Phillips P. OBrien @PhillipsPOBrien · 25m First ukrainian official Ive seen putting a specific figure on the number of Russian troops trapped in Lyman. 5000.
With the front now 20 km further east from Lyman and supplies cut off, then the situation for the Russians is desperate. Fighting now in Kreminna shows a total collapse of the line, as was suggested last night. Peskov also announced the suspension of the mobilization "because the recruiting offices are over loaded" (translation from the weasel- the mobilization has been the greatest Russian military disaster in decades).
The funereal faces in the Kremlin last night showed that the regime knows the game is up. The denouncing of the UN Charter (who signed up for these rules? asked Putin: all members of the UN, actually Vlad), was sinister, but in a pathetic, Dr. Evil, kind of way. The celebrations in Red Square were empty, and now many Russians are beginning to understand that the country is facing complete humiliation and utter disaster,
Though I would not want to test it, there is pretty good chance that even with better funding over the past decades, the Russian missile systems are in just as bad a state as the rest of the rabble of an army. Any nuclear use could lead to the rapid destruction of Russia´s entire armed forces, including its nuclear forces. The generals know this and while they are happy enough to rattle the nuclear sabre, there must be real concern that if they play that card, then rapid and total vengeance would follow. The western policy of maintaining conventional support for Ukraine makes complete sense. Russia has been warned to expect a "catastrophic" response to any first use of WMD.
So while our middle-agers here are enjoying the disaster porn of Threads and the like, the feeling here, close to the border, is that Russia is finished as a great power and that this war is the last nail in the coffin of a genuinely evil, criminal cabal. In their death throes they are very dangerous, but there is no real prospect of their long term survival. Could be weeks, or even months, but the direction of travel is close to irreversible. Then Russia will have to negotiate the scale of their moral depravity, in the same way as Germany did, after 1945.
IMO the big question facing Putin is the following: if he automagically 'wins' all of Ukraine today, how does he stop all the economic sanctions that are massively limiting his country's strength? The west won't just say: "Oh well, he's won, we'd better just lift everything!" as they well know Putin will do the same with your fair country and others.
Russia has spent decades getting vast amount of treasure from oil and gas. They will now be seen around the world as a massively unreliable supplier, untrustworthy. They will sell oil and gas, but at nowhere near the quantities they did before, or on the favourable conditions. Europe will find alternative supplies and move towards other, hopefully greener, forms of supply.
There is now no way that Russia ends this war stronger than it was before February this year. It will be a diminished country, in terms of its military, its world standing, and most importantly, the lives of its own citizens. A pariah.
The only way out of this is to withdraw from Ukraine - at the very least to its pre-February borders - and admit defeat. Then, slowly over time, sanctions can be withdrawn. But I doubt Germany et al will be taking long-term energy contracts out with them, and western companies will be very hesitant to invest in the country.
Continuing the escalation will only weaken Russia, as well as imperilling the world. And that's what worries me: as I've been saying for years, Putin is not interested in making Russia stronger. He is only interested in bringing us down to his level.
In short: Yes to most of that. It will take a very long time for Russia´s neighbours not to fear and hate them, but with the scale of the economic and demographic collapse no beginning, the outlook is truly grim, even if they withdrew today. Even if sanctions were lifted, the de facto boycott will continue. Who wants anything to do with a bunch of murderers, torturers and rapists, who laugh when the threaten nuclear megadeath to the whole world?
Russia will have to face the same moral regeneration as Germany after 1945, and that is a process that takes generations.
I don't think Putin and his clique are in the same league of evil as Hitler and his clique.
They're still pretty evil.
It was very hard for Germany, simply because of how vile the Nazis were. But, it was also easier, because they were such an outlier. Germany, pre-Nazi, was a prosperous, law-abiding, civilised country, with strong civic institutions. Russia doesn't really have any of that. Russia has always been a kleptocracy, since the time of the Mongol invasions. Without the Mongols, Russia today would probably be Scandinavian.
Part of the problem is that there has been no moral recovery from Stalin, who really was just as evil as Hitler.
Instead of atoning for the crimes of Stalinism and Communism, Putin has mostly repeated those crimes. This is why I use the word "moral" crisis. There has been no truth and reconciliation, but instead a glorification of the KGB and other criminals. Unless this is ended, Russia can never recover. I have many Russophone friends who now refuse to engage with any Russian culture because whatever the glories of Bulgakov, Tshaikovsky etc, everything is overlaid with the continuing brutality of thugs like Stalin, Beria and indeed Putin. As one said, who cares about the ballet when they are rebuilding the GULAG? The collapse of Russian soft power is just as remarkable as any other part of this Russian disaster.
The Soviet Union came out of WWII with a huge amount of international goodwill, which completely obscured the crimes of the 1930's. The onset of the Cold War diminished, but certainly did not destroy, that goodwill, particularly as the Soviets could claim to be anti-colonialists, and the West really did throw its weight behind some ghastly leaders in the Third World.
Obviously, where you are based, and in Eastern Europe generally, people have never had warm feelings towards the Soviet Union, given the dreadful treatment they received at its hands. It's remarkable really, how little venegeance was taken against Soviet collaborators.
The first paragraph is quite right; and it wasn't only goodwill earned by the Soviet union, but a recognition that governments in the 30s had made some horrendous mistakes. At least that's what many of the then older generation said.
I'm not quite sure that the second paragraph is as correct as the first; there appears to be, or to have been, some amount of support among the older generation for the Communist regimes because they compared well, in many respects, with what had gone before.
Not in the Baltic States or Czechoslovkia. These were countries as prosperous as the United Kingdom, pre WWII. Breaking up great estates might have generated some initial goodwill in other parts of Eastern Europe.
I can think of no country that welcomed Communism. Many, including the Baltic and Ukraine, fought guerilla wars for nearly a decade after the end of WWII, Romania and Bulgaria also had resistance movements, like the Bulgarian Goryani.
There were rebellions in Poland: 1956, 1970, 1980, Hungary: 1956, East Germany: 1953, Czechoslovakia: 1953 and 1968, there were resistance movements: Solidarnosc, KOR, the Petofi circles, Charter 77, Ekoglasnost.
There was no legitimacy to the "Peoples Republics" or the SSRs and as soon as the guns were put away, the system collapsed.
Chile and Yugoslavia both legally elected Communist governments, in 1970 and 1945 respectively.
Venezuela could perhaps be added to that list, although whether Chavez was a communist, socialist, or just a narcissist remains open to question.
Edit - also, Russia *would* have elected a Communist government in 1917, but for the fact Lenin and Trotsky decided the Socialist Revolutionaries were the wrong sort of Communists.
Phillips P. OBrien @PhillipsPOBrien · 25m First ukrainian official Ive seen putting a specific figure on the number of Russian troops trapped in Lyman. 5000.
With the front now 20 km further east from Lyman and supplies cut off, then the situation for the Russians is desperate. Fighting now in Kreminna shows a total collapse of the line, as was suggested last night. Peskov also announced the suspension of the mobilization "because the recruiting offices are over loaded" (translation from the weasel- the mobilization has been the greatest Russian military disaster in decades).
The funereal faces in the Kremlin last night showed that the regime knows the game is up. The denouncing of the UN Charter (who signed up for these rules? asked Putin: all members of the UN, actually Vlad), was sinister, but in a pathetic, Dr. Evil, kind of way. The celebrations in Red Square were empty, and now many Russians are beginning to understand that the country is facing complete humiliation and utter disaster,
Though I would not want to test it, there is pretty good chance that even with better funding over the past decades, the Russian missile systems are in just as bad a state as the rest of the rabble of an army. Any nuclear use could lead to the rapid destruction of Russia´s entire armed forces, including its nuclear forces. The generals know this and while they are happy enough to rattle the nuclear sabre, there must be real concern that if they play that card, then rapid and total vengeance would follow. The western policy of maintaining conventional support for Ukraine makes complete sense. Russia has been warned to expect a "catastrophic" response to any first use of WMD.
So while our middle-agers here are enjoying the disaster porn of Threads and the like, the feeling here, close to the border, is that Russia is finished as a great power and that this war is the last nail in the coffin of a genuinely evil, criminal cabal. In their death throes they are very dangerous, but there is no real prospect of their long term survival. Could be weeks, or even months, but the direction of travel is close to irreversible. Then Russia will have to negotiate the scale of their moral depravity, in the same way as Germany did, after 1945.
IMO the big question facing Putin is the following: if he automagically 'wins' all of Ukraine today, how does he stop all the economic sanctions that are massively limiting his country's strength? The west won't just say: "Oh well, he's won, we'd better just lift everything!" as they well know Putin will do the same with your fair country and others.
Russia has spent decades getting vast amount of treasure from oil and gas. They will now be seen around the world as a massively unreliable supplier, untrustworthy. They will sell oil and gas, but at nowhere near the quantities they did before, or on the favourable conditions. Europe will find alternative supplies and move towards other, hopefully greener, forms of supply.
There is now no way that Russia ends this war stronger than it was before February this year. It will be a diminished country, in terms of its military, its world standing, and most importantly, the lives of its own citizens. A pariah.
The only way out of this is to withdraw from Ukraine - at the very least to its pre-February borders - and admit defeat. Then, slowly over time, sanctions can be withdrawn. But I doubt Germany et al will be taking long-term energy contracts out with them, and western companies will be very hesitant to invest in the country.
Continuing the escalation will only weaken Russia, as well as imperilling the world. And that's what worries me: as I've been saying for years, Putin is not interested in making Russia stronger. He is only interested in bringing us down to his level.
In short: Yes to most of that. It will take a very long time for Russia´s neighbours not to fear and hate them, but with the scale of the economic and demographic collapse no beginning, the outlook is truly grim, even if they withdrew today. Even if sanctions were lifted, the de facto boycott will continue. Who wants anything to do with a bunch of murderers, torturers and rapists, who laugh when the threaten nuclear megadeath to the whole world?
Russia will have to face the same moral regeneration as Germany after 1945, and that is a process that takes generations.
I don't think Putin and his clique are in the same league of evil as Hitler and his clique.
They're still pretty evil.
It was very hard for Germany, simply because of how vile the Nazis were. But, it was also easier, because they were such an outlier. Germany, pre-Nazi, was a prosperous, law-abiding, civilised country, with strong civic institutions. Russia doesn't really have any of that. Russia has always been a kleptocracy, since the time of the Mongol invasions. Without the Mongols, Russia today would probably be Scandinavian.
Part of the problem is that there has been no moral recovery from Stalin, who really was just as evil as Hitler.
Instead of atoning for the crimes of Stalinism and Communism, Putin has mostly repeated those crimes. This is why I use the word "moral" crisis. There has been no truth and reconciliation, but instead a glorification of the KGB and other criminals. Unless this is ended, Russia can never recover. I have many Russophone friends who now refuse to engage with any Russian culture because whatever the glories of Bulgakov, Tshaikovsky etc, everything is overlaid with the continuing brutality of thugs like Stalin, Beria and indeed Putin. As one said, who cares about the ballet when they are rebuilding the GULAG? The collapse of Russian soft power is just as remarkable as any other part of this Russian disaster.
The Soviet Union came out of WWII with a huge amount of international goodwill, which completely obscured the crimes of the 1930's. The onset of the Cold War diminished, but certainly did not destroy, that goodwill, particularly as the Soviets could claim to be anti-colonialists, and the West really did throw its weight behind some ghastly leaders in the Third World.
Obviously, where you are based, and in Eastern Europe generally, people have never had warm feelings towards the Soviet Union, given the dreadful treatment they received at its hands. It's remarkable really, how little venegeance was taken against Soviet collaborators.
The first paragraph is quite right; and it wasn't only goodwill earned by the Soviet union, but a recognition that governments in the 30s had made some horrendous mistakes. At least that's what many of the then older generation said.
I'm not quite sure that the second paragraph is as correct as the first; there appears to be, or to have been, some amount of support among the older generation for the Communist regimes because they compared well, in many respects, with what had gone before.
Not in the Baltic States or Czechoslovkia. These were countries as prosperous as the United Kingdom, pre WWII. Breaking up great estates might have generated some initial goodwill in other parts of Eastern Europe.
I can think of no country that welcomed Communism. Many, including the Baltic and Ukraine, fought guerilla wars for nearly a decade after the end of WWII, Romania and Bulgaria also had resistance movements, like the Bulgarian Goryani.
There were rebellions in Poland: 1956, 1970, 1980, Hungary: 1956, East Germany: 1953, Czechoslovakia: 1953 and 1968, there were resistance movements: Solidarnosc, KOR, the Petofi circles, Charter 77, Ekoglasnost.
There was no legitimacy to the "Peoples Republics" or the SSRs and as soon as the guns were put away, the system collapsed.
Chile and Yugoslavia both legally elected Communist governments, in 1970 and 1945 respectively.
Venezuela could perhaps be added to that list, although whether Chavez was a communist, socialist, or just a narcissist remains open to question.
Edit - also, Russia *would* have elected a Communist government in 1917, but for the fact Lenin and Trotsky decided the Socialist Revolutionaries were the wrong sort of Communists.
Chile is a bit of a stretch.
Well, Pincochet certainly thought so, but I am surprised to learn you would side with him
Hope you are having a slightly easier time at your place (although that's hope over experience in the current mess).
So whilst I agree that our democratic system allows eg a change in leader and some policies between elections (and this is in fact essential), the extent of the change, and the fact that it directly contradicts what (some) people thought they were voting for, pushes this argument beyond breaking point. I don’t think we’re dealing in absolutes here.
Mmm. Our system gives quite a lot of power to an elected government during its term, which means there's a lot of leeway for it to take quite sharp turns in overall policy direction. (Compare the US, where there are more checks-and-balances and more frequent opportunities for the electorate to express disapproval. That brings its own set of dysfunctions, though...) I guess overall I'd say this sharp libertarian turn is deeply unwise in part because it's not something the electorate ever signed up to, but it's not "undemocratic". Hopefully the utterly dismal polling will make Tory MPs push back on the leadership. Otherwise, vote for parties who will pick up the pieces in 2024...
So whilst I agree that our democratic system allows eg a change in leader and some policies between elections (and this is in fact essential), the extent of the change, and the fact that it directly contradicts what (some) people thought they were voting for, pushes this argument beyond breaking point. I don’t think we’re dealing in absolutes here.
Mmm. Our system gives quite a lot of power to an elected government during its term, which means there's a lot of leeway for it to take quite sharp turns in overall policy direction. (Compare the US, where there are more checks-and-balances and more frequent opportunities for the electorate to express disapproval. That brings its own set of dysfunctions, though...) I guess overall I'd say this sharp libertarian turn is deeply unwise in part because it's not something the electorate ever signed up to, but it's not "undemocratic". Hopefully the utterly dismal polling will make Tory MPs push back on the leadership. Otherwise, vote for parties who will pick up the pieces in 2024...
Yes, that's what I'm trying to say I think. It's not 'undemocratic' in the sense of whether it is permitted in our democratic system, but it isn't what the electorate signed up (nor, I suspect, would they, given the chance, though I recognise that might be my own biases speaking). In the second sense it clearly is 'undemocratic'.
Phillips P. OBrien @PhillipsPOBrien · 25m First ukrainian official Ive seen putting a specific figure on the number of Russian troops trapped in Lyman. 5000.
With the front now 20 km further east from Lyman and supplies cut off, then the situation for the Russians is desperate. Fighting now in Kreminna shows a total collapse of the line, as was suggested last night. Peskov also announced the suspension of the mobilization "because the recruiting offices are over loaded" (translation from the weasel- the mobilization has been the greatest Russian military disaster in decades).
The funereal faces in the Kremlin last night showed that the regime knows the game is up. The denouncing of the UN Charter (who signed up for these rules? asked Putin: all members of the UN, actually Vlad), was sinister, but in a pathetic, Dr. Evil, kind of way. The celebrations in Red Square were empty, and now many Russians are beginning to understand that the country is facing complete humiliation and utter disaster,
Though I would not want to test it, there is pretty good chance that even with better funding over the past decades, the Russian missile systems are in just as bad a state as the rest of the rabble of an army. Any nuclear use could lead to the rapid destruction of Russia´s entire armed forces, including its nuclear forces. The generals know this and while they are happy enough to rattle the nuclear sabre, there must be real concern that if they play that card, then rapid and total vengeance would follow. The western policy of maintaining conventional support for Ukraine makes complete sense. Russia has been warned to expect a "catastrophic" response to any first use of WMD.
So while our middle-agers here are enjoying the disaster porn of Threads and the like, the feeling here, close to the border, is that Russia is finished as a great power and that this war is the last nail in the coffin of a genuinely evil, criminal cabal. In their death throes they are very dangerous, but there is no real prospect of their long term survival. Could be weeks, or even months, but the direction of travel is close to irreversible. Then Russia will have to negotiate the scale of their moral depravity, in the same way as Germany did, after 1945.
IMO the big question facing Putin is the following: if he automagically 'wins' all of Ukraine today, how does he stop all the economic sanctions that are massively limiting his country's strength? The west won't just say: "Oh well, he's won, we'd better just lift everything!" as they well know Putin will do the same with your fair country and others.
Russia has spent decades getting vast amount of treasure from oil and gas. They will now be seen around the world as a massively unreliable supplier, untrustworthy. They will sell oil and gas, but at nowhere near the quantities they did before, or on the favourable conditions. Europe will find alternative supplies and move towards other, hopefully greener, forms of supply.
There is now no way that Russia ends this war stronger than it was before February this year. It will be a diminished country, in terms of its military, its world standing, and most importantly, the lives of its own citizens. A pariah.
The only way out of this is to withdraw from Ukraine - at the very least to its pre-February borders - and admit defeat. Then, slowly over time, sanctions can be withdrawn. But I doubt Germany et al will be taking long-term energy contracts out with them, and western companies will be very hesitant to invest in the country.
Continuing the escalation will only weaken Russia, as well as imperilling the world. And that's what worries me: as I've been saying for years, Putin is not interested in making Russia stronger. He is only interested in bringing us down to his level.
In short: Yes to most of that. It will take a very long time for Russia´s neighbours not to fear and hate them, but with the scale of the economic and demographic collapse no beginning, the outlook is truly grim, even if they withdrew today. Even if sanctions were lifted, the de facto boycott will continue. Who wants anything to do with a bunch of murderers, torturers and rapists, who laugh when the threaten nuclear megadeath to the whole world?
Russia will have to face the same moral regeneration as Germany after 1945, and that is a process that takes generations.
I don't think Putin and his clique are in the same league of evil as Hitler and his clique.
They're still pretty evil.
It was very hard for Germany, simply because of how vile the Nazis were. But, it was also easier, because they were such an outlier. Germany, pre-Nazi, was a prosperous, law-abiding, civilised country, with strong civic institutions. Russia doesn't really have any of that. Russia has always been a kleptocracy, since the time of the Mongol invasions. Without the Mongols, Russia today would probably be Scandinavian.
Part of the problem is that there has been no moral recovery from Stalin, who really was just as evil as Hitler.
Instead of atoning for the crimes of Stalinism and Communism, Putin has mostly repeated those crimes. This is why I use the word "moral" crisis. There has been no truth and reconciliation, but instead a glorification of the KGB and other criminals. Unless this is ended, Russia can never recover. I have many Russophone friends who now refuse to engage with any Russian culture because whatever the glories of Bulgakov, Tshaikovsky etc, everything is overlaid with the continuing brutality of thugs like Stalin, Beria and indeed Putin. As one said, who cares about the ballet when they are rebuilding the GULAG? The collapse of Russian soft power is just as remarkable as any other part of this Russian disaster.
The Soviet Union came out of WWII with a huge amount of international goodwill, which completely obscured the crimes of the 1930's. The onset of the Cold War diminished, but certainly did not destroy, that goodwill, particularly as the Soviets could claim to be anti-colonialists, and the West really did throw its weight behind some ghastly leaders in the Third World.
Obviously, where you are based, and in Eastern Europe generally, people have never had warm feelings towards the Soviet Union, given the dreadful treatment they received at its hands. It's remarkable really, how little venegeance was taken against Soviet collaborators.
The first paragraph is quite right; and it wasn't only goodwill earned by the Soviet union, but a recognition that governments in the 30s had made some horrendous mistakes. At least that's what many of the then older generation said.
I'm not quite sure that the second paragraph is as correct as the first; there appears to be, or to have been, some amount of support among the older generation for the Communist regimes because they compared well, in many respects, with what had gone before.
Not in the Baltic States or Czechoslovkia. These were countries as prosperous as the United Kingdom, pre WWII. Breaking up great estates might have generated some initial goodwill in other parts of Eastern Europe.
I can think of no country that welcomed Communism. Many, including the Baltic and Ukraine, fought guerilla wars for nearly a decade after the end of WWII, Romania and Bulgaria also had resistance movements, like the Bulgarian Goryani.
There were rebellions in Poland: 1956, 1970, 1980, Hungary: 1956, East Germany: 1953, Czechoslovakia: 1953 and 1968, there were resistance movements: Solidarnosc, KOR, the Petofi circles, Charter 77, Ekoglasnost.
There was no legitimacy to the "Peoples Republics" or the SSRs and as soon as the guns were put away, the system collapsed.
Chile and Yugoslavia both legally elected Communist governments, in 1970 and 1945 respectively.
