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.
Ended his war as a POW in Colditz.
Not wishing to sound vulgar but I assume they are worth an absolute fortune? Is there a story behind your ownership?
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.
Ended his war as a POW in Colditz.
Not wishing to sound vulgar but I assume they are worth an absolute fortune? Is there a story behind your ownership?
He's got the dress medals - the little miniatures you wear for wearing for mess dinners. They're esy to get - when my dad died, I got his 'original' ones, and he gave a copy set to each of my brothers. Upham's signature may add value, but the medals themselves not much.
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.
Ended his war as a POW in Colditz.
Not wishing to sound vulgar but I assume they are worth an absolute fortune? Is there a story behind your ownership?
I collect dress medals. Or at least, I used to, 15-20 years ago when you could acquire them on e-bay for very modest sums. The Upham VC and Bar collection were offered to me as a private sale.
I also have the dress medals for "Blinker" Hall, head of naval intelligence, who brought the USA into WW1. Even more remarkably, he went on to become a Conservative MP.
In Liverpool.
Here they are. The Japanese award was a bit of an embarrassment come WW2....
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.
Ended his war as a POW in Colditz.
Not wishing to sound vulgar but I assume they are worth an absolute fortune? Is there a story behind your ownership?
I collect dress medals. Or at least, I used to, 15-20 years ago when you could acquire them on e-bay for very modest sums. The Upham VC and Bar collection were offered to me as a private sale.
I also have the dress medals for "Blinker" Hall, head of naval intelligence, who brought the USA into WW1. Even more remarkably, he went on to become a Conservative MP.
In Liverpool.
Here they are. The Japanese award was a bit of an embarrassment come WW2....
Thank you. Not being an expert on such things I didn't know there was such a thing as a dress medal. Very interesting.
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.
Ended his war as a POW in Colditz.
Not wishing to sound vulgar but I assume they are worth an absolute fortune? Is there a story behind your ownership?
He's got the dress medals - the little miniatures you wear for wearing for mess dinners. They're esy to get - when my dad died, I got his 'original' ones, and he gave a copy set to each of my brothers. Upham's signature may add value, but the medals themselves not much.
Indeed, the full size medals would worth a fortune. Basic VC is now, what £250,000 - or whatever Lord Ashcroft has to pay to acquire them. A VC and Bar? There were only three ever - and unlikely to be a fourth. All three are in museums, so moot as to what they would worth, but a seven figure sum at least. Upham was the only VC and Bar in WW2.
I offered the dress medals and ribbons to the museum in NZ when the full size ones were stolen, but they were recovered quite quickly so not needed.
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.
“ It’s the nine days of unnecessary, blanket coverage, inbetween, that pisses me off.”
I’m totally addicted to this TV coverage.
I keep telling myself if I don’t join the queue I will regret it for the rest of my life, but I’m hooked on the news coverage and scared I might miss something. I’d also rather see the queen alive, seeing her dead might be a bit sad.
I’m definitely going Monday because I can record it on all channels and watch them later.
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.
Ended his war as a POW in Colditz.
Not wishing to sound vulgar but I assume they are worth an absolute fortune? Is there a story behind your ownership?
Ditto - is there a story here?
I though the Charles Upham VC and Bar were owned by the Imperial War Museum, and had been on loan to a museum in NZ, but have been stolen and recovered. So I have no idea where they are now !
Perhaps "Dress Medals" are something that I do not know enough about?
I was totally expecting that to be a parody. It's for real?
A quick scrub through the News24 stream tells me at least the first half is.
Yep, person posting it looks entirely legit on closer inspection too.
I don't even mind it, particularly*, just unexpected. Hence me thinking initially that it must be some kind of spoof.
*as long as they revert after the funeral, which I assume will be the case
I expect they'll be a point next week (Wednesday perhaps?) where the continuous coverage starts to be described as Anti-Charles and TPTB will want the narrative moved on.
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.
“ It’s the nine days of unnecessary, blanket coverage, inbetween, that pisses me off.”
I’m totally addicted to this TV coverage.
I keep telling myself if I don’t join the queue I will regret it for the rest of my life, but I’m hooked on the news coverage and scared I might miss something. I’d also rather see the queen alive, seeing her dead might be a bit sad.
I’m definitely going Monday because I can record it on all channels and watch them later.
I think it depends what place HMQ / the funeral has in your own life, and what rituals you choose to follow.
I went to watch Diana's funeral cortege with members of her personal staff, and for them it was about a goodbye, and marking an endpoint of what time in their lives, and also about supporting in some way her immediate family. A punctuation mark in life before a new start.
Personally, I won't be going to the funeral itself or the lying in state, or following the story in especial detail, as the amount of complication seems too much for me this time. I'll do something to mark the moment and the transition, though.
For me with family one of the important rituals around a death is going to view the body, to fix in my mind that the person is now gone. I'm surprised how many people do not do that. It's also a deliberate decision I made years ago to avoid buying into the pretence quite prevalent in our society that a death does not matter, and should be minimised or ignored.
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.
It's slightly more complicated than that.
The UK Government announced the end of MIRAS - Mortgage Interest Tax Relief. But it was grandfathered in for people whose mortgages predated the legislation change.
This meant that there was a massive rush to buy properties before this massive tax break disappeared. Which - in turn - led to a big pricing downturn on the back of this. (Which, in turn, led to a recession as suddenly people felt very poor.)
I was totally expecting that to be a parody. It's for real?
