their money, but knowing they have a government funded back stop as they are too big to fail.
Take away the controls and regulation and sooner or later we shall be back to bail outs.
Well, it's too bad the Labour government didn't do something about it then...
Of course. Not sure why you think that is relevant when they have not been in power for a long time and it is the current governments policies that will matter.
Well, the view of Labour supporters on the GFC is "it started in America".
That's not the view of Labour supporters, it is a statement of fact.
The global [key word, there] financial crisis started in America. Britain was very poorly placed to weather it because Gordon Brown had spent the previous 6 years [after an admirable initial period of restraint] pissing money up the wall, spending more than he raked in even during times of relative financial health. Personally I couldn't give a fig how big bankers' bonuses are. I don't care at all about the optics, I care about the gap between what we spend and what we earn. That should be the #1 issue for a chancellor of the exchequer to worry about. If this measure narrows that gap (and I am at best agnostic about whether it will) it should be welcomed.
Britain was hit badly because we have a large globally exposed financial sector and one of our biggest banks was in the midst of an ill-advised over-leveraged buying spree at the top of the market. Running a structural deficit of 4% of GDP in 2007 compared to a G7 average of 3% is unlikely to have been a significant factor in explaining why we were hit worse than others, no matter how much people want it to be Gordon Brown's fault.
Running a structural deficit of 4% during pre-crash times is utterly catastrophic as when the crash inevitably comes and you inevitably need countercyclical spending to go with it, then you have nowhere to go.
The fact that some other countries were nearly as bad as the UK doesn't justify or excuse what Brown did.
But it is hard to blame Brown's fiscal policy for us being hit *much worse than others* when Brown's fiscal policy was *pretty much the same as others'*. That was the point I was responding to. Also worth noting that our debt to GDP ratio in 2007 was 41% (down from 43% in 1997) compared to a G7 average of 81%. So we had plenty of space to run countercyclical fiscal policy, certainly compared to other countries, and indeed the increase in our debt to GDP ratio between 2007 and 2010 (33pp) was almost identical to the G7 average (32pp), suggesting that we were indeed able to run a countercyclical fiscal policy just like other economies.
Except it wasn't the same as others, it was via your own figures worse than others. And of course its worth noting that the G7 average includes the UK so the G7 average was itself getting dragged down by Brown's terrible performance.
Debt to GDP isn't the relevant figure, the deficit is, although its worth noting via your own figures again in the span of three years Brown nearly doubled our debt-to-GDP figure whereas G7 nations debt-to-GDP increased by much less than half.
Gordon Brown's peak debt to GDP being around 3% iirc which was on a par with preceding Conservative governments. It was not significant and did not cause or exacerbate the GFC.
Also, aiui Team Truss has determined, as Cheney said of Reagan, that deficits don't matter and that George Osborne's austerity was a mistake that hobbled Britain's economy.
Except....this was a time of unprecedented receipts. The housing market was going bananas, profits were high, and it was a time where debt to GDP didn't need to be as high given the circumstances in the economy. Simply, we were spending too much. I don't think anyone disputes that, no matter what they think the answer (austerity/non-austerity) should have been.
Yes, there is a good deal in that. But as it happened, the GFC came along and rendered it all moot. Then Osborne came along and flatlined the nascent recovery inherited from Labour, and here we are.
The GFC didn't just "come along and render it moot", the GFC was a crash that the Government should have been preparing for as it was overdue. Crashes happen, and the GFC was a classic crash, not some exogenous and unforeseeable shock.
And you repeat the myth that Osborne flatlined the recovery. Don't you realise the UK in the 2010s grew faster than the Eurozone did, both in nominal terms and in per capita terms. "Despite Brexit" supposedly harming the UK during that decade.
If Brexit and Osborne "flatlined" or harmed the UK, then how come the UK grew faster than the Eurozone or the rest of the EU? Just how much faster than them would we have grown in your eyes were it not for Osborne or Brexit, and why?
Osborne's austerity was a mistake as even the current vintage of Tories now acknowledge. The problem is that they have pivoted to pro-growth fiscal policies at precisely the wrong moment, with inflation out of control, and so they will only succeed in pushing up inflation and interest rates. Euro area growth was low because of their sovereign debt crisis and because they followed similar austerity policies to us, and because they had lower population growth.
It was not a mistake, because the deficit was out of control.
Pro-growth policies are good now because the deficit was brought under control prior to the crash, unlike in Brown's time, and so we're in a much better fiscal position than we were then.
The UK grew faster than Europe on a per capita basis too, again despite "austerity" and "Brexit" being both accused of "flatlining" growth. We had our own sovereign debt crisis caused by Brown's borrowing too, which is why Osborne needed to clean up Brown's mess.
The UK deficit is set to grow considerably under Truss, who appears to believe in trickle-down economics, something known not to work. So, deficit up, but no significant improvement in growth.
Your position of saying both Osborne and Truss are right does need an explanation Barty?
Fiscal control on the one hand versus abandoning fiscal control for a dash for growth on the other will sound like chalk and cheese to us non economic, experts until you explain this one to us.
Different stages of the economic cycle.
Brown's deficit spending blew the budget up pre-crash, taking us from a budget surplus to a maxed out deficit before the recession even hit us.
Pre-recession the budget deficit shrank every single year for a decade under the Tories.
A dash for growth now is a viable option as Osborne fixed the roof while the sun was shining. Brown didn't.
So in this analogy, what exactly is “the roof”?
The deficit.
It traditionally goes up during and immediately after a recession due to countercyclical factors, while it comes down in the years of growth. Brown instead took us from budget surplus to maxed out deficit pre-crash meaning we were terribly exposed when the inevitable crash inevitably happened.
So what are the deficit figures from 2007, 2010, 2016, and today to absolutely prove your argument right here right now?
From 2002 to 2007, pre-crash, the Budget deficit increased from a surplus of 1.4% to a deficit of 2.9% . . . a pre-crash worsening of 4.3% of GDP
From 2013 to 2019, pre-crash, the Budget deficit fell from 7.4% to 1.5%, a pre-crash improvement of 5.9% of GDP
The net difference between a 4.3% deterioration in the accounts, and a 5.9% improvement in them, is 10.2% of GDP.
Why have you omitted the period 2007 to 2013?
Because we were discussing what happened in the years pre-crash.
Looking from 2002 to 2010 and 2010 to 2019 would make the deterioration in Labour's accounts and the improvement in Tory accounts even more exaggerated, but I did not consider that to be fair or reasonable.
Prior to the GFC of 2008 the deficit was lower every year under the Labour government than it had been in any year under Major. The deficit increased dramatically in response to the GFC but not as much as out has under The Tories in response to Covid and the CoL crisis.
Your favourite, Truss, is borrowing again rather than taxing the wealthy to cap energy prices, I see.
Again ignoring the economic cycle. 🤦♂️
There was a crash at the start of the 90s, however the UK went into that, as it should, with a budget surplus which was built up during the Thatcher years. So the deficit increased at the start of the 90s, but then was reduced consistently after then building up towards the budget surplus. That was economics as it should be. The deficit expanding then shrinking countercyclically.