Venezuela could perhaps be added to that list, although whether Chavez was a communist, socialist, or just a narcissist remains open to question.
Edit - also, Russia *would* have elected a Communist government in 1917, but for the fact Lenin and Trotsky decided the Socialist Revolutionaries were the wrong sort of Communists.
Chile is a bit of a stretch.
Well, Pincochet certainly thought so, but I am surprised to learn you would side with him
Hope you are having a slightly easier time at your place (although that's hope over experience in the current mess).
I mean Allende was considered to be a moderate within his Party. Defined himself as a Socialist, and won only 36.2 % of the vote. He was supported by Communists, yes, who were a big part of him getting elected. But it's a bit of a step to say they elected an openly Communist government. They also never won the Parliament.
I see the odious Clarke has been shooting his mouth "the state's far too big and too much welfare, it makes it harder for us to give tax cuts to the rich". Who he? A long streak of piss risen without trace, the North East's answer to Mogg
For me I reckon an 100 seat Labour majority doesn't seem out of the question.
If the election were this week you are probably right. But you are getting way ahead of yourself. Truss could double down and the Tories have a 1997-style melt down. On the other hand they could change leader early next year, steady the ship, and we end up with NOM.
Given the Tories track record since 2019 they deserve a good kicking but that doesn't necessarily mean they will get it.
You offer sensible words of caution, Olly, but personally I am having great difficulty seeing how the Tories reverse ferret out of this one.
The odds on a Labour Overall Majority look generous to me.
I see the odious Clarke has been shooting his mouth "the state's far too big and too much welfare, it makes it harder for us to give tax cuts to the rich". Who he? A long streak of piss risen without trace, the North East's answer to Mogg
Do you think the state's too small?
I don't actually have a problem with much lower taxes and a smaller state. I'm a pretty right-wing Tory. Those who think this is all about the 45p rate have got it wrong, at least for my constituency.
It's the economic illiteracy and irresponsibility of the announcements (essentially ignoring the deficit and the cost of borrowing) that got me.
So after blowing tens of billions on tax cuts the odious Clarke then moans about government spending . And I fxcking hate that expression trimming the fat !
Where in the manifesto did the public vote for austerity and didn’t the Maggie clone promise no spending cuts .
Course he does. Any negotiation now only favours Russia.
Meanwhile, Lyman has been recovered by Ukraine, Zarichne may also have been, soon all of occupied Donetsk north of the Siversky Donets river may be liberated, and Ukraine are expected to advance into western Luhansk, making a mockery of Russia's fictitious annexations. Putin is impotent.
TLDR; the things you think are beyond the pale morally, are to another person the only moral answer.
The usual conclusion from the book is that we should be more understanding of others’ political positions - more often than we think our opponents genuinely believe in the moral purpose of what they are doing.
In the case of the extremists in government, I feel there is also another conclusion to draw. If you are weird enough, you can find almost any outcome the ‘moral’ one (cf gulags under communism). So one should be deeply suspicious of one’s own moral certainties.
Given what others have posted about Truss in the last few hours, I’m not sure she will be open to that conclusion though.
I've not read it (although will now add it to the pile), but I did write this a few months ago on Facebook:
What a lot of bollocks.
This sanctimonious arsehole (bet he's a Dem) needs to mind his own business.
One techie friend of mine has always said that it's a feature, not a bug, of social media, that it generates hate.
One (and I have been guilty of this, and try to correct it) can end up saying things one would never dream of saying to another person in real life, and never dream of writing, if putting pen to paper.
I think being behind a screen has a lot to do with it.
It's less common but before social media it used to happen with road rage. Usually, because one person behind a screen let their emotions go and another behind another did the same in response.
I see the odious Clarke has been shooting his mouth "the state's far too big and too much welfare, it makes it harder for us to give tax cuts to the rich". Who he? A long streak of piss risen without trace, the North East's answer to Mogg
Do you think the state's too small?
One of the big misunderstandings in our politics is on the size of the state. Demand for the services offered by the state is increasing each year due to our demographics and people living longer. If we want to simply maintain services like pensions and healthcare at current levels we need to increase the share the state takes.
If the state was the correct size at around 35% in the 90s and 40% so far this century, then the equivalent will be mid 40s over the next couple of decades.
You can't just take a number from thirty plus years ago and assume it will still work for the future.
I see the odious Clarke has been shooting his mouth "the state's far too big and too much welfare, it makes it harder for us to give tax cuts to the rich". Who he? A long streak of piss risen without trace, the North East's answer to Mogg
Do you think the state's too small?
I don't actually have a problem with much lower taxes and a smaller state. I'm a pretty right-wing Tory. Those who think this is all about the 45p rate have got it wrong, at least for my constituency.
It's the economic illiteracy and irresponsibility of the announcements (essentially ignoring the deficit and the cost of borrowing) that got me.
Would they be able to win you back with a credible plan to close the deficit by cutting public spending, or have you lost trust in them to the extent that you'd find any plan from them not to be credible, and you'd have to see the public borrowing figures improve over the next 18 months before you could be swayed?
For me I reckon an 100 seat Labour majority doesn't seem out of the question.
If the election were this week you are probably right. But you are getting way ahead of yourself. Truss could double down and the Tories have a 1997-style melt down. On the other hand they could change leader early next year, steady the ship, and we end up with NOM.
Given the Tories track record since 2019 they deserve a good kicking but that doesn't necessarily mean they will get it.
You offer sensible words of caution, Olly, but personally I am having great difficulty seeing how the Tories reverse ferret out of this one.
The odds on a Labour Overall Majority look generous to me.
I was really just trying to deter CHB from being hubristic before he ends up with egg on his face. I agree that it is difficult to see how thee Tories turn this around and my punt is currently on a small overall majority
Course he does. Any negotiation now only favours Russia.
Meanwhile, Lyman has been recovered by Ukraine, Zarichne may also have been, soon all of occupied Donetsk north of the Siversky Donets river may be liberated, and Ukraine are expected to advance into western Luhansk, making a mockery of Russia's fictitious annexations. Putin is impotent.
A mini "highway of death" on the only road out of Lyman. Russian troops tried to escape in civilian vehicles:
Phillips P. OBrien @PhillipsPOBrien · 25m First ukrainian official Ive seen putting a specific figure on the number of Russian troops trapped in Lyman. 5000.
With the front now 20 km further east from Lyman and supplies cut off, then the situation for the Russians is desperate. Fighting now in Kreminna shows a total collapse of the line, as was suggested last night. Peskov also announced the suspension of the mobilization "because the recruiting offices are over loaded" (translation from the weasel- the mobilization has been the greatest Russian military disaster in decades).
The funereal faces in the Kremlin last night showed that the regime knows the game is up. The denouncing of the UN Charter (who signed up for these rules? asked Putin: all members of the UN, actually Vlad), was sinister, but in a pathetic, Dr. Evil, kind of way. The celebrations in Red Square were empty, and now many Russians are beginning to understand that the country is facing complete humiliation and utter disaster,
Though I would not want to test it, there is pretty good chance that even with better funding over the past decades, the Russian missile systems are in just as bad a state as the rest of the rabble of an army. Any nuclear use could lead to the rapid destruction of Russia´s entire armed forces, including its nuclear forces. The generals know this and while they are happy enough to rattle the nuclear sabre, there must be real concern that if they play that card, then rapid and total vengeance would follow. The western policy of maintaining conventional support for Ukraine makes complete sense. Russia has been warned to expect a "catastrophic" response to any first use of WMD.
So while our middle-agers here are enjoying the disaster porn of Threads and the like, the feeling here, close to the border, is that Russia is finished as a great power and that this war is the last nail in the coffin of a genuinely evil, criminal cabal. In their death throes they are very dangerous, but there is no real prospect of their long term survival. Could be weeks, or even months, but the direction of travel is close to irreversible. Then Russia will have to negotiate the scale of their moral depravity, in the same way as Germany did, after 1945.
IMO the big question facing Putin is the following: if he automagically 'wins' all of Ukraine today, how does he stop all the economic sanctions that are massively limiting his country's strength? The west won't just say: "Oh well, he's won, we'd better just lift everything!" as they well know Putin will do the same with your fair country and others.
Russia has spent decades getting vast amount of treasure from oil and gas. They will now be seen around the world as a massively unreliable supplier, untrustworthy. They will sell oil and gas, but at nowhere near the quantities they did before, or on the favourable conditions. Europe will find alternative supplies and move towards other, hopefully greener, forms of supply.
There is now no way that Russia ends this war stronger than it was before February this year. It will be a diminished country, in terms of its military, its world standing, and most importantly, the lives of its own citizens. A pariah.
The only way out of this is to withdraw from Ukraine - at the very least to its pre-February borders - and admit defeat. Then, slowly over time, sanctions can be withdrawn. But I doubt Germany et al will be taking long-term energy contracts out with them, and western companies will be very hesitant to invest in the country.
Continuing the escalation will only weaken Russia, as well as imperilling the world. And that's what worries me: as I've been saying for years, Putin is not interested in making Russia stronger. He is only interested in bringing us down to his level.
In short: Yes to most of that. It will take a very long time for Russia´s neighbours not to fear and hate them, but with the scale of the economic and demographic collapse no beginning, the outlook is truly grim, even if they withdrew today. Even if sanctions were lifted, the de facto boycott will continue. Who wants anything to do with a bunch of murderers, torturers and rapists, who laugh when the threaten nuclear megadeath to the whole world?
Russia will have to face the same moral regeneration as Germany after 1945, and that is a process that takes generations.
I don't think Putin and his clique are in the same league of evil as Hitler and his clique.
They're still pretty evil.
It was very hard for Germany, simply because of how vile the Nazis were. But, it was also easier, because they were such an outlier. Germany, pre-Nazi, was a prosperous, law-abiding, civilised country, with strong civic institutions. Russia doesn't really have any of that. Russia has always been a kleptocracy, since the time of the Mongol invasions. Without the Mongols, Russia today would probably be Scandinavian.
Part of the problem is that there has been no moral recovery from Stalin, who really was just as evil as Hitler.
Instead of atoning for the crimes of Stalinism and Communism, Putin has mostly repeated those crimes. This is why I use the word "moral" crisis. There has been no truth and reconciliation, but instead a glorification of the KGB and other criminals. Unless this is ended, Russia can never recover. I have many Russophone friends who now refuse to engage with any Russian culture because whatever the glories of Bulgakov, Tshaikovsky etc, everything is overlaid with the continuing brutality of thugs like Stalin, Beria and indeed Putin. As one said, who cares about the ballet when they are rebuilding the GULAG? The collapse of Russian soft power is just as remarkable as any other part of this Russian disaster.
The Soviet Union came out of WWII with a huge amount of international goodwill, which completely obscured the crimes of the 1930's. The onset of the Cold War diminished, but certainly did not destroy, that goodwill, particularly as the Soviets could claim to be anti-colonialists, and the West really did throw its weight behind some ghastly leaders in the Third World.
Obviously, where you are based, and in Eastern Europe generally, people have never had warm feelings towards the Soviet Union, given the dreadful treatment they received at its hands. It's remarkable really, how little venegeance was taken against Soviet collaborators.
The first paragraph is quite right; and it wasn't only goodwill earned by the Soviet union, but a recognition that governments in the 30s had made some horrendous mistakes. At least that's what many of the then older generation said.
I'm not quite sure that the second paragraph is as correct as the first; there appears to be, or to have been, some amount of support among the older generation for the Communist regimes because they compared well, in many respects, with what had gone before.
Not in the Baltic States or Czechoslovkia. These were countries as prosperous as the United Kingdom, pre WWII. Breaking up great estates might have generated some initial goodwill in other parts of Eastern Europe.
I can think of no country that welcomed Communism. Many, including the Baltic and Ukraine, fought guerilla wars for nearly a decade after the end of WWII, Romania and Bulgaria also had resistance movements, like the Bulgarian Goryani.
There were rebellions in Poland: 1956, 1970, 1980, Hungary: 1956, East Germany: 1953, Czechoslovakia: 1953 and 1968, there were resistance movements: Solidarnosc, KOR, the Petofi circles, Charter 77, Ekoglasnost.
There was no legitimacy to the "Peoples Republics" or the SSRs and as soon as the guns were put away, the system collapsed.
Chile and Yugoslavia both legally elected Communist governments, in 1970 and 1945 respectively.
Venezuela could perhaps be added to that list, although whether Chavez was a communist, socialist, or just a narcissist remains open to question.
Edit - also, Russia *would* have elected a Communist government in 1917, but for the fact Lenin and Trotsky decided the Socialist Revolutionaries were the wrong sort of Communists.
Chile is a bit of a stretch.
Well, Pincochet certainly thought so, but I am surprised to learn you would side with him
Hope you are having a slightly easier time at your place (although that's hope over experience in the current mess).
I mean Allende was considered to be a moderate within his Party. Defined himself as a Socialist, and won only 36.2 % of the vote. He was supported by Communists, yes, who were a big part of him getting elected. But it's a bit of a step to say they elected an openly Communist government. They also never won the Parliament.
Yes, I don't think that Allende was elected *as* a communist, although communists were part of his coalition, and the Chilean assembly had nothing close to a communist majority. It was more like the election of the Popular Front in France, in 1936.
I think that communist governments have been elected in West Bengal, on occasion.
For me I reckon an 100 seat Labour majority doesn't seem out of the question.
If the election were this week you are probably right. But you are getting way ahead of yourself. Truss could double down and the Tories have a 1997-style melt down. On the other hand they could change leader early next year, steady the ship, and we end up with NOM.
Given the Tories track record since 2019 they deserve a good kicking but that doesn't necessarily mean they will get it.
You offer sensible words of caution, Olly, but personally I am having great difficulty seeing how the Tories reverse ferret out of this one.
The odds on a Labour Overall Majority look generous to me.
I was really just trying to deter CHB from being hubristic before he ends up with egg on his face. I agree that it is difficult to see how thee Tories turn this around and my punt is currently on a small overall majority
Another manifestation of the Scottish Effect.
Labour 330, SNP 50, Lib Dem 25, Odds'n'ends 25 puts the Conservatives on 220, if I've done the maths right.
Only a small Labour majority, but a terrible night for the Conservatives.
Phillips P. OBrien @PhillipsPOBrien · 25m First ukrainian official Ive seen putting a specific figure on the number of Russian troops trapped in Lyman. 5000.
With the front now 20 km further east from Lyman and supplies cut off, then the situation for the Russians is desperate. Fighting now in Kreminna shows a total collapse of the line, as was suggested last night. Peskov also announced the suspension of the mobilization "because the recruiting offices are over loaded" (translation from the weasel- the mobilization has been the greatest Russian military disaster in decades).
The funereal faces in the Kremlin last night showed that the regime knows the game is up. The denouncing of the UN Charter (who signed up for these rules? asked Putin: all members of the UN, actually Vlad), was sinister, but in a pathetic, Dr. Evil, kind of way. The celebrations in Red Square were empty, and now many Russians are beginning to understand that the country is facing complete humiliation and utter disaster,
Though I would not want to test it, there is pretty good chance that even with better funding over the past decades, the Russian missile systems are in just as bad a state as the rest of the rabble of an army. Any nuclear use could lead to the rapid destruction of Russia´s entire armed forces, including its nuclear forces. The generals know this and while they are happy enough to rattle the nuclear sabre, there must be real concern that if they play that card, then rapid and total vengeance would follow. The western policy of maintaining conventional support for Ukraine makes complete sense. Russia has been warned to expect a "catastrophic" response to any first use of WMD.
So while our middle-agers here are enjoying the disaster porn of Threads and the like, the feeling here, close to the border, is that Russia is finished as a great power and that this war is the last nail in the coffin of a genuinely evil, criminal cabal. In their death throes they are very dangerous, but there is no real prospect of their long term survival. Could be weeks, or even months, but the direction of travel is close to irreversible. Then Russia will have to negotiate the scale of their moral depravity, in the same way as Germany did, after 1945.
IMO the big question facing Putin is the following: if he automagically 'wins' all of Ukraine today, how does he stop all the economic sanctions that are massively limiting his country's strength? The west won't just say: "Oh well, he's won, we'd better just lift everything!" as they well know Putin will do the same with your fair country and others.
Russia has spent decades getting vast amount of treasure from oil and gas. They will now be seen around the world as a massively unreliable supplier, untrustworthy. They will sell oil and gas, but at nowhere near the quantities they did before, or on the favourable conditions. Europe will find alternative supplies and move towards other, hopefully greener, forms of supply.
There is now no way that Russia ends this war stronger than it was before February this year. It will be a diminished country, in terms of its military, its world standing, and most importantly, the lives of its own citizens. A pariah.
The only way out of this is to withdraw from Ukraine - at the very least to its pre-February borders - and admit defeat. Then, slowly over time, sanctions can be withdrawn. But I doubt Germany et al will be taking long-term energy contracts out with them, and western companies will be very hesitant to invest in the country.
Continuing the escalation will only weaken Russia, as well as imperilling the world. And that's what worries me: as I've been saying for years, Putin is not interested in making Russia stronger. He is only interested in bringing us down to his level.
In short: Yes to most of that. It will take a very long time for Russia´s neighbours not to fear and hate them, but with the scale of the economic and demographic collapse no beginning, the outlook is truly grim, even if they withdrew today. Even if sanctions were lifted, the de facto boycott will continue. Who wants anything to do with a bunch of murderers, torturers and rapists, who laugh when the threaten nuclear megadeath to the whole world?
Russia will have to face the same moral regeneration as Germany after 1945, and that is a process that takes generations.
I don't think Putin and his clique are in the same league of evil as Hitler and his clique.
They're still pretty evil.
It was very hard for Germany, simply because of how vile the Nazis were. But, it was also easier, because they were such an outlier. Germany, pre-Nazi, was a prosperous, law-abiding, civilised country, with strong civic institutions. Russia doesn't really have any of that. Russia has always been a kleptocracy, since the time of the Mongol invasions. Without the Mongols, Russia today would probably be Scandinavian.
Part of the problem is that there has been no moral recovery from Stalin, who really was just as evil as Hitler.
Instead of atoning for the crimes of Stalinism and Communism, Putin has mostly repeated those crimes. This is why I use the word "moral" crisis. There has been no truth and reconciliation, but instead a glorification of the KGB and other criminals. Unless this is ended, Russia can never recover. I have many Russophone friends who now refuse to engage with any Russian culture because whatever the glories of Bulgakov, Tshaikovsky etc, everything is overlaid with the continuing brutality of thugs like Stalin, Beria and indeed Putin. As one said, who cares about the ballet when they are rebuilding the GULAG? The collapse of Russian soft power is just as remarkable as any other part of this Russian disaster.
The Soviet Union came out of WWII with a huge amount of international goodwill, which completely obscured the crimes of the 1930's. The onset of the Cold War diminished, but certainly did not destroy, that goodwill, particularly as the Soviets could claim to be anti-colonialists, and the West really did throw its weight behind some ghastly leaders in the Third World.
Obviously, where you are based, and in Eastern Europe generally, people have never had warm feelings towards the Soviet Union, given the dreadful treatment they received at its hands. It's remarkable really, how little venegeance was taken against Soviet collaborators.
The first paragraph is quite right; and it wasn't only goodwill earned by the Soviet union, but a recognition that governments in the 30s had made some horrendous mistakes. At least that's what many of the then older generation said.
I'm not quite sure that the second paragraph is as correct as the first; there appears to be, or to have been, some amount of support among the older generation for the Communist regimes because they compared well, in many respects, with what had gone before.
Not in the Baltic States or Czechoslovkia. These were countries as prosperous as the United Kingdom, pre WWII. Breaking up great estates might have generated some initial goodwill in other parts of Eastern Europe.
I can think of no country that welcomed Communism. Many, including the Baltic and Ukraine, fought guerilla wars for nearly a decade after the end of WWII, Romania and Bulgaria also had resistance movements, like the Bulgarian Goryani.
There were rebellions in Poland: 1956, 1970, 1980, Hungary: 1956, East Germany: 1953, Czechoslovakia: 1953 and 1968, there were resistance movements: Solidarnosc, KOR, the Petofi circles, Charter 77, Ekoglasnost.
There was no legitimacy to the "Peoples Republics" or the SSRs and as soon as the guns were put away, the system collapsed.
Chile and Yugoslavia both legally elected Communist governments, in 1970 and 1945 respectively.
Venezuela could perhaps be added to that list, although whether Chavez was a communist, socialist, or just a narcissist remains open to question.
Edit - also, Russia *would* have elected a Communist government in 1917, but for the fact Lenin and Trotsky decided the Socialist Revolutionaries were the wrong sort of Communists.
Chile is a bit of a stretch.
Well, Pincochet certainly thought so, but I am surprised to learn you would side with him
Hope you are having a slightly easier time at your place (although that's hope over experience in the current mess).
I mean Allende was considered to be a moderate within his Party. Defined himself as a Socialist, and won only 36.2 % of the vote. He was supported by Communists, yes, who were a big part of him getting elected. But it's a bit of a step to say they elected an openly Communist government. They also never won the Parliament.
Yes, I don't think that Allende was elected *as* a communist, although communists were part of his coalition, and the Chilean assembly had nothing close to a communist majority. It was more like the election of the Popular Front in France, in 1936.
I think that communist governments have been elected in West Bengal, on occasion.