This is more evidence The BBC are covering this better because the Tory’s are in charge at the BBC than if Labour were in power.
The Labour Leader at the last election wanted to abolish the monarchy and have the Queen running a hotdog stand in Trafalgar square.
What with The Queue and The Funeral, over the next week they’ll be good money to be earned with a hot dog cart.
Someone is probably doing a hot trade (so to speak) in dodgy Royal Warrant decals for those carts.
I was thinking a windfall tax on florists may be worth considering. Those limos are not VIPs en route to the funeral, they're flower-sellers on their way home.
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.
The behaviour of Texas and Florida is - of course - essentially identical to the behaviour of the French.
I was totally expecting that to be a parody. It's for real?
This is more evidence The BBC are covering this better because the Tory’s are in charge at the BBC than if Labour were in power.
The Labour Leader at the last election wanted to abolish the monarchy and have the Queen running a hotdog stand in Trafalgar square.
What with The Queue and The Funeral, over the next week they’ll be good money to be earned with a hot dog cart.
Someone is probably doing a hot trade (so to speak) in dodgy Royal Warrant decals for those carts.
I was thinking a windfall tax on florists may be worth considering. Those limos are not VIPs en route to the funeral, they're flower-sellers on their way home.
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
I was totally expecting that to be a parody. It's for real?
This is more evidence The BBC are covering this better because the Tory’s are in charge at the BBC than if Labour were in power.
The Labour Leader at the last election wanted to abolish the monarchy and have the Queen running a hotdog stand in Trafalgar square.
What with The Queue and The Funeral, over the next week they’ll be good money to be earned with a hot dog cart.
Someone is probably doing a hot trade (so to speak) in dodgy Royal Warrant decals for those carts.
I was thinking a windfall tax on florists may be worth considering. Those limos are not VIPs en route to the funeral, they're flower-sellers on their way home.
If there has been any rain at all then the heaps'll be pretty horrendous by the 20th, helped along by the marmalade sandwiches etc. Cue disposal by chaps in MOPP suits for the mould spores. Hope it stays dry.
CR had the right idea - makign a donation to charity.
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.
What are the chances of Russian nuclear weapons working as planned?
Very low.
Nuclear weapons require a lot of maintenance. Plutonium and highly enriched Uranium is, by its very nature, throwing off a ton of radiation as it decays. (If it wasn't unstable like this, it'd be a bloody awful weapon.)
Just as in nuclear power plants, this absolutely hammers the kit used to hold it. And do you really want a brittle enclosure for your nuclear warhead?
And then there's the fuel. It also tends to be very unstable and to degrade over time.
Basically, nuclear weapons are incredibly maintenance heavy.
If there's one thing we've learned from the Russian invasion of Ukraine, it's the extent to which corruption has permeated the Russian army. Those stalled columns of lorries were the direct result of not doing simple maintenance.
And if you can't do simple, low cost maintenance, what chance that expensive maintenance has been done?
I would be staggered if more than 10% of Russian nuclear weapons work as planned. I think it is highly likely they would do more damage to Russia than to the West.
Putin's Generals probably know this. Their yachts came from skimping on maintenance.
So, my money is on no nuclear war. And if it did occur: well, so be it. One cannot simple accede to a bully's demands to avoid Armageddon, because that way leads to demands-upon-demands-upon-demands.
Fracking, windfall tax, bankers bonus. Truss is racking up quite the scorecard. I'm starting to almost admire her complete detachment from normal political perception. https://twitter.com/YouGov/status/1570430058292211718
Fracking, windfall tax, bankers bonus. Truss is racking up quite the scorecard. I'm starting to almost admire her complete detachment from normal political perception. https://twitter.com/YouGov/status/1570430058292211718
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
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
But isn't that because the poor in the coutnryside in particular couldn't vote anyway?
Or didn't dare vote against the landlord!
Secret ballot, by then, I think, but activism would not go down well. It was a problem, earlier, though, also in the Disruption where the lairds often tried to target Free Church members (who often ended up as Liberals).
New: Parliament will sit again from next Thursday and recess will be cut nearly a week short - returning on 11 October, not 17 October as currently agreed.
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.
It's slightly more complicated than that.
The UK Government announced the end of MIRAS - Mortgage Interest Tax Relief. But it was grandfathered in for people whose mortgages predated the legislation change.
This meant that there was a massive rush to buy properties before this massive tax break disappeared. Which - in turn - led to a big pricing downturn on the back of this. (Which, in turn, led to a recession as suddenly people felt very poor.)
It wasn't abolition. It was abolished in 2000 by Gordon Brown (for presumably, new mortgages after that date).
1989 was the abolition of DOUBLE tax relief for non-married couples who pooled their allowances. Not available to married couples iirc. Not sure about eg friends jointly buying.
I knew people for whom it was worth up to 10% of salary. Not bad if you get that for the next 25 years. The only other thing worth as much was the subsidised mortgage rates for working for a bank.
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.
It's slightly more complicated than that.
The UK Government announced the end of MIRAS - Mortgage Interest Tax Relief. But it was grandfathered in for people whose mortgages predated the legislation change.
This meant that there was a massive rush to buy properties before this massive tax break disappeared. Which - in turn - led to a big pricing downturn on the back of this. (Which, in turn, led to a recession as suddenly people felt very poor.)
It wasn't abolition. It was abolished in 2000 by Gordon Brown (for presumably, new mortgages after that date).