Regrettably though, Brown took the budget surplus we had in 2002 and turned into into a mega deficit before the next recession hit. If he'd only kept the surplus as it was, not even made it a bigger surplus, then the UK would have been well placed for the inevitable next recession when it hit, just as we were the previous time.
It was 4.46% of GDP in 2009 according to that link. Though that link uses a much more generous version of deficit which actually had the UK in surplus by 2019, unlike pre-crash in the 00's. Either way the UK was far better placed pre-crash this time than last time.
Yes, sorry, my mistake - I've got too many charts open! - but the figure before the crash was 1.14% which again, is hardly a mega deficit.
Anyway, neither of us is likely to convince the other, so let's see how robust the 'low-tax' economy under Truss looks by the time of the next GE!
The problem pre crash was that Brown was using the boom to finance current spending.
So when the bust came, we were looking at a big hole in the public finances.
Simply spending at the same pace would have had the government rate at which they can borrow zoom out of sight, since it would have had to have been financed by borrowing ion epic scale.
My prediction is that Truss will turn out to be a lot better than many of us gave her credit for. Boris Johnson is a busted flush. He is yesterday's Clown; someone who achieved a great election victory against a ridiculously weedy opponent and managed very little else of note. His deranged supporters might want him back, but they will hopefully diminish in time, and before long it will be difficult to find anyone to admit they supported him.
I do wonder whether even he has fallen out of love with "Boris" as he always affectionately referred to him.
His posts do not indicate it so far, and I would be delighted if he would join those of us who want Truss to succeed and publicly accept Johnson is toxic and has damaged the party considerably
I support her as leader but she is still 10% behind on the latest poll and this end bankers' bonuses cap now was her decision not Boris'. She and Kwarteng own it
You demonstrate my point perfectly and until you condemn Johnson then you are part of his toxic legacy
I won't condemn the party's most successful leader since Thatcher
Leaving aside the question as to whether he was more successful than either Cameron or Major, looking at the rest of them that isn't exactly a high bar, is it?
Interesting that @HYUFD describes Johnson as "the party's most successful leader since Thatcher". This is a totally ridiculous proposition. He bases "most successful" solely on his election victory over Jeremy fecking Corbyn.
Johnson was responsible for one of the biggest fissures in the Tory Party since the Corn Laws. He became an international laughing stock. He thoroughly trashed the Conservative Party's reputation for sensible governance and found himself heaved out of No10 after only 3 years for dishonesty. Other than TMay you have to go back to 1827 to find a PM with a shorter tenure. He was hopeless. A bad joke. A man totally unfit for office. He was not successful, except in his ability to trounce the most ludicrous LoTO ever to have held that role, and to gull those foolish enough like @HYUFD into thinking he was appropriate to be Party leader and PM.
He also delivered Brexit and the vaccines on his watch and of course Theresa was sadly unable to defeat Corbyn.
Once we have gone through the Tory leaderships of Truss, Badenoch, Braverman and Rees Mogg even you might miss Boris!
Mr Johnson is a medical immunologist?
This is a bit divisive. Did Churchill win the second world war (from a British perspective - I know USSR/USA etc)? Yes. Did he fight in Normandy, the Ardennes, Crossing of the Rhine, in a Lancaster over Berlin? No (although he tried to get to Normandy...)
Did Johnson head into the lab, roll up his sleeves and say 'right, we've got the spike sequence, its time to see if mRNA vaccines work...'? Of course not. Did he appoint the right people, let them spend what was needed and keep out of the way? Yes he did.
It is fair to give him credit for things done well just as it is fair to blame for the things that went wrong. Don't let hatred or disdain for Johnson cloud that. There is enough to mock already.
In his leaving speech he claimed he achieved one of his big promises, and fixed social care.
Are we okay to work on the basis that he didn’t and ask, will we ever have a government that will actually fix social care?
The last person going into an election promising to fix social care and with a tax raising plan to do it, was widely perceived to have lost (albeit they formed a government). Its really hard to do. Ultimately I think we don't do well in the country as don't expect to look after our own family when they get old - we regard that as the job of the state. We also don't want to pay the state to do it. Then there is the bizarre fixation about passing on wealth to your children. If I don't inherit a penny from my folks it won't matter - if they need the money to be comfortable as they age then so be it. Its not MY money - it's theirs. Yet some like @HYUFD are obsessed with the idea that inheritance is sacrosanct.
For Tories it is, a core Tory value is maintaining estates and inherited wealth within the family and has been since the 18th century when the party was the party of the landowning interest and the Whigs the party of the merchant class
That was then, this is now. Perhaps try to extract a core philosophy, perhaps (going right out on a limb here) an unselfish one, maybe even one within hailing distance of Christian values (meaning acting justly and kindly towards everyone, even the poor, rather than bullying gays and the unwantedly pregnant), from the history of Conservativism, rather than harking back to the golden age of rottern boroughs and workhouses?
No it is still now, as the Conservative Party is still the heir to the Tory Party. Of course if you knew your history you would have understood that it was the Tory Disraeli who passed patrician acts like the 10 hour workday for women and children opposed by many Liberal factory owners and businessmen. It was also under the Whig government of Earl Grey that legislation was passed that meant relief for the poor could only be provided in the workhouse, not the Tories.
Until all the working classes got the vote and there began the rise of the Labour Party the Tories were often less capitalist and free market than the Liberals and Whigs. The Tories the party of rural areas and landowners, the Whigs and Liberals the party of urban merchants and businessmen
You sure? In Scotland the Liberals were the party of the rural areas who hated the landowners' guts (and still were until they went all milquetoast Tory-lite in recent years). The Liberals often voted (literally, when it came to choosing their own ministers) for the Free Church, the Tories went to the Church of Scotland which they then dominated and in which they chose the ministers for the parishes, or SEC if available locally.
My prediction is that Truss will turn out to be a lot better than many of us gave her credit for. Boris Johnson is a busted flush. He is yesterday's Clown; someone who achieved a great election victory against a ridiculously weedy opponent and managed very little else of note. His deranged supporters might want him back, but they will hopefully diminish in time, and before long it will be difficult to find anyone to admit they supported him.
I do wonder whether even he has fallen out of love with "Boris" as he always affectionately referred to him.
His posts do not indicate it so far, and I would be delighted if he would join those of us who want Truss to succeed and publicly accept Johnson is toxic and has damaged the party considerably
I support her as leader but she is still 10% behind on the latest poll and this end bankers' bonuses cap now was her decision not Boris'. She and Kwarteng own it
You demonstrate my point perfectly and until you condemn Johnson then you are part of his toxic legacy
I won't condemn the party's most successful leader since Thatcher
Leaving aside the question as to whether he was more successful than either Cameron or Major, looking at the rest of them that isn't exactly a high bar, is it?
