I don't see how the UK benefits greatly from an India trade deal. We already import wonderful goods at a very low price, and certainly a fairly free market in services also seems to exist. I stand to be educated. At any rate, Camilla should wear the crown; these matters should not be dictated by foreign governments.
[Edit] Insistence on the crown being worn = Tories get to put two fingers up at the woke and at foreigners at the same time as shutting down a threatening pulse of immigration. Never mind the current importance of diplomacy vis-a-vis India, etc. etc.
If Truss faced a VoNC now she'd "win" it, IMHO. The letters threshold doesn't allow enough momentum to drive for an absolute majority against the incumbent in just a few days.
But, this also happened with Theresa May and Boris Johnson and they were out shortly after.
What annoys me reading tonight is that all the blame for where we are is being put on truss and kwasi. Have they made things worse certainly they have and I have no liking for either.
However where we are is the end point of 30 odd years of centrist social democratic style governement. It has left millions in this country unable to live despite working 40 hours a week without having to rely on governement handouts or food banks or both.
Most of that time spent within the EU before anyone goes yeah but brexit. Centrist governments have failed a lot of people in this country while companies and their directors made out like bandits. The difference now is it is beginning to hit people on this board most of whom weren't in those bottom cohorts so now you are starting to cry and whine about it.
Welcome to the poorhouse you deserve it.
Forget Brexit.
What is it you propose?
Where is prospering, and what policies have they implemented that are appropriate for the UK?
And there are two massive headwinds you need to at the very least acknowledge.
Firstly, there's demographics. Secondly, there's all the people in the world - and we're not talking immigrants - who are prepared to do your job for less.
I don't believe anywhere in the west is prospering when you consider the life of the median citizen, they are finding housing costs rising, tax rising,energy price rising and food rising all more than their pay over the last 3 to 4 decades. All the west has been doing the social democratic lie of we can have more and more public services but not raise tax and funded it through borrowing. UK, germany, france etc.
Time to be realistic. We need to fund those public services we consider essential properly. We need to stop putting the cost of that on generations unborn. What we cant fund we need to tell people I am sorry we cant fund that and cut it.
I laid out the 5 tenets of where I come from.
Personally I prefer a small state but the 5 principles I think is where we need to be before we even talk about small state vs big state....fiscal stability
I wrote a piece of research about six or seven years ago which said pretty much the same thing:
For much of the post war period, developed countries – and their citizens – had it pretty good.
Unemployment was negligible, crime low, and each generation successively richer. A German, Japanese or American father could look down on his children and feel confident that their lives would be better than his.
But then something changed. The children of the 2000s ceased being wealthier than their parents. And while incomes had apparently risen, so had the prices of petrol, of energy and of rent. While families of the 1970s could survive - or even prosper – with one working parent, it now required two. Young people were leaving college with ever larger amounts of debt and failing to find the kind of secure, well paid jobs their father’s had.
We see these trends wherever we look. Take the US, generally considered (by us in Europe at least) to have been the most successful developed economy in the world in the recent past. According to the US Federal Reserve, real median household income is down almost 10% since peaking in 1999.
That’s an unprecedented reduction, and is all the more shocking in the context of a country where headline GDP growth has been relatively strong.
The story in the US - replicated to a lesser extent around the rest of the developed world - is that the benefits of that growth have been appropriated mostly by a small group of the rich and powerful, and hence denied from the rest of us.
I do wonder whether the hypothesis that the fall of communism removed the imperative to demonstrate the superiority of capitalism through sharing the benefits of growth more widely, because the potential alternative to capitalism had been defeated and the potential threat to the powerful of revolution went away, has something to it.
From the same piece...
Per capita GDP grew in many places, but median income did not. Why the disconnect? We see the issue as widening inequality, which is why there is so much concern about the “1%”. Statistics on the share of income taken by the richest show that inequality has been rising from the early 1980s. It’s an old adage that it is easier to share gains than losses: when everyone’s income was rising, the difference between the richest and the rest seemed a price worth paying.
Across the developed world, people are discontented because the old post War consensus has been broken. We are no longer all getting richer. And worse, we have a situation where a certain segment (the elites, the one percent, etc.) have gotten richer, while many others have gotten poorer. With consumer debt at elevated levels in many places, and the cost of entry into the middle classes – a college degree – both costing more and offering less, we should not be surprised that the stratification in society is resulting in fractures.
Is the rise of PB a coincidence? The relative decline of the west caused by us dicking about on the net?
Taking your humorous point seriously, had the world of my youth foreseen that the future would have every person able to access any information, data, statistic, image, etc within seconds without having to do anything other than take a small device out of their pocket, I am sure it would have been assumed that this unimaginable explosion in access to knowledge and information would elevate discourse and improve decision-making.
Yet listen to any political debate or media programme from the pre-internet age and you cannot avoid seeing how modern discourse has actually been dumbed down, to the point where too many people reject actual facts and information almost in principle.
“The Conservative benches have reached the point where they hate one another more than they care about electoral defeat. Acidity levels make normal politics near-impossible.“
Yes, the behaviour of the MPs has been disgraceful over the past month.
They gave the membership two choices, and then refused to get behind the new leader. If they couldn’t work with Liz Truss, they shouldn’t have nominated her. They should also have known, from the very first members’ poll, that Rishi Sunak wasn’t going to win, despite his expensive campaign among the MPs themselves, to make himself appear inevitable.
I don't see how the UK benefits greatly from an India trade deal. We already import wonderful goods at a very low price, and certainly a fairly free market in services also seems to exist. I stand to be educated. At any rate, Camilla should wear the crown; these matters should not be dictated by foreign governments.
Economically it doesn't matter that much. But team Brexit is desperate - trade with the Commonwealth was talked up as a better alternative to the EU, and those trade deals would be piss easy. So they need *something* to spin as good news. Anyway what are the down sides? People are very welcoming to a flood on non-white non-Christian migrants taking their jobs and their benefits and crowding their schools and hospitals. Will be fine.
I don't see how the UK benefits greatly from an India trade deal. We already import wonderful goods at a very low price, and certainly a fairly free market in services also seems to exist. I stand to be educated. At any rate, Camilla should wear the crown; these matters should not be dictated by foreign governments.
Economically it doesn't matter that much. But team Brexit is desperate - trade with the Commonwealth was talked up as a better alternative to the EU, and those trade deals would be piss easy. So they need *something* to spin as good news. Anyway what are the down sides? People are very welcoming to a flood on non-white non-Christian migrants taking their jobs and their benefits and crowding their schools and hospitals. Will be fine.
Very, very un-Churchillian, actually taking Indians' wishes seriously.
In some good news it appears that there were only a very limited number of Russian missile or kamikaze drone attacks overnight. Certainly no indication of them being able to keep up the bombardment of a few nights ago.
These interviews with Russian mobiks do seem to suggest sub optimal capabilities. They were lucky to be captured before the frosts and snows start.
Have just noticed. The video of Truss meeting the King. Lots of comments about her appalling courtesy thing. And his "you're back again? Dear oh dear". But listen between "again" and "dear". He grimaces and sucks his teeth loudly. Its comedy gold!
I am no fan of Truss but, quite frankly, I find it rude of the entitled, privileged, white male Monarch to react in that way.
There is no need for it.
People approving of such ignorant behaviour because its towards someone they politically do not like would not be so accomodating if it was someone like Starmer or Davey.
If Truss faced a VoNC now she'd "win" it, IMHO. The letters threshold doesn't allow enough momentum to drive for an absolute majority against the incumbent in just a few days.
But, this also happened with Theresa May and Boris Johnson and they were out shortly after.
It’s clear that the 15% threshold of letters the 1922 committee requires is enough to damage but not immediately destroy a leader. It probably needs to be increased to 20% or even 25% at which point the vote becomes more a confirmation
In some good news it appears that there were only a very limited number of Russian missile or kamikaze drone attacks overnight. Certainly no indication of them being able to keep up the bombardment of a few nights ago.
Yep, the Russians appear to be severely short of long-range weapons.
The intelligence was that there were two or three weeks of constant bombardment of Ukrainian cities coming, but they only managed to keep it up for one night.
Lots of announcement of air defence reinforcements from friendly nations too. The enemy lost four helicopters in one raid yesterday.
If The Queen Consort wears it then it is an insult to over a billion people and the fact the the Royal Family don't give a shit about their bloody colonial past.
Plans for Queen Camilla to be honoured with a crown containing the Koh-i-Noor diamond at the coronation next year could be dropped because of “political sensitivities”, it was claimed yesterday.
The crown was specially made for Queen Elizabeth — later the Queen Mother — in 1937. Previously the diamond was mounted in the crowns of Queen Alexandra, wife of Edward VII, and Queen Mary, wife of George V.
The Koh-i-Noor was acquired by the East India Company after the Anglo-Sikh Wars and presented to Queen Victoria in 1850. A campaign has sprung up in India urging Britain to return it, although it is also claimed by Afghanistan and Pakistan.
A source told the Daily Mail: “There are serious political sensitivities and significant nervousness.”
According to The Daily Telegraph, a spokesman for the Bharatiya Janata Party of Narendra Modi, the Indian prime minister, said: “The coronation of Camilla and the use of the crown jewel Koh-i-Noor brings back painful memories of the colonial past.”
What annoys me reading tonight is that all the blame for where we are is being put on truss and kwasi. Have they made things worse certainly they have and I have no liking for either.
However where we are is the end point of 30 odd years of centrist social democratic style governement. It has left millions in this country unable to live despite working 40 hours a week without having to rely on governement handouts or food banks or both.
Most of that time spent within the EU before anyone goes yeah but brexit. Centrist governments have failed a lot of people in this country while companies and their directors made out like bandits. The difference now is it is beginning to hit people on this board most of whom weren't in those bottom cohorts so now you are starting to cry and whine about it.
Welcome to the poorhouse you deserve it.
Forget Brexit.
What is it you propose?
Where is prospering, and what policies have they implemented that are appropriate for the UK?
And there are two massive headwinds you need to at the very least acknowledge.
Firstly, there's demographics. Secondly, there's all the people in the world - and we're not talking immigrants - who are prepared to do your job for less.
I don't believe anywhere in the west is prospering when you consider the life of the median citizen, they are finding housing costs rising, tax rising,energy price rising and food rising all more than their pay over the last 3 to 4 decades. All the west has been doing the social democratic lie of we can have more and more public services but not raise tax and funded it through borrowing. UK, germany, france etc.
Time to be realistic. We need to fund those public services we consider essential properly. We need to stop putting the cost of that on generations unborn. What we cant fund we need to tell people I am sorry we cant fund that and cut it.
I laid out the 5 tenets of where I come from.
Personally I prefer a small state but the 5 principles I think is where we need to be before we even talk about small state vs big state....fiscal stability
I wrote a piece of research about six or seven years ago which said pretty much the same thing:
For much of the post war period, developed countries – and their citizens – had it pretty good.
Unemployment was negligible, crime low, and each generation successively richer. A German, Japanese or American father could look down on his children and feel confident that their lives would be better than his.
But then something changed. The children of the 2000s ceased being wealthier than their parents. And while incomes had apparently risen, so had the prices of petrol, of energy and of rent. While families of the 1970s could survive - or even prosper – with one working parent, it now required two. Young people were leaving college with ever larger amounts of debt and failing to find the kind of secure, well paid jobs their father’s had.