1989 was the abolition of DOUBLE tax relief for non-married couples who pooled their allowances. Not available to married couples. Not sure about eg friends jointly buying.
I knew people for whom it was worth up to 10% of salary. Not bad if you get that for the next 25 years. The only other thing worth as much was the subsidised mortgage rate for working for a bank.
My memory is that MIRAS went poof for existing mortgages in 2000 as well - we had one at the time.
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.
What are the chances of Russian nuclear weapons working as planned?
Very low.
Nuclear weapons require a lot of maintenance. Plutonium and highly enriched Uranium is, by its very nature, throwing off a ton of radiation as it decays. (If it wasn't unstable like this, it'd be a bloody awful weapon.)
Just as in nuclear power plants, this absolutely hammers the kit used to hold it. And do you really want a brittle enclosure for your nuclear warhead?
And then there's the fuel. It also tends to be very unstable and to degrade over time.
Basically, nuclear weapons are incredibly maintenance heavy.
If there's one thing we've learned from the Russian invasion of Ukraine, it's the extent to which corruption has permeated the Russian army. Those stalled columns of lorries were the direct result of not doing simple maintenance.
And if you can't do simple, low cost maintenance, what chance that expensive maintenance has been done?
I would be staggered if more than 10% of Russian nuclear weapons work as planned. I think it is highly likely they would do more damage to Russia than to the West.
Putin's Generals probably know this. Their yachts came from skimping on maintenance.
So, my money is on no nuclear war. And if it did occur: well, so be it. One cannot simple accede to a bully's demands to avoid Armageddon, because that way leads to demands-upon-demands-upon-demands.
Not quite.
Enriched Uranium is a very low emitter if radiation. Plutonium is a bit higher - depends on the grade (amount of 240 mixed in with the 239). Some super grade stuff was made for nuclear torpedos, since in some subs crew slept next to the torpedoes.
The early bombs had trouble with rapidly expiring components - mostly imitators and batteries. Aging explosives were an issue.
In post 60s designs, the big issue is the Tritium. Universally the designs are boosted - a little bit of fusion from the Tritium turbo charges the fission reaction which in turn kicks of the main event (the secondary), itself containing tritium to get tings going.
The problem is that Tritium decays to Helium 3. Which is a reaction poison - it is worse than useless. And Tritium is fairly radioactive and decays quickly.
The capsule of Tritium gas in the warheads will need changing every 18 months or so - exact number depends on the design. 5 grams or so of Tritium per bomb. And Tritium is $30,000 odd per gram.
So you need frequent changes of something that is highly valuable on open market.
Local by-elections today. Unlike a general election, by-elections are not paused due to mourning.
Rumworth, Bolton Council - L defending: C, L, LD, G, Reform UK/Bolton for Change Oak Tree, Mansfield Council - Mansfield Independent defending: C, L, Mansfield Independent, Freedom Alliance, TUSC Bolney, Mid Sussex Council - C defending:C, L, LD, G, I, Loony Bishopsgate, City of London Alderman - I defending: I, I Cripplegate, City of London Alderman - I defending: I, I Cordwainer, City of London Common Council - I defending: I, I, I
Andrew Teale's guide to the by-elections has the usual information about each ward.
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.
“ It’s the nine days of unnecessary, blanket coverage, inbetween, that pisses me off.”
I’m totally addicted to this TV coverage.
I keep telling myself if I don’t join the queue I will regret it for the rest of my life, but I’m hooked on the news coverage and scared I might miss something. I’d also rather see the queen alive, seeing her dead might be a bit sad.
I’m definitely going Monday because I can record it on all channels and watch them later.
I think it depends what place HMQ / the funeral has in your own life, and what rituals you choose to follow.
I went to watch Diana's funeral cortege with members of her personal staff, and for them it was about a goodbye, and marking an endpoint of what time in their lives, and also about supporting in some way her immediate family. A punctuation mark in life before a new start.
Personally, I won't be going to the funeral itself or the lying in state, or following the story in especial detail, as the amount of complication seems too much for me this time. I'll do something to mark the moment and the transition, though.
For me with family one of the important rituals around a death is going to view the body, to fix in my mind that the person is now gone. I'm surprised how many people do not do that. It's also a deliberate decision I made years ago to avoid buying into the pretence quite prevalent in our society that a death does not matter, and should be minimised or ignored.
Maybe it’s because I’m younger I feel differently about seeing dead body. Do I need to see them actually dead for my brain to compute they are gone? Seeing someone dead to jog your brain into realises goneness is different than a funeral, a funeral is thanks giving for a life.
I’m still in two minds. My first feeling was to join the queue, but then I started to ask myself what will I get from it? Are people jumping in the queue for queen or country - see dead person or see pageantry? And then if Royalty are doing a vigil of princes at coffin I couldn’t decide how I should dress or do my hair for it, the same as for a funeral or not? What does it say in debrettes about dressing to visit someone lying in state?
To go back to Ping’s point, how people don’t realise the market for this coverage not just how right and proper it is. there is an absolute massive demand for this, when newspapers do special royal supplements and editions they double sales, you see they will have sold loads more newspapers everyday this week. Would not be surprised the tv viewing figures much bigger than normal these “9 days”
My mum and Dad and brother addicted to this blanket coverage too.
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.
“ It’s the nine days of unnecessary, blanket coverage, inbetween, that pisses me off.”
I’m totally addicted to this TV coverage.