I was just thinking about how things may evolve. The tories seem hell bent on doubling down. The possible outcome seems to be to shore up their base of wealthy southern and rural constituencies. (although even if this is the case, they are going in to an unwise battle with them over planning reform - which makes you wonder, is there any political strategy at all?). But I wondered... looking at the regional polling that came out yesterday, what is the likelihood of an 'independent group' of red wall tory MPs forming? Could this be the end game for the current 'growth plans'?
The southern base is far, far from safe and not just due to planning but demographics - many seats' populations of young professionals priced out of London are growing in formerly solid commuter towns - and spending most of the time since the referendum taking liberal Conservatives (which many in the south are) for granted and insulting them. There maybe a similar parallel with Labour losing its northern heartlands after ignoring them for too long - they might shore it up, but these aren't the kind of policies that will help, as there are very few libertarians, and fewer still who'll put that ahead of their kids' school, NHS wait times, or a rocketing mortgage. Rather they might precipitate a far swifter collapse than Labour managed until Corbyn was fully let rip.
I don't really understand the Tories' strategy. Most people I know who are benefiting from the tax cut think it's stupid and don't want the money. How they can justify it when public services are falling apart and so many people are struggling is mystifying. The only explanation is that they are actually utter psychopaths. I think they have fundamentally misread the British character.
And I don't understand why you don't understand it. Giving tax cuts to the already wealthy. Giving benefit cuts to scroungers. Cutting the public sector to the bone until it's ripe for privatisation. Lining further the pockets of the rich by cutting corporation tax. Encouraging greed.
That's what Tories do, isn't it? That's why I'm not one.
Except... it didn't used to be that way. Even Thatcher didn't entirely believe it- for her, the point of the Good Samaritan was that he had the money to give away, but that was because the assumption that the wealthy should be generous was taken as read. Dave's Big Society, TMay's JAMs, Boris's Levelling Up... they weren't entirely cant. In part, yes, but not entirely. There was at least an ackowledgement that the pile had real people at the bottom of it.
Yes, Conservatives have always gone for spending and taxing less, and (let's be honest) sweating human and material resources more than is healthy in the long term.
But not like this.
Deeply rooted in the mindset of Truss and co. is the idea that governmental influence over the individual - be it the welfare system giving them money they wouldn't otherwise have, or the NHS deciding what happens to their bodies - is in itself deeply immoral. Moreover, it will always be harmful as governments are inherently inefficient and incompetent. Eradicate the governmental stuff and, after some initial jolts, the individual will shine and prosper as never before.
It was the Thatcher government that introduced the national curriculum in state schools.
As for welfare and free-at-the-point-of-use state healthcare, they aren't necessarily bound up with control over the individual, and it says a lot about Tory ideology that the two things are conflated.
The chairman and operations lead of the Young Conservatives has apologised after calling Birmingham - where the party is holding its annual conference - a “dump”.
Haven't fully caught up yet, but am enjoying the mental whiplash on manifestos.
When discussing PR and coalitions - the fact that we supposedly vote according to manifestos is crucial, compromise and coalitions damage the very fabric of our political system.
When discussing a majority party making huge changes mid-term - the fact that we supposedly vote according to manifestos is irrelevant, they have no hold on a Government that can call upon a majority in the House of Commons under our political system.
Fun.
My personal take is the same for both: politicians elected as our representatives can compromise (with each other, with reality, and/or with ideology) as much as they like. But they will have to face the electorate afterwards, who will pass judgement on what compromises they decided to make.
And politicians know this, and this will influence the House of Commons as a whole, and if it doesn't, they will face the electorate in due time. As did the Lib Dems after compromising away their tuition fees stance.
What is the largest actual majority we think Labour could achieve?
Let's look at the benchmarks.
1997: Labour 179 seat majority (659 MPs in Commons) 1992: Tories 14,093,007 votes 1983: Tory 14.8pp vote share lead 1959: Tory 49.4% vote share 1931: National 67.2% vote share, 36.6pp vote share lead and 493 seat majority (615 MPs in Commons)
Some of those records are safe, but one does start to wonder about a few of them.
1983 was a special circumstance. To think that there's any chance of that margin getting blown away without a major split shortly beforehand is remarkable. It probably won't happen, but it's not impossible.
1983 was better for Labour than it might have been, had it just been Tory v Labour with a few Liberals on the side.
Our pleasure. Although I wasn’t allowed to watch it when it first aired, being 10 years old, even just the Radio Times cover gave me nightmares at the time.
Had to watch it at school. I was maybe thirteen years old when they showed it (a couple of years after release). Can still remember the exact room in which we sat, staring at the TV screen.
“Where people understand the plan” = in La-La Land “and the logic behind it” = degree in casuistry required “they are prepared to give it a chance” = they still hate it
I was just thinking about how things may evolve. The tories seem hell bent on doubling down. The possible outcome seems to be to shore up their base of wealthy southern and rural constituencies. (although even if this is the case, they are going in to an unwise battle with them over planning reform - which makes you wonder, is there any political strategy at all?). But I wondered... looking at the regional polling that came out yesterday, what is the likelihood of an 'independent group' of red wall tory MPs forming? Could this be the end game for the current 'growth plans'?
The southern base is far, far from safe and not just due to planning but demographics - many seats' populations of young professionals priced out of London are growing in formerly solid commuter towns - and spending most of the time since the referendum taking liberal Conservatives (which many in the south are) for granted and insulting them. There maybe a similar parallel with Labour losing its northern heartlands after ignoring them for too long - they might shore it up, but these aren't the kind of policies that will help, as there are very few libertarians, and fewer still who'll put that ahead of their kids' school, NHS wait times, or a rocketing mortgage. Rather they might precipitate a far swifter collapse than Labour managed until Corbyn was fully let rip.
I don't really understand the Tories' strategy. Most people I know who are benefiting from the tax cut think it's stupid and don't want the money. How they can justify it when public services are falling apart and so many people are struggling is mystifying. The only explanation is that they are actually utter psychopaths. I think they have fundamentally misread the British character.
And I don't understand why you don't understand it. Giving tax cuts to the already wealthy. Giving benefit cuts to scroungers. Cutting the public sector to the bone until it's ripe for privatisation. Lining further the pockets of the rich by cutting corporation tax. Encouraging greed.
That's what Tories do, isn't it? That's why I'm not one.
Except... it didn't used to be that way. Even Thatcher didn't entirely believe it- for her, the point of the Good Samaritan was that he had the money to give away, but that was because the assumption that the wealthy should be generous was taken as read. Dave's Big Society, TMay's JAMs, Boris's Levelling Up... they weren't entirely cant. In part, yes, but not entirely. There was at least an ackowledgement that the pile had real people at the bottom of it.
Yes, Conservatives have always gone for spending and taxing less, and (let's be honest) sweating human and material resources more than is healthy in the long term.
But not like this.
Deeply rooted in the mindset of Truss and co. is the idea that governmental influence over the individual - be it the welfare system giving them money they wouldn't otherwise have, or the NHS deciding what happens to their bodies - is in itself deeply immoral. Moreover, it will always be harmful as governments are inherently inefficient and incompetent. Eradicate the governmental stuff and, after some initial jolts, the individual will shine and prosper as never before.
It was the Thatcher government that introduced the national curriculum in state schools.
As for welfare and free-at-the-point-of-use state healthcare, they aren't necessarily bound up with control over the individual, and it says a lot about Tory ideology that the two things are conflated.
It was also Truss herself as schools minister who developed the new, even more useless national curriculum.
I see the odious Clarke has been shooting his mouth "the state's far too big and too much welfare, it makes it harder for us to give tax cuts to the rich". Who he? A long streak of piss risen without trace, the North East's answer to Mogg
Do you think the state's too small?
One of the big misunderstandings in our politics is on the size of the state. Demand for the services offered by the state is increasing each year due to our demographics and people living longer. If we want to simply maintain services like pensions and healthcare at current levels we need to increase the share the state takes.
If the state was the correct size at around 35% in the 90s and 40% so far this century, then the equivalent will be mid 40s over the next couple of decades.
You can't just take a number from thirty plus years ago and assume it will still work for the future.
Sadly that is a giant ponzi scheme in operation. You simply cannot continue increasing the size of the state as a proportion of GDP in the way you seem to be advocating.
That is in no way to support what Truss and Kwartang have just done. Changes to our systems ned to be done with time, consideration and the support of the population. They also need to be fair - reducing the tax burden by spreading it and then lowering it rather than just slashing it for the richest whilst increasing it for the rest.
But there has to be a finite limit to the amount the state can expand. Personally, I think we have reached and exceeded that limit but that is something that can and should be discussed by the nation as a whole rather than just slamming the breaks on overnight and saying 'tough live with it'.
I was just thinking about how things may evolve. The tories seem hell bent on doubling down. The possible outcome seems to be to shore up their base of wealthy southern and rural constituencies. (although even if this is the case, they are going in to an unwise battle with them over planning reform - which makes you wonder, is there any political strategy at all?). But I wondered... looking at the regional polling that came out yesterday, what is the likelihood of an 'independent group' of red wall tory MPs forming? Could this be the end game for the current 'growth plans'?
The southern base is far, far from safe and not just due to planning but demographics - many seats' populations of young professionals priced out of London are growing in formerly solid commuter towns - and spending most of the time since the referendum taking liberal Conservatives (which many in the south are) for granted and insulting them. There maybe a similar parallel with Labour losing its northern heartlands after ignoring them for too long - they might shore it up, but these aren't the kind of policies that will help, as there are very few libertarians, and fewer still who'll put that ahead of their kids' school, NHS wait times, or a rocketing mortgage. Rather they might precipitate a far swifter collapse than Labour managed until Corbyn was fully let rip.
I don't really understand the Tories' strategy. Most people I know who are benefiting from the tax cut think it's stupid and don't want the money. How they can justify it when public services are falling apart and so many people are struggling is mystifying. The only explanation is that they are actually utter psychopaths. I think they have fundamentally misread the British character.
And I don't understand why you don't understand it. Giving tax cuts to the already wealthy. Giving benefit cuts to scroungers. Cutting the public sector to the bone until it's ripe for privatisation. Lining further the pockets of the rich by cutting corporation tax. Encouraging greed.
That's what Tories do, isn't it? That's why I'm not one.
Except... it didn't used to be that way. Even Thatcher didn't entirely believe it- for her, the point of the Good Samaritan was that he had the money to give away, but that was because the assumption that the wealthy should be generous was taken as read. Dave's Big Society, TMay's JAMs, Boris's Levelling Up... they weren't entirely cant. In part, yes, but not entirely. There was at least an ackowledgement that the pile had real people at the bottom of it.
Yes, Conservatives have always gone for spending and taxing less, and (let's be honest) sweating human and material resources more than is healthy in the long term.
But not like this.
Deeply rooted in the mindset of Truss and co. is the idea that governmental influence over the individual - be it the welfare system giving them money they wouldn't otherwise have, or the NHS deciding what happens to their bodies - is in itself deeply immoral. Moreover, it will always be harmful as governments are inherently inefficient and incompetent. Eradicate the governmental stuff and, after some initial jolts, the individual will shine and prosper as never before.
It was the Thatcher government that introduced the national curriculum in state schools.
As for welfare and free-at-the-point-of-use state healthcare, they aren't necessarily bound up with control over the individual, and it says a lot about Tory ideology that the two things are conflated.
It was the John Major government that introduces the National Curriculum.
I was just thinking about how things may evolve. The tories seem hell bent on doubling down. The possible outcome seems to be to shore up their base of wealthy southern and rural constituencies. (although even if this is the case, they are going in to an unwise battle with them over planning reform - which makes you wonder, is there any political strategy at all?). But I wondered... looking at the regional polling that came out yesterday, what is the likelihood of an 'independent group' of red wall tory MPs forming? Could this be the end game for the current 'growth plans'?
The southern base is far, far from safe and not just due to planning but demographics - many seats' populations of young professionals priced out of London are growing in formerly solid commuter towns - and spending most of the time since the referendum taking liberal Conservatives (which many in the south are) for granted and insulting them. There maybe a similar parallel with Labour losing its northern heartlands after ignoring them for too long - they might shore it up, but these aren't the kind of policies that will help, as there are very few libertarians, and fewer still who'll put that ahead of their kids' school, NHS wait times, or a rocketing mortgage. Rather they might precipitate a far swifter collapse than Labour managed until Corbyn was fully let rip.
I don't really understand the Tories' strategy. Most people I know who are benefiting from the tax cut think it's stupid and don't want the money. How they can justify it when public services are falling apart and so many people are struggling is mystifying. The only explanation is that they are actually utter psychopaths. I think they have fundamentally misread the British character.
And I don't understand why you don't understand it. Giving tax cuts to the already wealthy. Giving benefit cuts to scroungers. Cutting the public sector to the bone until it's ripe for privatisation. Lining further the pockets of the rich by cutting corporation tax. Encouraging greed.
That's what Tories do, isn't it? That's why I'm not one.
Except... it didn't used to be that way. Even Thatcher didn't entirely believe it- for her, the point of the Good Samaritan was that he had the money to give away, but that was because the assumption that the wealthy should be generous was taken as read. Dave's Big Society, TMay's JAMs, Boris's Levelling Up... they weren't entirely cant. In part, yes, but not entirely. There was at least an ackowledgement that the pile had real people at the bottom of it.
Yes, Conservatives have always gone for spending and taxing less, and (let's be honest) sweating human and material resources more than is healthy in the long term.
But not like this.
Deeply rooted in the mindset of Truss and co. is the idea that governmental influence over the individual - be it the welfare system giving them money they wouldn't otherwise have, or the NHS deciding what happens to their bodies - is in itself deeply immoral. Moreover, it will always be harmful as governments are inherently inefficient and incompetent. Eradicate the governmental stuff and, after some initial jolts, the individual will shine and prosper as never before.
It was the Thatcher government that introduced the national curriculum in state schools.
As for welfare and free-at-the-point-of-use state healthcare, they aren't necessarily bound up with control over the individual, and it says a lot about Tory ideology that the two things are conflated.
It was the John Major government that introduces the National Curriculum.
It was introduced in 1988, although it only started being taught from 1990-91.
I was just thinking about how things may evolve. The tories seem hell bent on doubling down. The possible outcome seems to be to shore up their base of wealthy southern and rural constituencies. (although even if this is the case, they are going in to an unwise battle with them over planning reform - which makes you wonder, is there any political strategy at all?). But I wondered... looking at the regional polling that came out yesterday, what is the likelihood of an 'independent group' of red wall tory MPs forming? Could this be the end game for the current 'growth plans'?
The southern base is far, far from safe and not just due to planning but demographics - many seats' populations of young professionals priced out of London are growing in formerly solid commuter towns - and spending most of the time since the referendum taking liberal Conservatives (which many in the south are) for granted and insulting them. There maybe a similar parallel with Labour losing its northern heartlands after ignoring them for too long - they might shore it up, but these aren't the kind of policies that will help, as there are very few libertarians, and fewer still who'll put that ahead of their kids' school, NHS wait times, or a rocketing mortgage. Rather they might precipitate a far swifter collapse than Labour managed until Corbyn was fully let rip.
I don't really understand the Tories' strategy. Most people I know who are benefiting from the tax cut think it's stupid and don't want the money. How they can justify it when public services are falling apart and so many people are struggling is mystifying. The only explanation is that they are actually utter psychopaths. I think they have fundamentally misread the British character.
And I don't understand why you don't understand it. Giving tax cuts to the already wealthy. Giving benefit cuts to scroungers. Cutting the public sector to the bone until it's ripe for privatisation. Lining further the pockets of the rich by cutting corporation tax. Encouraging greed.
That's what Tories do, isn't it? That's why I'm not one.
Except... it didn't used to be that way. Even Thatcher didn't entirely believe it- for her, the point of the Good Samaritan was that he had the money to give away, but that was because the assumption that the wealthy should be generous was taken as read. Dave's Big Society, TMay's JAMs, Boris's Levelling Up... they weren't entirely cant. In part, yes, but not entirely. There was at least an ackowledgement that the pile had real people at the bottom of it.
Yes, Conservatives have always gone for spending and taxing less, and (let's be honest) sweating human and material resources more than is healthy in the long term.
But not like this.
Deeply rooted in the mindset of Truss and co. is the idea that governmental influence over the individual - be it the welfare system giving them money they wouldn't otherwise have, or the NHS deciding what happens to their bodies - is in itself deeply immoral. Moreover, it will always be harmful as governments are inherently inefficient and incompetent. Eradicate the governmental stuff and, after some initial jolts, the individual will shine and prosper as never before.
It was the Thatcher government that introduced the national curriculum in state schools.
As for welfare and free-at-the-point-of-use state healthcare, they aren't necessarily bound up with control over the individual, and it says a lot about Tory ideology that the two things are conflated.
It was the John Major government that introduces the National Curriculum.
It was the Thatcher government, in the Education Reform Act 1988, under education secretary Kenneth Baker.
I see the odious Clarke has been shooting his mouth "the state's far too big and too much welfare, it makes it harder for us to give tax cuts to the rich". Who he? A long streak of piss risen without trace, the North East's answer to Mogg
Do you think the state's too small?
I don't actually have a problem with much lower taxes and a smaller state. I'm a pretty right-wing Tory. Those who think this is all about the 45p rate have got it wrong, at least for my constituency.
It's the economic illiteracy and irresponsibility of the announcements (essentially ignoring the deficit and the cost of borrowing) that got me.
Would they be able to win you back with a credible plan to close the deficit by cutting public spending, or have you lost trust in them to the extent that you'd find any plan from them not to be credible, and you'd have to see the public borrowing figures improve over the next 18 months before you could be swayed?
Probably the latter, I'm afraid.
I don't think Truss is a leopard that's going to change her spots and has a tin ear for politics anyway.
Haven't fully caught up yet, but am enjoying the mental whiplash on manifestos.
When discussing PR and coalitions - the fact that we supposedly vote according to manifestos is crucial, compromise and coalitions damage the very fabric of our political system.
When discussing a majority party making huge changes mid-term - the fact that we supposedly vote according to manifestos is irrelevant, they have no hold on a Government that can call upon a majority in the House of Commons under our political system.
Fun.
My personal take is the same for both: politicians elected as our representatives can compromise (with each other, with reality, and/or with ideology) as much as they like. But they will have to face the electorate afterwards, who will pass judgement on what compromises they decided to make.
And politicians know this, and this will influence the House of Commons as a whole, and if it doesn't, they will face the electorate in due time. As did the Lib Dems after compromising away their tuition fees stance.
This is why certain forms of PR - those which advocate party lists - are so pernicious. The result is that some MPs know they will get re-elected almost no matter what. Obviously there are a number of systems that don't work this way but anything that gives more power to the parties should be avoided.
By the track on Google Maps, Hurricane Ian has changed course and is heading directly for me again.
Sometime a storm has your name on it...
Indeed.
I got within two hundred miles of the centre of Sandy (more accurately, vice versa) in 2012, when it was a downgraded superstorm, and have never experienced constant strong wind like that before or since. You could hardly walk down the street and kept within reach of something to grab onto to cope with the gusts.
I’m now the same distance from Ian, and it’s just a very rainy day, with hardly any constant wind and only modest gusts. Of course, things may change - the centre is going to be very close here by this evening - but it looks like this one burnt itself out in Florida, and even there was more notable for rain than wind. CNN continues to struggle to find something dramatic to report since the storm left Florida. One of the South Carolina piers took some damage is the worst of it.
I see the odious Clarke has been shooting his mouth "the state's far too big and too much welfare, it makes it harder for us to give tax cuts to the rich". Who he? A long streak of piss risen without trace, the North East's answer to Mogg
Do you think the state's too small?
I don't actually have a problem with much lower taxes and a smaller state. I'm a pretty right-wing Tory. Those who think this is all about the 45p rate have got it wrong, at least for my constituency.
It's the economic illiteracy and irresponsibility of the announcements (essentially ignoring the deficit and the cost of borrowing) that got me.
Would they be able to win you back with a credible plan to close the deficit by cutting public spending, or have you lost trust in them to the extent that you'd find any plan from them not to be credible, and you'd have to see the public borrowing figures improve over the next 18 months before you could be swayed?
Probably the latter, I'm afraid.
I don't think Truss is a leopard that's going to change her spots and has a tin ear for politics anyway.
Yep there are two different points here (and to be fair I speak as someone who didn't vote Tory anyway). It is possible that Truss is right and that we do see an improvement before the next election, perhaps even a big improvement. I doubt it but it is possible. But that doesn't change the fact that Truss and Kwartang have made a series of decisions (the 45p tax rate change and the bankers bonus changes for two) which have little overall impact on public finances but which are hugely damaging politically and completely unnecessary except as a matter of pure ideology.
In my view this makes her unfit to govern even if the overall financial plan turns out to be correct.
Which ‘people’ would these be I wonder? The Sioux or Zoroastrians, or Rangers supporters perhaps?
What is with the KCMG bollocks? Is he allowed to advertise himself in that way?
Since if he were one the correct form of address would be 'Sir [Name] KG' I imagine he probably is. It would be like referring to yourself as the Supreme Duke and Earl Marshall of the Wash and Humber. It is a non-existent title so has no meaning.
I have edited that because of course KCMG is Michael and George, not the Garter.
More to the point, a little research confirms there are no 'Knight Commanders' in the Garter. They are 'Knight Companions.' It's the other orders have Knight Commanders. So it's a totally made up title.