We see these trends wherever we look. Take the US, generally considered (by us in Europe at least) to have been the most successful developed economy in the world in the recent past. According to the US Federal Reserve, real median household income is down almost 10% since peaking in 1999.
That’s an unprecedented reduction, and is all the more shocking in the context of a country where headline GDP growth has been relatively strong.
That reduction is an inevitable consequence of the unprecedented competition faced by the low to medium skilled from the development of what were previously third world countries, specifically China. The massive increase in global trade simply left those groups, which contain the majority of the population, with no negotiating power. If they don't like the lower wages the factory was transplanted and minimal tariffs meant that the business could still produce its product for the market in the US or the EU.
This is the same problem we had with the SM writ large. It was of course possible for us to thrive in the SM, as Germany did, but it would have needed a completely different policy mix from governments who almost certainly would not have been re-elected.
Simplistic, idealistic notions of the benefits of free trade, low or non existent tariffs have completely undermined the majority of western society. Those with capital or with exceptional skills at the top have, of course, gained massively and we have seen GDP creep up, usually with increasing trade deficits as we import much of what we used to make.
We have heard this song before of course. Between the First and Second World Wars, following the US passing of The Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930, a wave of protectionist measures were passed around the wold. This did not end well: world trade collapsed, and economies – that had been recovering – deteriorated further. The raising of tariff barriers around the world was one of the ultimate causes of the Second World War; something recognised in the creation of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade in 1947, which went on to become the World Trade Organisation in 1995.
World Trade 1929-1933, as % of World GDP
Source: League of Nations’ World Economic Survey 1932-33
It is true that the benefits of free trade appear very unequal: to an unemployed steel worker in Sunderland, the 1% in his country have gotten wealthier, as have the people of China and other emerging markets, while he has found himself without a job. The problem is that the proposed alternatives – of erecting tariff barriers – make the problem worse.
Raising tariff barriers on – say – imported steel to maintain jobs in Redcar or Port Talbot won’t save those jobs. Or, if it temporarily does, it will do so at the expense of the steel consumers of the UK – car makers and the like.
But let us imagine this issue could be solved (and that we could avoid retaliatory tariffs from those affected by our actions): who would be the purchaser of manufactured products from us if we attempted to protect our industries? We would be making a conscious decision to produce goods at above world market prices. And we need our exports: because without exports of goods and services, we cannot afford the natural gas and oil and the like we need.
As we discussed in Why We Were Rich, above, the developed world used to have the monopoly on manufacturing goods. It no longer does. Attempting to protect industries that are no longer competitive will not help them, it will merely unbalance economies further. Recognising this is painful. Not recognising it is worse.
Yet that period between WW1 and 2 was when the world of deference ebbed away - what we might in Britain glibly call the Downton Abbey world came to an end - and both equality and quality of life for working people improved considerably. Which is why you have to look at the politics and the economics together.
If The Queen Consort wears it then it is an insult to over a billion people and the fact the the Royal Family don't give a shit about their bloody colonial past.
Plans for Queen Camilla to be honoured with a crown containing the Koh-i-Noor diamond at the coronation next year could be dropped because of “political sensitivities”, it was claimed yesterday.
The crown was specially made for Queen Elizabeth — later the Queen Mother — in 1937. Previously the diamond was mounted in the crowns of Queen Alexandra, wife of Edward VII, and Queen Mary, wife of George V.
The Koh-i-Noor was acquired by the East India Company after the Anglo-Sikh Wars and presented to Queen Victoria in 1850. A campaign has sprung up in India urging Britain to return it, although it is also claimed by Afghanistan and Pakistan.
A source told the Daily Mail: “There are serious political sensitivities and significant nervousness.”
According to The Daily Telegraph, a spokesman for the Bharatiya Janata Party of Narendra Modi, the Indian prime minister, said: “The coronation of Camilla and the use of the crown jewel Koh-i-Noor brings back painful memories of the colonial past.”
I don't wish to irritate those on the right, but the East India Company were an absolute disgrace. An appalling organisation which became a front for state-sponsored banditry, larceny, and manslaughter. (God I love an Oxford comma.) Their involvement not only in slavery but in, for example, the opium trade which led to millions of Chinese opium addicts is just one of the abysmal legacies which they both got away with and which funded some of Britain's colonial prosperity.
Just one of many history lessons that should be taught to ALL British school children but which never is:
Of course it should be noted that the East India Company did eventually fall foul of the British Government who decided that they had gone all Colonel Kurz on them.
But, like many things in history, it's complicated and the ledger isn't all one way.
Abhorrence at slavery led to a global campaign for its abolition. The Opium Wars led to the treaty port of Hong Kong, which became the most successful economy in China and seeded democracy there. The end of the East India Company and the rise of the Raj led to the creation of democratic and legal institutions in India, which fostered self-government and are still used to this day.
If we're going to teach history to all British schoolchildren - which I'm all for - then let's have it in full please, and not politicise it one way or the other depending on what's currently in vogue.
The one thing that I agree with the 'woke' is that the British Empire should be properly studied. Post 1945 it has just been viewed as ancient history and a bit of an embarrassment.
I think that Yuval Noah Harari has the best insight in to all this - that the British empire was part of an inevitable evolutionary process associated with industrialisation, and that it is too big to really judge, you can find abundant evidence of good and evil in it. (I am paraphrasing what he actually says, but this is the jist).
Certainly, if you want to stop colonialism then I would expect condemnation of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. But we haven't heard much concern about that from the current Indian government.
In their last couple of leadership elections, both main parties have managed to elect an extremist who did/does not enjoy anything like enough support from their parliamentary party and who would never command enough support nationally to win a general election.
The only difference between the two parties' situations is that (fortuitously for them) Labour happened to do it while they were in opposition, so it was much more damaging to them than it was to the country. Doing it while in Government inflicts significant damage to the country too, as we're seeing.
In the next GE I'll vote for any party which proposes to legislate to ban any political party with more than, say, 40 MPs from leaving their final choice of leader in the hands of their membership!
(though I know that's pure fantasy, of course)
If you think Corbyn and Truss are bad, you ought to have a look at the long list of duds elected by Scottish Labour members:
2007 Wendy Alexander 2008 Iain Gray 2011 Johan Lamont 2014 Jim Murphy 2015 Kezia Dugdale 2017 Richard Leonard 2021 Anas Sarwar
The talent pool is admittedly tiny, but they still managed to pick total crackers there.
Luckily, as you say, when parties do it in Opposition, they solely damage themselves and not the country.
Wendy Alexander was not a "dud". She fell out with "old Labour" MSPs because she expected them to work harder. .
Personally, I quite liked Kezia. Shame it didn’t work out. What’s she doing nowadays?
I liked her too. On I'm a Celebrity. No idea of how good she was as a politician.
Speaking of which it's almost time for this year's. Could they take Truss and Kwarteng. Please. And leave them there.
If Truss faced a VoNC now she'd "win" it, IMHO. The letters threshold doesn't allow enough momentum to drive for an absolute majority against the incumbent in just a few days.
But, this also happened with Theresa May and Boris Johnson and they were out shortly after.
They won't do a confidence vote, they won't need to. This government has already expired. Its principle policy platform cannot clear the Commons. And the party has a tried and tested method of dealing with dead governments - no wonder Mrs Brady is always grinning. He's been the busiest 22 Chair in its history.
Have just noticed. The video of Truss meeting the King. Lots of comments about her appalling courtesy thing. And his "you're back again? Dear oh dear". But listen between "again" and "dear". He grimaces and sucks his teeth loudly. Its comedy gold!
I am no fan of Truss but, quite frankly, I find it rude of the entitled, privileged, white male Monarch to react in that way.
There is no need for it.
People approving of such ignorant behaviour because its towards someone they politically do not like would not be so accomodating if it was someone like Starmer or Davey.
Charles isn't backwards about coming forwards. Earlier this year he read the final Queen's speech and did so with clear dripping disdain for what he was having to announce. Now here he is treating a contemptable PM with open contempt.
If he was going against the mood of the country then we would have a big problem. As it is he just adds colour to what is already funny. Where I do agree with you is "there is no need for it" where my definition of "it" is the monarchy.
What annoys me reading tonight is that all the blame for where we are is being put on truss and kwasi. Have they made things worse certainly they have and I have no liking for either.
However where we are is the end point of 30 odd years of centrist social democratic style governement. It has left millions in this country unable to live despite working 40 hours a week without having to rely on governement handouts or food banks or both.
Most of that time spent within the EU before anyone goes yeah but brexit. Centrist governments have failed a lot of people in this country while companies and their directors made out like bandits. The difference now is it is beginning to hit people on this board most of whom weren't in those bottom cohorts so now you are starting to cry and whine about it.
Welcome to the poorhouse you deserve it.
Forget Brexit.
What is it you propose?
Where is prospering, and what policies have they implemented that are appropriate for the UK?
And there are two massive headwinds you need to at the very least acknowledge.
Firstly, there's demographics. Secondly, there's all the people in the world - and we're not talking immigrants - who are prepared to do your job for less.
I don't believe anywhere in the west is prospering when you consider the life of the median citizen, they are finding housing costs rising, tax rising,energy price rising and food rising all more than their pay over the last 3 to 4 decades. All the west has been doing the social democratic lie of we can have more and more public services but not raise tax and funded it through borrowing. UK, germany, france etc.
Time to be realistic. We need to fund those public services we consider essential properly. We need to stop putting the cost of that on generations unborn. What we cant fund we need to tell people I am sorry we cant fund that and cut it.
I laid out the 5 tenets of where I come from.
Personally I prefer a small state but the 5 principles I think is where we need to be before we even talk about small state vs big state....fiscal stability
I wrote a piece of research about six or seven years ago which said pretty much the same thing:
For much of the post war period, developed countries – and their citizens – had it pretty good.
Unemployment was negligible, crime low, and each generation successively richer. A German, Japanese or American father could look down on his children and feel confident that their lives would be better than his.
But then something changed. The children of the 2000s ceased being wealthier than their parents. And while incomes had apparently risen, so had the prices of petrol, of energy and of rent. While families of the 1970s could survive - or even prosper – with one working parent, it now required two. Young people were leaving college with ever larger amounts of debt and failing to find the kind of secure, well paid jobs their father’s had.
We see these trends wherever we look. Take the US, generally considered (by us in Europe at least) to have been the most successful developed economy in the world in the recent past. According to the US Federal Reserve, real median household income is down almost 10% since peaking in 1999.
That’s an unprecedented reduction, and is all the more shocking in the context of a country where headline GDP growth has been relatively strong.
The story in the US - replicated to a lesser extent around the rest of the developed world - is that the benefits of that growth have been appropriated mostly by a small group of the rich and powerful, and hence denied from the rest of us.
I do wonder whether the hypothesis that the fall of communism removed the imperative to demonstrate the superiority of capitalism through sharing the benefits of growth more widely, because the potential alternative to capitalism had been defeated and the potential threat to the powerful of revolution went away, has something to it.
Really interesting thread, thanks pagan for starting it. I’m surprised by the diagnosis of centrist government as the source of the problem, though. To me the source is really quite simple - shareholder capitalism prioritising dividends and short term profit over investment.
The solution, in my view, is some form of stakeholder capitalism. Employees, customers and local communities (ie those with a long term interest in the growth of a business) owning as large a stake in that business as economically possible.
I don’t think it’s government that is the problem, though I agree with other parts of your diagnosis.
The fundamental problem is cognitive dissonance.