I keep telling myself if I don’t join the queue I will regret it for the rest of my life, but I’m hooked on the news coverage and scared I might miss something. I’d also rather see the queen alive, seeing her dead might be a bit sad.
I’m definitely going Monday because I can record it on all channels and watch them later.
I've been irritated, as always, by the TV coverage. Too much Huw Edwards and Nicholas Witchell saying nothing in breathy tones. I care for neither pomp nor circumstance. Just as I am an atheist whose taste in churches is Highland Presbyterian rather than Mediterranean Catholic, I am a republican whose taste in monarchy is Scandinavian.
But I love The Queue. Hours on end of patient British queuing, followed by a brief, final interaction with The Queen, in a room which - well, it's not a church hall - but it's calm, austere, and, in the circumstance, not massively showy. A bow, a nod, a cry, a silent thought. My favourite was the man - mid 40s, dressed in a suit: looked like someone I might encounter at work - who turned to face the coffin, and silently mouthed 'Thank You'. This is people interacting with their monarch at its best. It delights me. I love that it isn't a massive outpouring of emotion (which is what the death of Diana felt like) - it is measured, calm, internal. I think if I had the space in my life to do so I would join them.
I wonder what the Queen would have thought about it?
Fracking, windfall tax, bankers bonus. Truss is racking up quite the scorecard. I'm starting to almost admire her complete detachment from normal political perception. https://twitter.com/YouGov/status/1570430058292211718
..or reality.
Reality isn't so important, if you can talk a good game.
But the politics looks horrible- a chunky majority of Conservative voters and Leave voters don't like the smell of this idea. The fun thing (in the Wednesday Addams sense of the word) about the Truss cabinet is that it's pretty much down to the economically dry, socially unwoke types. The sort who would really be happier in Texas. Or Spain as one of Franco's Opus Dei Technocrats. Almost everyone else has gone. And whilst their worldview is coherent, it's not one I can imagine many people voting for.
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
But isn't that because the poor in the coutnryside in particular couldn't vote anyway?
If they had they would have voted Labour not Liberal, we are talking 19th century not 20th century politics (though even now the Tories still do best in rural areas of Scotland)
Fracking, windfall tax, bankers bonus. Truss is racking up quite the scorecard. I'm starting to almost admire her complete detachment from normal political perception. https://twitter.com/YouGov/status/1570430058292211718
..or reality.
Reality isn't so important, if you can talk a good game.
But the politics looks horrible- a chunky majority of Conservative voters and Leave voters don't like the smell of this idea. The fun thing (in the Wednesday Addams sense of the word) about the Truss cabinet is that it's pretty much down to the economically dry, socially unwoke types. The sort who would really be happier in Texas. Or Spain as one of Franco's Opus Dei Technocrats. Almost everyone else has gone. And whilst their worldview is coherent, it's not one I can imagine many people voting for.
But who is left in the Cabinet to point this out?
On the plus side not cowering and yielding to the will and concepts acceptable to every focus group.
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
But isn't that because the poor in the coutnryside in particular couldn't vote anyway?
If they had they would have voted Labour not Liberal, we are talking 19th century not 20th century politics (though even now the Tories still do best in rural areas of Scotland)
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.
What are the chances of Russian nuclear weapons working as planned?
Very low.
Nuclear weapons require a lot of maintenance. Plutonium and highly enriched Uranium is, by its very nature, throwing off a ton of radiation as it decays. (If it wasn't unstable like this, it'd be a bloody awful weapon.)
Just as in nuclear power plants, this absolutely hammers the kit used to hold it. And do you really want a brittle enclosure for your nuclear warhead?
And then there's the fuel. It also tends to be very unstable and to degrade over time.
Basically, nuclear weapons are incredibly maintenance heavy.
If there's one thing we've learned from the Russian invasion of Ukraine, it's the extent to which corruption has permeated the Russian army. Those stalled columns of lorries were the direct result of not doing simple maintenance.
And if you can't do simple, low cost maintenance, what chance that expensive maintenance has been done?
I would be staggered if more than 10% of Russian nuclear weapons work as planned. I think it is highly likely they would do more damage to Russia than to the West.
Putin's Generals probably know this. Their yachts came from skimping on maintenance.
So, my money is on no nuclear war. And if it did occur: well, so be it. One cannot simple accede to a bully's demands to avoid Armageddon, because that way leads to demands-upon-demands-upon-demands.
There's also the fact that NATO weaponry has been shown to be far superior to Russian weaponry. If Russia did attempt to fire nukes, while probably less than 10% would be viable to work, not all of that 10% would even make it to the West. A considerable proportion could be intercepted in the air by shield technologies.
I'd be surprised if even 5% of Russia's nukes could actually make it to a target and explode. 5% could still inflict a lot of damage, but it wouldn't be Armageddon for the West - though it would be Armageddon for Russia as the retaliation would be swift and unyielding with weaponry that actually works.
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
But isn't that because the poor in the coutnryside in particular couldn't vote anyway?
If they had they would have voted Labour not Liberal, we are talking 19th century not 20th century politics (though even now the Tories still do best in rural areas of Scotland)
They did vote Liberal in later elections!
Some not all and still not as much as urban Scotland
New centre right coalition based on the Sweden Democrats to take office.
Neat reversal of direction from the SDs on Swexit three years ago. A party with neo-Nazi roots, they now support having a Swedish embassy in Jerusalem and NATO all the wayto ...
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.
“ It’s the nine days of unnecessary, blanket coverage, inbetween, that pisses me off.”