Why would he do it? I don't know, but I'm guessing because he's a tool. This would be in character with much of his career.
Just had a look at his twitter feed. Completely lost down an anti-vax rabbit hole of paranoia.
Was he ever taken seriously?
To be fair there are respected doctors like Dr Aseem Malhotra now coming out saying the vax is harmful
"Malhotra's views on diet and health have been criticized by the British Heart Foundation as "misleading and wrong", and his public questioning of the need ever to use statins has been condemned as a danger to public health."
"During the COVID-19 pandemic Malhotra published a book called The 21-Day Immunity Plan[11] making claims that following the diet could quickly help people reduce their risk from the virus; such claims are not backed by medical research evidence."
Malhotra becoming antivax seems to have been a fairly heartbreaking result of desperately seeking something to blame. His father died of heart failure. Had he taken statins, as recommended (but which Malhotra crusaded against) - well, things might have been different. BUt could anyone accept that, from Malhotra's position?
So he decided to blame a vaccine taken six months earlier. For damage to a heart that had occurred over years, and where no matter how he tried to torture the data, no signal of elevated heart failure could be found. You could find a strong signal for elevated risk of myocardial infarction and the like from previous infections by covid, but not from the vaccine.
This did not stop him. And hasn't. He has, of course, been heralded by the antivaxxer community (like RFK Jr) as a prophet and a great man. During the recent antivaxxer conference, he sat by and said nothing whilst others questioned whether viruses exist at all, and the answer to why mass deaths hadn't been seen from the vaccines was "Maybe almost all of them were duds as they ramped up manufacturing so quickly."
I see the odious Clarke has been shooting his mouth "the state's far too big and too much welfare, it makes it harder for us to give tax cuts to the rich". Who he? A long streak of piss risen without trace, the North East's answer to Mogg
Do you think the state's too small?
One of the big misunderstandings in our politics is on the size of the state. Demand for the services offered by the state is increasing each year due to our demographics and people living longer. If we want to simply maintain services like pensions and healthcare at current levels we need to increase the share the state takes.
If the state was the correct size at around 35% in the 90s and 40% so far this century, then the equivalent will be mid 40s over the next couple of decades.
You can't just take a number from thirty plus years ago and assume it will still work for the future.
Sadly that is a giant ponzi scheme in operation. You simply cannot continue increasing the size of the state as a proportion of GDP in the way you seem to be advocating.
That is in no way to support what Truss and Kwartang have just done. Changes to our systems ned to be done with time, consideration and the support of the population. They also need to be fair - reducing the tax burden by spreading it and then lowering it rather than just slashing it for the richest whilst increasing it for the rest.
But there has to be a finite limit to the amount the state can expand. Personally, I think we have reached and exceeded that limit but that is something that can and should be discussed by the nation as a whole rather than just slamming the breaks on overnight and saying 'tough live with it'.
My post was not particularly advocating anything, it was stating that to maintain public services at the levels we are used to, the size of the state has to increase because of our demographics. With different demographics we would be able to improve public services and reduce the size of the state simultaneously.
Yes of course it is up to the country to decide if the state should be bigger or smaller, but it should be an informed decision that understands the above. I do not think Truss and Kwarteng get it.
Haven't fully caught up yet, but am enjoying the mental whiplash on manifestos.
When discussing PR and coalitions - the fact that we supposedly vote according to manifestos is crucial, compromise and coalitions damage the very fabric of our political system.
When discussing a majority party making huge changes mid-term - the fact that we supposedly vote according to manifestos is irrelevant, they have no hold on a Government that can call upon a majority in the House of Commons under our political system.
Fun.
My personal take is the same for both: politicians elected as our representatives can compromise (with each other, with reality, and/or with ideology) as much as they like. But they will have to face the electorate afterwards, who will pass judgement on what compromises they decided to make.
And politicians know this, and this will influence the House of Commons as a whole, and if it doesn't, they will face the electorate in due time. As did the Lib Dems after compromising away their tuition fees stance.
This is why certain forms of PR - those which advocate party lists - are so pernicious. The result is that some MPs know they will get re-elected almost no matter what. Obviously there are a number of systems that don't work this way but anything that gives more power to the parties should be avoided.
I'm a strong fan of STV. Proportional (or at least far more proportional), allows for independents to be elected, and allows for individual politicians to be thrown out.
Phillips P. OBrien @PhillipsPOBrien · 25m First ukrainian official Ive seen putting a specific figure on the number of Russian troops trapped in Lyman. 5000.
With the front now 20 km further east from Lyman and supplies cut off, then the situation for the Russians is desperate. Fighting now in Kreminna shows a total collapse of the line, as was suggested last night. Peskov also announced the suspension of the mobilization "because the recruiting offices are over loaded" (translation from the weasel- the mobilization has been the greatest Russian military disaster in decades).
The funereal faces in the Kremlin last night showed that the regime knows the game is up. The denouncing of the UN Charter (who signed up for these rules? asked Putin: all members of the UN, actually Vlad), was sinister, but in a pathetic, Dr. Evil, kind of way. The celebrations in Red Square were empty, and now many Russians are beginning to understand that the country is facing complete humiliation and utter disaster,
Though I would not want to test it, there is pretty good chance that even with better funding over the past decades, the Russian missile systems are in just as bad a state as the rest of the rabble of an army. Any nuclear use could lead to the rapid destruction of Russia´s entire armed forces, including its nuclear forces. The generals know this and while they are happy enough to rattle the nuclear sabre, there must be real concern that if they play that card, then rapid and total vengeance would follow. The western policy of maintaining conventional support for Ukraine makes complete sense. Russia has been warned to expect a "catastrophic" response to any first use of WMD.
So while our middle-agers here are enjoying the disaster porn of Threads and the like, the feeling here, close to the border, is that Russia is finished as a great power and that this war is the last nail in the coffin of a genuinely evil, criminal cabal. In their death throes they are very dangerous, but there is no real prospect of their long term survival. Could be weeks, or even months, but the direction of travel is close to irreversible. Then Russia will have to negotiate the scale of their moral depravity, in the same way as Germany did, after 1945.
IMO the big question facing Putin is the following: if he automagically 'wins' all of Ukraine today, how does he stop all the economic sanctions that are massively limiting his country's strength? The west won't just say: "Oh well, he's won, we'd better just lift everything!" as they well know Putin will do the same with your fair country and others.
Russia has spent decades getting vast amount of treasure from oil and gas. They will now be seen around the world as a massively unreliable supplier, untrustworthy. They will sell oil and gas, but at nowhere near the quantities they did before, or on the favourable conditions. Europe will find alternative supplies and move towards other, hopefully greener, forms of supply.
There is now no way that Russia ends this war stronger than it was before February this year. It will be a diminished country, in terms of its military, its world standing, and most importantly, the lives of its own citizens. A pariah.
The only way out of this is to withdraw from Ukraine - at the very least to its pre-February borders - and admit defeat. Then, slowly over time, sanctions can be withdrawn. But I doubt Germany et al will be taking long-term energy contracts out with them, and western companies will be very hesitant to invest in the country.
Continuing the escalation will only weaken Russia, as well as imperilling the world. And that's what worries me: as I've been saying for years, Putin is not interested in making Russia stronger. He is only interested in bringing us down to his level.
In short: Yes to most of that. It will take a very long time for Russia´s neighbours not to fear and hate them, but with the scale of the economic and demographic collapse no beginning, the outlook is truly grim, even if they withdrew today. Even if sanctions were lifted, the de facto boycott will continue. Who wants anything to do with a bunch of murderers, torturers and rapists, who laugh when the threaten nuclear megadeath to the whole world?
Russia will have to face the same moral regeneration as Germany after 1945, and that is a process that takes generations.
I don't think Putin and his clique are in the same league of evil as Hitler and his clique.
They're still pretty evil.
It was very hard for Germany, simply because of how vile the Nazis were. But, it was also easier, because they were such an outlier. Germany, pre-Nazi, was a prosperous, law-abiding, civilised country, with strong civic institutions. Russia doesn't really have any of that. Russia has always been a kleptocracy, since the time of the Mongol invasions. Without the Mongols, Russia today would probably be Scandinavian.
That's very arguable (on Germany, that is).
Germany always had a strong militaristic tradition and although clearly delineated, its civil institutions were actually very weak compared to the army. For example, the Reichstag under the Empire had no power over the government, and during the Weimar era the Presidency ruled without the Reichstag altogether under Article 48 on many occasions long before Hitler came to power. And the President was elected because he was an ex military commander.
Germany also always had a highly expansionist outlook, including annexing large chunks of territory from its neighbours. They launched WWI (yes, they did, that's been an argument pretty much done and dusted for 60 years ever since Fischer published his book on the subject and Ritter was caught forging and destroying documents to rebut it) very largely in the hope of annexing more territory in Poland, Belgium and France.
Without wishing to be all AJP Taylor about this, one of the more troubling features of Nazism is how many of its policies followed quite naturally from those of earlier generations of German rulers.
Russia was flooded with western, mostly American, academics and advisors after communism fell, but the mistake they made was to focus almost entirely on the economy (and from a right wing standpoint not too dissimilar from Truss’s), launching that scheme whereby every Russian got a few shares in previously state owned companies into an environment with no democratic culture or traditions, and in the absence of the strong institutions needed to make democracy stick. Which led directly to an oligarchy of criminals.
Germany in 1945 had an entire generation either wiped out or discredited by criminality more than any in history. Those that replaced them and the upcoming young were determined to set a different example. It’s hard to see Russia achieving such an outcome when those with power aren’t suffering casualties, sending young conscripts to their deaths, with no foreign occupation, and little likelihood of criminal liability aside, possibly, from Putin himself. History suggests a power struggle followed by the emergence of someone similar, the only consolation being that Russia will be economically and militarily crippled.
I see the odious Clarke has been shooting his mouth "the state's far too big and too much welfare, it makes it harder for us to give tax cuts to the rich". Who he? A long streak of piss risen without trace, the North East's answer to Mogg
Do you think the state's too small?
One of the big misunderstandings in our politics is on the size of the state. Demand for the services offered by the state is increasing each year due to our demographics and people living longer. If we want to simply maintain services like pensions and healthcare at current levels we need to increase the share the state takes.
If the state was the correct size at around 35% in the 90s and 40% so far this century, then the equivalent will be mid 40s over the next couple of decades.
You can't just take a number from thirty plus years ago and assume it will still work for the future.
Sadly that is a giant ponzi scheme in operation. You simply cannot continue increasing the size of the state as a proportion of GDP in the way you seem to be advocating.
That is in no way to support what Truss and Kwartang have just done. Changes to our systems ned to be done with time, consideration and the support of the population. They also need to be fair - reducing the tax burden by spreading it and then lowering it rather than just slashing it for the richest whilst increasing it for the rest.
But there has to be a finite limit to the amount the state can expand. Personally, I think we have reached and exceeded that limit but that is something that can and should be discussed by the nation as a whole rather than just slamming the breaks on overnight and saying 'tough live with it'.
My post was not particularly advocating anything, it was stating that to maintain public services at the levels we are used to, the size of the state has to increase because of our demographics. With different demographics we would be able to improve public services and reduce the size of the state simultaneously.
Yes of course it is up to the country to decide if the state should be bigger or smaller, but it should be an informed decision that understands the above. I do not think Truss and Kwarteng get it.
Yep I get your point. I just think that we have long since reached the point where we needed to decide that the state can do no more and is, in fact doing too much.
I would start by dumping the triple lock. Pensioners - particularly those who have had good jobs in their earlier life - should do far more to look after themselves in retirement and not expect the Government to provide them with a higher standard of living than many poorer working families can afford.
I see the odious Clarke has been shooting his mouth "the state's far too big and too much welfare, it makes it harder for us to give tax cuts to the rich". Who he? A long streak of piss risen without trace, the North East's answer to Mogg
Do you think the state's too small?
One of the big misunderstandings in our politics is on the size of the state. Demand for the services offered by the state is increasing each year due to our demographics and people living longer. If we want to simply maintain services like pensions and healthcare at current levels we need to increase the share the state takes.
If the state was the correct size at around 35% in the 90s and 40% so far this century, then the equivalent will be mid 40s over the next couple of decades.
You can't just take a number from thirty plus years ago and assume it will still work for the future.
Sadly that is a giant ponzi scheme in operation. You simply cannot continue increasing the size of the state as a proportion of GDP in the way you seem to be advocating.
That is in no way to support what Truss and Kwartang have just done. Changes to our systems ned to be done with time, consideration and the support of the population. They also need to be fair - reducing the tax burden by spreading it and then lowering it rather than just slashing it for the richest whilst increasing it for the rest.
But there has to be a finite limit to the amount the state can expand. Personally, I think we have reached and exceeded that limit but that is something that can and should be discussed by the nation as a whole rather than just slamming the breaks on overnight and saying 'tough live with it'.
My post was not particularly advocating anything, it was stating that to maintain public services at the levels we are used to, the size of the state has to increase because of our demographics. With different demographics we would be able to improve public services and reduce the size of the state simultaneously.
Yes of course it is up to the country to decide if the state should be bigger or smaller, but it should be an informed decision that understands the above. I do not think Truss and Kwarteng get it.
Yep I get your point. I just think that we have long since reached the point where we needed to decide that the state can do no more and is, in fact doing too much.
I would start by dumping the triple lock. Pensioners - particularly those who have had good jobs in their earlier life - should do far more to look after themselves in retirement and not expect the Government to provide them with a higher standard of living than many poorer working families can afford.
The triple lock is not just perpetually increasing the size of the state, but if you maintained it for another few decades would see state pensions alone become the size of the total current state spending.
It is one of those policies any economist can see is unnecessary and problematic, but no politician knows how to get rid of.
Which ‘people’ would these be I wonder? The Sioux or Zoroastrians, or Rangers supporters perhaps?
What is with the KCMG bollocks? Is he allowed to advertise himself in that way?
Since if he were one the correct form of address would be 'Sir [Name] KG' I imagine he probably is. It would be like referring to yourself as the Supreme Duke and Earl Marshall of the Wash and Humber. It is a non-existent title so has no meaning.
I have edited that because of course KCMG is Michael and George, not the Garter.
More to the point, a little research confirms there are no 'Knight Commanders' in the Garter. They are 'Knight Companions.' It's the other orders have Knight Commanders. So it's a totally made up title.
Why would he do it? I don't know, but I'm guessing because he's a tool. This would be in character with much of his career.
Just had a look at his twitter feed. Completely lost down an anti-vax rabbit hole of paranoia.
Was he ever taken seriously?
To be fair there are respected doctors like Dr Aseem Malhotra now coming out saying the vax is harmful
"Malhotra's views on diet and health have been criticized by the British Heart Foundation as "misleading and wrong", and his public questioning of the need ever to use statins has been condemned as a danger to public health."
"During the COVID-19 pandemic Malhotra published a book called The 21-Day Immunity Plan[11] making claims that following the diet could quickly help people reduce their risk from the virus; such claims are not backed by medical research evidence."
Malhotra becoming antivax seems to have been a fairly heartbreaking result of desperately seeking something to blame. His father died of heart failure. Had he taken statins, as recommended (but which Malhotra crusaded against) - well, things might have been different. BUt could anyone accept that, from Malhotra's position?
So he decided to blame a vaccine taken six months earlier. For damage to a heart that had occurred over years, and where no matter how he tried to torture the data, no signal of elevated heart failure could be found. You could find a strong signal for elevated risk of myocardial infarction and the like from previous infections by covid, but not from the vaccine.
This did not stop him. And hasn't. He has, of course, been heralded by the antivaxxer community (like RFK Jr) as a prophet and a great man. During the recent antivaxxer conference, he sat by and said nothing whilst others questioned whether viruses exist at all, and the answer to why mass deaths hadn't been seen from the vaccines was "Maybe almost all of them were duds as they ramped up manufacturing so quickly."
Think the problem is the excess deaths in the uk and other countries running at i believe around 1000 per week in the uk Hypotheses 1. Lack of prompt nhs medical care due to lockdown 2. The vax Remember after a pandemic we should have negative excess deaths
I see the odious Clarke has been shooting his mouth "the state's far too big and too much welfare, it makes it harder for us to give tax cuts to the rich". Who he? A long streak of piss risen without trace, the North East's answer to Mogg
Do you think the state's too small?
I don't actually have a problem with much lower taxes and a smaller state. I'm a pretty right-wing Tory. Those who think this is all about the 45p rate have got it wrong, at least for my constituency.
It's the economic illiteracy and irresponsibility of the announcements (essentially ignoring the deficit and the cost of borrowing) that got me.
Would they be able to win you back with a credible plan to close the deficit by cutting public spending, or have you lost trust in them to the extent that you'd find any plan from them not to be credible, and you'd have to see the public borrowing figures improve over the next 18 months before you could be swayed?
Probably the latter, I'm afraid.
I don't think Truss is a leopard that's going to change her spots and has a tin ear for politics anyway.
Yep there are two different points here (and to be fair I speak as someone who didn't vote Tory anyway). It is possible that Truss is right and that we do see an improvement before the next election, perhaps even a big improvement. I doubt it but it is possible. But that doesn't change the fact that Truss and Kwartang have made a series of decisions (the 45p tax rate change and the bankers bonus changes for two) which have little overall impact on public finances but which are hugely damaging politically and completely unnecessary except as a matter of pure ideology.
In my view this makes her unfit to govern even if the overall financial plan turns out to be correct.
I see the odious Clarke has been shooting his mouth "the state's far too big and too much welfare, it makes it harder for us to give tax cuts to the rich". Who he? A long streak of piss risen without trace, the North East's answer to Mogg
Do you think the state's too small?
One of the big misunderstandings in our politics is on the size of the state. Demand for the services offered by the state is increasing each year due to our demographics and people living longer. If we want to simply maintain services like pensions and healthcare at current levels we need to increase the share the state takes.
If the state was the correct size at around 35% in the 90s and 40% so far this century, then the equivalent will be mid 40s over the next couple of decades.
You can't just take a number from thirty plus years ago and assume it will still work for the future.
Sadly that is a giant ponzi scheme in operation. You simply cannot continue increasing the size of the state as a proportion of GDP in the way you seem to be advocating.
That is in no way to support what Truss and Kwartang have just done. Changes to our systems ned to be done with time, consideration and the support of the population. They also need to be fair - reducing the tax burden by spreading it and then lowering it rather than just slashing it for the richest whilst increasing it for the rest.
But there has to be a finite limit to the amount the state can expand. Personally, I think we have reached and exceeded that limit but that is something that can and should be discussed by the nation as a whole rather than just slamming the breaks on overnight and saying 'tough live with it'.
My post was not particularly advocating anything, it was stating that to maintain public services at the levels we are used to, the size of the state has to increase because of our demographics. With different demographics we would be able to improve public services and reduce the size of the state simultaneously.
Yes of course it is up to the country to decide if the state should be bigger or smaller, but it should be an informed decision that understands the above. I do not think Truss and Kwarteng get it.
Yep I get your point. I just think that we have long since reached the point where we needed to decide that the state can do no more and is, in fact doing too much.
I would start by dumping the triple lock. Pensioners - particularly those who have had good jobs in their earlier life - should do far more to look after themselves in retirement and not expect the Government to provide them with a higher standard of living than many poorer working families can afford.
The triple lock is not just perpetually increasing the size of the state, but if you maintained it for another few decades would see state pensions alone become the size of the total current state spending.
It is one of those policies any economist can see is unnecessary and problematic, but no politician knows how to get rid of.
State pension is currently 10% of govt spending, so just this years commitment to the triple lock alone increases the size of the state by about half a % point.
Phillips P. OBrien @PhillipsPOBrien · 25m First ukrainian official Ive seen putting a specific figure on the number of Russian troops trapped in Lyman. 5000.
With the front now 20 km further east from Lyman and supplies cut off, then the situation for the Russians is desperate. Fighting now in Kreminna shows a total collapse of the line, as was suggested last night. Peskov also announced the suspension of the mobilization "because the recruiting offices are over loaded" (translation from the weasel- the mobilization has been the greatest Russian military disaster in decades).
The funereal faces in the Kremlin last night showed that the regime knows the game is up. The denouncing of the UN Charter (who signed up for these rules? asked Putin: all members of the UN, actually Vlad), was sinister, but in a pathetic, Dr. Evil, kind of way. The celebrations in Red Square were empty, and now many Russians are beginning to understand that the country is facing complete humiliation and utter disaster,
Though I would not want to test it, there is pretty good chance that even with better funding over the past decades, the Russian missile systems are in just as bad a state as the rest of the rabble of an army. Any nuclear use could lead to the rapid destruction of Russia´s entire armed forces, including its nuclear forces. The generals know this and while they are happy enough to rattle the nuclear sabre, there must be real concern that if they play that card, then rapid and total vengeance would follow. The western policy of maintaining conventional support for Ukraine makes complete sense. Russia has been warned to expect a "catastrophic" response to any first use of WMD.
So while our middle-agers here are enjoying the disaster porn of Threads and the like, the feeling here, close to the border, is that Russia is finished as a great power and that this war is the last nail in the coffin of a genuinely evil, criminal cabal. In their death throes they are very dangerous, but there is no real prospect of their long term survival. Could be weeks, or even months, but the direction of travel is close to irreversible. Then Russia will have to negotiate the scale of their moral depravity, in the same way as Germany did, after 1945.