Everyone starts from their conclusion (immigrants, China, shareholder capitalism, social democratic government) and works out how that is the key driver behind stagnant incomes.
Completely agree, I meant to write a (less eloquent and succinct) version of your reply at the end of my post but am in deep brain fog from my 2 year old deciding 3 am is play time.
That was kind of my whole point in fact - I diagnose the problem in one way, pagan another, you probably another, based on our existing biases. No one really knows where the truth lies, least of all economists.
Nevertheless at really big picture it is pretty clear that, within the developed world, the US has been and remains at the leading edge of these changes, which we mostly agree are becoming seriously problematic, with continental Europe at the trailing edge and the UK in between. There is far greater interest in and emphasis on equality and quality of life in continental Europe, and while it may not have yet hit on a stable alternative to oligarchic capitalism, it feels a better place for us to align than is the US.
EU social democratic governments may be struggling to imagine and articulate a counter to the predominant economic model, but to suggest they are responsible for it as someone did above is a stretch (being polite).
“The Conservative benches have reached the point where they hate one another more than they care about electoral defeat. Acidity levels make normal politics near-impossible.“
Yes, the behaviour of the MPs has been disgraceful over the past month.
They gave the membership two choices, and then refused to get behind the new leader. If they couldn’t work with Liz Truss, they shouldn’t have nominated her. They should also have known, from the very first members’ poll, that Rishi Sunak wasn’t going to win, despite his expensive campaign among the MPs themselves, to make himself appear inevitable.
While Liz was speaking to the members none of the tax cutting policies existed. She only announced them during the member hustings and then it fell apart..
If The Queen Consort wears it then it is an insult to over a billion people and the fact the the Royal Family don't give a shit about their bloody colonial past.
Plans for Queen Camilla to be honoured with a crown containing the Koh-i-Noor diamond at the coronation next year could be dropped because of “political sensitivities”, it was claimed yesterday.
The crown was specially made for Queen Elizabeth — later the Queen Mother — in 1937. Previously the diamond was mounted in the crowns of Queen Alexandra, wife of Edward VII, and Queen Mary, wife of George V.
The Koh-i-Noor was acquired by the East India Company after the Anglo-Sikh Wars and presented to Queen Victoria in 1850. A campaign has sprung up in India urging Britain to return it, although it is also claimed by Afghanistan and Pakistan.
A source told the Daily Mail: “There are serious political sensitivities and significant nervousness.”
According to The Daily Telegraph, a spokesman for the Bharatiya Janata Party of Narendra Modi, the Indian prime minister, said: “The coronation of Camilla and the use of the crown jewel Koh-i-Noor brings back painful memories of the colonial past.”
And if the Koh-i-Noor cannot be worn, it might as well be returned to India. The Indian Prime Minister perhaps has this in mind.
BBC news online has a piece discussing a plan for the Parthenon sculptures to return to Greece, with polls showing public support for it here. Not from LT though but that won't matter soon.
Have just noticed. The video of Truss meeting the King. Lots of comments about her appalling courtesy thing. And his "you're back again? Dear oh dear". But listen between "again" and "dear". He grimaces and sucks his teeth loudly. Its comedy gold!
Not a lover of Truss, but this "comedy gold" says more about Charles's clear sense of entitlement than it does Truss's incompetence.
Liz Truss is clearly out of her depth, nonetheless the misogynistic hatred propelled towards her is appalling. Her performance at PMQs was no worse than pretty much every Johnson PMQ performance, yet she has been hung out to dry whilst Johnson was lauded for his satirical genius.
Truss could do worse than quote Julia Guillard's decade old "misogyny speech" verbatim.
Mr. B2, perhaps it's down to outsourcing non-top jobs to places where factories and the like are cheaper to run, denying the work in the West, helping the East/Africa, but also (within Western nations) being relatively bad for the middle class?
Yes, an alternative - or possibly complementary - hypothesis is that the combination of technology and so-called globalisation has exposed everyone to competition, which has driven down our worth, except for those in charge whose reach, and hence worth, has expanded.
From the perspective of the real global poor, this is of course good news, because they are being slowly levelled with us.
There have been prior periods in history when power and wealth has aggregated towards a small elite, and the eventual outcome has tended to be political turbulence, often of a violent nature.
The ironic circularity is of course that such pressures are behind the origins of communism.
Perhaps what is missing today is any sort of coherent ideology or alternative model (to globalistic capitalism - which has become proto-oligarchic) powerful enough to be both credible and around which modern revolutionaries (and voters) can gather?
With Communism discredited there are other emerging alternatives to capitalist consumerism. One is Islamism and other hardline religious tyranny, anther is Green radicalism. Neither are strong enough to take power here, but both have the opportunity to be radically disruptive.
Yes, very fair point. You caught me screening out those that didn’t pass my own prejudicial credibility test.
I am sympathetic to the radical Green view, but that is easier once you are already older and reasonable well off, and taking a longer view the explanation as to how it avoids leaving us like the Amish is still missing.
Have just noticed. The video of Truss meeting the King. Lots of comments about her appalling courtesy thing. And his "you're back again? Dear oh dear". But listen between "again" and "dear". He grimaces and sucks his teeth loudly. Its comedy gold!
I am no fan of Truss but, quite frankly, I find it rude of the entitled, privileged, white male Monarch to react in that way.
There is no need for it.
People approving of such ignorant behaviour because its towards someone they politically do not like would not be so accomodating if it was someone like Starmer or Davey.
Dickhead was always going to be like this. Everyone knew it.
What annoys me reading tonight is that all the blame for where we are is being put on truss and kwasi. Have they made things worse certainly they have and I have no liking for either.
However where we are is the end point of 30 odd years of centrist social democratic style governement. It has left millions in this country unable to live despite working 40 hours a week without having to rely on governement handouts or food banks or both.
Most of that time spent within the EU before anyone goes yeah but brexit. Centrist governments have failed a lot of people in this country while companies and their directors made out like bandits. The difference now is it is beginning to hit people on this board most of whom weren't in those bottom cohorts so now you are starting to cry and whine about it.
Welcome to the poorhouse you deserve it.
Forget Brexit.
What is it you propose?
Where is prospering, and what policies have they implemented that are appropriate for the UK?
And there are two massive headwinds you need to at the very least acknowledge.
Firstly, there's demographics. Secondly, there's all the people in the world - and we're not talking immigrants - who are prepared to do your job for less.
I don't believe anywhere in the west is prospering when you consider the life of the median citizen, they are finding housing costs rising, tax rising,energy price rising and food rising all more than their pay over the last 3 to 4 decades. All the west has been doing the social democratic lie of we can have more and more public services but not raise tax and funded it through borrowing. UK, germany, france etc.
Time to be realistic. We need to fund those public services we consider essential properly. We need to stop putting the cost of that on generations unborn. What we cant fund we need to tell people I am sorry we cant fund that and cut it.
I laid out the 5 tenets of where I come from.
Personally I prefer a small state but the 5 principles I think is where we need to be before we even talk about small state vs big state....fiscal stability
I wrote a piece of research about six or seven years ago which said pretty much the same thing:
For much of the post war period, developed countries – and their citizens – had it pretty good.
Unemployment was negligible, crime low, and each generation successively richer. A German, Japanese or American father could look down on his children and feel confident that their lives would be better than his.
But then something changed. The children of the 2000s ceased being wealthier than their parents. And while incomes had apparently risen, so had the prices of petrol, of energy and of rent. While families of the 1970s could survive - or even prosper – with one working parent, it now required two. Young people were leaving college with ever larger amounts of debt and failing to find the kind of secure, well paid jobs their father’s had.
We see these trends wherever we look. Take the US, generally considered (by us in Europe at least) to have been the most successful developed economy in the world in the recent past. According to the US Federal Reserve, real median household income is down almost 10% since peaking in 1999.
That’s an unprecedented reduction, and is all the more shocking in the context of a country where headline GDP growth has been relatively strong.
That reduction is an inevitable consequence of the unprecedented competition faced by the low to medium skilled from the development of what were previously third world countries, specifically China. The massive increase in global trade simply left those groups, which contain the majority of the population, with no negotiating power. If they don't like the lower wages the factory was transplanted and minimal tariffs meant that the business could still produce its product for the market in the US or the EU.
This is the same problem we had with the SM writ large. It was of course possible for us to thrive in the SM, as Germany did, but it would have needed a completely different policy mix from governments who almost certainly would not have been re-elected.
Simplistic, idealistic notions of the benefits of free trade, low or non existent tariffs have completely undermined the majority of western society. Those with capital or with exceptional skills at the top have, of course, gained massively and we have seen GDP creep up, usually with increasing trade deficits as we import much of what we used to make.
We have heard this song before of course. Between the First and Second World Wars, following the US passing of The Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930, a wave of protectionist measures were passed around the wold. This did not end well: world trade collapsed, and economies – that had been recovering – deteriorated further. The raising of tariff barriers around the world was one of the ultimate causes of the Second World War; something recognised in the creation of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade in 1947, which went on to become the World Trade Organisation in 1995.
World Trade 1929-1933, as % of World GDP
Source: League of Nations’ World Economic Survey 1932-33
It is true that the benefits of free trade appear very unequal: to an unemployed steel worker in Sunderland, the 1% in his country have gotten wealthier, as have the people of China and other emerging markets, while he has found himself without a job. The problem is that the proposed alternatives – of erecting tariff barriers – make the problem worse.
Raising tariff barriers on – say – imported steel to maintain jobs in Redcar or Port Talbot won’t save those jobs. Or, if it temporarily does, it will do so at the expense of the steel consumers of the UK – car makers and the like.
But let us imagine this issue could be solved (and that we could avoid retaliatory tariffs from those affected by our actions): who would be the purchaser of manufactured products from us if we attempted to protect our industries? We would be making a conscious decision to produce goods at above world market prices. And we need our exports: because without exports of goods and services, we cannot afford the natural gas and oil and the like we need.
As we discussed in Why We Were Rich, above, the developed world used to have the monopoly on manufacturing goods. It no longer does. Attempting to protect industries that are no longer competitive will not help them, it will merely unbalance economies further. Recognising this is painful. Not recognising it is worse.
Yet that period between WW1 and 2 was when the world of deference ebbed away - what we might in Britain glibly call the Downton Abbey world came to an end - and both equality and quality of life for working people improved considerably. Which is why you have to look at the politics and the economics together.
A nice point. One only need look at the council houses of the 1920s ands 1930s round here - decent buildings in decent garden plots erected because all the free market had to offer the workers was tied factory and mine owned boxes, and private landlord flats, often near-slums. The latter situation had very nearly led to revolution in Clydeside, and more generally cannot be blamed on planning and nimbies.
PB is currently in one of its periods of exaggerated emotion, or as Monty Python used to say, Hyper - bole. Led as always by the press. Amended policy, no matter how slight, becomes a U-turn, or rather a "screeching U-turn." Any minor tax change is always social cleansing or something equally hideous.
Perhaps, it's the 24 hour news cycle - where everything is accompanied by the obligatory breathless excitement. Like a six-year who's stayed up too late.
On most days, very little new happens. When you can't differentiate between world-shattering news and nothing very much, you end up manic. It's the raison-d'etre of the press, but you don't need to indulge them.
OK, a pandemic folllowed by a European war is unusual, but even without those, the press would go full disaster-mode. It's what they do
Politically, in national news, the Tories have picked a dud, who they will probably replace soon enough. It will cost them votes, and a it's a reasonable discussion point for PB. The Labour party managed to saddle itself with Corbyn but have recovered and are now electable. Er ... that's it.