Interesting that @HYUFD describes Johnson as "the party's most successful leader since Thatcher". This is a totally ridiculous proposition. He bases "most successful" solely on his election victory over Jeremy fecking Corbyn.
Johnson was responsible for one of the biggest fissures in the Tory Party since the Corn Laws. He became an international laughing stock. He thoroughly trashed the Conservative Party's reputation for sensible governance and found himself heaved out of No10 after only 3 years for dishonesty. Other than TMay you have to go back to 1827 to find a PM with a shorter tenure. He was hopeless. A bad joke. A man totally unfit for office. He was not successful, except in his ability to trounce the most ludicrous LoTO ever to have held that role, and to gull those foolish enough like @HYUFD into thinking he was appropriate to be Party leader and PM.
He also delivered Brexit and the vaccines on his watch and of course Theresa was sadly unable to defeat Corbyn.
Once we have gone through the Tory leaderships of Truss, Badenoch, Braverman and Rees Mogg even you might miss Boris!
Mr Johnson is a medical immunologist?
This is a bit divisive. Did Churchill win the second world war (from a British perspective - I know USSR/USA etc)? Yes. Did he fight in Normandy, the Ardennes, Crossing of the Rhine, in a Lancaster over Berlin? No (although he tried to get to Normandy...)
Did Johnson head into the lab, roll up his sleeves and say 'right, we've got the spike sequence, its time to see if mRNA vaccines work...'? Of course not. Did he appoint the right people, let them spend what was needed and keep out of the way? Yes he did.
It is fair to give him credit for things done well just as it is fair to blame for the things that went wrong. Don't let hatred or disdain for Johnson cloud that. There is enough to mock already.
In his leaving speech he claimed he achieved one of his big promises, and fixed social care.
Are we okay to work on the basis that he didn’t and ask, will we ever have a government that will actually fix social care?
The last person going into an election promising to fix social care and with a tax raising plan to do it, was widely perceived to have lost (albeit they formed a government). Its really hard to do. Ultimately I think we don't do well in the country as don't expect to look after our own family when they get old - we regard that as the job of the state. We also don't want to pay the state to do it. Then there is the bizarre fixation about passing on wealth to your children. If I don't inherit a penny from my folks it won't matter - if they need the money to be comfortable as they age then so be it. Its not MY money - it's theirs. Yet some like @HYUFD are obsessed with the idea that inheritance is sacrosanct.
For Tories it is, a core Tory value is maintaining estates and inherited wealth within the family and has been since the 18th century when the party was the party of the landowning interest and the Whigs the party of the merchant class
That was then, this is now. Perhaps try to extract a core philosophy, perhaps (going right out on a limb here) an unselfish one, maybe even one within hailing distance of Christian values (meaning acting justly and kindly towards everyone, even the poor, rather than bullying gays and the unwantedly pregnant), from the history of Conservativism, rather than harking back to the golden age of rottern boroughs and workhouses?
No it is still now, as the Conservative Party is still the heir to the Tory Party.
Heirs frequently disappoint, or even act entirely opposite to those they are heir to.
My prediction is that Truss will turn out to be a lot better than many of us gave her credit for. Boris Johnson is a busted flush. He is yesterday's Clown; someone who achieved a great election victory against a ridiculously weedy opponent and managed very little else of note. His deranged supporters might want him back, but they will hopefully diminish in time, and before long it will be difficult to find anyone to admit they supported him.
I do wonder whether even he has fallen out of love with "Boris" as he always affectionately referred to him.
His posts do not indicate it so far, and I would be delighted if he would join those of us who want Truss to succeed and publicly accept Johnson is toxic and has damaged the party considerably
I support her as leader but she is still 10% behind on the latest poll and this end bankers' bonuses cap now was her decision not Boris'. She and Kwarteng own it
You demonstrate my point perfectly and until you condemn Johnson then you are part of his toxic legacy
I won't condemn the party's most successful leader since Thatcher
Leaving aside the question as to whether he was more successful than either Cameron or Major, looking at the rest of them that isn't exactly a high bar, is it?
Interesting that @HYUFD describes Johnson as "the party's most successful leader since Thatcher". This is a totally ridiculous proposition. He bases "most successful" solely on his election victory over Jeremy fecking Corbyn.
Johnson was responsible for one of the biggest fissures in the Tory Party since the Corn Laws. He became an international laughing stock. He thoroughly trashed the Conservative Party's reputation for sensible governance and found himself heaved out of No10 after only 3 years for dishonesty. Other than TMay you have to go back to 1827 to find a PM with a shorter tenure. He was hopeless. A bad joke. A man totally unfit for office. He was not successful, except in his ability to trounce the most ludicrous LoTO ever to have held that role, and to gull those foolish enough like @HYUFD into thinking he was appropriate to be Party leader and PM.
He also delivered Brexit and the vaccines on his watch and of course Theresa was sadly unable to defeat Corbyn.
Once we have gone through the Tory leaderships of Truss, Badenoch, Braverman and Rees Mogg even you might miss Boris!
Mr Johnson is a medical immunologist?
This is a bit divisive. Did Churchill win the second world war (from a British perspective - I know USSR/USA etc)? Yes. Did he fight in Normandy, the Ardennes, Crossing of the Rhine, in a Lancaster over Berlin? No (although he tried to get to Normandy...)
Did Johnson head into the lab, roll up his sleeves and say 'right, we've got the spike sequence, its time to see if mRNA vaccines work...'? Of course not. Did he appoint the right people, let them spend what was needed and keep out of the way? Yes he did.
It is fair to give him credit for things done well just as it is fair to blame for the things that went wrong. Don't let hatred or disdain for Johnson cloud that. There is enough to mock already.
In his leaving speech he claimed he achieved one of his big promises, and fixed social care.
Are we okay to work on the basis that he didn’t and ask, will we ever have a government that will actually fix social care?
The last person going into an election promising to fix social care and with a tax raising plan to do it, was widely perceived to have lost (albeit they formed a government). Its really hard to do. Ultimately I think we don't do well in the country as don't expect to look after our own family when they get old - we regard that as the job of the state. We also don't want to pay the state to do it. Then there is the bizarre fixation about passing on wealth to your children. If I don't inherit a penny from my folks it won't matter - if they need the money to be comfortable as they age then so be it. Its not MY money - it's theirs. Yet some like @HYUFD are obsessed with the idea that inheritance is sacrosanct.
For Tories it is, a core Tory value is maintaining estates and inherited wealth within the family and has been since the 18th century when the party was the party of the landowning interest and the Whigs the party of the merchant class
That was then, this is now. Perhaps try to extract a core philosophy, perhaps (going right out on a limb here) an unselfish one, maybe even one within hailing distance of Christian values (meaning acting justly and kindly towards everyone, even the poor, rather than bullying gays and the unwantedly pregnant), from the history of Conservativism, rather than harking back to the golden age of rottern boroughs and workhouses?