I’m totally addicted to this TV coverage.
I keep telling myself if I don’t join the queue I will regret it for the rest of my life, but I’m hooked on the news coverage and scared I might miss something. I’d also rather see the queen alive, seeing her dead might be a bit sad.
I’m definitely going Monday because I can record it on all channels and watch them later.
I think it depends what place HMQ / the funeral has in your own life, and what rituals you choose to follow.
I went to watch Diana's funeral cortege with members of her personal staff, and for them it was about a goodbye, and marking an endpoint of what time in their lives, and also about supporting in some way her immediate family. A punctuation mark in life before a new start.
Personally, I won't be going to the funeral itself or the lying in state, or following the story in especial detail, as the amount of complication seems too much for me this time. I'll do something to mark the moment and the transition, though.
For me with family one of the important rituals around a death is going to view the body, to fix in my mind that the person is now gone. I'm surprised how many people do not do that. It's also a deliberate decision I made years ago to avoid buying into the pretence quite prevalent in our society that a death does not matter, and should be minimised or ignored.
Maybe it’s because I’m younger I feel differently about seeing dead body. Do I need to see them actually dead for my brain to compute they are gone? Seeing someone dead to jog your brain into realises goneness is different than a funeral, a funeral is thanks giving for a life.
I’m still in two minds. My first feeling was to join the queue, but then I started to ask myself what will I get from it? Are people jumping in the queue for queen or country - see dead person or see pageantry? And then if Royalty are doing a vigil of princes at coffin I couldn’t decide how I should dress or do my hair for it, the same as for a funeral or not? What does it say in debrettes about dressing to visit someone lying in state?
To go back to Ping’s point, how people don’t realise the market for this coverage not just how right and proper it is. there is an absolute massive demand for this, when newspapers do special royal supplements and editions they double sales, you see they will have sold loads more newspapers everyday this week. Would not be surprised the tv viewing figures much bigger than normal these “9 days”
My mum and Dad and brother addicted to this blanket coverage too.
An interesting reply - thanks. Difficult to reply in a comment. Let me try.
It's not really about age - more imo about worldview. It was a practice I adopted in my early 20s after reading a book by an interesting sociologist called Dr Andrew Walker, arguing that modernity had removed richness from life. An interesting man - he was a convert from rationalised Protestantism to more numinous Russian Orthodoxy, which has a far deeper ritual practice.
Around death the case was that people who have died are still part of our lives through being in our memories and in our lives through things we have shared with them, and that modern culture seeks to hide death (and illness) away in hospitals, which are almost a factory setting, to hand it over to professionals, and not to acknowledge the full breadth of the relationship. He viewed the over---transactional nature of modernist culture as dehumanising.
And that it is far healthier to acknowledge that continuing relationship with someone who has died, and deliberately allow it time to steep and turn into a memory, than to package it up and try and bury or burn it with the body at a single stroke. I treat viewing the body as part of the process of allowing my relationship with the deceased to develop from a living relationship into an acknowledged memory over time.
There are parallel things - hospices focused on a 'good death' are part of it, as is a swing towards deliberate acknowledgment of dying / death over the last several decades, as are homespun rituals that many adopt.
To return to @ping 's point, I think that one important function of the current process is to remind ourselves of our largely unwritten constitutional settlement - just as the various parades around Parliament, Black Rod having the doors slammed etc. Naturally some people who would prefer a written constitution etc are protesting.
Fracking, windfall tax, bankers bonus. Truss is racking up quite the scorecard. I'm starting to almost admire her complete detachment from normal political perception. https://twitter.com/YouGov/status/1570430058292211718
..or reality.
Reality isn't so important, if you can talk a good game.
But the politics looks horrible- a chunky majority of Conservative voters and Leave voters don't like the smell of this idea. The fun thing (in the Wednesday Addams sense of the word) about the Truss cabinet is that it's pretty much down to the economically dry, socially unwoke types. The sort who would really be happier in Texas. Or Spain as one of Franco's Opus Dei Technocrats. Almost everyone else has gone. And whilst their worldview is coherent, it's not one I can imagine many people voting for.
But who is left in the Cabinet to point this out?
ISTM that PM Truss is leaving herself horribly dependent on circumstances and economics and Energy Prices and inflation rescuing her, against her creation of as bad a political backdrop as possible.
At last, an explanation of what Alister Jack is for.
Forget the Speculative, the RCA is obviously where it's at for the social climber and power hunter!
The Royal Company of Archers. Marvellous. Makes me feel all of a quiver
Take a bow.
Interestingly, it's claimed to be a private society with membership only by invitation and then election (ie veto). But it has a public function, however vestigial.
At last, an explanation of what Alister Jack is for.
Forget the Speculative, the RCA is obviously where it's at for the social climber and power hunter!
The Royal Company of Archers. Marvellous. Makes me feel all of a quiver
Take a bow.
Interestingly, it's claimed to be a private society with membership only by invitation and then election (ie veto). Butt it has a public function, however vestigial.
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.
What are the chances of Russian nuclear weapons working as planned?
Very low.
Nuclear weapons require a lot of maintenance. Plutonium and highly enriched Uranium is, by its very nature, throwing off a ton of radiation as it decays. (If it wasn't unstable like this, it'd be a bloody awful weapon.)
Just as in nuclear power plants, this absolutely hammers the kit used to hold it. And do you really want a brittle enclosure for your nuclear warhead?
And then there's the fuel. It also tends to be very unstable and to degrade over time.