The discussions on here can be amusing, and it keeps me coming. But I doubt any will change my mind much, even though I'm now an undecided..
PB is currently in one of its periods of exaggerated emotion, or as Monty Python used to say, Hyper - bole. Led as always by the press. Amended policy, no matter how slight, becomes a U-turn, or rather a "screeching U-turn." Any minor tax change is always social cleansing or something equally hideous.
Perhaps, it's the 24 hour news cycle - where everything is accompanied by the obligatory breathless excitement. Like a six-year who's stayed up too late.
On most days, very little new happens. When you can't differentiate between world-shattering news and nothing very much, you end up manic. It's the raison-d'etre of the press, but you don't need to indulge them.
OK, a pandemic folllowed by a European war is unusual, but even without those, the press would go full disaster-mode. It's what they do
Politically, in national news, the Tories have picked a dud, who they will probably replace soon enough. It will cost them votes, and a A reasonable discussion point for PB. The Labour party managed to saddle itself with Corbyn but have recovered and are now electable. Er ... that's it. The discussions on here can be amusing, and it keeps me coming. But I doubt any will change my mind much, even though I'm now an undecided..
There was a time when VAT on hot Greggs pasties was where it was at.
Have just noticed. The video of Truss meeting the King. Lots of comments about her appalling courtesy thing. And his "you're back again? Dear oh dear". But listen between "again" and "dear". He grimaces and sucks his teeth loudly. Its comedy gold!
Not a lover of Truss, but this "comedy gold" says more about Charles's clear sense of entitlement than it does Truss's incompetence.
Liz Truss is clearly out of her depth, nonetheless the misogynistic hatred propelled towards her is appalling. Her performance at PMQs was no worse than pretty much every Johnson PMQ performance, yet she has been hung out to dry whilst Johnson was lauded for his satirical genius.
Truss could do worse than quote Julia Guillard's decade old "misogyny speech" verbatim.
Charles *is* entitled. He is the monarch. Gets to summon the PM every week to give them unsolicited advice. The whole thing is an anachronism. But if he wants to add to the firm's decline I am all for it.
Is the hate towards Truss because she's a woman? Or because of her policies? Was the hate towards Johnson because he was a man? Or because of the endless lies?
Truss has one choice, change and reverse some of the measures otherwise it is over for her
Mind you I believe it is over for her even if she does reverse course
I'm struggling with her path to survival even if she does a complete about face. Clearly she would throw Kamikaze aside and likely the rest of the Treasury team. But she can't blame her ministers for this mess. She laid out these policies over a period of several months at endless hustings.
This - quite literally - is her entire platform. If she bins all of it then what is she about? What is her offer? And how could she possibly lead the party to back her?
PB is currently in one of its periods of exaggerated emotion, or as Monty Python used to say, Hyper - bole. Led as always by the press. Amended policy, no matter how slight, becomes a U-turn, or rather a "screeching U-turn." Any minor tax change is always social cleansing or something equally hideous.
Perhaps, it's the 24 hour news cycle - where everything is accompanied by the obligatory breathless excitement. Like a six-year who's stayed up too late.
On most days, very little new happens. When you can't differentiate between world-shattering news and nothing very much, you end up manic. It's the raison-d'etre of the press, but you don't need to indulge them.
OK, a pandemic folllowed by a European war is unusual, but even without those, the press would go full disaster-mode. It's what they do
Politically, in national news, the Tories have picked a dud, who they will probably replace soon enough. It will cost them votes, and a it's a reasonable discussion point for PB. The Labour party managed to saddle itself with Corbyn but have recovered and are now electable. Er ... that's it.
The discussions on here can be amusing, and it keeps me coming. But I doubt any will change my mind much, even though I'm now an undecided..
Sort of fair. We do all overreact but it's harmless fun.
Very few opinions are ever changed on here though.
PB is currently in one of its periods of exaggerated emotion, or as Monty Python used to say, Hyper - bole. Led as always by the press. Amended policy, no matter how slight, becomes a U-turn, or rather a "screeching U-turn." Any minor tax change is always social cleansing or something equally hideous.
Perhaps, it's the 24 hour news cycle - where everything is accompanied by the obligatory breathless excitement. Like a six-year who's stayed up too late.
On most days, very little new happens. When you can't differentiate between world-shattering news and nothing very much, you end up manic. It's the raison-d'etre of the press, but you don't need to indulge them.
OK, a pandemic folllowed by a European war is unusual, but even without those, the press would go full disaster-mode. It's what they do
Politically, in national news, the Tories have picked a dud, who they will probably replace soon enough. It will cost them votes, and a A reasonable discussion point for PB. The Labour party managed to saddle itself with Corbyn but have recovered and are now electable. Er ... that's it. The discussions on here can be amusing, and it keeps me coming. But I doubt any will change my mind much, even though I'm now an undecided..
There was a time when VAT on hot Greggs pasties was where it was at.
Oh for the days of a good old fashioned omnishambles. Not for these!
What annoys me reading tonight is that all the blame for where we are is being put on truss and kwasi. Have they made things worse certainly they have and I have no liking for either.
However where we are is the end point of 30 odd years of centrist social democratic style governement. It has left millions in this country unable to live despite working 40 hours a week without having to rely on governement handouts or food banks or both.
Most of that time spent within the EU before anyone goes yeah but brexit. Centrist governments have failed a lot of people in this country while companies and their directors made out like bandits. The difference now is it is beginning to hit people on this board most of whom weren't in those bottom cohorts so now you are starting to cry and whine about it.
Welcome to the poorhouse you deserve it.
Forget Brexit.
What is it you propose?
Where is prospering, and what policies have they implemented that are appropriate for the UK?
And there are two massive headwinds you need to at the very least acknowledge.
Firstly, there's demographics. Secondly, there's all the people in the world - and we're not talking immigrants - who are prepared to do your job for less.
I don't believe anywhere in the west is prospering when you consider the life of the median citizen, they are finding housing costs rising, tax rising,energy price rising and food rising all more than their pay over the last 3 to 4 decades. All the west has been doing the social democratic lie of we can have more and more public services but not raise tax and funded it through borrowing. UK, germany, france etc.
Time to be realistic. We need to fund those public services we consider essential properly. We need to stop putting the cost of that on generations unborn. What we cant fund we need to tell people I am sorry we cant fund that and cut it.
I laid out the 5 tenets of where I come from.
Personally I prefer a small state but the 5 principles I think is where we need to be before we even talk about small state vs big state....fiscal stability
I wrote a piece of research about six or seven years ago which said pretty much the same thing:
For much of the post war period, developed countries – and their citizens – had it pretty good.
Unemployment was negligible, crime low, and each generation successively richer. A German, Japanese or American father could look down on his children and feel confident that their lives would be better than his.
But then something changed. The children of the 2000s ceased being wealthier than their parents. And while incomes had apparently risen, so had the prices of petrol, of energy and of rent. While families of the 1970s could survive - or even prosper – with one working parent, it now required two. Young people were leaving college with ever larger amounts of debt and failing to find the kind of secure, well paid jobs their father’s had.
We see these trends wherever we look. Take the US, generally considered (by us in Europe at least) to have been the most successful developed economy in the world in the recent past. According to the US Federal Reserve, real median household income is down almost 10% since peaking in 1999.
That’s an unprecedented reduction, and is all the more shocking in the context of a country where headline GDP growth has been relatively strong.
That reduction is an inevitable consequence of the unprecedented competition faced by the low to medium skilled from the development of what were previously third world countries, specifically China. The massive increase in global trade simply left those groups, which contain the majority of the population, with no negotiating power. If they don't like the lower wages the factory was transplanted and minimal tariffs meant that the business could still produce its product for the market in the US or the EU.
This is the same problem we had with the SM writ large. It was of course possible for us to thrive in the SM, as Germany did, but it would have needed a completely different policy mix from governments who almost certainly would not have been re-elected.
Simplistic, idealistic notions of the benefits of free trade, low or non existent tariffs have completely undermined the majority of western society. Those with capital or with exceptional skills at the top have, of course, gained massively and we have seen GDP creep up, usually with increasing trade deficits as we import much of what we used to make.
We have heard this song before of course. Between the First and Second World Wars, following the US passing of The Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930, a wave of protectionist measures were passed around the wold. This did not end well: world trade collapsed, and economies – that had been recovering – deteriorated further. The raising of tariff barriers around the world was one of the ultimate causes of the Second World War; something recognised in the creation of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade in 1947, which went on to become the World Trade Organisation in 1995.
World Trade 1929-1933, as % of World GDP
Source: League of Nations’ World Economic Survey 1932-33
It is true that the benefits of free trade appear very unequal: to an unemployed steel worker in Sunderland, the 1% in his country have gotten wealthier, as have the people of China and other emerging markets, while he has found himself without a job. The problem is that the proposed alternatives – of erecting tariff barriers – make the problem worse.
Raising tariff barriers on – say – imported steel to maintain jobs in Redcar or Port Talbot won’t save those jobs. Or, if it temporarily does, it will do so at the expense of the steel consumers of the UK – car makers and the like.
But let us imagine this issue could be solved (and that we could avoid retaliatory tariffs from those affected by our actions): who would be the purchaser of manufactured products from us if we attempted to protect our industries? We would be making a conscious decision to produce goods at above world market prices. And we need our exports: because without exports of goods and services, we cannot afford the natural gas and oil and the like we need.
As we discussed in Why We Were Rich, above, the developed world used to have the monopoly on manufacturing goods. It no longer does. Attempting to protect industries that are no longer competitive will not help them, it will merely unbalance economies further. Recognising this is painful. Not recognising it is worse.
Yet that period between WW1 and 2 was when the world of deference ebbed away - what we might in Britain glibly call the Downton Abbey world came to an end - and both equality and quality of life for working people improved considerably. Which is why you have to look at the politics and the economics together.
A nice point. One only need look at the council houses of the 1920s ands 1930s round here - decent buildings in decent garden plots erected because all the free market had to offer the workers was tied factory and mine owned boxes, and private landlord flats, often near-slums. The latter situation had very nearly led to revolution in Clydeside, and more generally cannot be blamed on planning and nimbies.
True. The economic crises of the 20-30s hit the wealthy at least as much as the poor, exemplified by the jumping from Wall Street windows and firesales of stately homes, whereas the rich have breezed (so far) through the crises of this century better off than before.
Have just noticed. The video of Truss meeting the King. Lots of comments about her appalling courtesy thing. And his "you're back again? Dear oh dear". But listen between "again" and "dear". He grimaces and sucks his teeth loudly. Its comedy gold!
Not a lover of Truss, but this "comedy gold" says more about Charles's clear sense of entitlement than it does Truss's incompetence.
Liz Truss is clearly out of her depth, nonetheless the misogynistic hatred propelled towards her is appalling. Her performance at PMQs was no worse than pretty much every Johnson PMQ performance, yet she has been hung out to dry whilst Johnson was lauded for his satirical genius.
Truss could do worse than quote Julia Guillard's decade old "misogyny speech" verbatim.
Disliking someone because of their appalling incompetence and narrow minded ideological madness, who happens to be a woman, is very, very, very, very different to disliking someone *because* they are a woman.