No it is still now, as the Conservative Party is still the heir to the Tory Party. Of course if you knew your history you would have understood that it was the Tory Disraeli who passed patrician acts like the 10 hour workday for women and children opposed by many Liberal factory owners and businessmen. It was also under the Whig government of Earl Grey that legislation was passed that meant relief for the poor could only be provided in the workhouse, not the Tories.
Until all the working classes got the vote and there began the rise of the Labour Party the Tories were often less capitalist and free market than the Liberals and Whigs. The Tories the party of rural areas and landowners, the Whigs and Liberals the party of urban merchants and businessmen
You sure? In Scotland the Liberals were the party of the rural areas who hated the landowners' guts (and still were until they went all milquetoast Tory-lite in recent years). The Liberals often voted (literally, when it came to choosing their own ministers) for the Free Church, the Tories went to the Church of Scotland which they then dominated and in which they chose the ministers for the parishes, or SEC if available locally.
PS Also of course the Libs were the party of the middle classes and businessmen as well as improving artisans.
It's quite hard to score a VC these days. Yet another instance where the youth of today are being denied an opportunity.
I have the dress medals of Charles Upham, VC and Bar. Signed by him (also his uniform ribbons). It was said that he could have won the VC up to six times, but a vulgar five bars would have made it look like the other chaps weren't trying.
My prediction is that Truss will turn out to be a lot better than many of us gave her credit for. Boris Johnson is a busted flush. He is yesterday's Clown; someone who achieved a great election victory against a ridiculously weedy opponent and managed very little else of note. His deranged supporters might want him back, but they will hopefully diminish in time, and before long it will be difficult to find anyone to admit they supported him.
I do wonder whether even he has fallen out of love with "Boris" as he always affectionately referred to him.
His posts do not indicate it so far, and I would be delighted if he would join those of us who want Truss to succeed and publicly accept Johnson is toxic and has damaged the party considerably
I support her as leader but she is still 10% behind on the latest poll and this end bankers' bonuses cap now was her decision not Boris'. She and Kwarteng own it
You demonstrate my point perfectly and until you condemn Johnson then you are part of his toxic legacy
I won't condemn the party's most successful leader since Thatcher
Leaving aside the question as to whether he was more successful than either Cameron or Major, looking at the rest of them that isn't exactly a high bar, is it?
Interesting that @HYUFD describes Johnson as "the party's most successful leader since Thatcher". This is a totally ridiculous proposition. He bases "most successful" solely on his election victory over Jeremy fecking Corbyn.
Johnson was responsible for one of the biggest fissures in the Tory Party since the Corn Laws. He became an international laughing stock. He thoroughly trashed the Conservative Party's reputation for sensible governance and found himself heaved out of No10 after only 3 years for dishonesty. Other than TMay you have to go back to 1827 to find a PM with a shorter tenure. He was hopeless. A bad joke. A man totally unfit for office. He was not successful, except in his ability to trounce the most ludicrous LoTO ever to have held that role, and to gull those foolish enough like @HYUFD into thinking he was appropriate to be Party leader and PM.
He also delivered Brexit and the vaccines on his watch and of course Theresa was sadly unable to defeat Corbyn.
Once we have gone through the Tory leaderships of Truss, Badenoch, Braverman and Rees Mogg even you might miss Boris!
Mr Johnson is a medical immunologist?
This is a bit divisive. Did Churchill win the second world war (from a British perspective - I know USSR/USA etc)? Yes. Did he fight in Normandy, the Ardennes, Crossing of the Rhine, in a Lancaster over Berlin? No (although he tried to get to Normandy...)
Did Johnson head into the lab, roll up his sleeves and say 'right, we've got the spike sequence, its time to see if mRNA vaccines work...'? Of course not. Did he appoint the right people, let them spend what was needed and keep out of the way? Yes he did.
It is fair to give him credit for things done well just as it is fair to blame for the things that went wrong. Don't let hatred or disdain for Johnson cloud that. There is enough to mock already.
In his leaving speech he claimed he achieved one of his big promises, and fixed social care.
Are we okay to work on the basis that he didn’t and ask, will we ever have a government that will actually fix social care?
The last person going into an election promising to fix social care and with a tax raising plan to do it, was widely perceived to have lost (albeit they formed a government). Its really hard to do. Ultimately I think we don't do well in the country as don't expect to look after our own family when they get old - we regard that as the job of the state. We also don't want to pay the state to do it. Then there is the bizarre fixation about passing on wealth to your children. If I don't inherit a penny from my folks it won't matter - if they need the money to be comfortable as they age then so be it. Its not MY money - it's theirs. Yet some like @HYUFD are obsessed with the idea that inheritance is sacrosanct.
For Tories it is, a core Tory value is maintaining estates and inherited wealth within the family and has been since the 18th century when the party was the party of the landowning interest and the Whigs the party of the merchant class
That was then, this is now. Perhaps try to extract a core philosophy, perhaps (going right out on a limb here) an unselfish one, maybe even one within hailing distance of Christian values (meaning acting justly and kindly towards everyone, even the poor, rather than bullying gays and the unwantedly pregnant), from the history of Conservativism, rather than harking back to the golden age of rottern boroughs and workhouses?
No it is still now, as the Conservative Party is still the heir to the Tory Party. Of course if you knew your history you would have understood that it was the Tory Disraeli who passed patrician acts like the 10 hour workday for women and children opposed by many Liberal factory owners and businessmen. It was also under the Whig government of Earl Grey that legislation was passed that meant relief for the poor could only be provided in the workhouse, not the Tories.
Until all the working classes got the vote and there began the rise of the Labour Party the Tories were often less capitalist and free market than the Liberals and Whigs. The Tories the party of rural areas and landowners, the Whigs and Liberals the party of urban merchants and businessmen
At the same time, the Whigs were also the party of religious Nonconformism, opposition to absolute monarchy, and intellectual open-mindedness. The original "Liberal Elite", and probably the only the time the term has actually meant anything.
My prediction is that Truss will turn out to be a lot better than many of us gave her credit for. Boris Johnson is a busted flush. He is yesterday's Clown; someone who achieved a great election victory against a ridiculously weedy opponent and managed very little else of note. His deranged supporters might want him back, but they will hopefully diminish in time, and before long it will be difficult to find anyone to admit they supported him.
I do wonder whether even he has fallen out of love with "Boris" as he always affectionately referred to him.
His posts do not indicate it so far, and I would be delighted if he would join those of us who want Truss to succeed and publicly accept Johnson is toxic and has damaged the party considerably
I support her as leader but she is still 10% behind on the latest poll and this end bankers' bonuses cap now was her decision not Boris'. She and Kwarteng own it
You demonstrate my point perfectly and until you condemn Johnson then you are part of his toxic legacy
I won't condemn the party's most successful leader since Thatcher
Leaving aside the question as to whether he was more successful than either Cameron or Major, looking at the rest of them that isn't exactly a high bar, is it?
Interesting that @HYUFD describes Johnson as "the party's most successful leader since Thatcher". This is a totally ridiculous proposition. He bases "most successful" solely on his election victory over Jeremy fecking Corbyn.