Basically, nuclear weapons are incredibly maintenance heavy.
If there's one thing we've learned from the Russian invasion of Ukraine, it's the extent to which corruption has permeated the Russian army. Those stalled columns of lorries were the direct result of not doing simple maintenance.
And if you can't do simple, low cost maintenance, what chance that expensive maintenance has been done?
I would be staggered if more than 10% of Russian nuclear weapons work as planned. I think it is highly likely they would do more damage to Russia than to the West.
Putin's Generals probably know this. Their yachts came from skimping on maintenance.
So, my money is on no nuclear war. And if it did occur: well, so be it. One cannot simple accede to a bully's demands to avoid Armageddon, because that way leads to demands-upon-demands-upon-demands.
Russian nuclear power stations seem to work OK.
Why not save lots of lives and tell Russia "Get out of the Donbas, or else we'll nuke Moscow"? Or go a step further and carry out a limited nuclear first strike to convey the same message more forcefully?
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.
“ It’s the nine days of unnecessary, blanket coverage, inbetween, that pisses me off.”
I’m totally addicted to this TV coverage.
I keep telling myself if I don’t join the queue I will regret it for the rest of my life, but I’m hooked on the news coverage and scared I might miss something. I’d also rather see the queen alive, seeing her dead might be a bit sad.
I’m definitely going Monday because I can record it on all channels and watch them later.
I think it depends what place HMQ / the funeral has in your own life, and what rituals you choose to follow.
I went to watch Diana's funeral cortege with members of her personal staff, and for them it was about a goodbye, and marking an endpoint of what time in their lives, and also about supporting in some way her immediate family. A punctuation mark in life before a new start.
Personally, I won't be going to the funeral itself or the lying in state, or following the story in especial detail, as the amount of complication seems too much for me this time. I'll do something to mark the moment and the transition, though.
For me with family one of the important rituals around a death is going to view the body, to fix in my mind that the person is now gone. I'm surprised how many people do not do that. It's also a deliberate decision I made years ago to avoid buying into the pretence quite prevalent in our society that a death does not matter, and should be minimised or ignored.
Maybe it’s because I’m younger I feel differently about seeing dead body. Do I need to see them actually dead for my brain to compute they are gone? Seeing someone dead to jog your brain into realises goneness is different than a funeral, a funeral is thanks giving for a life.
I’m still in two minds. My first feeling was to join the queue, but then I started to ask myself what will I get from it? Are people jumping in the queue for queen or country - see dead person or see pageantry? And then if Royalty are doing a vigil of princes at coffin I couldn’t decide how I should dress or do my hair for it, the same as for a funeral or not? What does it say in debrettes about dressing to visit someone lying in state?
To go back to Ping’s point, how people don’t realise the market for this coverage not just how right and proper it is. there is an absolute massive demand for this, when newspapers do special royal supplements and editions they double sales, you see they will have sold loads more newspapers everyday this week. Would not be surprised the tv viewing figures much bigger than normal these “9 days”
My mum and Dad and brother addicted to this blanket coverage too.
An interesting reply - thanks. Difficult to reply in a comment. Let me try.
It's not really about age - more imo about worldview. It was a practice I adopted in my early 20s after reading a book by an interesting sociologist called Dr Andrew Walker, arguing that modernity had removed richness from life. An interesting man - he was a convert from rationalised Protestantism to more numinous Russian Orthodoxy, which has a far deeper ritual practice.
Around death the case was that people who have died are still part of our lives through being in our memories and in our lives through things we have shared with them, and that modern culture seeks to hide death (and illness) away in hospitals, which are almost a factory setting, to hand it over to professionals, and not to acknowledge the full breadth of the relationship. He viewed the over---transactional nature of modernist culture as dehumanising.
And that it is far healthier to acknowledge that continuing relationship with someone who has died, and deliberately allow it time to steep and turn into a memory, than to package it up and try and bury or burn it with the body at a single stroke. I treat viewing the body as part of the process of allowing my relationship with the deceased to develop from a living relationship into an acknowledged memory over time.
There are parallel things - hospices focused on a 'good death' are part of it, as is a swing towards deliberate acknowledgment of dying / death over the last several decades, as are homespun rituals that many adopt.
To return to @ping 's point, I think that one important function of the current process is to remind ourselves of our largely unwritten constitutional settlement - just as the various parades around Parliament, Black Rod having the doors slammed etc. Naturally some people who would prefer a written constitution etc are protesting.
That is a brilliant reply. In my twenties I am sure now I don’t have a modernity liking world view either. Plenty there for me to think about. It sort of ties in with Pugin’s views about workhouses and modernity being dehuminising.
But ceremonial burning of dead people isn’t a new thing though, it goes back all time and world over doesn’t it? Sometimes it’s a quick turnaround to burning in hot climates like India, or burning because your body won’t decompose in permafrost countries - I don’t want to come over socialology myself but climate must drive a lot of religious practice and belief, as it starts out of what is necessary and sensible and then becomes ritual.
But you are right, the dead are still with us - sometimes my nan is in my dreams and can have a conversation with me about what I am doing and what she missed. In a recent dream I told her I had six wins from sixteen win bets at this years Cheltenham.
It’s easy to imagine the culture toward death being different in the past when there was so much of it, didn’t Mahler lose 13 brothers and sisters and his own young children - than a modern day culture built on “ad land” where only nice things happen not horrible things because we like to believe in our modern day science conquering death and horrible things?