Truss has one choice, change and reverse some of the measures otherwise it is over for her
Mind you I believe it is over for her even if she does reverse course
If she thinks that she presumably won't change course (why bother?)
That she is continually shifting her position suggests that she still believes she can survive. The next few weeks and months are going to be politically interesting, if sadly very damaging to the country.
Have just noticed. The video of Truss meeting the King. Lots of comments about her appalling courtesy thing. And his "you're back again? Dear oh dear". But listen between "again" and "dear". He grimaces and sucks his teeth loudly. Its comedy gold!
Not a lover of Truss, but this "comedy gold" says more about Charles's clear sense of entitlement than it does Truss's incompetence.
Liz Truss is clearly out of her depth, nonetheless the misogynistic hatred propelled towards her is appalling. Her performance at PMQs was no worse than pretty much every Johnson PMQ performance, yet she has been hung out to dry whilst Johnson was lauded for his satirical genius.
Truss could do worse than quote Julia Guillard's decade old "misogyny speech" verbatim.
Disliking someone because of their appalling incompetence and narrow minded ideological madness, who happens to be a woman, is very, very, very, very different to disliking someone *because* they are a woman.
A bit like Nicky Morgan.
She blamed most of the hate she got on her gender, but really it was because she is a vile human being.
Have just noticed. The video of Truss meeting the King. Lots of comments about her appalling courtesy thing. And his "you're back again? Dear oh dear". But listen between "again" and "dear". He grimaces and sucks his teeth loudly. Its comedy gold!
PB is currently in one of its periods of exaggerated emotion, or as Monty Python used to say, Hyper - bole. Led as always by the press. Amended policy, no matter how slight, becomes a U-turn, or rather a "screeching U-turn." Any minor tax change is always social cleansing or something equally hideous.
Perhaps, it's the 24 hour news cycle - where everything is accompanied by the obligatory breathless excitement. Like a six-year who's stayed up too late.
On most days, very little new happens. When you can't differentiate between world-shattering news and nothing very much, you end up manic. It's the raison-d'etre of the press, but you don't need to indulge them.
OK, a pandemic folllowed by a European war is unusual, but even without those, the press would go full disaster-mode. It's what they do
Politically, in national news, the Tories have picked a dud, who they will probably replace soon enough. It will cost them votes, and a it's a reasonable discussion point for PB. The Labour party managed to saddle itself with Corbyn but have recovered and are now electable. Er ... that's it.
The discussions on here can be amusing, and it keeps me coming. But I doubt any will change my mind much, even though I'm now an undecided..
Sort of fair. We do all overreact but it's harmless fun.
Very few opinions are ever changed on here though.
Yes and no. When we get panting media-style hyperbole dropped in here, most of PB exemplifies a very healthy counter-reaction.
The number of possible things that might happen is much greater than the number of those that actually will, and while most of what is imagined is more outlandish than a generally pedestrian reality, every so often something happens for real that would have seemed ludicrous if imagined in advance.
Have just noticed. The video of Truss meeting the King. Lots of comments about her appalling courtesy thing. And his "you're back again? Dear oh dear". But listen between "again" and "dear". He grimaces and sucks his teeth loudly. Its comedy gold!
Not a lover of Truss, but [...] the misogynistic hatred propelled towards her is appalling.
I don't think it's got anything to do with her being a woman.
It's because she's fucking useless.
I'm no fan of hers, but I have no doubt that some of the (ahem) comments towards her are misogynistic. It's a particularly crass way of talking about her, as she's given people ample valid reasons to criticise her.
Oh FFS give us a GE and let's get rid of this sack of fighting ferrets. Utterly out of control and frankly deranged:
Noa Hoffman @hoffman_noa · 1h Source told The Sun: “It's clear that there is widespread frustration in gov with Suella’s freelancing. She's running a blatant leadership campaign but it’s having a destabilising effect on the gov. She needs to focus on the day job and stop her antics or she won’t last long."
Have just noticed. The video of Truss meeting the King. Lots of comments about her appalling courtesy thing. And his "you're back again? Dear oh dear". But listen between "again" and "dear". He grimaces and sucks his teeth loudly. Its comedy gold!
Not a lover of Truss, but [...] the misogynistic hatred propelled towards her is appalling.
I don't think it's got anything to do with her being a woman.
It's because she's fucking useless.
I'm no fan of hers, but I have no doubt that some of the (ahem) comments towards her are misogynistic. It's a particularly crass way of talking about her, as she's given people ample valid reasons to criticise her.
TBF she did have a run-in with the local* turnip Tory Taliban early in her career as a MP, because of her private life, and I'm not sure a male MP would have had the same treatment.
PB is currently in one of its periods of exaggerated emotion [...] On most days, very little new happens. When you can't differentiate between world-shattering news and nothing very much, you end up manic. It's the raison-d'etre of the press, but you don't need to indulge them.
Try this ostrich denial to my two nieces who have each just had their mortgages cancelled and their dreams of home ownership shattered.
I've noticed quite a few on the Right, in their shock and bewilderment, staggering around blaming everyone but themselves for this clusterfuck.
PB is currently in one of its periods of exaggerated emotion, or as Monty Python used to say, Hyper - bole. Led as always by the press. Amended policy, no matter how slight, becomes a U-turn, or rather a "screeching U-turn." Any minor tax change is always social cleansing or something equally hideous.
Perhaps, it's the 24 hour news cycle - where everything is accompanied by the obligatory breathless excitement. Like a six-year who's stayed up too late.
On most days, very little new happens. When you can't differentiate between world-shattering news and nothing very much, you end up manic. It's the raison-d'etre of the press, but you don't need to indulge them.
OK, a pandemic folllowed by a European war is unusual, but even without those, the press would go full disaster-mode. It's what they do
Politically, in national news, the Tories have picked a dud, who they will probably replace soon enough. It will cost them votes, and a it's a reasonable discussion point for PB. The Labour party managed to saddle itself with Corbyn but have recovered and are now electable. Er ... that's it.
The discussions on here can be amusing, and it keeps me coming. But I doubt any will change my mind much, even though I'm now an undecided..
Sort of fair. We do all overreact but it's harmless fun.
Very few opinions are ever changed on here though.
Perhaps not overall political positions, but I for one have learnt a lot on PB, and not just about civil engineering or where to go on holiday.
Have just noticed. The video of Truss meeting the King. Lots of comments about her appalling courtesy thing. And his "you're back again? Dear oh dear". But listen between "again" and "dear". He grimaces and sucks his teeth loudly. Its comedy gold!
Not a lover of Truss, but [...] the misogynistic hatred propelled towards her is appalling.
I don't think it's got anything to do with her being a woman.
It's because she's fucking useless.
I'm no fan of hers, but I have no doubt that some of the (ahem) comments towards her are misogynistic. It's a particularly crass way of talking about her, as she's given people ample valid reasons to criticise her.
People are starting to call "the witch" or "that witch" down my neck of the woods. Definitely a long history of that being a misogynistic term.
I'll just stick to "f-ing useless and way out of her depth".
Anyone else getting seriously worried that a PM who is so clearly out of her depth but also blinkered, is going to guide us through the worst winter crisis since the 1970s?
It is inevitable.
It will be what it will be. Pointless worrying about it.
That was the fatalistic vibe I was getting from the past couple of days' comments from anonymous backbenchers: that LizT has crashed the Tories so hard that it is not even worth trying to replace her. If that mood does take hold, she's in for the long haul.
Oh FFS give us a GE and let's get rid of this sack of fighting ferrets. Utterly out of control and frankly deranged:
Noa Hoffman @hoffman_noa · 1h Source told The Sun: “It's clear that there is widespread frustration in gov with Suella’s freelancing. She's running a blatant leadership campaign but it’s having a destabilising effect on the gov. She needs to focus on the day job and stop her antics or she won’t last long."
Suella's leadership campaign is one of the things most likely to keep Truss in Number Ten.
Oh FFS give us a GE and let's get rid of this sack of fighting ferrets. Utterly out of control and frankly deranged:
Noa Hoffman @hoffman_noa · 1h Source told The Sun: “It's clear that there is widespread frustration in gov with Suella’s freelancing. She's running a blatant leadership campaign but it’s having a destabilising effect on the gov. She needs to focus on the day job and stop her antics or she won’t last long."
I've backed her for next PM. I don't think she cares too much for economics - so the party can do a u-turn toward common sense on that point; whereas her social program will appeal to the membership.
Good morning everyone. The Guardian has a different take on the cabinet rows: 'Liz Truss on collision course with Jacob Rees-Mogg over solar power ban.' Apparently he is in favour of farmers farming solar panels, she isn't!
Have just noticed. The video of Truss meeting the King. Lots of comments about her appalling courtesy thing. And his "you're back again? Dear oh dear". But listen between "again" and "dear". He grimaces and sucks his teeth loudly. Its comedy gold!
Not a lover of Truss, but [...] the misogynistic hatred propelled towards her is appalling.
I don't think it's got anything to do with her being a woman.
It's because she's fucking useless.
I'm no fan of hers, but I have no doubt that some of the (ahem) comments towards her are misogynistic. It's a particularly crass way of talking about her, as she's given people ample valid reasons to criticise her.
I agree
I think she is out of her depth and needs to go but I have detected a degree of misogyny in some comments that is not necessary
Have just noticed. The video of Truss meeting the King. Lots of comments about her appalling courtesy thing. And his "you're back again? Dear oh dear". But listen between "again" and "dear". He grimaces and sucks his teeth loudly. Its comedy gold!
I am no fan of Truss but, quite frankly, I find it rude of the entitled, privileged, white male Monarch to react in that way.
There is no need for it.
People approving of such ignorant behaviour because its towards someone they politically do not like would not be so accomodating if it was someone like Starmer or Davey.
I don't think you have to approve of the behaviour of KCIII to be amused by it. The episode reflects very badly on both of them - I can't imagine why it was released.
KCIII should know better and be able to keep up a facade, but the whole country can understand his reaction, because we're thinking the same.
PB is currently in one of its periods of exaggerated emotion, or as Monty Python used to say, Hyper - bole. Led as always by the press. Amended policy, no matter how slight, becomes a U-turn, or rather a "screeching U-turn." Any minor tax change is always social cleansing or something equally hideous.
Perhaps, it's the 24 hour news cycle - where everything is accompanied by the obligatory breathless excitement. Like a six-year who's stayed up too late.
On most days, very little new happens. When you can't differentiate between world-shattering news and nothing very much, you end up manic. It's the raison-d'etre of the press, but you don't need to indulge them.
OK, a pandemic folllowed by a European war is unusual, but even without those, the press would go full disaster-mode. It's what they do
Politically, in national news, the Tories have picked a dud, who they will probably replace soon enough. It will cost them votes, and a it's a reasonable discussion point for PB. The Labour party managed to saddle itself with Corbyn but have recovered and are now electable. Er ... that's it.
The discussions on here can be amusing, and it keeps me coming. But I doubt any will change my mind much, even though I'm now an undecided..
Sort of fair. We do all overreact but it's harmless fun.
Very few opinions are ever changed on here though.
Yes and no. When we get panting media-style hyperbole dropped in here, most of PB exemplifies a very healthy counter-reaction.
The number of possible things that might happen is much greater than the number of those that actually will, and while most of what is imagined is more outlandish than a generally pedestrian reality, every so often something happens for real that would have seemed ludicrous if imagined in advance.
Fair point.
Truss being an abject failure was widely predicted on here, with one or two dissenters.