IMO the big question facing Putin is the following: if he automagically 'wins' all of Ukraine today, how does he stop all the economic sanctions that are massively limiting his country's strength? The west won't just say: "Oh well, he's won, we'd better just lift everything!" as they well know Putin will do the same with your fair country and others.
Russia has spent decades getting vast amount of treasure from oil and gas. They will now be seen around the world as a massively unreliable supplier, untrustworthy. They will sell oil and gas, but at nowhere near the quantities they did before, or on the favourable conditions. Europe will find alternative supplies and move towards other, hopefully greener, forms of supply.
There is now no way that Russia ends this war stronger than it was before February this year. It will be a diminished country, in terms of its military, its world standing, and most importantly, the lives of its own citizens. A pariah.
The only way out of this is to withdraw from Ukraine - at the very least to its pre-February borders - and admit defeat. Then, slowly over time, sanctions can be withdrawn. But I doubt Germany et al will be taking long-term energy contracts out with them, and western companies will be very hesitant to invest in the country.
Continuing the escalation will only weaken Russia, as well as imperilling the world. And that's what worries me: as I've been saying for years, Putin is not interested in making Russia stronger. He is only interested in bringing us down to his level.
In short: Yes to most of that. It will take a very long time for Russia´s neighbours not to fear and hate them, but with the scale of the economic and demographic collapse no beginning, the outlook is truly grim, even if they withdrew today. Even if sanctions were lifted, the de facto boycott will continue. Who wants anything to do with a bunch of murderers, torturers and rapists, who laugh when the threaten nuclear megadeath to the whole world?
Russia will have to face the same moral regeneration as Germany after 1945, and that is a process that takes generations.
I don't think Putin and his clique are in the same league of evil as Hitler and his clique.
They're still pretty evil.
It was very hard for Germany, simply because of how vile the Nazis were. But, it was also easier, because they were such an outlier. Germany, pre-Nazi, was a prosperous, law-abiding, civilised country, with strong civic institutions. Russia doesn't really have any of that. Russia has always been a kleptocracy, since the time of the Mongol invasions. Without the Mongols, Russia today would probably be Scandinavian.
Part of the problem is that there has been no moral recovery from Stalin, who really was just as evil as Hitler.
Instead of atoning for the crimes of Stalinism and Communism, Putin has mostly repeated those crimes. This is why I use the word "moral" crisis. There has been no truth and reconciliation, but instead a glorification of the KGB and other criminals. Unless this is ended, Russia can never recover. I have many Russophone friends who now refuse to engage with any Russian culture because whatever the glories of Bulgakov, Tshaikovsky etc, everything is overlaid with the continuing brutality of thugs like Stalin, Beria and indeed Putin. As one said, who cares about the ballet when they are rebuilding the GULAG? The collapse of Russian soft power is just as remarkable as any other part of this Russian disaster.
The Soviet Union came out of WWII with a huge amount of international goodwill, which completely obscured the crimes of the 1930's. The onset of the Cold War diminished, but certainly did not destroy, that goodwill, particularly as the Soviets could claim to be anti-colonialists, and the West really did throw its weight behind some ghastly leaders in the Third World.
Obviously, where you are based, and in Eastern Europe generally, people have never had warm feelings towards the Soviet Union, given the dreadful treatment they received at its hands. It's remarkable really, how little venegeance was taken against Soviet collaborators.
The first paragraph is quite right; and it wasn't only goodwill earned by the Soviet union, but a recognition that governments in the 30s had made some horrendous mistakes. At least that's what many of the then older generation said.
I'm not quite sure that the second paragraph is as correct as the first; there appears to be, or to have been, some amount of support among the older generation for the Communist regimes because they compared well, in many respects, with what had gone before.
There was little residual support for communism in the immediate aftermath of the changes, but nostalgia grew with the disruptive changes that followed.
I remember reading an account of the changes in Eastern Europe in the 90s and an observation that struck me was that, at some point during the transition to capitalist economies, it dawned on people that they were being ‘sorted’ into classes, not just them but likely their children and children’s children, moving from a state where, barring the tiny nomenclature, everyone had similar living standards to a western state with a ‘middle class’ who would perpetually have generally better access to everything than the ‘working class’.
Not surprising that some on the losing side of the deal started to hanker for the lost ‘equality’ and ‘all in it together’ communitarianism, made easier with a bit of distance in the same way that many of us look back on objectively unpleasant experiences almost as if we had enjoyed them at the time.
Haven't fully caught up yet, but am enjoying the mental whiplash on manifestos.
When discussing PR and coalitions - the fact that we supposedly vote according to manifestos is crucial, compromise and coalitions damage the very fabric of our political system.
When discussing a majority party making huge changes mid-term - the fact that we supposedly vote according to manifestos is irrelevant, they have no hold on a Government that can call upon a majority in the House of Commons under our political system.
Fun.
My personal take is the same for both: politicians elected as our representatives can compromise (with each other, with reality, and/or with ideology) as much as they like. But they will have to face the electorate afterwards, who will pass judgement on what compromises they decided to make.
And politicians know this, and this will influence the House of Commons as a whole, and if it doesn't, they will face the electorate in due time. As did the Lib Dems after compromising away their tuition fees stance.
This is why certain forms of PR - those which advocate party lists - are so pernicious. The result is that some MPs know they will get re-elected almost no matter what. Obviously there are a number of systems that don't work this way but anything that gives more power to the parties should be avoided.
For all intents and purposes, there are 100-150 MPs in each of the main parties who will be reelected no matter what. That's a little under half the total.
He's right. Question. Will we see a video of Liz Truss explaining the abolition of the cap on bankers bonuses, and the 45p tax cut. No. Of course not. She is trying to avoid even talking about it. So if you can't talk about it you can't defend it. And if you can't defend it, don't do it.
Haven't fully caught up yet, but am enjoying the mental whiplash on manifestos.
When discussing PR and coalitions - the fact that we supposedly vote according to manifestos is crucial, compromise and coalitions damage the very fabric of our political system.
When discussing a majority party making huge changes mid-term - the fact that we supposedly vote according to manifestos is irrelevant, they have no hold on a Government that can call upon a majority in the House of Commons under our political system.
Fun.
My personal take is the same for both: politicians elected as our representatives can compromise (with each other, with reality, and/or with ideology) as much as they like. But they will have to face the electorate afterwards, who will pass judgement on what compromises they decided to make.
And politicians know this, and this will influence the House of Commons as a whole, and if it doesn't, they will face the electorate in due time. As did the Lib Dems after compromising away their tuition fees stance.
This is why certain forms of PR - those which advocate party lists - are so pernicious. The result is that some MPs know they will get re-elected almost no matter what. Obviously there are a number of systems that don't work this way but anything that gives more power to the parties should be avoided.
I still think the Danish option of unweighted lists is a happy compromise - yes, you have a party list, but you choose a specific person on it, and if party X gets N seats, they go to the N candidates with the most personal votes on the list. This encourages parties to seek diversity instead of robotic loyalty - for example, the Tories could have a list with Truss and Sunak and Gove and various other flavours, and if you like the Tories in general but want to avoid certain types of them, you can do exactly that. The party benefits by attracting a variety of support.
It is also possible to simply vote for the party. Some Danish parties allocate such votes to the people at the top of the list, which does boost the power of the party to reward loyalty. Essentially the voter is saying "I like the Tories and delegate to them which individuals get seats". But others simply ignore those votes in deciding who gets the seats, and that's the variant I like.
Which ‘people’ would these be I wonder? The Sioux or Zoroastrians, or Rangers supporters perhaps?
What is with the KCMG bollocks? Is he allowed to advertise himself in that way?
Since if he were one the correct form of address would be 'Sir [Name] KG' I imagine he probably is. It would be like referring to yourself as the Supreme Duke and Earl Marshall of the Wash and Humber. It is a non-existent title so has no meaning.
I have edited that because of course KCMG is Michael and George, not the Garter.
More to the point, a little research confirms there are no 'Knight Commanders' in the Garter. They are 'Knight Companions.' It's the other orders have Knight Commanders. So it's a totally made up title.
Why would he do it? I don't know, but I'm guessing because he's a tool. This would be in character with much of his career.
Just had a look at his twitter feed. Completely lost down an anti-vax rabbit hole of paranoia.
Was he ever taken seriously?
To be fair there are respected doctors like Dr Aseem Malhotra now coming out saying the vax is harmful
"Malhotra's views on diet and health have been criticized by the British Heart Foundation as "misleading and wrong", and his public questioning of the need ever to use statins has been condemned as a danger to public health."
"During the COVID-19 pandemic Malhotra published a book called The 21-Day Immunity Plan[11] making claims that following the diet could quickly help people reduce their risk from the virus; such claims are not backed by medical research evidence."
Malhotra becoming antivax seems to have been a fairly heartbreaking result of desperately seeking something to blame. His father died of heart failure. Had he taken statins, as recommended (but which Malhotra crusaded against) - well, things might have been different. BUt could anyone accept that, from Malhotra's position?
So he decided to blame a vaccine taken six months earlier. For damage to a heart that had occurred over years, and where no matter how he tried to torture the data, no signal of elevated heart failure could be found. You could find a strong signal for elevated risk of myocardial infarction and the like from previous infections by covid, but not from the vaccine.
This did not stop him. And hasn't. He has, of course, been heralded by the antivaxxer community (like RFK Jr) as a prophet and a great man. During the recent antivaxxer conference, he sat by and said nothing whilst others questioned whether viruses exist at all, and the answer to why mass deaths hadn't been seen from the vaccines was "Maybe almost all of them were duds as they ramped up manufacturing so quickly."
Think the problem is the excess deaths in the uk and other countries running at i believe around 1000 per week in the uk Hypotheses 1. Lack of prompt nhs medical care due to lockdown 2. The vax Remember after a pandemic we should have negative excess deaths
And the fact that excess deaths are by far the highest in those unvaccinated surely points away from the vaccine?
The ONS present figures for deaths by vaccination status. Age standardised excess deaths per 100,000 Vaccinated: 957.4. Unvaccinated: 2337.5
Not the vax, then, is it?
And why on Earth would you assume that post-mass-infection by a virus that is now well known and proven to cause elevated risk of cardiovascular damage of all types in those infected would lead to a decrease in the death rate?
Coupled with a health service running flat out for so long.
Out of interest has any country officially recognised Putin's annexations yet?
India abstained.
China too, and Brazil. The UNSC vote went +10-1=4. Gabon was the other abstainer. +3-1=1 among the permanent members, with the +3 all being in NATO.
No matter who wins tomorrow's Brazilian Presidential election neither will take a very hard line on Putin. Bolsonaro has been a pal of his in the past and said the sanctions on Russia are too harsh. While Lula has said Zelensky is as much to blame as Putin for the invasion.
Outside of the support in the West and most of Eastern Europe for Ukraine most of the rest of the world is staying out of it
Phillips P. OBrien @PhillipsPOBrien · 25m First ukrainian official Ive seen putting a specific figure on the number of Russian troops trapped in Lyman. 5000.
With the front now 20 km further east from Lyman and supplies cut off, then the situation for the Russians is desperate. Fighting now in Kreminna shows a total collapse of the line, as was suggested last night. Peskov also announced the suspension of the mobilization "because the recruiting offices are over loaded" (translation from the weasel- the mobilization has been the greatest Russian military disaster in decades).
The funereal faces in the Kremlin last night showed that the regime knows the game is up. The denouncing of the UN Charter (who signed up for these rules? asked Putin: all members of the UN, actually Vlad), was sinister, but in a pathetic, Dr. Evil, kind of way. The celebrations in Red Square were empty, and now many Russians are beginning to understand that the country is facing complete humiliation and utter disaster,
Though I would not want to test it, there is pretty good chance that even with better funding over the past decades, the Russian missile systems are in just as bad a state as the rest of the rabble of an army. Any nuclear use could lead to the rapid destruction of Russia´s entire armed forces, including its nuclear forces. The generals know this and while they are happy enough to rattle the nuclear sabre, there must be real concern that if they play that card, then rapid and total vengeance would follow. The western policy of maintaining conventional support for Ukraine makes complete sense. Russia has been warned to expect a "catastrophic" response to any first use of WMD.
So while our middle-agers here are enjoying the disaster porn of Threads and the like, the feeling here, close to the border, is that Russia is finished as a great power and that this war is the last nail in the coffin of a genuinely evil, criminal cabal. In their death throes they are very dangerous, but there is no real prospect of their long term survival. Could be weeks, or even months, but the direction of travel is close to irreversible. Then Russia will have to negotiate the scale of their moral depravity, in the same way as Germany did, after 1945.
IMO the big question facing Putin is the following: if he automagically 'wins' all of Ukraine today, how does he stop all the economic sanctions that are massively limiting his country's strength? The west won't just say: "Oh well, he's won, we'd better just lift everything!" as they well know Putin will do the same with your fair country and others.
Russia has spent decades getting vast amount of treasure from oil and gas. They will now be seen around the world as a massively unreliable supplier, untrustworthy. They will sell oil and gas, but at nowhere near the quantities they did before, or on the favourable conditions. Europe will find alternative supplies and move towards other, hopefully greener, forms of supply.
There is now no way that Russia ends this war stronger than it was before February this year. It will be a diminished country, in terms of its military, its world standing, and most importantly, the lives of its own citizens. A pariah.
The only way out of this is to withdraw from Ukraine - at the very least to its pre-February borders - and admit defeat. Then, slowly over time, sanctions can be withdrawn. But I doubt Germany et al will be taking long-term energy contracts out with them, and western companies will be very hesitant to invest in the country.
Continuing the escalation will only weaken Russia, as well as imperilling the world. And that's what worries me: as I've been saying for years, Putin is not interested in making Russia stronger. He is only interested in bringing us down to his level.
In short: Yes to most of that. It will take a very long time for Russia´s neighbours not to fear and hate them, but with the scale of the economic and demographic collapse no beginning, the outlook is truly grim, even if they withdrew today. Even if sanctions were lifted, the de facto boycott will continue. Who wants anything to do with a bunch of murderers, torturers and rapists, who laugh when the threaten nuclear megadeath to the whole world?
Russia will have to face the same moral regeneration as Germany after 1945, and that is a process that takes generations.
I don't think Putin and his clique are in the same league of evil as Hitler and his clique.
They're still pretty evil.
It was very hard for Germany, simply because of how vile the Nazis were. But, it was also easier, because they were such an outlier. Germany, pre-Nazi, was a prosperous, law-abiding, civilised country, with strong civic institutions. Russia doesn't really have any of that. Russia has always been a kleptocracy, since the time of the Mongol invasions. Without the Mongols, Russia today would probably be Scandinavian.
Part of the problem is that there has been no moral recovery from Stalin, who really was just as evil as Hitler.
Instead of atoning for the crimes of Stalinism and Communism, Putin has mostly repeated those crimes. This is why I use the word "moral" crisis. There has been no truth and reconciliation, but instead a glorification of the KGB and other criminals. Unless this is ended, Russia can never recover. I have many Russophone friends who now refuse to engage with any Russian culture because whatever the glories of Bulgakov, Tshaikovsky etc, everything is overlaid with the continuing brutality of thugs like Stalin, Beria and indeed Putin. As one said, who cares about the ballet when they are rebuilding the GULAG? The collapse of Russian soft power is just as remarkable as any other part of this Russian disaster.
The Soviet Union came out of WWII with a huge amount of international goodwill, which completely obscured the crimes of the 1930's. The onset of the Cold War diminished, but certainly did not destroy, that goodwill, particularly as the Soviets could claim to be anti-colonialists, and the West really did throw its weight behind some ghastly leaders in the Third World.
Obviously, where you are based, and in Eastern Europe generally, people have never had warm feelings towards the Soviet Union, given the dreadful treatment they received at its hands. It's remarkable really, how little venegeance was taken against Soviet collaborators.
The first paragraph is quite right; and it wasn't only goodwill earned by the Soviet union, but a recognition that governments in the 30s had made some horrendous mistakes. At least that's what many of the then older generation said.
I'm not quite sure that the second paragraph is as correct as the first; there appears to be, or to have been, some amount of support among the older generation for the Communist regimes because they compared well, in many respects, with what had gone before.
There was little residual support for communism in the immediate aftermath of the changes, but nostalgia grew with the disruptive changes that followed.
I remember reading an account of the changes in Eastern Europe in the 90s and an observation that struck me was that, at some point during the transition to capitalist economies, it dawned on people that they were being ‘sorted’ into classes, not just them but likely their children and children’s children, moving from a state where, barring the tiny nomenclature, everyone had similar living standards to a western state with a ‘middle class’ who would perpetually have generally better access to everything than the ‘working class’.
Not surprising that some on the losing side of the deal started to hanker for the lost ‘equality’ and ‘all in it together’ communitarianism, made easier with a bit of distance in the same way that many of us look back on objectively unpleasant experiences almost as if we had enjoyed them at the time.
Well for every country, even including Russia, it did not take long for actual living standards to overtake the so-called equality of the Communist system. Of course Soviet Communism was even more unequal than normal Parliamentary democracy, because the Party members had extraordinary privileges compared to the ordinary citizen. The party was an increasingly hereditary system too, by the end. As with Russia and China today, the princelings grabbed a disproportionate share of the goodies.
He's right. Question. Will we see a video of Liz Truss explaining the abolition of the cap on bankers bonuses, and the 45p tax cut. No. Of course not. She is trying to avoid even talking about it. So if you can't talk about it you can't defend it. And if you can't defend it, don't do it.
Another bloke jumping up and down about the 5% of unfunded spending while saying nothing about the 95% of unfunded spending. I'm worried that people think a 7.7 deficit "but fair for me" would have been fine.
I see the odious Clarke has been shooting his mouth "the state's far too big and too much welfare, it makes it harder for us to give tax cuts to the rich". Who he? A long streak of piss risen without trace, the North East's answer to Mogg
Do you think the state's too small?
One of the big misunderstandings in our politics is on the size of the state. Demand for the services offered by the state is increasing each year due to our demographics and people living longer. If we want to simply maintain services like pensions and healthcare at current levels we need to increase the share the state takes.
If the state was the correct size at around 35% in the 90s and 40% so far this century, then the equivalent will be mid 40s over the next couple of decades.
You can't just take a number from thirty plus years ago and assume it will still work for the future.
Sadly that is a giant ponzi scheme in operation. You simply cannot continue increasing the size of the state as a proportion of GDP in the way you seem to be advocating.
That is in no way to support what Truss and Kwartang have just done. Changes to our systems ned to be done with time, consideration and the support of the population. They also need to be fair - reducing the tax burden by spreading it and then lowering it rather than just slashing it for the richest whilst increasing it for the rest.
But there has to be a finite limit to the amount the state can expand. Personally, I think we have reached and exceeded that limit but that is something that can and should be discussed by the nation as a whole rather than just slamming the breaks on overnight and saying 'tough live with it'.
My post was not particularly advocating anything, it was stating that to maintain public services at the levels we are used to, the size of the state has to increase because of our demographics. With different demographics we would be able to improve public services and reduce the size of the state simultaneously.
Yes of course it is up to the country to decide if the state should be bigger or smaller, but it should be an informed decision that understands the above. I do not think Truss and Kwarteng get it.
Yep I get your point. I just think that we have long since reached the point where we needed to decide that the state can do no more and is, in fact doing too much.
I would start by dumping the triple lock. Pensioners - particularly those who have had good jobs in their earlier life - should do far more to look after themselves in retirement and not expect the Government to provide them with a higher standard of living than many poorer working families can afford.
The triple lock is not just perpetually increasing the size of the state, but if you maintained it for another few decades would see state pensions alone become the size of the total current state spending.
It is one of those policies any economist can see is unnecessary and problematic, but no politician knows how to get rid of.
well now is an ideal time for Labour to go for it. they dont get much of the pensioner vote anyway so the electoral downside is limited.
but maybe there are other ways. the state pension in itself is barely enough to live off. but if those with large private pensions on top had more deductions from those, similar to working people with the same income, that could go towards maintaining the basic pension for all. not a policy the Tories would countenance. but feels like a real winner for Labour to me.
Apropos of nothing, I ‘enjoyed’ my second covid booster on Thursday. I had a pretty intense reaction (flu like fever etc) to my fist booster (Pfizer, after 2x AZ). Had the new moderna mRNA this time and again nasty fever for 36 hours. Not fun. But harmful? Not a lot of evidence for that.
Looks like a load of bollocks to me. "...this vaccine is not completely safe." No vaccine is completely safe, surely?
No, nothing will be completely safe, hence the wrangles we’ve had over vaccinating kids in the U.K.
Yup. Nothing is zero risk. The evidence from the comprehensive systems of testing and reporting of effects when in use, show that the vaccines for COVID, used in the U.K., have a very low risk so side effects. Compared, for example to many other vaccinations of long standing,
Haven't fully caught up yet, but am enjoying the mental whiplash on manifestos.
When discussing PR and coalitions - the fact that we supposedly vote according to manifestos is crucial, compromise and coalitions damage the very fabric of our political system.
When discussing a majority party making huge changes mid-term - the fact that we supposedly vote according to manifestos is irrelevant, they have no hold on a Government that can call upon a majority in the House of Commons under our political system.
Fun.