My favourite sky sports news presenter, the beautiful Scottish one, has cancer and I’m really gutted for her. 😢
Comments
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/tennis/62911876
I also have the dress medals for "Blinker" Hall, head of naval intelligence, who brought the USA into WW1. Even more remarkably, he went on to become a Conservative MP.
In Liverpool.
Here they are. The Japanese award was a bit of an embarrassment come WW2....
I don't even mind it, particularly*, just unexpected. Hence me thinking initially that it must be some kind of spoof.
*as long as they revert after the funeral, which I assume will be the case
I offered the dress medals and ribbons to the museum in NZ when the full size ones were stolen, but they were recovered quite quickly so not needed.
I’m totally addicted to this TV coverage.
I keep telling myself if I don’t join the queue I will regret it for the rest of my life, but I’m hooked on the news coverage and scared I might miss something. I’d also rather see the queen alive, seeing her dead might be a bit sad.
I’m definitely going Monday because I can record it on all channels and watch them later.
I though the Charles Upham VC and Bar were owned by the Imperial War Museum, and had been on loan to a museum in NZ, but have been stolen and recovered. So I have no idea where they are now !
Perhaps "Dress Medals" are something that I do not know enough about?
Rather like ...
But Roger was Roger. An artist. Everybody's favourite player to watch.
I went to watch Diana's funeral cortege with members of her personal staff, and for them it was about a goodbye, and marking an endpoint of what time in their lives, and also about supporting in some way her immediate family. A punctuation mark in life before a new start.
Personally, I won't be going to the funeral itself or the lying in state, or following the story in especial detail, as the amount of complication seems too much for me this time. I'll do something to mark the moment and the transition, though.
For me with family one of the important rituals around a death is going to view the body, to fix in my mind that the person is now gone. I'm surprised how many people do not do that. It's also a deliberate decision I made years ago to avoid buying into the pretence quite prevalent in our society that a death does not matter, and should be minimised or ignored.
The UK Government announced the end of MIRAS - Mortgage Interest Tax Relief. But it was grandfathered in for people whose mortgages predated the legislation change.
This meant that there was a massive rush to buy properties before this massive tax break disappeared. Which - in turn - led to a big pricing downturn on the back of this. (Which, in turn, led to a recession as suddenly people felt very poor.)
CR had the right idea - makign a donation to charity.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cJxDwDzAwEs
Very low.
Nuclear weapons require a lot of maintenance. Plutonium and highly enriched Uranium is, by its very nature, throwing off a ton of radiation as it decays. (If it wasn't unstable like this, it'd be a bloody awful weapon.)
Just as in nuclear power plants, this absolutely hammers the kit used to hold it. And do you really want a brittle enclosure for your nuclear warhead?
And then there's the fuel. It also tends to be very unstable and to degrade over time.
Basically, nuclear weapons are incredibly maintenance heavy.
If there's one thing we've learned from the Russian invasion of Ukraine, it's the extent to which corruption has permeated the Russian army. Those stalled columns of lorries were the direct result of not doing simple maintenance.
And if you can't do simple, low cost maintenance, what chance that expensive maintenance has been done?
I would be staggered if more than 10% of Russian nuclear weapons work as planned. I think it is highly likely they would do more damage to Russia than to the West.
Putin's Generals probably know this. Their yachts came from skimping on maintenance.
So, my money is on no nuclear war. And if it did occur: well, so be it. One cannot simple accede to a bully's demands to avoid Armageddon, because that way leads to demands-upon-demands-upon-demands.
https://twitter.com/YouGov/status/1570430058292211718
https://twitter.com/breeallegretti/status/1570425800511422464
1989 was the abolition of DOUBLE tax relief for non-married couples who pooled their allowances. Not available to married couples iirc. Not sure about eg friends jointly buying.
I knew people for whom it was worth up to 10% of salary. Not bad if you get that for the next 25 years. The only other thing worth as much was the subsidised mortgage rates for working for a bank.
Enriched Uranium is a very low emitter if radiation. Plutonium is a bit higher - depends on the grade (amount of 240 mixed in with the 239). Some super grade stuff was made for nuclear torpedos, since in some subs crew slept next to the torpedoes.
The early bombs had trouble with rapidly expiring components - mostly imitators and batteries. Aging explosives were an issue.
In post 60s designs, the big issue is the Tritium. Universally the designs are boosted - a little bit of fusion from the Tritium turbo charges the fission reaction which in turn kicks of the main event (the secondary), itself containing tritium to get tings going.
The problem is that Tritium decays to Helium 3. Which is a reaction poison - it is worse than useless. And Tritium is fairly radioactive and decays quickly.
The capsule of Tritium gas in the warheads will need changing every 18 months or so - exact number depends on the design. 5 grams or so of Tritium per bomb. And Tritium is $30,000 odd per gram.
So you need frequent changes of something that is highly valuable on open market.
What could go wrong in modern Russia?
Rumworth, Bolton Council - L defending: C, L, LD, G, Reform UK/Bolton for Change
Oak Tree, Mansfield Council - Mansfield Independent defending: C, L, Mansfield Independent, Freedom Alliance, TUSC
Bolney, Mid Sussex Council - C defending:C, L, LD, G, I, Loony
Bishopsgate, City of London Alderman - I defending: I, I
Cripplegate, City of London Alderman - I defending: I, I
Cordwainer, City of London Common Council - I defending: I, I, I
Andrew Teale's guide to the by-elections has the usual information about each ward.
https://medium.com/britainelects/previewing-the-elections-of-15th-september-2022-2b35ae4f255b
I’m still in two minds. My first feeling was to join the queue, but then I started to ask myself what will I get from it? Are people jumping in the queue for queen or country - see dead person or see pageantry? And then if Royalty are doing a vigil of princes at coffin I couldn’t decide how I should dress or do my hair for it, the same as for a funeral or not? What does it say in debrettes about dressing to visit someone lying in state?