Were any on here predicting in February that Russia would fail to win a short war against Ukraine? I seem to remember quite a few predictions of rapid Russian economic collapse, and of the West failing to support Ukraine, both of which were wrong.
If The Queen Consort wears it then it is an insult to over a billion people and the fact the the Royal Family don't give a shit about their bloody colonial past.
Plans for Queen Camilla to be honoured with a crown containing the Koh-i-Noor diamond at the coronation next year could be dropped because of “political sensitivities”, it was claimed yesterday.
The crown was specially made for Queen Elizabeth — later the Queen Mother — in 1937. Previously the diamond was mounted in the crowns of Queen Alexandra, wife of Edward VII, and Queen Mary, wife of George V.
The Koh-i-Noor was acquired by the East India Company after the Anglo-Sikh Wars and presented to Queen Victoria in 1850. A campaign has sprung up in India urging Britain to return it, although it is also claimed by Afghanistan and Pakistan.
A source told the Daily Mail: “There are serious political sensitivities and significant nervousness.”
According to The Daily Telegraph, a spokesman for the Bharatiya Janata Party of Narendra Modi, the Indian prime minister, said: “The coronation of Camilla and the use of the crown jewel Koh-i-Noor brings back painful memories of the colonial past.”
And if the Koh-i-Noor cannot be worn, it might as well be returned to India. The Indian Prime Minister perhaps has this in mind.
BBC news online has a piece discussing a plan for the Parthenon sculptures to return to Greece, with polls showing public support for it here. Not from LT though but that won't matter soon.
I doubt the average Briton (or Greek) could recognise the Elgin Marbles or Parthenon sculptures. I certainly could not, and I've been to the British Museum within the past few years. From what I can see, the case for saying we stole them is weak, but on the other hand, if we can make perfect replicas, then why not? The Natural History Museum has done it for years.
Good morning everyone. The Guardian has a different take on the cabinet rows: 'Liz Truss on collision course with Jacob Rees-Mogg over solar power ban.' Apparently he is in favour of farmers farming solar panels, she isn't!
This is one of their policy battles that I just don't understand. Farmers are usually Tories. Farmers own their land and need to make a living. Many are struggling to make money farming (in part by post-Brexit idiocy and energy prices crippling our fertiliser industry and spiking prices). So they make £ putting solar farms up. Which produces critical power.
Why would you stop this? I know that the spin line is "we promote Nuclear and the other parties don't". But if they authorise a new nuclear plant today its 2030 at best before it generates electricity. Whereas solar can generate power as soon as they are plugged in...
James Cleverly was asked something like ‘how bad is it for Liz Truss’ and he answered by saying “changing the leadership would be a disastrously bad idea”. Which gives you some idea of how bad those around the PM think things really are… https://twitter.com/bbcr4today/status/1580468411175665664
Have just noticed. The video of Truss meeting the King. Lots of comments about her appalling courtesy thing. And his "you're back again? Dear oh dear". But listen between "again" and "dear". He grimaces and sucks his teeth loudly. Its comedy gold!
Not a lover of Truss, but [...] the misogynistic hatred propelled towards her is appalling.
I don't think it's got anything to do with her being a woman.
It's because she's fucking useless.
I'm no fan of hers, but I have no doubt that some of the (ahem) comments towards her are misogynistic. It's a particularly crass way of talking about her, as she's given people ample valid reasons to criticise her.
People are starting to call "the witch" or "that witch" down my neck of the woods. Definitely a long history of that being a misogynistic term.
I'll just stick to "f-ing useless and way out of her depth".
What I've said before about May can now be said about Truss. May and Truss have been brilliant for equality: they have shown not just that women can rise to the top, but also that women can be just as incompetent as men.
This is one of their policy battles that I just don't understand. Farmers are usually Tories. Farmers own their land and need to make a living. Many are struggling to make money farming (in part by post-Brexit idiocy and energy prices crippling our fertiliser industry and spiking prices). So they make £ putting solar farms up. Which produces critical power.
Why would you stop this?
Posted the other day
It makes sense if you remember that Truss is a Norfolk MP, and her constituents would rather see green fields than solar farms.
If The Queen Consort wears it then it is an insult to over a billion people and the fact the the Royal Family don't give a shit about their bloody colonial past.
Plans for Queen Camilla to be honoured with a crown containing the Koh-i-Noor diamond at the coronation next year could be dropped because of “political sensitivities”, it was claimed yesterday.
The crown was specially made for Queen Elizabeth — later the Queen Mother — in 1937. Previously the diamond was mounted in the crowns of Queen Alexandra, wife of Edward VII, and Queen Mary, wife of George V.
The Koh-i-Noor was acquired by the East India Company after the Anglo-Sikh Wars and presented to Queen Victoria in 1850. A campaign has sprung up in India urging Britain to return it, although it is also claimed by Afghanistan and Pakistan.
A source told the Daily Mail: “There are serious political sensitivities and significant nervousness.”
According to The Daily Telegraph, a spokesman for the Bharatiya Janata Party of Narendra Modi, the Indian prime minister, said: “The coronation of Camilla and the use of the crown jewel Koh-i-Noor brings back painful memories of the colonial past.”
And if the Koh-i-Noor cannot be worn, it might as well be returned to India. The Indian Prime Minister perhaps has this in mind.
BBC news online has a piece discussing a plan for the Parthenon sculptures to return to Greece, with polls showing public support for it here. Not from LT though but that won't matter soon.
I doubt the average Briton (or Greek) could recognise the Elgin Marbles or Parthenon sculptures. I certainly could not, and I've been to the British Museum within the past few years. From what I can see, the case for saying we stole them is weak, but on the other hand, if we can make perfect replicas, then why not? The Natural History Museum has done it for years.
I think the V&A has a floor full of resin replicas of ancient sculptures.
If returning items helps us diplomatically I'd say do it. Let the public know they're here for one more year then they're gone. And find something else in the basement to display.
This is one of their policy battles that I just don't understand. Farmers are usually Tories. Farmers own their land and need to make a living. Many are struggling to make money farming (in part by post-Brexit idiocy and energy prices crippling our fertiliser industry and spiking prices). So they make £ putting solar farms up. Which produces critical power.
Why would you stop this?
Posted the other day
It makes sense if you remember that Truss is a Norfolk MP, and her constituents would rather see green fields than solar farms.
That's it.
If she really is that simple then we are in deep deep trouble.
If The Queen Consort wears it then it is an insult to over a billion people and the fact the the Royal Family don't give a shit about their bloody colonial past.
Plans for Queen Camilla to be honoured with a crown containing the Koh-i-Noor diamond at the coronation next year could be dropped because of “political sensitivities”, it was claimed yesterday.
The crown was specially made for Queen Elizabeth — later the Queen Mother — in 1937. Previously the diamond was mounted in the crowns of Queen Alexandra, wife of Edward VII, and Queen Mary, wife of George V.
The Koh-i-Noor was acquired by the East India Company after the Anglo-Sikh Wars and presented to Queen Victoria in 1850. A campaign has sprung up in India urging Britain to return it, although it is also claimed by Afghanistan and Pakistan.
A source told the Daily Mail: “There are serious political sensitivities and significant nervousness.”
According to The Daily Telegraph, a spokesman for the Bharatiya Janata Party of Narendra Modi, the Indian prime minister, said: “The coronation of Camilla and the use of the crown jewel Koh-i-Noor brings back painful memories of the colonial past.”
And if the Koh-i-Noor cannot be worn, it might as well be returned to India. The Indian Prime Minister perhaps has this in mind.
BBC news online has a piece discussing a plan for the Parthenon sculptures to return to Greece, with polls showing public support for it here. Not from LT though but that won't matter soon.
I doubt the average Briton (or Greek) could recognise the Elgin Marbles or Parthenon sculptures. I certainly could not, and I've been to the British Museum within the past few years. From what I can see, the case for saying we stole them is weak, but on the other hand, if we can make perfect replicas, then why not? The Natural History Museum has done it for years.
Museums have beem making plaster casts for centuries.
Oh FFS give us a GE and let's get rid of this sack of fighting ferrets. Utterly out of control and frankly deranged:
Noa Hoffman @hoffman_noa · 1h Source told The Sun: “It's clear that there is widespread frustration in gov with Suella’s freelancing. She's running a blatant leadership campaign but it’s having a destabilising effect on the gov. She needs to focus on the day job and stop her antics or she won’t last long."
I've backed her for next PM. I don't think she cares too much for economics - so the party can do a u-turn toward common sense on that point; whereas her social program will appeal to the membership.
The RedWall will love the hanging, flogging and strafing Zodiac inflatables in the Channel too.
That was the restrained but devastating conclusion of NickP too - 'out of her depth'.
That's also the response to the accusation of mysogyny. I rather like Liz Truss - she remains notably calm under fire, as even the ever-unpleasant Quentin Letts admits, and her occasional shy smile is rather endearing. She also seems to have integrity - I'd certainly rather lend her £100 than Boris.
But I don't think one can get away from the facts: (a) she is deeply wedded to a libertarian branch of conservatism to the point that she ignores short-term difficulties in implementing it and (b) she doesn't think through what is actually politically viable. Possibly (b) will improve with the current baptism of fire. (a) should be acknowledged as a problem even if one likes the ideas (which obviously I don't).
By the way, I don't think Charles was deliberately being dismissive of Truss - I take his murmur as a self-deprecating aside about her being delighted to see him amid the general turmoil.
Have just noticed. The video of Truss meeting the King. Lots of comments about her appalling courtesy thing. And his "you're back again? Dear oh dear". But listen between "again" and "dear". He grimaces and sucks his teeth loudly. Its comedy gold!
Not a lover of Truss, but [...] the misogynistic hatred propelled towards her is appalling.
I don't think it's got anything to do with her being a woman.
It's because she's fucking useless.
I'm no fan of hers, but I have no doubt that some of the (ahem) comments towards her are misogynistic. It's a particularly crass way of talking about her, as she's given people ample valid reasons to criticise her.
I agree
I think she is out of her depth and needs to go but I have detected a degree of misogyny in some comments that is not necessary
This is another thing Truss could suggest - that the criticism of her is misogynistic, and that she needs to carry on for this reason, don't give in to sexism etc. There will always be idiots who provide ammunition for this type of claim. But I would guess that it won't be received particularly well by the general public, who are primarily concerned with mortgage rates and cost of living issues. Also, I recall there was some polling recently that indicated that she was very unpopular with women, which will not help her. I don't think she is in any position where she can look for public sympathy in the way that Theresa May did. Unfortunately, the PM is a role where you just cannot keep someone on because you feel sorry for them.
This is one of their policy battles that I just don't understand. Farmers are usually Tories. Farmers own their land and need to make a living. Many are struggling to make money farming (in part by post-Brexit idiocy and energy prices crippling our fertiliser industry and spiking prices). So they make £ putting solar farms up. Which produces critical power.
Why would you stop this?
Posted the other day
It makes sense if you remember that Truss is a Norfolk MP, and her constituents would rather see green fields than solar farms.
That's it.
Indeed, and there are many more non-farmer Tory voters living in the country than farmers. City dwellers sometimes assume that everybody who lives in the country is a farmer. I bet it's less than 1 in a 100 of the rural population who actually own or run a farm and would therefore benefit from putting panels on the land.
Good morning everyone. The Guardian has a different take on the cabinet rows: 'Liz Truss on collision course with Jacob Rees-Mogg over solar power ban.' Apparently he is in favour of farmers farming solar panels, she isn't!