Johnson was responsible for one of the biggest fissures in the Tory Party since the Corn Laws. He became an international laughing stock. He thoroughly trashed the Conservative Party's reputation for sensible governance and found himself heaved out of No10 after only 3 years for dishonesty. Other than TMay you have to go back to 1827 to find a PM with a shorter tenure. He was hopeless. A bad joke. A man totally unfit for office. He was not successful, except in his ability to trounce the most ludicrous LoTO ever to have held that role, and to gull those foolish enough like @HYUFD into thinking he was appropriate to be Party leader and PM.
He also delivered Brexit and the vaccines on his watch and of course Theresa was sadly unable to defeat Corbyn.
Once we have gone through the Tory leaderships of Truss, Badenoch, Braverman and Rees Mogg even you might miss Boris!
Mr Johnson is a medical immunologist?
This is a bit divisive. Did Churchill win the second world war (from a British perspective - I know USSR/USA etc)? Yes. Did he fight in Normandy, the Ardennes, Crossing of the Rhine, in a Lancaster over Berlin? No (although he tried to get to Normandy...)
Did Johnson head into the lab, roll up his sleeves and say 'right, we've got the spike sequence, its time to see if mRNA vaccines work...'? Of course not. Did he appoint the right people, let them spend what was needed and keep out of the way? Yes he did.
It is fair to give him credit for things done well just as it is fair to blame for the things that went wrong. Don't let hatred or disdain for Johnson cloud that. There is enough to mock already.
In his leaving speech he claimed he achieved one of his big promises, and fixed social care.
Are we okay to work on the basis that he didn’t and ask, will we ever have a government that will actually fix social care?
The last person going into an election promising to fix social care and with a tax raising plan to do it, was widely perceived to have lost (albeit they formed a government). Its really hard to do. Ultimately I think we don't do well in the country as don't expect to look after our own family when they get old - we regard that as the job of the state. We also don't want to pay the state to do it. Then there is the bizarre fixation about passing on wealth to your children. If I don't inherit a penny from my folks it won't matter - if they need the money to be comfortable as they age then so be it. Its not MY money - it's theirs. Yet some like @HYUFD are obsessed with the idea that inheritance is sacrosanct.
For Tories it is, a core Tory value is maintaining estates and inherited wealth within the family and has been since the 18th century when the party was the party of the landowning interest and the Whigs the party of the merchant class
That was then, this is now. Perhaps try to extract a core philosophy, perhaps (going right out on a limb here) an unselfish one, maybe even one within hailing distance of Christian values (meaning acting justly and kindly towards everyone, even the poor, rather than bullying gays and the unwantedly pregnant), from the history of Conservativism, rather than harking back to the golden age of rottern boroughs and workhouses?
No it is still now, as the Conservative Party is still the heir to the Tory Party. Of course if you knew your history you would have understood that it was the Tory Disraeli who passed patrician acts like the 10 hour workday for women and children opposed by many Liberal factory owners and businessmen. It was also under the Whig government of Earl Grey that legislation was passed that meant relief for the poor could only be provided in the workhouse, not the Tories.
Until all the working classes got the vote and there began the rise of the Labour Party the Tories were often less capitalist and free market than the Liberals and Whigs. The Tories the party of rural areas and landowners, the Whigs and Liberals the party of urban merchants and businessmen
At the same time, the Whigs were the party of religious Nonconformism, opposition to absolute monarchy, and intellectual open-mindedness. The original "Liberal Elite", and probably the only the time the term has actually meant anything.
In the late nineteenth century weren’t the liberals rather outright Republican?
Is it possible that so many of Sean Thomas' "friends" are annoyed with him for decades because Sean Thomas is annoying, rather than because the British monarchy is so brilliant? Seems a more elegant explanation.
My prediction is that Truss will turn out to be a lot better than many of us gave her credit for. Boris Johnson is a busted flush. He is yesterday's Clown; someone who achieved a great election victory against a ridiculously weedy opponent and managed very little else of note. His deranged supporters might want him back, but they will hopefully diminish in time, and before long it will be difficult to find anyone to admit they supported him.
I do wonder whether even he has fallen out of love with "Boris" as he always affectionately referred to him.
His posts do not indicate it so far, and I would be delighted if he would join those of us who want Truss to succeed and publicly accept Johnson is toxic and has damaged the party considerably
I support her as leader but she is still 10% behind on the latest poll and this end bankers' bonuses cap now was her decision not Boris'. She and Kwarteng own it
You demonstrate my point perfectly and until you condemn Johnson then you are part of his toxic legacy
I won't condemn the party's most successful leader since Thatcher
Leaving aside the question as to whether he was more successful than either Cameron or Major, looking at the rest of them that isn't exactly a high bar, is it?
Interesting that @HYUFD describes Johnson as "the party's most successful leader since Thatcher". This is a totally ridiculous proposition. He bases "most successful" solely on his election victory over Jeremy fecking Corbyn.
Johnson was responsible for one of the biggest fissures in the Tory Party since the Corn Laws. He became an international laughing stock. He thoroughly trashed the Conservative Party's reputation for sensible governance and found himself heaved out of No10 after only 3 years for dishonesty. Other than TMay you have to go back to 1827 to find a PM with a shorter tenure. He was hopeless. A bad joke. A man totally unfit for office. He was not successful, except in his ability to trounce the most ludicrous LoTO ever to have held that role, and to gull those foolish enough like @HYUFD into thinking he was appropriate to be Party leader and PM.
He also delivered Brexit and the vaccines on his watch and of course Theresa was sadly unable to defeat Corbyn.
Once we have gone through the Tory leaderships of Truss, Badenoch, Braverman and Rees Mogg even you might miss Boris!
Mr Johnson is a medical immunologist?
This is a bit divisive. Did Churchill win the second world war (from a British perspective - I know USSR/USA etc)? Yes. Did he fight in Normandy, the Ardennes, Crossing of the Rhine, in a Lancaster over Berlin? No (although he tried to get to Normandy...)
Did Johnson head into the lab, roll up his sleeves and say 'right, we've got the spike sequence, its time to see if mRNA vaccines work...'? Of course not. Did he appoint the right people, let them spend what was needed and keep out of the way? Yes he did.
It is fair to give him credit for things done well just as it is fair to blame for the things that went wrong. Don't let hatred or disdain for Johnson cloud that. There is enough to mock already.
In his leaving speech he claimed he achieved one of his big promises, and fixed social care.
Are we okay to work on the basis that he didn’t and ask, will we ever have a government that will actually fix social care?
The last person going into an election promising to fix social care and with a tax raising plan to do it, was widely perceived to have lost (albeit they formed a government). Its really hard to do. Ultimately I think we don't do well in the country as don't expect to look after our own family when they get old - we regard that as the job of the state. We also don't want to pay the state to do it. Then there is the bizarre fixation about passing on wealth to your children. If I don't inherit a penny from my folks it won't matter - if they need the money to be comfortable as they age then so be it. Its not MY money - it's theirs. Yet some like @HYUFD are obsessed with the idea that inheritance is sacrosanct.