My personal take is the same for both: politicians elected as our representatives can compromise (with each other, with reality, and/or with ideology) as much as they like. But they will have to face the electorate afterwards, who will pass judgement on what compromises they decided to make.
And politicians know this, and this will influence the House of Commons as a whole, and if it doesn't, they will face the electorate in due time. As did the Lib Dems after compromising away their tuition fees stance.
This is why certain forms of PR - those which advocate party lists - are so pernicious. The result is that some MPs know they will get re-elected almost no matter what. Obviously there are a number of systems that don't work this way but anything that gives more power to the parties should be avoided.
I'm a strong fan of STV. Proportional (or at least far more proportional), allows for independents to be elected, and allows for individual politicians to be thrown out.
Yes, and for different fractions of the same party to test their strengths. STV is a pretty good system and fits with the Westminster tradition pretty well.
Phillips P. OBrien @PhillipsPOBrien · 25m First ukrainian official Ive seen putting a specific figure on the number of Russian troops trapped in Lyman. 5000.
With the front now 20 km further east from Lyman and supplies cut off, then the situation for the Russians is desperate. Fighting now in Kreminna shows a total collapse of the line, as was suggested last night. Peskov also announced the suspension of the mobilization "because the recruiting offices are over loaded" (translation from the weasel- the mobilization has been the greatest Russian military disaster in decades).
The funereal faces in the Kremlin last night showed that the regime knows the game is up. The denouncing of the UN Charter (who signed up for these rules? asked Putin: all members of the UN, actually Vlad), was sinister, but in a pathetic, Dr. Evil, kind of way. The celebrations in Red Square were empty, and now many Russians are beginning to understand that the country is facing complete humiliation and utter disaster,
Though I would not want to test it, there is pretty good chance that even with better funding over the past decades, the Russian missile systems are in just as bad a state as the rest of the rabble of an army. Any nuclear use could lead to the rapid destruction of Russia´s entire armed forces, including its nuclear forces. The generals know this and while they are happy enough to rattle the nuclear sabre, there must be real concern that if they play that card, then rapid and total vengeance would follow. The western policy of maintaining conventional support for Ukraine makes complete sense. Russia has been warned to expect a "catastrophic" response to any first use of WMD.
So while our middle-agers here are enjoying the disaster porn of Threads and the like, the feeling here, close to the border, is that Russia is finished as a great power and that this war is the last nail in the coffin of a genuinely evil, criminal cabal. In their death throes they are very dangerous, but there is no real prospect of their long term survival. Could be weeks, or even months, but the direction of travel is close to irreversible. Then Russia will have to negotiate the scale of their moral depravity, in the same way as Germany did, after 1945.
IMO the big question facing Putin is the following: if he automagically 'wins' all of Ukraine today, how does he stop all the economic sanctions that are massively limiting his country's strength? The west won't just say: "Oh well, he's won, we'd better just lift everything!" as they well know Putin will do the same with your fair country and others.
Russia has spent decades getting vast amount of treasure from oil and gas. They will now be seen around the world as a massively unreliable supplier, untrustworthy. They will sell oil and gas, but at nowhere near the quantities they did before, or on the favourable conditions. Europe will find alternative supplies and move towards other, hopefully greener, forms of supply.
There is now no way that Russia ends this war stronger than it was before February this year. It will be a diminished country, in terms of its military, its world standing, and most importantly, the lives of its own citizens. A pariah.
The only way out of this is to withdraw from Ukraine - at the very least to its pre-February borders - and admit defeat. Then, slowly over time, sanctions can be withdrawn. But I doubt Germany et al will be taking long-term energy contracts out with them, and western companies will be very hesitant to invest in the country.
Continuing the escalation will only weaken Russia, as well as imperilling the world. And that's what worries me: as I've been saying for years, Putin is not interested in making Russia stronger. He is only interested in bringing us down to his level.
In short: Yes to most of that. It will take a very long time for Russia´s neighbours not to fear and hate them, but with the scale of the economic and demographic collapse no beginning, the outlook is truly grim, even if they withdrew today. Even if sanctions were lifted, the de facto boycott will continue. Who wants anything to do with a bunch of murderers, torturers and rapists, who laugh when the threaten nuclear megadeath to the whole world?
Russia will have to face the same moral regeneration as Germany after 1945, and that is a process that takes generations.
I don't think Putin and his clique are in the same league of evil as Hitler and his clique.
They're still pretty evil.
It was very hard for Germany, simply because of how vile the Nazis were. But, it was also easier, because they were such an outlier. Germany, pre-Nazi, was a prosperous, law-abiding, civilised country, with strong civic institutions. Russia doesn't really have any of that. Russia has always been a kleptocracy, since the time of the Mongol invasions. Without the Mongols, Russia today would probably be Scandinavian.
Part of the problem is that there has been no moral recovery from Stalin, who really was just as evil as Hitler.
Instead of atoning for the crimes of Stalinism and Communism, Putin has mostly repeated those crimes. This is why I use the word "moral" crisis. There has been no truth and reconciliation, but instead a glorification of the KGB and other criminals. Unless this is ended, Russia can never recover. I have many Russophone friends who now refuse to engage with any Russian culture because whatever the glories of Bulgakov, Tshaikovsky etc, everything is overlaid with the continuing brutality of thugs like Stalin, Beria and indeed Putin. As one said, who cares about the ballet when they are rebuilding the GULAG? The collapse of Russian soft power is just as remarkable as any other part of this Russian disaster.
The Soviet Union came out of WWII with a huge amount of international goodwill, which completely obscured the crimes of the 1930's. The onset of the Cold War diminished, but certainly did not destroy, that goodwill, particularly as the Soviets could claim to be anti-colonialists, and the West really did throw its weight behind some ghastly leaders in the Third World.
Obviously, where you are based, and in Eastern Europe generally, people have never had warm feelings towards the Soviet Union, given the dreadful treatment they received at its hands. It's remarkable really, how little venegeance was taken against Soviet collaborators.
The first paragraph is quite right; and it wasn't only goodwill earned by the Soviet union, but a recognition that governments in the 30s had made some horrendous mistakes. At least that's what many of the then older generation said.
I'm not quite sure that the second paragraph is as correct as the first; there appears to be, or to have been, some amount of support among the older generation for the Communist regimes because they compared well, in many respects, with what had gone before.
Not in the Baltic States or Czechoslovkia. These were countries as prosperous as the United Kingdom, pre WWII. Breaking up great estates might have generated some initial goodwill in other parts of Eastern Europe.
I can think of no country that welcomed Communism. Many, including the Baltic and Ukraine, fought guerilla wars for nearly a decade after the end of WWII, Romania and Bulgaria also had resistance movements, like the Bulgarian Goryani.
There were rebellions in Poland: 1956, 1970, 1980, Hungary: 1956, East Germany: 1953, Czechoslovakia: 1953 and 1968, there were resistance movements: Solidarnosc, KOR, the Petofi circles, Charter 77, Ekoglasnost.
There was no legitimacy to the "Peoples Republics" or the SSRs and as soon as the guns were put away, the system collapsed.
Chile and Yugoslavia both legally elected Communist governments, in 1970 and 1945 respectively.
Venezuela could perhaps be added to that list, although whether Chavez was a communist, socialist, or just a narcissist remains open to question.
Edit - also, Russia *would* have elected a Communist government in 1917, but for the fact Lenin and Trotsky decided the Socialist Revolutionaries were the wrong sort of Communists.
I see the odious Clarke has been shooting his mouth "the state's far too big and too much welfare, it makes it harder for us to give tax cuts to the rich". Who he? A long streak of piss risen without trace, the North East's answer to Mogg
Do you think the state's too small?
One of the big misunderstandings in our politics is on the size of the state. Demand for the services offered by the state is increasing each year due to our demographics and people living longer. If we want to simply maintain services like pensions and healthcare at current levels we need to increase the share the state takes.
If the state was the correct size at around 35% in the 90s and 40% so far this century, then the equivalent will be mid 40s over the next couple of decades.
You can't just take a number from thirty plus years ago and assume it will still work for the future.
Sadly that is a giant ponzi scheme in operation. You simply cannot continue increasing the size of the state as a proportion of GDP in the way you seem to be advocating.
That is in no way to support what Truss and Kwartang have just done. Changes to our systems ned to be done with time, consideration and the support of the population. They also need to be fair - reducing the tax burden by spreading it and then lowering it rather than just slashing it for the richest whilst increasing it for the rest.
But there has to be a finite limit to the amount the state can expand. Personally, I think we have reached and exceeded that limit but that is something that can and should be discussed by the nation as a whole rather than just slamming the breaks on overnight and saying 'tough live with it'.
My post was not particularly advocating anything, it was stating that to maintain public services at the levels we are used to, the size of the state has to increase because of our demographics. With different demographics we would be able to improve public services and reduce the size of the state simultaneously.
Yes of course it is up to the country to decide if the state should be bigger or smaller, but it should be an informed decision that understands the above. I do not think Truss and Kwarteng get it.
Yep I get your point. I just think that we have long since reached the point where we needed to decide that the state can do no more and is, in fact doing too much.
I would start by dumping the triple lock. Pensioners - particularly those who have had good jobs in their earlier life - should do far more to look after themselves in retirement and not expect the Government to provide them with a higher standard of living than many poorer working families can afford.
The triple lock is not just perpetually increasing the size of the state, but if you maintained it for another few decades would see state pensions alone become the size of the total current state spending.
It is one of those policies any economist can see is unnecessary and problematic, but no politician knows how to get rid of.
well now is an ideal time for Labour to go for it. they dont get much of the pensioner vote anyway so the electoral downside is limited.
but maybe there are other ways. the state pension in itself is barely enough to live off. but if those with large private pensions on top had more deductions from those, similar to working people with the same income, that could go towards maintaining the basic pension for all. not a policy the Tories would countenance. but feels like a real winner for Labour to me.
I think the Labour members who don't follow economics would think it mean and right wing. I dont think Starmer could go there.
You are probably right there may be other ways of doing similar such as merging NI and IT or making pensioners pay NI.
Haven't fully caught up yet, but am enjoying the mental whiplash on manifestos.
When discussing PR and coalitions - the fact that we supposedly vote according to manifestos is crucial, compromise and coalitions damage the very fabric of our political system.
When discussing a majority party making huge changes mid-term - the fact that we supposedly vote according to manifestos is irrelevant, they have no hold on a Government that can call upon a majority in the House of Commons under our political system.
Fun.
My personal take is the same for both: politicians elected as our representatives can compromise (with each other, with reality, and/or with ideology) as much as they like. But they will have to face the electorate afterwards, who will pass judgement on what compromises they decided to make.
And politicians know this, and this will influence the House of Commons as a whole, and if it doesn't, they will face the electorate in due time. As did the Lib Dems after compromising away their tuition fees stance.
This is why certain forms of PR - those which advocate party lists - are so pernicious. The result is that some MPs know they will get re-elected almost no matter what. Obviously there are a number of systems that don't work this way but anything that gives more power to the parties should be avoided.
I still think the Danish option of unweighted lists is a happy compromise - yes, you have a party list, but you choose a specific person on it, and if party X gets N seats, they go to the N candidates with the most personal votes on the list. This encourages parties to seek diversity instead of robotic loyalty - for example, the Tories could have a list with Truss and Sunak and Gove and various other flavours, and if you like the Tories in general but want to avoid certain types of them, you can do exactly that. The party benefits by attracting a variety of support.
It is also possible to simply vote for the party. Some Danish parties allocate such votes to the people at the top of the list, which does boost the power of the party to reward loyalty. Essentially the voter is saying "I like the Tories and delegate to them which individuals get seats". But others simply ignore those votes in deciding who gets the seats, and that's the variant I like.
Not for me I'm afraid. It still gives too much power to the parties. Any system that allows the parties to claim that votes were for them rather than for an individual is a retrograde step in my eyes. We should be reducing the influence and power of the party over democratic politics rather than increasing it.
The latest (Russian propagandist) RYBAR map - 3.00pm local time - shows Lyman in Ukrainian hands and the battlefront moved north and east by some 10km.
I find the idea October is "Black History Month" is very odd. For me October is Halloween, in the same way as December is Christmas. Black and orange are the colours of October, but not that meaning of black.
October is about witches, ghouls, skeletons, zombies, devils and so on . . . adding "black people" to that list seems more than a tad unfortunate.
Just watched Hocus Pocus with the girls, it still holds up. Looking forward to watching Hocus Pocus 2 with them tonight.
Phillips P. OBrien @PhillipsPOBrien · 25m First ukrainian official Ive seen putting a specific figure on the number of Russian troops trapped in Lyman. 5000.
With the front now 20 km further east from Lyman and supplies cut off, then the situation for the Russians is desperate. Fighting now in Kreminna shows a total collapse of the line, as was suggested last night. Peskov also announced the suspension of the mobilization "because the recruiting offices are over loaded" (translation from the weasel- the mobilization has been the greatest Russian military disaster in decades).
The funereal faces in the Kremlin last night showed that the regime knows the game is up. The denouncing of the UN Charter (who signed up for these rules? asked Putin: all members of the UN, actually Vlad), was sinister, but in a pathetic, Dr. Evil, kind of way. The celebrations in Red Square were empty, and now many Russians are beginning to understand that the country is facing complete humiliation and utter disaster,
Though I would not want to test it, there is pretty good chance that even with better funding over the past decades, the Russian missile systems are in just as bad a state as the rest of the rabble of an army. Any nuclear use could lead to the rapid destruction of Russia´s entire armed forces, including its nuclear forces. The generals know this and while they are happy enough to rattle the nuclear sabre, there must be real concern that if they play that card, then rapid and total vengeance would follow. The western policy of maintaining conventional support for Ukraine makes complete sense. Russia has been warned to expect a "catastrophic" response to any first use of WMD.
So while our middle-agers here are enjoying the disaster porn of Threads and the like, the feeling here, close to the border, is that Russia is finished as a great power and that this war is the last nail in the coffin of a genuinely evil, criminal cabal. In their death throes they are very dangerous, but there is no real prospect of their long term survival. Could be weeks, or even months, but the direction of travel is close to irreversible. Then Russia will have to negotiate the scale of their moral depravity, in the same way as Germany did, after 1945.
IMO the big question facing Putin is the following: if he automagically 'wins' all of Ukraine today, how does he stop all the economic sanctions that are massively limiting his country's strength? The west won't just say: "Oh well, he's won, we'd better just lift everything!" as they well know Putin will do the same with your fair country and others.
Russia has spent decades getting vast amount of treasure from oil and gas. They will now be seen around the world as a massively unreliable supplier, untrustworthy. They will sell oil and gas, but at nowhere near the quantities they did before, or on the favourable conditions. Europe will find alternative supplies and move towards other, hopefully greener, forms of supply.
There is now no way that Russia ends this war stronger than it was before February this year. It will be a diminished country, in terms of its military, its world standing, and most importantly, the lives of its own citizens. A pariah.
The only way out of this is to withdraw from Ukraine - at the very least to its pre-February borders - and admit defeat. Then, slowly over time, sanctions can be withdrawn. But I doubt Germany et al will be taking long-term energy contracts out with them, and western companies will be very hesitant to invest in the country.
Continuing the escalation will only weaken Russia, as well as imperilling the world. And that's what worries me: as I've been saying for years, Putin is not interested in making Russia stronger. He is only interested in bringing us down to his level.
In short: Yes to most of that. It will take a very long time for Russia´s neighbours not to fear and hate them, but with the scale of the economic and demographic collapse no beginning, the outlook is truly grim, even if they withdrew today. Even if sanctions were lifted, the de facto boycott will continue. Who wants anything to do with a bunch of murderers, torturers and rapists, who laugh when the threaten nuclear megadeath to the whole world?
Russia will have to face the same moral regeneration as Germany after 1945, and that is a process that takes generations.
I don't think Putin and his clique are in the same league of evil as Hitler and his clique.
They're still pretty evil.
It was very hard for Germany, simply because of how vile the Nazis were. But, it was also easier, because they were such an outlier. Germany, pre-Nazi, was a prosperous, law-abiding, civilised country, with strong civic institutions. Russia doesn't really have any of that. Russia has always been a kleptocracy, since the time of the Mongol invasions. Without the Mongols, Russia today would probably be Scandinavian.
Part of the problem is that there has been no moral recovery from Stalin, who really was just as evil as Hitler.
Instead of atoning for the crimes of Stalinism and Communism, Putin has mostly repeated those crimes. This is why I use the word "moral" crisis. There has been no truth and reconciliation, but instead a glorification of the KGB and other criminals. Unless this is ended, Russia can never recover. I have many Russophone friends who now refuse to engage with any Russian culture because whatever the glories of Bulgakov, Tshaikovsky etc, everything is overlaid with the continuing brutality of thugs like Stalin, Beria and indeed Putin. As one said, who cares about the ballet when they are rebuilding the GULAG? The collapse of Russian soft power is just as remarkable as any other part of this Russian disaster.
The Soviet Union came out of WWII with a huge amount of international goodwill, which completely obscured the crimes of the 1930's. The onset of the Cold War diminished, but certainly did not destroy, that goodwill, particularly as the Soviets could claim to be anti-colonialists, and the West really did throw its weight behind some ghastly leaders in the Third World.
Obviously, where you are based, and in Eastern Europe generally, people have never had warm feelings towards the Soviet Union, given the dreadful treatment they received at its hands. It's remarkable really, how little venegeance was taken against Soviet collaborators.
The first paragraph is quite right; and it wasn't only goodwill earned by the Soviet union, but a recognition that governments in the 30s had made some horrendous mistakes. At least that's what many of the then older generation said.
I'm not quite sure that the second paragraph is as correct as the first; there appears to be, or to have been, some amount of support among the older generation for the Communist regimes because they compared well, in many respects, with what had gone before.
There was little residual support for communism in the immediate aftermath of the changes, but nostalgia grew with the disruptive changes that followed.
I remember reading an account of the changes in Eastern Europe in the 90s and an observation that struck me was that, at some point during the transition to capitalist economies, it dawned on people that they were being ‘sorted’ into classes, not just them but likely their children and children’s children, moving from a state where, barring the tiny nomenclature, everyone had similar living standards to a western state with a ‘middle class’ who would perpetually have generally better access to everything than the ‘working class’.
Not surprising that some on the losing side of the deal started to hanker for the lost ‘equality’ and ‘all in it together’ communitarianism, made easier with a bit of distance in the same way that many of us look back on objectively unpleasant experiences almost as if we had enjoyed them at the time.
This is why certain forms of PR - those which advocate party lists - are so pernicious. The result is that some MPs know they will get re-elected almost no matter what. Obviously there are a number of systems that don't work this way but anything that gives more power to the parties should be avoided.
For all intents and purposes, there are 100-150 MPs in each of the main parties who will be reelected no matter what. That's a little under half the total.
So what we find is "safe" seats or "safe" MPs would exist under any and all forms of electoral system.
Where I part company with advocates of FPTP is at the local level where Labour used to win 100% of the seats on about 65% of the vote. The monopoly was broken in May when the Greens won 2 seats in Stratford.
The fact remains the 17% who voted Green get at least a voice, the 14% who voted Conservative get nothing. The 61% who voted Labour are rewarded with 64 out of 66 seats.
Applying a proportional aspect would still leave Labour in control with 40 seats but you'd have 11 Green Councillors, 9 Conservative seats and 6 from other parties. What you would then have is a healthier local democracy, a plurality of voices and opinions and less of a sense of a single-party unaccountable fiefdom.
I find the argument for STV for local elections compelling - for Westminster elections, I accept the argument is less convincing but many systems function on a mix of constituency and list MPs with the latter ensuring a degree of proportionality. Whether it's the German or NZ or some other system I don't know but it seems the way forward.
He's right. Question. Will we see a video of Liz Truss explaining the abolition of the cap on bankers bonuses, and the 45p tax cut. No. Of course not. She is trying to avoid even talking about it. So if you can't talk about it you can't defend it. And if you can't defend it, don't do it.
Course he does. Any negotiation now only favours Russia.
Meanwhile, Lyman has been recovered by Ukraine, Zarichne may also have been, soon all of occupied Donetsk north of the Siversky Donets river may be liberated, and Ukraine are expected to advance into western Luhansk, making a mockery of Russia's fictitious annexations. Putin is impotent.
A mini "highway of death" on the only road out of Lyman. Russian troops tried to escape in civilian vehicles:
Chile and Yugoslavia both legally elected Communist governments, in 1970 and 1945 respectively.
Venezuela could perhaps be added to that list, although whether Chavez was a communist, socialist, or just a narcissist remains open to question.
Edit - also, Russia *would* have elected a Communist government in 1917, but for the fact Lenin and Trotsky decided the Socialist Revolutionaries were the wrong sort of Communists.
Arguably Italy would have too post-war, if it hadn't been for vigorous CIA intervention. Mosaddegh in Iraq is another one, overthrown by Western undercover operations: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohammad_Mosaddegh . Eastern German states have also elected communist-led coalitions, as did Poland (I remember Taki's indignant Spectator op-ed on it - "If the Poles wanted to elect commies they should have said so before and we wouldn't have tried to free them").
We Eurocommies in the 60s argued that if only we shed the association with dictatatorships in the Soviet bloc, we had a decent chance of winning the argument. Not sure we weren't being over-optimistic, but it was worth a try.