To go back to Ping’s point, how people don’t realise the market for this coverage not just how right and proper it is. there is an absolute massive demand for this, when newspapers do special royal supplements and editions they double sales, you see they will have sold loads more newspapers everyday this week. Would not be surprised the tv viewing figures much bigger than normal these “9 days”
My mum and Dad and brother addicted to this blanket coverage too.
But I love The Queue. Hours on end of patient British queuing, followed by a brief, final interaction with The Queen, in a room which - well, it's not a church hall - but it's calm, austere, and, in the circumstance, not massively showy. A bow, a nod, a cry, a silent thought. My favourite was the man - mid 40s, dressed in a suit: looked like someone I might encounter at work - who turned to face the coffin, and silently mouthed 'Thank You'.
This is people interacting with their monarch at its best. It delights me. I love that it isn't a massive outpouring of emotion (which is what the death of Diana felt like) - it is measured, calm, internal.
I think if I had the space in my life to do so I would join them.
I wonder what the Queen would have thought about it?
But the politics looks horrible- a chunky majority of Conservative voters and Leave voters don't like the smell of this idea. The fun thing (in the Wednesday Addams sense of the word) about the Truss cabinet is that it's pretty much down to the economically dry, socially unwoke types. The sort who would really be happier in Texas. Or Spain as one of Franco's Opus Dei Technocrats. Almost everyone else has gone. And whilst their worldview is coherent, it's not one I can imagine many people voting for.
But who is left in the Cabinet to point this out?
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/swedish-pm-magdalena-andersson-concedes-defeat-in-watershed-election/ar-AA11Q2UI?ocid=msedgntp&cvid=8cc241f2c9e8487dbeb583561292f935
New centre right coalition based on the Sweden Democrats to take office.
https://mobile.twitter.com/Fusion_Industry/status/1570413985383731200
At the fusion hearing,
@Sen_JoeManchin starts by saying that his trip to @iterorg in March helped restore his faith in mankind. Says he’s a “changed man” after it.
All Britons
Should scrap: 15%
Should not scrap: 67%
Con voters
Should scrap: 20%
Should not scrap: 65%
https://twitter.com/YouGov/status/1570430058292211718?s=20&t=ORZ2SzNedSUAstdxVD_xXw
I'd be surprised if even 5% of Russia's nukes could actually make it to a target and explode. 5% could still inflict a lot of damage, but it wouldn't be Armageddon for the West - though it would be Armageddon for Russia as the retaliation would be swift and unyielding with weaponry that actually works.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1900_United_Kingdom_general_election
It's not really about age - more imo about worldview. It was a practice I adopted in my early 20s after reading a book by an interesting sociologist called Dr Andrew Walker, arguing that modernity had removed richness from life. An interesting man - he was a convert from rationalised Protestantism to more numinous Russian Orthodoxy, which has a far deeper ritual practice.
Around death the case was that people who have died are still part of our lives through being in our memories and in our lives through things we have shared with them, and that modern culture seeks to hide death (and illness) away in hospitals, which are almost a factory setting, to hand it over to professionals, and not to acknowledge the full breadth of the relationship. He viewed the over---transactional nature of modernist culture as dehumanising.
And that it is far healthier to acknowledge that continuing relationship with someone who has died, and deliberately allow it time to steep and turn into a memory, than to package it up and try and bury or burn it with the body at a single stroke. I treat viewing the body as part of the process of allowing my relationship with the deceased to develop from a living relationship into an acknowledged memory over time.
There are parallel things - hospices focused on a 'good death' are part of it, as is a swing towards deliberate acknowledgment of dying / death over the last several decades, as are homespun rituals that many adopt.
To return to @ping 's point, I think that one important function of the current process is to remind ourselves of our largely unwritten constitutional settlement - just as the various parades around Parliament, Black Rod having the doors slammed etc. Naturally some people who would prefer a written constitution etc are protesting.
Why not save lots of lives and tell Russia "Get out of the Donbas, or else we'll nuke Moscow"? Or go a step further and carry out a limited nuclear first strike to convey the same message more forcefully?
But ceremonial burning of dead people isn’t a new thing though, it goes back all time and world over doesn’t it? Sometimes it’s a quick turnaround to burning in hot climates like India, or burning because your body won’t decompose in permafrost countries - I don’t want to come over socialology myself but climate must drive a lot of religious practice and belief, as it starts out of what is necessary and sensible and then becomes ritual.
But you are right, the dead are still with us - sometimes my nan is in my dreams and can have a conversation with me about what I am doing and what she missed. In a recent dream I told her I had six wins from sixteen win bets at this years Cheltenham.
It’s easy to imagine the culture toward death being different in the past when there was so much of it, didn’t Mahler lose 13 brothers and sisters and his own young children - than a modern day culture built on “ad land” where only nice things happen not horrible things because we like to believe in our modern day science conquering death and horrible things?
My favourite sky sports news presenter, the beautiful Scottish one, has cancer and I’m really gutted for her. 😢