For Tories it is, a core Tory value is maintaining estates and inherited wealth within the family and has been since the 18th century when the party was the party of the landowning interest and the Whigs the party of the merchant class
That was then, this is now. Perhaps try to extract a core philosophy, perhaps (going right out on a limb here) an unselfish one, maybe even one within hailing distance of Christian values (meaning acting justly and kindly towards everyone, even the poor, rather than bullying gays and the unwantedly pregnant), from the history of Conservativism, rather than harking back to the golden age of rottern boroughs and workhouses?
No it is still now, as the Conservative Party is still the heir to the Tory Party. Of course if you knew your history you would have understood that it was the Tory Disraeli who passed patrician acts like the 10 hour workday for women and children opposed by many Liberal factory owners and businessmen. It was also under the Whig government of Earl Grey that legislation was passed that meant relief for the poor could only be provided in the workhouse, not the Tories.
Until all the working classes got the vote and there began the rise of the Labour Party the Tories were often less capitalist and free market than the Liberals and Whigs. The Tories the party of rural areas and landowners, the Whigs and Liberals the party of urban merchants and businessmen
At the same time, the Whigs were the party of religious Nonconformism, opposition to absolute monarchy, and intellectual open-mindedness. The original "Liberal Elite", and probably the only the time the term has actually meant anything.
In the late nineteenth century weren’t the liberals rather outright Republican?
Yes, Charles Dilke was they key figure there. What a different country it would have been if he had become PM, as he so nearly did. A Whig aristocrat turned radical-imperalist-republican. Instead he and his wife basically were some of the key metropolitans in helping set up the Labour Party with the workers. Counter-intuitive as it sounds, his wife, the art historian Emilia, Lady Dilke was one of the first British trade unionists and campaigners for workers' rights, and he was full of legislation to crack down on capitalist abuses too.
These aren't things you'll hear in the Tory narrative of the "liberal elite of Labour abandoning its working class roots".
Paul Brand @PaulBrandITV I know you’ll think I’m getting carried away here, but the queue is genuinely a really lovely thing to stroll alongside. Everyone in great spirits, brilliantly organised and stewarded, moving along like clockwork, with a respectful mood being observed at the end of it.
I was totally expecting that to be a parody. It's for real?
I don’t see the problem, on its own. It’s quite nice and fitting and the soundtrack, especially, is better than their normal techno/Ibiza one.
Well, it wouldn’t be a problem if the BBC (and most other media) mostly reverted to normal service after the first 48hrs after her death. Going big on the funeral is fine with me, too.
It’s the nine days of unnecessary, blanket coverage, inbetween, that pisses me off. Stories about the queens favourite Tupperware, or whatever.
They’ve got it wrong. But the soundtrack isn’t the problem. It’s a target for attack because it’s a proxy.
More film of the omen and portent last night ((C) MoonRabbit).
"Steve Owens, an astronomer and science communicator at the Glasgow Science Centre, said (...) 'The one last night might have been the size of a golf ball or maybe a cricket ball, maybe bigger than that'."
No way was that object as small as a cricket ball.
Like HY and unlike Leon, I am a big traditionalist at heart - so instead of calling it a UFO I am calling it a dragon. They come from out the void and hide underneath the hill because before banks everyone used to bury their wealth and treasure and dragons love treasure.
The only other explanation is the importance of portents - if you are going to tell the bee’s the master is dead (just smacks of politeness to me but different if you truly superstitious) then what about signs in the sky, leaky pens - OMG 🫣
Personally, I am watching for news items about the sea boiling south of the Hebrides and communication slowly being lost with communities along the West Coast of Scotland....
Hope it's not aliens, they might ask to be taken to our leaders and then where would we be?
Apparently one of Mr Musk's comsats. Beginning to wonder how many more fireballs we'll see, given how many comsats of his there are.
I thought the starlink satellites were a lot larger than the estimated size of the object that caused the fireball.
Depends how flimsy the different bits are and how they disintegrate, I expect. Looks off the top of my head as if the sat stayed more or less in one piece with some bits flaring off?
Let us hope they are sufficiently flimsy to burn up before they finish they descent through the atmosphere. Can you imagine the bills Mr Musk (or his insurance) would get if one of those hit something on the ground?
Of course, if it hit Putin's house he would likely get a medal and the rest of us would get WW3
SpaceX/Starlink designed the satellites to completely burn up in the upper atmosphere. This is in excess of the general design criteria for satellites which quite often have bits surviving re-entry.
It’s not about flimsiness - it’s matching components drag profile vs the materials they are made from.
If you Google you will see quite a lot is stuff makes it to the ground from satellites each year.
I know a lot of stuff makes it down. It is a reason no one visits Point Nemo by boat or plane. The ocean bottom down there must look like the "after" of a Star Wars battle
I think the reason is more, you need a range of 3,360 miles to get there and back again, and there's nothing to see when you get there anyway.
My prediction is that Truss will turn out to be a lot better than many of us gave her credit for. Boris Johnson is a busted flush. He is yesterday's Clown; someone who achieved a great election victory against a ridiculously weedy opponent and managed very little else of note. His deranged supporters might want him back, but they will hopefully diminish in time, and before long it will be difficult to find anyone to admit they supported him.
I do wonder whether even he has fallen out of love with "Boris" as he always affectionately referred to him.
His posts do not indicate it so far, and I would be delighted if he would join those of us who want Truss to succeed and publicly accept Johnson is toxic and has damaged the party considerably
I support her as leader but she is still 10% behind on the latest poll and this end bankers' bonuses cap now was her decision not Boris'. She and Kwarteng own it
You demonstrate my point perfectly and until you condemn Johnson then you are part of his toxic legacy
I won't condemn the party's most successful leader since Thatcher
Leaving aside the question as to whether he was more successful than either Cameron or Major, looking at the rest of them that isn't exactly a high bar, is it?
Interesting that @HYUFD describes Johnson as "the party's most successful leader since Thatcher". This is a totally ridiculous proposition. He bases "most successful" solely on his election victory over Jeremy fecking Corbyn.
Johnson was responsible for one of the biggest fissures in the Tory Party since the Corn Laws. He became an international laughing stock. He thoroughly trashed the Conservative Party's reputation for sensible governance and found himself heaved out of No10 after only 3 years for dishonesty. Other than TMay you have to go back to 1827 to find a PM with a shorter tenure. He was hopeless. A bad joke. A man totally unfit for office. He was not successful, except in his ability to trounce the most ludicrous LoTO ever to have held that role, and to gull those foolish enough like @HYUFD into thinking he was appropriate to be Party leader and PM.
He also delivered Brexit and the vaccines on his watch and of course Theresa was sadly unable to defeat Corbyn.
Once we have gone through the Tory leaderships of Truss, Badenoch, Braverman and Rees Mogg even you might miss Boris!
Mr Johnson is a medical immunologist?