Haven't fully caught up yet, but am enjoying the mental whiplash on manifestos.
When discussing PR and coalitions - the fact that we supposedly vote according to manifestos is crucial, compromise and coalitions damage the very fabric of our political system.
When discussing a majority party making huge changes mid-term - the fact that we supposedly vote according to manifestos is irrelevant, they have no hold on a Government that can call upon a majority in the House of Commons under our political system.
Fun.
My personal take is the same for both: politicians elected as our representatives can compromise (with each other, with reality, and/or with ideology) as much as they like. But they will have to face the electorate afterwards, who will pass judgement on what compromises they decided to make.
And politicians know this, and this will influence the House of Commons as a whole, and if it doesn't, they will face the electorate in due time. As did the Lib Dems after compromising away their tuition fees stance.
This is why certain forms of PR - those which advocate party lists - are so pernicious. The result is that some MPs know they will get re-elected almost no matter what. Obviously there are a number of systems that don't work this way but anything that gives more power to the parties should be avoided.
For all intents and purposes, there are 100-150 MPs in each of the main parties who will be reelected no matter what. That's a little under half the total.
Well we have just seen a poll which, if the Baxtering is anywhere near correct would see the Tories get over 20% of the vote but lose all but two MPs. And yet under a party PR system around 130 of those MPs would be safe. And we would not necessarily be getting to chose which MPs it was who survived - the party would.
I find the idea October is "Black History Month" is very odd. For me October is Halloween, in the same way as December is Christmas. Black and orange are the colours of October, but not that meaning of black.
October is about witches, ghouls, skeletons, zombies, devils and so on . . . adding "black people" to that list seems more than a tad unfortunate.
Just watched Hocus Pocus with the girls, it still holds up. Looking forward to watching Hocus Pocus 2 with them tonight.
For me Halloween is the 31st and maybe the couple of days leading up to it, not the whole month.
I see the odious Clarke has been shooting his mouth "the state's far too big and too much welfare, it makes it harder for us to give tax cuts to the rich". Who he? A long streak of piss risen without trace, the North East's answer to Mogg
Do you think the state's too small?
I don't actually have a problem with much lower taxes and a smaller state. I'm a pretty right-wing Tory. Those who think this is all about the 45p rate have got it wrong, at least for my constituency.
It's the economic illiteracy and irresponsibility of the announcements (essentially ignoring the deficit and the cost of borrowing) that got me.
Would they be able to win you back with a credible plan to close the deficit by cutting public spending, or have you lost trust in them to the extent that you'd find any plan from them not to be credible, and you'd have to see the public borrowing figures improve over the next 18 months before you could be swayed?
Probably the latter, I'm afraid.
I don't think Truss is a leopard that's going to change her spots and has a tin ear for politics anyway.
Yep there are two different points here (and to be fair I speak as someone who didn't vote Tory anyway). It is possible that Truss is right and that we do see an improvement before the next election, perhaps even a big improvement. I doubt it but it is possible. But that doesn't change the fact that Truss and Kwartang have made a series of decisions (the 45p tax rate change and the bankers bonus changes for two) which have little overall impact on public finances but which are hugely damaging politically and completely unnecessary except as a matter of pure ideology.
In my view this makes her unfit to govern even if the overall financial plan turns out to be correct.
Even if changes like that can work positively - and I’m as sceptical as you are - they surely need a stable environment, in which people (investors, businesses, etc.) expect them to be lasting - in order to change economic behaviour?
If everyone expects the comedians in charge to be thrown out at the earliest opportunity, it is hard to see businesses making investment or location decisions on the back of their announcements. Indeed it isn’t yet clear that the budget is going to survive intact through Parliament.
Phillips P. OBrien @PhillipsPOBrien · 25m First ukrainian official Ive seen putting a specific figure on the number of Russian troops trapped in Lyman. 5000.
With the front now 20 km further east from Lyman and supplies cut off, then the situation for the Russians is desperate. Fighting now in Kreminna shows a total collapse of the line, as was suggested last night. Peskov also announced the suspension of the mobilization "because the recruiting offices are over loaded" (translation from the weasel- the mobilization has been the greatest Russian military disaster in decades).
The funereal faces in the Kremlin last night showed that the regime knows the game is up. The denouncing of the UN Charter (who signed up for these rules? asked Putin: all members of the UN, actually Vlad), was sinister, but in a pathetic, Dr. Evil, kind of way. The celebrations in Red Square were empty, and now many Russians are beginning to understand that the country is facing complete humiliation and utter disaster,
Though I would not want to test it, there is pretty good chance that even with better funding over the past decades, the Russian missile systems are in just as bad a state as the rest of the rabble of an army. Any nuclear use could lead to the rapid destruction of Russia´s entire armed forces, including its nuclear forces. The generals know this and while they are happy enough to rattle the nuclear sabre, there must be real concern that if they play that card, then rapid and total vengeance would follow. The western policy of maintaining conventional support for Ukraine makes complete sense. Russia has been warned to expect a "catastrophic" response to any first use of WMD.
So while our middle-agers here are enjoying the disaster porn of Threads and the like, the feeling here, close to the border, is that Russia is finished as a great power and that this war is the last nail in the coffin of a genuinely evil, criminal cabal. In their death throes they are very dangerous, but there is no real prospect of their long term survival. Could be weeks, or even months, but the direction of travel is close to irreversible. Then Russia will have to negotiate the scale of their moral depravity, in the same way as Germany did, after 1945.
IMO the big question facing Putin is the following: if he automagically 'wins' all of Ukraine today, how does he stop all the economic sanctions that are massively limiting his country's strength? The west won't just say: "Oh well, he's won, we'd better just lift everything!" as they well know Putin will do the same with your fair country and others.
Russia has spent decades getting vast amount of treasure from oil and gas. They will now be seen around the world as a massively unreliable supplier, untrustworthy. They will sell oil and gas, but at nowhere near the quantities they did before, or on the favourable conditions. Europe will find alternative supplies and move towards other, hopefully greener, forms of supply.
There is now no way that Russia ends this war stronger than it was before February this year. It will be a diminished country, in terms of its military, its world standing, and most importantly, the lives of its own citizens. A pariah.
The only way out of this is to withdraw from Ukraine - at the very least to its pre-February borders - and admit defeat. Then, slowly over time, sanctions can be withdrawn. But I doubt Germany et al will be taking long-term energy contracts out with them, and western companies will be very hesitant to invest in the country.
Continuing the escalation will only weaken Russia, as well as imperilling the world. And that's what worries me: as I've been saying for years, Putin is not interested in making Russia stronger. He is only interested in bringing us down to his level.
In short: Yes to most of that. It will take a very long time for Russia´s neighbours not to fear and hate them, but with the scale of the economic and demographic collapse no beginning, the outlook is truly grim, even if they withdrew today. Even if sanctions were lifted, the de facto boycott will continue. Who wants anything to do with a bunch of murderers, torturers and rapists, who laugh when the threaten nuclear megadeath to the whole world?
Russia will have to face the same moral regeneration as Germany after 1945, and that is a process that takes generations.
I don't think Putin and his clique are in the same league of evil as Hitler and his clique.
They're still pretty evil.
It was very hard for Germany, simply because of how vile the Nazis were. But, it was also easier, because they were such an outlier. Germany, pre-Nazi, was a prosperous, law-abiding, civilised country, with strong civic institutions. Russia doesn't really have any of that. Russia has always been a kleptocracy, since the time of the Mongol invasions. Without the Mongols, Russia today would probably be Scandinavian.
Part of the problem is that there has been no moral recovery from Stalin, who really was just as evil as Hitler.
Instead of atoning for the crimes of Stalinism and Communism, Putin has mostly repeated those crimes. This is why I use the word "moral" crisis. There has been no truth and reconciliation, but instead a glorification of the KGB and other criminals. Unless this is ended, Russia can never recover. I have many Russophone friends who now refuse to engage with any Russian culture because whatever the glories of Bulgakov, Tshaikovsky etc, everything is overlaid with the continuing brutality of thugs like Stalin, Beria and indeed Putin. As one said, who cares about the ballet when they are rebuilding the GULAG? The collapse of Russian soft power is just as remarkable as any other part of this Russian disaster.
The Soviet Union came out of WWII with a huge amount of international goodwill, which completely obscured the crimes of the 1930's. The onset of the Cold War diminished, but certainly did not destroy, that goodwill, particularly as the Soviets could claim to be anti-colonialists, and the West really did throw its weight behind some ghastly leaders in the Third World.
Obviously, where you are based, and in Eastern Europe generally, people have never had warm feelings towards the Soviet Union, given the dreadful treatment they received at its hands. It's remarkable really, how little venegeance was taken against Soviet collaborators.
The first paragraph is quite right; and it wasn't only goodwill earned by the Soviet union, but a recognition that governments in the 30s had made some horrendous mistakes. At least that's what many of the then older generation said.
I'm not quite sure that the second paragraph is as correct as the first; there appears to be, or to have been, some amount of support among the older generation for the Communist regimes because they compared well, in many respects, with what had gone before.
There was little residual support for communism in the immediate aftermath of the changes, but nostalgia grew with the disruptive changes that followed.
I remember reading an account of the changes in Eastern Europe in the 90s and an observation that struck me was that, at some point during the transition to capitalist economies, it dawned on people that they were being ‘sorted’ into classes, not just them but likely their children and children’s children, moving from a state where, barring the tiny nomenclature, everyone had similar living standards to a western state with a ‘middle class’ who would perpetually have generally better access to everything than the ‘working class’.
Not surprising that some on the losing side of the deal started to hanker for the lost ‘equality’ and ‘all in it together’ communitarianism, made easier with a bit of distance in the same way that many of us look back on objectively unpleasant experiences almost as if we had enjoyed them at the time.
Well for every country, even including Russia, it did not take long for actual living standards to overtake the so-called equality of the Communist system.
Haven't fully caught up yet, but am enjoying the mental whiplash on manifestos.
When discussing PR and coalitions - the fact that we supposedly vote according to manifestos is crucial, compromise and coalitions damage the very fabric of our political system.
When discussing a majority party making huge changes mid-term - the fact that we supposedly vote according to manifestos is irrelevant, they have no hold on a Government that can call upon a majority in the House of Commons under our political system.
Fun.
My personal take is the same for both: politicians elected as our representatives can compromise (with each other, with reality, and/or with ideology) as much as they like. But they will have to face the electorate afterwards, who will pass judgement on what compromises they decided to make.
And politicians know this, and this will influence the House of Commons as a whole, and if it doesn't, they will face the electorate in due time. As did the Lib Dems after compromising away their tuition fees stance.
This is why certain forms of PR - those which advocate party lists - are so pernicious. The result is that some MPs know they will get re-elected almost no matter what. Obviously there are a number of systems that don't work this way but anything that gives more power to the parties should be avoided.
Parties have tremendous power in our current system, given its many safe seats.
STV enables voters to throw out their MP without abandoning their party - a better position than now (surely many of those represented by the likes of Sultana or Chope know their MP is a numpty but simply don’t want to vote for the other side?) - and ensures that elected politicians still have to work to get re-elected.
This is why certain forms of PR - those which advocate party lists - are so pernicious. The result is that some MPs know they will get re-elected almost no matter what. Obviously there are a number of systems that don't work this way but anything that gives more power to the parties should be avoided.
For all intents and purposes, there are 100-150 MPs in each of the main parties who will be reelected no matter what. That's a little under half the total.
So what we find is "safe" seats or "safe" MPs would exist under any and all forms of electoral system.
Where I part company with advocates of FPTP is at the local level where Labour used to win 100% of the seats on about 65% of the vote. The monopoly was broken in May when the Greens won 2 seats in Stratford.
The fact remains the 17% who voted Green get at least a voice, the 14% who voted Conservative get nothing. The 61% who voted Labour are rewarded with 64 out of 66 seats.
Applying a proportional aspect would still leave Labour in control with 40 seats but you'd have 11 Green Councillors, 9 Conservative seats and 6 from other parties. What you would then have is a healthier local democracy, a plurality of voices and opinions and less of a sense of a single-party unaccountable fiefdom.
I find the argument for STV for local elections compelling - for Westminster elections, I accept the argument is less convincing but many systems function on a mix of constituency and list MPs with the latter ensuring a degree of proportionality. Whether it's the German or NZ or some other system I don't know but it seems the way forward.
You are still giving the party more power in the system than they deserve when in fact we should be moving the other way and reducing the power of the parties.
If you want to reform the system then start by banning party affiliation on polling slips. Make people do some work and find out who their MP is rather than just voting for the green tree or the yellow bird. Combine that with an STV system but maintaining the current constituencies.
And massively reduce whipping. Make every vote in Parliament other than votes of confidence a free vote. If a party wants its MPs to vote a particular way they should win their support by force of argument not by bribes and threats.
He's right. Question. Will we see a video of Liz Truss explaining the abolition of the cap on bankers bonuses, and the 45p tax cut. No. Of course not. She is trying to avoid even talking about it. So if you can't talk about it you can't defend it. And if you can't defend it, don't do it.
Hold on, but if she was talking about it, then people would say "if you're explaining, you're losing".
Seems a bit damned if you do, damned if you don't.
Explaining should be done ahead of the policy announcements. If you do it after you are losing but have a chance of turning it around. If you don't bother before or after and the country is against you, you have given up and lost.
Not for me I'm afraid. It still gives too much power to the parties. Any system that allows the parties to claim that votes were for them rather than for an individual is a retrograde step in my eyes. We should be reducing the influence and power of the party over democratic politics rather than increasing it.
If you want to reach the 100,000 voters in East Ham, you can't do it on your own. You need help, time and money and that's why we have parties, to bring together like-minded people in support of candidates.
You could have an Open Primary to choose a candidate - the Conservatives did that and it didn't end well as the winner ended up as a Lib Dem (obviously very wise).
How many people in East Ham vote Labour, how many vote for Stephen Timms, how many even know who Stephen Timms is? I know the answer to the first question but not the last two. The extent to which any MP can have a "personal" vote in a constituency of 100,000 people with constant churn is over-stated.
Tom Brake, my MP when I lived in Sutton, was one of the hardest working MPs you'll ever encounter - he may have had a personal vote, it might even have saved him in the 2015 rout but in 2019 he lost. Did he lose because he was a bad MP? Did he lose because Elliot Coburn was a fantastic campaigner? In both instances, I suspect not.
Among the 49,000 who voted in December 2019 Tom lost about 700 votes, turnout was down 1,000 and the Conservative gained 2,000. Were some of these 2,000 "new" Conservative voters ex-LD, were they new voters to the area who voted not because of how the constituency MP performed but because of how they had always voted? Were they previous non-voters enthused by Boris Johnson? All possible but no evidence.
Phillips P. OBrien @PhillipsPOBrien · 25m First ukrainian official Ive seen putting a specific figure on the number of Russian troops trapped in Lyman. 5000.
With the front now 20 km further east from Lyman and supplies cut off, then the situation for the Russians is desperate. Fighting now in Kreminna shows a total collapse of the line, as was suggested last night. Peskov also announced the suspension of the mobilization "because the recruiting offices are over loaded" (translation from the weasel- the mobilization has been the greatest Russian military disaster in decades).
The funereal faces in the Kremlin last night showed that the regime knows the game is up. The denouncing of the UN Charter (who signed up for these rules? asked Putin: all members of the UN, actually Vlad), was sinister, but in a pathetic, Dr. Evil, kind of way. The celebrations in Red Square were empty, and now many Russians are beginning to understand that the country is facing complete humiliation and utter disaster,
Though I would not want to test it, there is pretty good chance that even with better funding over the past decades, the Russian missile systems are in just as bad a state as the rest of the rabble of an army. Any nuclear use could lead to the rapid destruction of Russia´s entire armed forces, including its nuclear forces. The generals know this and while they are happy enough to rattle the nuclear sabre, there must be real concern that if they play that card, then rapid and total vengeance would follow. The western policy of maintaining conventional support for Ukraine makes complete sense. Russia has been warned to expect a "catastrophic" response to any first use of WMD.
So while our middle-agers here are enjoying the disaster porn of Threads and the like, the feeling here, close to the border, is that Russia is finished as a great power and that this war is the last nail in the coffin of a genuinely evil, criminal cabal. In their death throes they are very dangerous, but there is no real prospect of their long term survival. Could be weeks, or even months, but the direction of travel is close to irreversible. Then Russia will have to negotiate the scale of their moral depravity, in the same way as Germany did, after 1945.
IMO the big question facing Putin is the following: if he automagically 'wins' all of Ukraine today, how does he stop all the economic sanctions that are massively limiting his country's strength? The west won't just say: "Oh well, he's won, we'd better just lift everything!" as they well know Putin will do the same with your fair country and others.
Russia has spent decades getting vast amount of treasure from oil and gas. They will now be seen around the world as a massively unreliable supplier, untrustworthy. They will sell oil and gas, but at nowhere near the quantities they did before, or on the favourable conditions. Europe will find alternative supplies and move towards other, hopefully greener, forms of supply.
There is now no way that Russia ends this war stronger than it was before February this year. It will be a diminished country, in terms of its military, its world standing, and most importantly, the lives of its own citizens. A pariah.
The only way out of this is to withdraw from Ukraine - at the very least to its pre-February borders - and admit defeat. Then, slowly over time, sanctions can be withdrawn. But I doubt Germany et al will be taking long-term energy contracts out with them, and western companies will be very hesitant to invest in the country.
Continuing the escalation will only weaken Russia, as well as imperilling the world. And that's what worries me: as I've been saying for years, Putin is not interested in making Russia stronger. He is only interested in bringing us down to his level.
In short: Yes to most of that. It will take a very long time for Russia´s neighbours not to fear and hate them, but with the scale of the economic and demographic collapse no beginning, the outlook is truly grim, even if they withdrew today. Even if sanctions were lifted, the de facto boycott will continue. Who wants anything to do with a bunch of murderers, torturers and rapists, who laugh when the threaten nuclear megadeath to the whole world?
Russia will have to face the same moral regeneration as Germany after 1945, and that is a process that takes generations.
I don't think Putin and his clique are in the same league of evil as Hitler and his clique.
They're still pretty evil.
It was very hard for Germany, simply because of how vile the Nazis were. But, it was also easier, because they were such an outlier. Germany, pre-Nazi, was a prosperous, law-abiding, civilised country, with strong civic institutions. Russia doesn't really have any of that. Russia has always been a kleptocracy, since the time of the Mongol invasions. Without the Mongols, Russia today would probably be Scandinavian.
Part of the problem is that there has been no moral recovery from Stalin, who really was just as evil as Hitler.
Instead of atoning for the crimes of Stalinism and Communism, Putin has mostly repeated those crimes. This is why I use the word "moral" crisis. There has been no truth and reconciliation, but instead a glorification of the KGB and other criminals. Unless this is ended, Russia can never recover. I have many Russophone friends who now refuse to engage with any Russian culture because whatever the glories of Bulgakov, Tshaikovsky etc, everything is overlaid with the continuing brutality of thugs like Stalin, Beria and indeed Putin. As one said, who cares about the ballet when they are rebuilding the GULAG? The collapse of Russian soft power is just as remarkable as any other part of this Russian disaster.
The Soviet Union came out of WWII with a huge amount of international goodwill, which completely obscured the crimes of the 1930's. The onset of the Cold War diminished, but certainly did not destroy, that goodwill, particularly as the Soviets could claim to be anti-colonialists, and the West really did throw its weight behind some ghastly leaders in the Third World.
Obviously, where you are based, and in Eastern Europe generally, people have never had warm feelings towards the Soviet Union, given the dreadful treatment they received at its hands. It's remarkable really, how little venegeance was taken against Soviet collaborators.
The first paragraph is quite right; and it wasn't only goodwill earned by the Soviet union, but a recognition that governments in the 30s had made some horrendous mistakes. At least that's what many of the then older generation said.
I'm not quite sure that the second paragraph is as correct as the first; there appears to be, or to have been, some amount of support among the older generation for the Communist regimes because they compared well, in many respects, with what had gone before.
There was little residual support for communism in the immediate aftermath of the changes, but nostalgia grew with the disruptive changes that followed.
I remember reading an account of the changes in Eastern Europe in the 90s and an observation that struck me was that, at some point during the transition to capitalist economies, it dawned on people that they were being ‘sorted’ into classes, not just them but likely their children and children’s children, moving from a state where, barring the tiny nomenclature, everyone had similar living standards to a western state with a ‘middle class’ who would perpetually have generally better access to everything than the ‘working class’.
Not surprising that some on the losing side of the deal started to hanker for the lost ‘equality’ and ‘all in it together’ communitarianism, made easier with a bit of distance in the same way that many of us look back on objectively unpleasant experiences almost as if we had enjoyed them at the time.
Well for every country, even including Russia, it did not take long for actual living standards to overtake the so-called equality of the Communist system. Of course Soviet Communism was even more unequal than normal Parliamentary democracy, because the Party members had extraordinary privileges compared to the ordinary citizen. The party was an increasingly hereditary system too, by the end. As with Russia and China today, the princelings grabbed a disproportionate share of the goodies.
All true. Although it is human nature to judge wealth and poverty relative to those around us, rather than in absolute terms.
The numbers enjoying the real privileges of senior party membership were tiny compared to the numbers of ‘better off’ people in what we lazily call the middle classes. So, of course, the latter is a better overall outcome - but maybe it doesn’t feel like that if you aren’t one of the better offs?