This is one of their policy battles that I just don't understand. Farmers are usually Tories. Farmers own their land and need to make a living. Many are struggling to make money farming (in part by post-Brexit idiocy and energy prices crippling our fertiliser industry and spiking prices). So they make £ putting solar farms up. Which produces critical power.
Why would you stop this? I know that the spin line is "we promote Nuclear and the other parties don't". But if they authorise a new nuclear plant today its 2030 at best before it generates electricity. Whereas solar can generate power as soon as they are plugged in...
Reading the details in the Guardian the whole thing seems to be a storm in a teacup. Solar farms are already restricted from the best farmland. The proposal is to change the definition of the most valuable farmland to include the next tier down, so that it includes grades 1-3b, instead of 1-3a, on a nominally five point scale (where the middle point is divided in two).
There is no great clash of principle here. No sweeping ban. It's a slight change in emphasis. A tweak. A light hand on the tiller.
Now, if you spent the time to look at it in detail you could probably make a case for one side or the other of the debate, but it's being elevated in importance out of all proportion to its effect.
Arguing about this is pure displacement activity. There are much bigger issues that need to be grasped.
If The Queen Consort wears it then it is an insult to over a billion people and the fact the the Royal Family don't give a shit about their bloody colonial past.
Plans for Queen Camilla to be honoured with a crown containing the Koh-i-Noor diamond at the coronation next year could be dropped because of “political sensitivities”, it was claimed yesterday.
The crown was specially made for Queen Elizabeth — later the Queen Mother — in 1937. Previously the diamond was mounted in the crowns of Queen Alexandra, wife of Edward VII, and Queen Mary, wife of George V.
The Koh-i-Noor was acquired by the East India Company after the Anglo-Sikh Wars and presented to Queen Victoria in 1850. A campaign has sprung up in India urging Britain to return it, although it is also claimed by Afghanistan and Pakistan.
A source told the Daily Mail: “There are serious political sensitivities and significant nervousness.”
According to The Daily Telegraph, a spokesman for the Bharatiya Janata Party of Narendra Modi, the Indian prime minister, said: “The coronation of Camilla and the use of the crown jewel Koh-i-Noor brings back painful memories of the colonial past.”
I don't wish to irritate those on the right, but the East India Company were an absolute disgrace. An appalling organisation which became a front for state-sponsored banditry, larceny, and manslaughter. (God I love an Oxford comma.) Their involvement not only in slavery but in, for example, the opium trade which led to millions of Chinese opium addicts is just one of the abysmal legacies which they both got away with and which funded some of Britain's colonial prosperity.
Just one of many history lessons that should be taught to ALL British school children but which never is:
Of course it should be noted that the East India Company did eventually fall foul of the British Government who decided that they had gone all Colonel Kurz on them.
I think most acknowledge that the EIC was not a particularly enlightens part of our history (not really the fault of the British state and, to some extent, they just took advantages of the failures of the Mughal empire).
I have a friend whose Dad is selling their family home as neither of the kids want to take it on. They have an iconic painting of one of their ancestors who was chairman of the EIC. Can’t find anyone who wants to take it (not even the East India Club who apparently want to play down their links to the company!). They are probably going to end up giving it to the NPG
This is one of their policy battles that I just don't understand. Farmers are usually Tories. Farmers own their land and need to make a living. Many are struggling to make money farming (in part by post-Brexit idiocy and energy prices crippling our fertiliser industry and spiking prices). So they make £ putting solar farms up. Which produces critical power.
Why would you stop this?
Posted the other day
It makes sense if you remember that Truss is a Norfolk MP, and her constituents would rather see green fields than solar farms.
That's it.
Indeed, and there are many more non-farmer Tory voters living in the country than farmers. City dwellers sometimes assume that everybody who lives in the country is a farmer. I bet it's less than 1 in a 100 of the rural population who actually own or run a farm and would therefore benefit from putting panels on the land.
Also a bit shit if you are a farming machinery contractor or employee thereof or tractor enthusiast (not *that* kind), any one-off installation work aside. Though we're not talking about the same level of loss of employment as has happened in the past with e.g. cheap corn imports or successive mechanizations.
This is one of their policy battles that I just don't understand. Farmers are usually Tories. Farmers own their land and need to make a living. Many are struggling to make money farming (in part by post-Brexit idiocy and energy prices crippling our fertiliser industry and spiking prices). So they make £ putting solar farms up. Which produces critical power.
Why would you stop this?
Posted the other day
It makes sense if you remember that Truss is a Norfolk MP, and her constituents would rather see green fields than solar farms.
That's it.
Indeed, and there are many more non-farmer Tory voters living in the country than farmers. City dwellers sometimes assume that everybody who lives in the country is a farmer. I bet it's less than 1 in a 100 of the rural population who actually own or run a farm and would therefore benefit from putting panels on the land.
Surely we all benefit from solar farms as it both produces electricity and contributes towards a cleaner environment. If people want to be against solar panels and wind turbines that's ok if they can propose an alternative. "Nuclear" is a long-term solution, not something we can erect and plug in.
If The Queen Consort wears it then it is an insult to over a billion people and the fact the the Royal Family don't give a shit about their bloody colonial past.
Plans for Queen Camilla to be honoured with a crown containing the Koh-i-Noor diamond at the coronation next year could be dropped because of “political sensitivities”, it was claimed yesterday.
The crown was specially made for Queen Elizabeth — later the Queen Mother — in 1937. Previously the diamond was mounted in the crowns of Queen Alexandra, wife of Edward VII, and Queen Mary, wife of George V.
The Koh-i-Noor was acquired by the East India Company after the Anglo-Sikh Wars and presented to Queen Victoria in 1850. A campaign has sprung up in India urging Britain to return it, although it is also claimed by Afghanistan and Pakistan.
A source told the Daily Mail: “There are serious political sensitivities and significant nervousness.”
According to The Daily Telegraph, a spokesman for the Bharatiya Janata Party of Narendra Modi, the Indian prime minister, said: “The coronation of Camilla and the use of the crown jewel Koh-i-Noor brings back painful memories of the colonial past.”
Truss has one choice, change and reverse some of the measures otherwise it is over for her
Mind you I believe it is over for her even if she does reverse course
I'm struggling with her path to survival even if she does a complete about face. Clearly she would throw Kamikaze aside and likely the rest of the Treasury team. But she can't blame her ministers for this mess. She laid out these policies over a period of several months at endless hustings.
This - quite literally - is her entire platform. If she bins all of it then what is she about? What is her offer? And how could she possibly lead the party to back her?
Maybe just tell it like it is and it's not too bad?
"I put together a very conservative platform that was in line with the instincts of the members. I did my best to deliver it but it's now clear that the voters don't like it and MPs aren't going to vote for it. Instead I'm going to make a new cabinet with talent from all across the party and pursue a program with wider appeal."
This is one of their policy battles that I just don't understand. Farmers are usually Tories. Farmers own their land and need to make a living. Many are struggling to make money farming (in part by post-Brexit idiocy and energy prices crippling our fertiliser industry and spiking prices). So they make £ putting solar farms up. Which produces critical power.
Why would you stop this?
Posted the other day
It makes sense if you remember that Truss is a Norfolk MP, and her constituents would rather see green fields than solar farms.
This is one of their policy battles that I just don't understand. Farmers are usually Tories. Farmers own their land and need to make a living. Many are struggling to make money farming (in part by post-Brexit idiocy and energy prices crippling our fertiliser industry and spiking prices). So they make £ putting solar farms up. Which produces critical power.
Why would you stop this?
Posted the other day
It makes sense if you remember that Truss is a Norfolk MP, and her constituents would rather see green fields than solar farms.
That's it.
Indeed, and there are many more non-farmer Tory voters living in the country than farmers. City dwellers sometimes assume that everybody who lives in the country is a farmer. I bet it's less than 1 in a 100 of the rural population who actually own or run a farm and would therefore benefit from putting panels on the land.
Surely we all benefit from solar farms as it both produces electricity and contributes towards a cleaner environment. If people want to be against solar panels and wind turbines that's ok if they can propose an alternative. "Nuclear" is a long-term solution, not something we can erect and plug in.
They do have an alternative: solar panels and wind turbines somewhere else.
That was the restrained but devastating conclusion of NickP too - 'out of her depth'.
That's also the response to the accusation of mysogyny. I rather like Liz Truss - she remains notably calm under fire, as even the ever-unpleasant Quentin Letts admits, and her occasional shy smile is rather endearing. She also seems to have integrity - I'd certainly rather lend her £100 than Boris.
But I don't think one can get away from the facts: (a) she is deeply wedded to a libertarian branch of conservatism to the point that she ignores short-term difficulties in implementing it and (b) she doesn't think through what is actually politically viable. Possibly (b) will improve with the current baptism of fire. (a) should be acknowledged as a problem even if one likes the ideas (which obviously I don't).
By the way, I don't think Charles was deliberately being dismissive of Truss - I take his murmur as a self-deprecating aside about her being delighted to see him amid the general turmoil.
Thanks Nick for rounding that out, and yes I agree with you about Charles. I think the murmur is being widely and wildly misinterpreted.
Have just noticed. The video of Truss meeting the King. Lots of comments about her appalling courtesy thing. And his "you're back again? Dear oh dear". But listen between "again" and "dear". He grimaces and sucks his teeth loudly. Its comedy gold!
I am no fan of Truss but, quite frankly, I find it rude of the entitled, privileged, white male Monarch to react in that way.
There is no need for it.
People approving of such ignorant behaviour because its towards someone they politically do not like would not be so accomodating if it was someone like Starmer or Davey.
Dickhead was always going to be like this. Everyone knew it.
If The Queen Consort wears it then it is an insult to over a billion people and the fact the the Royal Family don't give a shit about their bloody colonial past.
Plans for Queen Camilla to be honoured with a crown containing the Koh-i-Noor diamond at the coronation next year could be dropped because of “political sensitivities”, it was claimed yesterday.
The crown was specially made for Queen Elizabeth — later the Queen Mother — in 1937. Previously the diamond was mounted in the crowns of Queen Alexandra, wife of Edward VII, and Queen Mary, wife of George V.
The Koh-i-Noor was acquired by the East India Company after the Anglo-Sikh Wars and presented to Queen Victoria in 1850. A campaign has sprung up in India urging Britain to return it, although it is also claimed by Afghanistan and Pakistan.
A source told the Daily Mail: “There are serious political sensitivities and significant nervousness.”
According to The Daily Telegraph, a spokesman for the Bharatiya Janata Party of Narendra Modi, the Indian prime minister, said: “The coronation of Camilla and the use of the crown jewel Koh-i-Noor brings back painful memories of the colonial past.”
There's an alternative Universe where Gordon Brown not only doesn't knife Wendy Alexander in the back he actually goes all in on "Bring It On" and agrees to have a SIndy ref in 2009.
Given the economic circumstances Yes would have been lucky to get 35%. Brown would have gone into a 2010 not just the saviour of the banking sector but also of the Union.
This is one of their policy battles that I just don't understand. Farmers are usually Tories. Farmers own their land and need to make a living. Many are struggling to make money farming (in part by post-Brexit idiocy and energy prices crippling our fertiliser industry and spiking prices). So they make £ putting solar farms up. Which produces critical power.
Why would you stop this?