This is a bit divisive. Did Churchill win the second world war (from a British perspective - I know USSR/USA etc)? Yes. Did he fight in Normandy, the Ardennes, Crossing of the Rhine, in a Lancaster over Berlin? No (although he tried to get to Normandy...)
Did Johnson head into the lab, roll up his sleeves and say 'right, we've got the spike sequence, its time to see if mRNA vaccines work...'? Of course not. Did he appoint the right people, let them spend what was needed and keep out of the way? Yes he did.
It is fair to give him credit for things done well just as it is fair to blame for the things that went wrong. Don't let hatred or disdain for Johnson cloud that. There is enough to mock already.
In his leaving speech he claimed he achieved one of his big promises, and fixed social care.
Are we okay to work on the basis that he didn’t and ask, will we ever have a government that will actually fix social care?
The last person going into an election promising to fix social care and with a tax raising plan to do it, was widely perceived to have lost (albeit they formed a government). Its really hard to do. Ultimately I think we don't do well in the country as don't expect to look after our own family when they get old - we regard that as the job of the state. We also don't want to pay the state to do it. Then there is the bizarre fixation about passing on wealth to your children. If I don't inherit a penny from my folks it won't matter - if they need the money to be comfortable as they age then so be it. Its not MY money - it's theirs. Yet some like @HYUFD are obsessed with the idea that inheritance is sacrosanct.
For Tories it is, a core Tory value is maintaining estates and inherited wealth within the family and has been since the 18th century when the party was the party of the landowning interest and the Whigs the party of the merchant class
That was then, this is now. Perhaps try to extract a core philosophy, perhaps (going right out on a limb here) an unselfish one, maybe even one within hailing distance of Christian values (meaning acting justly and kindly towards everyone, even the poor, rather than bullying gays and the unwantedly pregnant), from the history of Conservativism, rather than harking back to the golden age of rottern boroughs and workhouses?
No it is still now, as the Conservative Party is still the heir to the Tory Party. Of course if you knew your history you would have understood that it was the Tory Disraeli who passed patrician acts like the 10 hour workday for women and children opposed by many Liberal factory owners and businessmen. It was also under the Whig government of Earl Grey that legislation was passed that meant relief for the poor could only be provided in the workhouse, not the Tories.
Until all the working classes got the vote and there began the rise of the Labour Party the Tories were often less capitalist and free market than the Liberals and Whigs. The Tories the party of rural areas and landowners, the Whigs and Liberals the party of urban merchants and businessmen
You sure? In Scotland the Liberals were the party of the rural areas who hated the landowners' guts (and still were until they went all milquetoast Tory-lite in recent years). The Liberals often voted (literally, when it came to choosing their own ministers) for the Free Church, the Tories went to the Church of Scotland which they then dominated and in which they chose the ministers for the parishes, or SEC if available locally.
Even in Scotland the Tories tended to do best in the rural areas while the Liberals won the urban central belt as this map from the 1874 election shows
Comments
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/what-the-live-streamed-lying-in-state-says-to-us
I don't think they could or should have done it any other way. Perhaps have queue centres in the major cities and then allocate timings based upon that but with a few days to prepare plus no-shows plus people losing their wristbands, surely the easiest way is to get yourself down to London and get in the queue.
No point having the wristband distribution point at Wapping or Wandsworth because that just adds complexity.
Meanwhile this morning’s adverts are to vote for a primary candidate, and for HIV medication. The big news story is Texas and Florida bussing incoming migrants up to states in the north east and dumping them there. The latest batch flown up to exclusive Martha’s Vineyard yesterday by the Florida Governor, and left at the side of the road.
I don't really think she would have wanted any of those things.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-62902950
The only difference a cigarette paper can be put in I can see at this point is some pre-planned healthcare, so that it presumably what the shouting will be about.
That's exactly what should be meant by countercyclical spending.
What tax giveaways are happening to "the rich" and how do you define "the rich"? Are taxes on housing being cut, as opposed to taxes on earnings?
You will be back posting for the National Hunt season Malcolm?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Achievement_(heraldry)
And then discovered that the most impressive views are from the outside.
The lads selling umbrellas and waterproofs were having a good day.
https://twitter.com/AAlexanderRose/status/1570153886886903808?s=20&t=qPNXdphzmgvT6BnZBNBMmQ
https://twitter.com/robertrea/status/1570310245465083906?s=20&t=qPNXdphzmgvT6BnZBNBMmQ
Funnily enough, they all say its ghastly yet memorable yet gruelling, and they all conclude it is worth it
As I said, it is becoming a thing in itself. The Queue
Quite surprising Leon had the stomach to read it all, let alone link to it.
Bit shit though to find cosplay 19thc Sabbatarianism at Center Parcs. One hopes the wi-fi is working. Makes a change from reading improving stories for children and Chambers's Family Journal.
I stopped reading at "the British get this right". That is so fawning and parochial.
Please, no-one tell the king about how the same pattern appears at Gobleki Tepe, in Australian aboriginal body-painting, and in the Cosmati pavement in the Abbey.
Re. the latter, I was quite perturbed by Donald Trump's interest in that.
I thought we were supposed to be at the highest tax take since the 1960s, as we are currently constantly being told. What happened?
FWIW iirc the numbers normally used put us as about 36% now.
The OECD has 2020 as 32.8%
https://www.oecd.org/tax/revenue-statistics-united-kingdom.pdf
The IFS has it at 33% for 2019, and 36% now.:
https://ifs.org.uk/taxlab/taxlab-key-questions/how-do-uk-tax-revenues-compare-internationally
Of course, if it hit Putin's house he would likely get a medal and the rest of us would get WW3
* We have one of the biggest and best pharmaceutical sectors in the known universe, and that has nothing to do with Johnson. FACT
* When I last looked Boris Johnson has no scientific credential FACT
* If the decision relating to the procurement was his (which I doubt he took on his own) it was a good call. VERY LIKELY
* The rest of the whole pandemic was a mixture of bad and very very bad. SUBJECTIVE
* On top of that we have a man that presided over a culture of partying at No10 while knowing other people were making great sacrifices FACT
* He is without doubt the worst PM in recent history, if not the whole of history. SUBJECTIVE (but pretty accurate)
* There are no circumstances where I will miss having such a lying cretinous clown as our PM ABSOLUTE FACT
* It is a shame that you are an apologist for him, as it demonstrates that you, by association, must be as dishonest as he SUBJECTIVE
MG: other ppl have different understanding of SE and lesbian? U saw PR and his understanding
KH: u mean a lesbian can be a man with a penis?
https://twitter.com/soniasodha/status/1570403277501505538
Of all Scott's victims I hate him for A C-G more than anyone else, even Oates and the ponies. Put in a position by Scott's incompetence where he blamed himself for the rest of his life for not having gone on from One Ton Camp to rescue the posturing old fraud, and could only function with heroic bursts of ECT.
It goes down from the mid 70s-79. Stabilises through the early and mid 80s, drops off dramatically in the 2-3 years prior to the 90s recession, then jumps up dramatically; It stabilises after 1997, and drops again, until it rockets up to a new baseline in 2008-2012, where it stays virtually unchanged until the new-new baseline in 2021.