Haven't fully caught up yet, but am enjoying the mental whiplash on manifestos.
When discussing PR and coalitions - the fact that we supposedly vote according to manifestos is crucial, compromise and coalitions damage the very fabric of our political system.
When discussing a majority party making huge changes mid-term - the fact that we supposedly vote according to manifestos is irrelevant, they have no hold on a Government that can call upon a majority in the House of Commons under our political system.
Fun.
My personal take is the same for both: politicians elected as our representatives can compromise (with each other, with reality, and/or with ideology) as much as they like. But they will have to face the electorate afterwards, who will pass judgement on what compromises they decided to make.
And politicians know this, and this will influence the House of Commons as a whole, and if it doesn't, they will face the electorate in due time. As did the Lib Dems after compromising away their tuition fees stance.
This is why certain forms of PR - those which advocate party lists - are so pernicious. The result is that some MPs know they will get re-elected almost no matter what. Obviously there are a number of systems that don't work this way but anything that gives more power to the parties should be avoided.
I still think the Danish option of unweighted lists is a happy compromise - yes, you have a party list, but you choose a specific person on it, and if party X gets N seats, they go to the N candidates with the most personal votes on the list. This encourages parties to seek diversity instead of robotic loyalty - for example, the Tories could have a list with Truss and Sunak and Gove and various other flavours, and if you like the Tories in general but want to avoid certain types of them, you can do exactly that. The party benefits by attracting a variety of support.
It is also possible to simply vote for the party. Some Danish parties allocate such votes to the people at the top of the list, which does boost the power of the party to reward loyalty. Essentially the voter is saying "I like the Tories and delegate to them which individuals get seats". But others simply ignore those votes in deciding who gets the seats, and that's the variant I like.
I prefer this to STV to be honest, which is a mathematical nightmare.
I find the idea October is "Black History Month" is very odd. For me October is Halloween, in the same way as December is Christmas. Black and orange are the colours of October, but not that meaning of black.
October is about witches, ghouls, skeletons, zombies, devils and so on . . . adding "black people" to that list seems more than a tad unfortunate.
Just watched Hocus Pocus with the girls, it still holds up. Looking forward to watching Hocus Pocus 2 with them tonight.
For me Halloween is the 31st and maybe the couple of days leading up to it, not the whole month.
We enjoy Halloween for the whole month. Halloween movies whenever we watch a movie all month long, there's so many good ones you couldn't do them all in a day, and all the shops have Halloween stuff all month etc too. Plus other activities, we're going pumpkin picking later this month on a farm, then will be pumpkin carving after. The kids do Halloween activities at school, at Rainbows and Brownies. Oh and Pumpkin Spice Latte etc too.
Halloween is a month long for us, not a day, any more than Christmas is just 25 December.
The latest (Russian propagandist) RYBAR map - 3.00pm local time - shows Lyman in Ukrainian hands and the battlefront moved north and east by some 10km.
I find the idea October is "Black History Month" is very odd. For me October is Halloween, in the same way as December is Christmas. Black and orange are the colours of October, but not that meaning of black.
October is about witches, ghouls, skeletons, zombies, devils and so on . . . adding "black people" to that list seems more than a tad unfortunate.
Just watched Hocus Pocus with the girls, it still holds up. Looking forward to watching Hocus Pocus 2 with them tonight.
Lol - Halloween decorations and retail promotions have been up and going strong since mid-September here in the US. They Segway directly into Xmas stuff in November, so the Americans manage to stretch the whole trees-and -decorations thing out for three and a half months…..
He's right. Question. Will we see a video of Liz Truss explaining the abolition of the cap on bankers bonuses, and the 45p tax cut. No. Of course not. She is trying to avoid even talking about it. So if you can't talk about it you can't defend it. And if you can't defend it, don't do it.
Hold on, but if she was talking about it, then people would say "if you're explaining, you're losing".
Seems a bit damned if you do, damned if you don't.
Explaining should be done ahead of the policy announcements. If you do it after you are losing but have a chance of turning it around. If you don't bother before or after and the country is against you, you have given up and lost.
Actually, the bankers' bonus cap removal is very easy to explain, because it's a very sensible policy. It's very simple to explain to someone that 1. The bonus cap doesn't change anyone's remuneration - bankers are still being paid squillions, it just has to be paid in salary, so currently they'll get it regardless of how they perform. 2. Because of this, banks are thinking twice before locating their staff in the UK, because they will have to give their staff all higher salaries here, rather than tie their pay to performance.
I think anyone who has an issue with the policy after that explanation is either an imbecile, or a Labour activist (or of course both). I can't see anyone else, from a costermonger to a Duke, disagreeing with the policy.
Not for me I'm afraid. It still gives too much power to the parties. Any system that allows the parties to claim that votes were for them rather than for an individual is a retrograde step in my eyes. We should be reducing the influence and power of the party over democratic politics rather than increasing it.
If you want to reach the 100,000 voters in East Ham, you can't do it on your own. You need help, time and money and that's why we have parties, to bring together like-minded people in support of candidates.
You could have an Open Primary to choose a candidate - the Conservatives did that and it didn't end well as the winner ended up as a Lib Dem (obviously very wise).
How many people in East Ham vote Labour, how many vote for Stephen Timms, how many even know who Stephen Timms is? I know the answer to the first question but not the last two. The extent to which any MP can have a "personal" vote in a constituency of 100,000 people with constant churn is over-stated.
Tom Brake, my MP when I lived in Sutton, was one of the hardest working MPs you'll ever encounter - he may have had a personal vote, it might even have saved him in the 2015 rout but in 2019 he lost. Did he lose because he was a bad MP? Did he lose because Elliot Coburn was a fantastic campaigner? In both instances, I suspect not.
Among the 49,000 who voted in December 2019 Tom lost about 700 votes, turnout was down 1,000 and the Conservative gained 2,000. Were some of these 2,000 "new" Conservative voters ex-LD, were they new voters to the area who voted not because of how the constituency MP performed but because of how they had always voted? Were they previous non-voters enthused by Boris Johnson? All possible but no evidence.
I was door knocking that day. The awful weather and time of year meant that turn-out in the council estates was way down on previous years. I'm pretty sure that if the vote had happened in May Brake may well have sneaked over the line.
Haven't fully caught up yet, but am enjoying the mental whiplash on manifestos.
When discussing PR and coalitions - the fact that we supposedly vote according to manifestos is crucial, compromise and coalitions damage the very fabric of our political system.
When discussing a majority party making huge changes mid-term - the fact that we supposedly vote according to manifestos is irrelevant, they have no hold on a Government that can call upon a majority in the House of Commons under our political system.
Fun.
My personal take is the same for both: politicians elected as our representatives can compromise (with each other, with reality, and/or with ideology) as much as they like. But they will have to face the electorate afterwards, who will pass judgement on what compromises they decided to make.
And politicians know this, and this will influence the House of Commons as a whole, and if it doesn't, they will face the electorate in due time. As did the Lib Dems after compromising away their tuition fees stance.
This is why certain forms of PR - those which advocate party lists - are so pernicious. The result is that some MPs know they will get re-elected almost no matter what. Obviously there are a number of systems that don't work this way but anything that gives more power to the parties should be avoided.
I still think the Danish option of unweighted lists is a happy compromise - yes, you have a party list, but you choose a specific person on it, and if party X gets N seats, they go to the N candidates with the most personal votes on the list. This encourages parties to seek diversity instead of robotic loyalty - for example, the Tories could have a list with Truss and Sunak and Gove and various other flavours, and if you like the Tories in general but want to avoid certain types of them, you can do exactly that. The party benefits by attracting a variety of support.
It is also possible to simply vote for the party. Some Danish parties allocate such votes to the people at the top of the list, which does boost the power of the party to reward loyalty. Essentially the voter is saying "I like the Tories and delegate to them which individuals get seats". But others simply ignore those votes in deciding who gets the seats, and that's the variant I like.
Not for me I'm afraid. It still gives too much power to the parties. Any system that allows the parties to claim that votes were for them rather than for an individual is a retrograde step in my eyes. We should be reducing the influence and power of the party over democratic politics rather than increasing it.
Most people vote for a party and potential PM so not a convincing argument against the Danish system. Curtailing party control a good objective I agree, the Danish approach might be a good pragmatic compromise. If large multi-member constituencies were part of the system that would give competition within a constituency in terms of dealing with issues for constituents.
Comments
But obviously behind the camera.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/oct/01/corbyn-mcdonnell-crash-the-pound-truss-free-market
Hope you are having a slightly easier time at your place (although that's hope over experience in the current mess).
https://twitter.com/georgegalloway/status/1576134989334433792?s=20&t=4FlWraZ81gdC867J08rkqg
But it's a bit of a step to say they elected an openly Communist government.
They also never won the Parliament.
The odds on a Labour Overall Majority look generous to me.
It's the economic illiteracy and irresponsibility of the announcements (essentially ignoring the deficit and the cost of borrowing) that got me.
Where in the manifesto did the public vote for austerity and didn’t the Maggie clone promise no spending cuts .
Meanwhile, Lyman has been recovered by Ukraine, Zarichne may also have been, soon all of occupied Donetsk north of the Siversky Donets river may be liberated, and Ukraine are expected to advance into western Luhansk, making a mockery of Russia's fictitious annexations. Putin is impotent.
It's less common but before social media it used to happen with road rage. Usually, because one person behind a screen let their emotions go and another behind another did the same in response.
If the state was the correct size at around 35% in the 90s and 40% so far this century, then the equivalent will be mid 40s over the next couple of decades.
You can't just take a number from thirty plus years ago and assume it will still work for the future.
https://twitter.com/search?q=#UKRAINE&f=live
I think that communist governments have been elected in West Bengal, on occasion.
Labour 330, SNP 50, Lib Dem 25, Odds'n'ends 25 puts the Conservatives on 220, if I've done the maths right.
Only a small Labour majority, but a terrible night for the Conservatives.
As for welfare and free-at-the-point-of-use state healthcare, they aren't necessarily bound up with control over the individual, and it says a lot about Tory ideology that the two things are conflated.
They view markets response as an over-reaction based on failure to understand full extent of plans for govt
They believe markets will settle. They are not changing course
https://twitter.com/Steven_Swinford/status/1576178963168247816
Daniel Grainger said he “tweeted without thinking” after being threatened with a mugging. https://twitter.com/KevinASchofield/status/1576177083700895749/photo/1
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/0e0e5c46-40e4-11ed-a7af-c587dcb7526e?shareToken=e37c550c5ac40d5530d527d75dbb27dd https://twitter.com/hugorifkind/status/1576176507625406465/photo/1
This has gone out to Tory MPs: https://twitter.com/HannahAlOthman/status/1576173996491640835/photo/1
When discussing PR and coalitions - the fact that we supposedly vote according to manifestos is crucial, compromise and coalitions damage the very fabric of our political system.
When discussing a majority party making huge changes mid-term - the fact that we supposedly vote according to manifestos is irrelevant, they have no hold on a Government that can call upon a majority in the House of Commons under our political system.
Fun.
My personal take is the same for both: politicians elected as our representatives can compromise (with each other, with reality, and/or with ideology) as much as they like. But they will have to face the electorate afterwards, who will pass judgement on what compromises they decided to make.
And politicians know this, and this will influence the House of Commons as a whole, and if it doesn't, they will face the electorate in due time. As did the Lib Dems after compromising away their tuition fees stance.
Yeah, that had an impact on us.
“and the logic behind it” = degree in casuistry required
“they are prepared to give it a chance” = they still hate it
https://twitter.com/JohnRentoul/status/1576182285413806080
+3-1=1 among the permanent members, with the +3 all being in NATO.
So why weren't they doing this before?
It's so basic as to suggest complete incompetent insouciance as to how it would be received.
That is in no way to support what Truss and Kwartang have just done. Changes to our systems ned to be done with time, consideration and the support of the population. They also need to be fair - reducing the tax burden by spreading it and then lowering it rather than just slashing it for the richest whilst increasing it for the rest.
But there has to be a finite limit to the amount the state can expand. Personally, I think we have reached and exceeded that limit but that is something that can and should be discussed by the nation as a whole rather than just slamming the breaks on overnight and saying 'tough live with it'.
His final two paragraphs will be sobering for Tories if they turn out to be prophetic:
https://on.ft.com/3E81fI9 https://twitter.com/juliamacfarlane/status/1576183931971698690/photo/1
I don't think Truss is a leopard that's going to change her spots and has a tin ear for politics anyway.
I got within two hundred miles of the centre of Sandy (more accurately, vice versa) in 2012, when it was a downgraded superstorm, and have never experienced constant strong wind like that before or since. You could hardly walk down the street and kept within reach of something to grab onto to cope with the gusts.
I’m now the same distance from Ian, and it’s just a very rainy day, with hardly any constant wind and only modest gusts. Of course, things may change - the centre is going to be very close here by this evening - but it looks like this one burnt itself out in Florida, and even there was more notable for rain than wind. CNN continues to struggle to find something dramatic to report since the storm left Florida. One of the South Carolina piers took some damage is the worst of it.
In my view this makes her unfit to govern even if the overall financial plan turns out to be correct.
His father died of heart failure. Had he taken statins, as recommended (but which Malhotra crusaded against) - well, things might have been different. BUt could anyone accept that, from Malhotra's position?
So he decided to blame a vaccine taken six months earlier. For damage to a heart that had occurred over years, and where no matter how he tried to torture the data, no signal of elevated heart failure could be found. You could find a strong signal for elevated risk of myocardial infarction and the like from previous infections by covid, but not from the vaccine.
This did not stop him. And hasn't. He has, of course, been heralded by the antivaxxer community (like RFK Jr) as a prophet and a great man. During the recent antivaxxer conference, he sat by and said nothing whilst others questioned whether viruses exist at all, and the answer to why mass deaths hadn't been seen from the vaccines was "Maybe almost all of them were duds as they ramped up manufacturing so quickly."
Yes of course it is up to the country to decide if the state should be bigger or smaller, but it should be an informed decision that understands the above. I do not think Truss and Kwarteng get it.
Germany in 1945 had an entire generation either wiped out or discredited by criminality more than any in history. Those that replaced them and the upcoming young were determined to set a different example. It’s hard to see Russia achieving such an outcome when those with power aren’t suffering casualties, sending young conscripts to their deaths, with no foreign occupation, and little likelihood of criminal liability aside, possibly, from Putin himself. History suggests a power struggle followed by the emergence of someone similar, the only consolation being that Russia will be economically and militarily crippled.
I would start by dumping the triple lock. Pensioners - particularly those who have had good jobs in their earlier life
- should do far more to look after themselves in retirement and not expect the Government to provide them with a higher standard of living than many poorer working families can afford.
It is one of those policies any economist can see is unnecessary and problematic, but no politician knows how to get rid of.
Hypotheses
1. Lack of prompt nhs medical care due to lockdown
2. The vax
Remember after a pandemic we should have negative excess deaths
I remember reading an account of the changes in Eastern Europe in the 90s and an observation that struck me was that, at some point during the transition to capitalist economies, it dawned on people that they were being ‘sorted’ into classes, not just them but likely their children and children’s children, moving from a state where, barring the tiny nomenclature, everyone had similar living standards to a western state with a ‘middle class’ who would perpetually have generally better access to everything than the ‘working class’.
Not surprising that some on the losing side of the deal started to hanker for the lost ‘equality’ and ‘all in it together’ communitarianism, made easier with a bit of distance in the same way that many of us look back on objectively unpleasant experiences almost as if we had enjoyed them at the time.
Question. Will we see a video of Liz Truss explaining the abolition of the cap on bankers bonuses, and the 45p tax cut. No. Of course not. She is trying to avoid even talking about it. So if you can't talk about it you can't defend it. And if you can't defend it, don't do it.
https://twitter.com/DPJHodges/status/1576140282743377921?cxt=HHwWgsDS0ZDPyd8rAAAA
It is also possible to simply vote for the party. Some Danish parties allocate such votes to the people at the top of the list, which does boost the power of the party to reward loyalty. Essentially the voter is saying "I like the Tories and delegate to them which individuals get seats". But others simply ignore those votes in deciding who gets the seats, and that's the variant I like.
The ONS present figures for deaths by vaccination status.
Age standardised excess deaths per 100,000
Vaccinated: 957.4.
Unvaccinated: 2337.5
Not the vax, then, is it?
And why on Earth would you assume that post-mass-infection by a virus that is now well known and proven to cause elevated risk of cardiovascular damage of all types in those infected would lead to a decrease in the death rate?
Coupled with a health service running flat out for so long.
Outside of the support in the West and most of Eastern Europe for Ukraine most of the rest of the world is staying out of it
but maybe there are other ways. the state pension in itself is barely enough to live off. but if those with large private pensions on top had more deductions from those, similar to working people with the same income, that could go towards maintaining the basic pension for all. not a policy the Tories would countenance. but feels like a real winner for Labour to me.
No, nothing will be completely safe, hence the wrangles we’ve had over vaccinating kids in the U.K.
Yup. Nothing is zero risk. The evidence from the comprehensive systems of testing and reporting of effects when in use, show that the vaccines for COVID, used in the U.K., have a very low risk so side effects. Compared, for example to many other vaccinations of long standing,
You are probably right there may be other ways of doing similar such as merging NI and IT or making pensioners pay NI.
https://twitter.com/WWIIIAR/status/1576185632564871174/photo/1
October is about witches, ghouls, skeletons, zombies, devils and so on . . . adding "black people" to that list seems more than a tad unfortunate.
Just watched Hocus Pocus with the girls, it still holds up. Looking forward to watching Hocus Pocus 2 with them tonight.
Where I part company with advocates of FPTP is at the local level where Labour used to win 100% of the seats on about 65% of the vote. The monopoly was broken in May when the Greens won 2 seats in Stratford.
The fact remains the 17% who voted Green get at least a voice, the 14% who voted Conservative get nothing. The 61% who voted Labour are rewarded with 64 out of 66 seats.
Applying a proportional aspect would still leave Labour in control with 40 seats but you'd have 11 Green Councillors, 9 Conservative seats and 6 from other parties. What you would then have is a healthier local democracy, a plurality of voices and opinions and less of a sense of a single-party unaccountable fiefdom.
I find the argument for STV for local elections compelling - for Westminster elections, I accept the argument is less convincing but many systems function on a mix of constituency and list MPs with the latter ensuring a degree of proportionality. Whether it's the German or NZ or some other system I don't know but it seems the way forward.
Seems a bit damned if you do, damned if you don't.
We Eurocommies in the 60s argued that if only we shed the association with dictatatorships in the Soviet bloc, we had a decent chance of winning the argument. Not sure we weren't being over-optimistic, but it was worth a try.
If everyone expects the comedians in charge to be thrown out at the earliest opportunity, it is hard to see businesses making investment or location decisions on the back of their announcements. Indeed it isn’t yet clear that the budget is going to survive intact through Parliament.
STV enables voters to throw out their MP without abandoning their party - a better position than now (surely many of those represented by the likes of Sultana or Chope know their MP is a numpty but simply don’t want to vote for the other side?) - and ensures that elected politicians still have to work to get re-elected.
If you want to reform the system then start by banning party affiliation on polling slips. Make people do some work and find out who their MP is rather than just voting for the green tree or the yellow bird. Combine that with an STV system but maintaining the current constituencies.
And massively reduce whipping. Make every vote in Parliament other than votes of confidence a free vote. If a party wants its MPs to vote a particular way they should win their support by force of argument not by bribes and threats.
You could have an Open Primary to choose a candidate - the Conservatives did that and it didn't end well as the winner ended up as a Lib Dem (obviously very wise).
How many people in East Ham vote Labour, how many vote for Stephen Timms, how many even know who Stephen Timms is? I know the answer to the first question but not the last two. The extent to which any MP can have a "personal" vote in a constituency of 100,000 people with constant churn is over-stated.
Tom Brake, my MP when I lived in Sutton, was one of the hardest working MPs you'll ever encounter - he may have had a personal vote, it might even have saved him in the 2015 rout but in 2019 he lost. Did he lose because he was a bad MP? Did he lose because Elliot Coburn was a fantastic campaigner? In both instances, I suspect not.
Among the 49,000 who voted in December 2019 Tom lost about 700 votes, turnout was down 1,000 and the Conservative gained 2,000. Were some of these 2,000 "new" Conservative voters ex-LD, were they new voters to the area who voted not because of how the constituency MP performed but because of how they had always voted? Were they previous non-voters enthused by Boris Johnson? All possible but no evidence.
The numbers enjoying the real privileges of senior party membership were tiny compared to the numbers of ‘better off’ people in what we lazily call the middle classes. So, of course, the latter is a better overall outcome - but maybe it doesn’t feel like that if you aren’t one of the better offs?
Halloween is a month long for us, not a day, any more than Christmas is just 25 December.
1. The bonus cap doesn't change anyone's remuneration - bankers are still being paid squillions, it just has to be paid in salary, so currently they'll get it regardless of how they perform.
2. Because of this, banks are thinking twice before locating their staff in the UK, because they will have to give their staff all higher salaries here, rather than tie their pay to performance.
I think anyone who has an issue with the policy after that explanation is either an imbecile, or a Labour activist (or of course both). I can't see anyone else, from a costermonger to a Duke, disagreeing with the policy.