Basically, the colour of the government doesn't seem to have much effect, and the arguments everyone has are based on picking arbitrary start and end points and discussing a few percentage points either way; the big changes massively outweigh any of the minutiae.
It’s not about flimsiness - it’s matching components drag profile vs the materials they are made from.
If you Google you will see quite a lot is stuff makes it to the ground from satellites each year.
I wouldn't want either of you bug-eyed loons on my side in a conflict - you can't consider possible consequences.
Interestingly (and scarily) the understanding that right-wingers here are showing of the different roads along which this war might develop has plummeted since February.
But that's enough counter-insults from me. This is a site where people discuss probabilities of eventualities, yes?
Here's a question then.
What's the probability of nuclear war breaking out between Russia and the West before say the end of next year?
From the top of my head (because who really knows?): 30% and rising.
Target has been eliminated.
They also scuttled the flagship of the Black Sea Fleet, to save the Russians the trouble of having to do it themselves.
But I was under the impression that most of the Black Sea Fleet had run away to Novorossiysk.
But when I went last week to look at tax take vs GDP for the UK and the EU countries, the huge variance between numbers on supposedly official websites of reputable organisations was so vast that it made the whole exercise pointless. What is the point in arguing about a difference of 2% between tax take/GDP in the UK and France when the World Bank quotes a set of figures that are 10 points different from the ONS?
SO maybe those with real economic insight on here could let me know whose figures we are supposed to use for these things because the variations are so large, they make all discussion of comparative rates pointless.
A internal McMullin campaign poll memo from Impact Research shared exclusively with [the Washington Post] reports, “Among likely voters in Utah, McMullin receives 47% of the vote while Lee gets 46%, and just 7% of the vote remains undecided.” Moreover, the McMullin pollsters found that “Lee’s job rating has dropped a net 11 points since June and it is now underwater by a 3-point margin (47% positive / 50% negative).” When accounting for other minor candidates in the race, McMullin winds up with 44 percent and Lee with 45 percent.
https://www.space.com/32381-ewok-extinction-star-wars-death-star.html
https://www.nhm.ac.uk/galleries/galleries-home/treasures/specimens/penguin-egg/index.html
https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2012/jan/14/penguin-eggs-worst-journey-world
https://zoologyweblog.blogspot.com/2015/01/penguins-eggs-and-scott-expedition.html
Due to open in 1-2 years - allegedly.
Since Sevastopol is part of Ukraine occupied by Russian forces, the concept of 'forcing Russia to cede Sevastopol', with the undertones of 'legally surrender', is an interesting one.
The attorney general, Letitia James, is also considering suing at least one of Mr. Trump’s adult children, the people said. Ivanka, Eric and Donald Trump Jr., have all been senior executives at Mr. Trump’s company, the Trump Organization.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/15/nyregion/letitia-james-trump-settlement.html
The Russians so want us to believe this but the domestic situation in Russia is now beginning to change very rapidly. The news of the disaster of the past few days has broken across the country and there is now an increasing questioning of the official Putin narrative. The West will not intervene directly, and it will not have to, as long as Ukraine can hold its own.
The collapse of CSTO, the pressure on Armenia are all signs that the Russo-North Korean led torturers alliance is in bits. Still further Russian defeats in Ukraine are coming and after that the Rusky Mir won´t even include Rossiya.
Looking at it from window of your troll house, even you must see that the Putinist cause is lost? There is no 7th cavalry, or even 91st guards than can save the "Special operation" now. If Putin mobilized tomorrow he´d still be defeated, it would take minimum 3-6 months to even get Russian basic training done, and that´s to a Russian standard. Iranian drones or North Korean shells are no match for the modern equipment that the UAF now has and which it is getting much much more of.
Meanwhile the Ukrainians are moving from weak post Soviet to NATO standard tactics, training and equipment.
Young people in Russia increasingly know that the war is lost. When that reality can no longer be avoided, Putin will be either on his way to the Hague, the Gulf or the grave.
The diversity is striking. Old young, fat thin, White Black Asian Muslim Chinese African Indian Korean whatever, disabled people uniformed people, shoppers and nuns, joggers, students and businessmen in suits. Clearly plenty of Londoners
Remarkable
https://www.bbc.com/news/live/uk-62902778
Source: International Monetary Fund, Government Finance Statistics Yearbook and data files, and World Bank and OECD GDP estimates.
Now I'm even more bemused.
Anyway, neither of us is likely to convince the other, so let's see how robust the 'low-tax' economy under Truss looks by the time of the next GE!
https://nitter.net/chrisckmedia/status/1570359005561913346#m
"Fin. It was very quiet and beautiful and humbling. I think worth it. #TheQueue"
So from the off it was pretty diverse.
Probably more diverse than tomorrow which will be my first day out at 0630hrs god help me.
Until all the working classes got the vote and there began the rise of the Labour Party the Tories were often less capitalist and free market than the Liberals and Whigs. The Tories the party of rural areas and landowners, the Whigs and Liberals the party of urban merchants and businessmen
The Guardian and assorted sneering types said Meh, no one will show up, just a few mad old white ladies from Newent, it’s a farce
In the end 200,000 of all types of Brits queued to see her, and half a million stood on the streets to watch her funeral
The British monarchy has very deep roots and extraordinary emotional power. Which is why it isn’t going anywhere
Leaned out of the queue? Back of the line.
Made eye contact with someone else in the queue? Back of the line.
So when the bust came, we were looking at a big hole in the public finances.
Simply spending at the same pace would have had the government rate at which they can borrow zoom out of sight, since it would have had to have been financed by borrowing ion epic scale.
Ended his war as a POW in Colditz.
For those Russian thugs who may be watching I can recommend the Estonian form of patriotism: singing
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wM4-28tfNaY&ab_channel=Ringtee
BTW the choir are the 30,000 in front of the 120,000 spectators.
SO much better than waving your shriveled little ICBM in the air.
Makes a nice change.
These aren't things you'll hear in the Tory narrative of the "liberal elite of Labour abandoning its working class roots".
Paul Brand
@PaulBrandITV
I know you’ll think I’m getting carried away here, but the queue is genuinely a really lovely thing to stroll alongside. Everyone in great spirits, brilliantly organised and stewarded, moving along like clockwork, with a respectful mood being observed at the end of it.
He did seem to have an awful lot of them. Apart from me it was mainly tourists buying them.
Well, it wouldn’t be a problem if the BBC (and most other media) mostly reverted to normal service after the first 48hrs after her death. Going big on the funeral is fine with me, too.
It’s the nine days of unnecessary, blanket coverage, inbetween, that pisses me off. Stories about the queens favourite Tupperware, or whatever.
They’ve got it wrong. But the soundtrack isn’t the problem. It’s a target for attack because it’s a proxy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1874_United_Kingdom_general_election#/media/File:United_Kingdom_general_election_1874.svg