Posted the other day
It makes sense if you remember that Truss is a Norfolk MP, and her constituents would rather see green fields than solar farms.
That's it.
I agree. You can get a real insight into how Liz Truss makes her decisions if you ascribe them all to having Norfolk intelligence.
This is one of their policy battles that I just don't understand. Farmers are usually Tories. Farmers own their land and need to make a living. Many are struggling to make money farming (in part by post-Brexit idiocy and energy prices crippling our fertiliser industry and spiking prices). So they make £ putting solar farms up. Which produces critical power.
Why would you stop this?
Posted the other day
It makes sense if you remember that Truss is a Norfolk MP, and her constituents would rather see green fields than solar farms.
That's it.
Indeed, and there are many more non-farmer Tory voters living in the country than farmers. City dwellers sometimes assume that everybody who lives in the country is a farmer. I bet it's less than 1 in a 100 of the rural population who actually own or run a farm and would therefore benefit from putting panels on the land.
Surely we all benefit from solar farms as it both produces electricity and contributes towards a cleaner environment. If people want to be against solar panels and wind turbines that's ok if they can propose an alternative. "Nuclear" is a long-term solution, not something we can erect and plug in.
They do have an alternative: solar panels and wind turbines somewhere else.
Somewhere else, the response of NIMBYs everywhere. Anywhere but my backyard. Its totally BANANAs. 🙄
If The Queen Consort wears it then it is an insult to over a billion people and the fact the the Royal Family don't give a shit about their bloody colonial past.
Plans for Queen Camilla to be honoured with a crown containing the Koh-i-Noor diamond at the coronation next year could be dropped because of “political sensitivities”, it was claimed yesterday.
The crown was specially made for Queen Elizabeth — later the Queen Mother — in 1937. Previously the diamond was mounted in the crowns of Queen Alexandra, wife of Edward VII, and Queen Mary, wife of George V.
The Koh-i-Noor was acquired by the East India Company after the Anglo-Sikh Wars and presented to Queen Victoria in 1850. A campaign has sprung up in India urging Britain to return it, although it is also claimed by Afghanistan and Pakistan.
A source told the Daily Mail: “There are serious political sensitivities and significant nervousness.”
According to The Daily Telegraph, a spokesman for the Bharatiya Janata Party of Narendra Modi, the Indian prime minister, said: “The coronation of Camilla and the use of the crown jewel Koh-i-Noor brings back painful memories of the colonial past.”
If The Queen Consort wears it then it is an insult to over a billion people and the fact the the Royal Family don't give a shit about their bloody colonial past.
Plans for Queen Camilla to be honoured with a crown containing the Koh-i-Noor diamond at the coronation next year could be dropped because of “political sensitivities”, it was claimed yesterday.
The crown was specially made for Queen Elizabeth — later the Queen Mother — in 1937. Previously the diamond was mounted in the crowns of Queen Alexandra, wife of Edward VII, and Queen Mary, wife of George V.
The Koh-i-Noor was acquired by the East India Company after the Anglo-Sikh Wars and presented to Queen Victoria in 1850. A campaign has sprung up in India urging Britain to return it, although it is also claimed by Afghanistan and Pakistan.
A source told the Daily Mail: “There are serious political sensitivities and significant nervousness.”
According to The Daily Telegraph, a spokesman for the Bharatiya Janata Party of Narendra Modi, the Indian prime minister, said: “The coronation of Camilla and the use of the crown jewel Koh-i-Noor brings back painful memories of the colonial past.”
There's an alternative Universe where Gordon Brown not only doesn't knife Wendy Alexander in the back he actually goes all in on "Bring It On" and agrees to have a SIndy ref in 2009.
Given the economic circumstances Yes would have been lucky to get 35%. Brown would have gone into a 2010 not just the saviour of the banking sector but also of the Union.
Given Brown was in charge when the economy collapsed Yes would likely still have got 40 to 45%, that is the Nationalist core vote regardless
If The Queen Consort wears it then it is an insult to over a billion people and the fact the the Royal Family don't give a shit about their bloody colonial past.
Plans for Queen Camilla to be honoured with a crown containing the Koh-i-Noor diamond at the coronation next year could be dropped because of “political sensitivities”, it was claimed yesterday.
The crown was specially made for Queen Elizabeth — later the Queen Mother — in 1937. Previously the diamond was mounted in the crowns of Queen Alexandra, wife of Edward VII, and Queen Mary, wife of George V.
The Koh-i-Noor was acquired by the East India Company after the Anglo-Sikh Wars and presented to Queen Victoria in 1850. A campaign has sprung up in India urging Britain to return it, although it is also claimed by Afghanistan and Pakistan.
A source told the Daily Mail: “There are serious political sensitivities and significant nervousness.”
According to The Daily Telegraph, a spokesman for the Bharatiya Janata Party of Narendra Modi, the Indian prime minister, said: “The coronation of Camilla and the use of the crown jewel Koh-i-Noor brings back painful memories of the colonial past.”
And if the Koh-i-Noor cannot be worn, it might as well be returned to India. The Indian Prime Minister perhaps has this in mind.
Wasn’t it stolen by the Persians and then a couple of hundred years later the EIC acquired it (I am only part way through The Anarchy mind)
No. It was given to Queen Victoria by the last Sikh ruler of the Punjab.*
Which makes it even more ironic that the Hindu nationalist Modi is getting his knickers in a twist over it.
*I say 'given'. He was aged 11 at the time.
As three nations are claiming it, should we have it recut as three gems to be handed back ?
It has been suggested. Or that it should be cut into four.
The other complication on that subject, of course, is that it was substantially recut by Queen Victoria so is rather different from the diamond ceded in 1849.
There's an alternative Universe where Gordon Brown not only doesn't knife Wendy Alexander in the back he actually goes all in on "Bring It On" and agrees to have a SIndy ref in 2009.
Given the economic circumstances Yes would have been lucky to get 35%. Brown would have gone into a 2010 not just the saviour of the banking sector but also of the Union.
Given Brown was in charge when the economy collapsed Yes would likely still have got 40 to 45%, that is the Nationalist core vote regardless
This might seem a tangential question, but what is your opinion on the origin, development (if any), and eventual fate of the universe?
I'm not completely sure this can be dismissed as hyperbole.
https://thehill.com/blogs/in-the-know/3683520-michael-cohen-says-he-fears-for-his-safety-if-trump-becomes-president-again/ Michael Cohen says he fears for his safety if Donald Trump ever becomes president again. “Yeah, I am,” Trump’s former personal lawyer said when asked if he’s worried about his well-being should the 45th commander in chief return to the Oval Office. “Actually, I’m worried for your safety, too,” he said, “and everybody else in America.” “My fear is that you’re going to see like what you see in Russia right now,” Cohen added in an interview with ITK this week. “All of these individuals flying out of windows or mysterious deaths of suicide. Donald has a very long list of — we’ll call it an enemies list — and I’m certain that I am definitively on it.”...
There's an alternative Universe where Gordon Brown not only doesn't knife Wendy Alexander in the back he actually goes all in on "Bring It On" and agrees to have a SIndy ref in 2009.
Given the economic circumstances Yes would have been lucky to get 35%. Brown would have gone into a 2010 not just the saviour of the banking sector but also of the Union.
Given Brown was in charge when the economy collapsed Yes would likely still have got 40 to 45%, that is the Nationalist core vote regardless
It looked at the start of the campaign in 2014 as though Yes would be lucky to get 30%. By the end one poll had it ahead.
This is one of their policy battles that I just don't understand. Farmers are usually Tories. Farmers own their land and need to make a living. Many are struggling to make money farming (in part by post-Brexit idiocy and energy prices crippling our fertiliser industry and spiking prices). So they make £ putting solar farms up. Which produces critical power.
Why would you stop this?
Posted the other day
It makes sense if you remember that Truss is a Norfolk MP, and her constituents would rather see green fields than solar farms.
That's it.
Yes, but she was supposed to be a Libertarian who was against the anti-growth coalition, not its champion.
What annoys me reading tonight is that all the blame for where we are is being put on truss and kwasi. Have they made things worse certainly they have and I have no liking for either.
However where we are is the end point of 30 odd years of centrist social democratic style governement. It has left millions in this country unable to live despite working 40 hours a week without having to rely on governement handouts or food banks or both.
Most of that time spent within the EU before anyone goes yeah but brexit. Centrist governments have failed a lot of people in this country while companies and their directors made out like bandits. The difference now is it is beginning to hit people on this board most of whom weren't in those bottom cohorts so now you are starting to cry and whine about it.
Welcome to the poorhouse you deserve it.
Forget Brexit.
What is it you propose?
Where is prospering, and what policies have they implemented that are appropriate for the UK?
And there are two massive headwinds you need to at the very least acknowledge.
Firstly, there's demographics. Secondly, there's all the people in the world - and we're not talking immigrants - who are prepared to do your job for less.
I don't believe anywhere in the west is prospering when you consider the life of the median citizen, they are finding housing costs rising, tax rising,energy price rising and food rising all more than their pay over the last 3 to 4 decades. All the west has been doing the social democratic lie of we can have more and more public services but not raise tax and funded it through borrowing. UK, germany, france etc.
Time to be realistic. We need to fund those public services we consider essential properly. We need to stop putting the cost of that on generations unborn. What we cant fund we need to tell people I am sorry we cant fund that and cut it.
I laid out the 5 tenets of where I come from.
Personally I prefer a small state but the 5 principles I think is where we need to be before we even talk about small state vs big state....fiscal stability
I wrote a piece of research about six or seven years ago which said pretty much the same thing:
For much of the post war period, developed countries – and their citizens – had it pretty good.
Unemployment was negligible, crime low, and each generation successively richer. A German, Japanese or American father could look down on his children and feel confident that their lives would be better than his.
But then something changed. The children of the 2000s ceased being wealthier than their parents. And while incomes had apparently risen, so had the prices of petrol, of energy and of rent. While families of the 1970s could survive - or even prosper – with one working parent, it now required two. Young people were leaving college with ever larger amounts of debt and failing to find the kind of secure, well paid jobs their father’s had.
We see these trends wherever we look. Take the US, generally considered (by us in Europe at least) to have been the most successful developed economy in the world in the recent past. According to the US Federal Reserve, real median household income is down almost 10% since peaking in 1999.
That’s an unprecedented reduction, and is all the more shocking in the context of a country where headline GDP growth has been relatively strong.
That reduction is an inevitable consequence of the unprecedented competition faced by the low to medium skilled from the development of what were previously third world countries, specifically China. The massive increase in global trade simply left those groups, which contain the majority of the population, with no negotiating power. If they don't like the lower wages the factory was transplanted and minimal tariffs meant that the business could still produce its product for the market in the US or the EU.
This is the same problem we had with the SM writ large. It was of course possible for us to thrive in the SM, as Germany did, but it would have needed a completely different policy mix from governments who almost certainly would not have been re-elected.
Simplistic, idealistic notions of the benefits of free trade, low or non existent tariffs have completely undermined the majority of western society. Those with capital or with exceptional skills at the top have, of course, gained massively and we have seen GDP creep up, usually with increasing trade deficits as we import much of what we used to make.
We have heard this song before of course. Between the First and Second World Wars, following the US passing of The Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930, a wave of protectionist measures were passed around the wold. This did not end well: world trade collapsed, and economies – that had been recovering – deteriorated further. The raising of tariff barriers around the world was one of the ultimate causes of the Second World War; something recognised in the creation of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade in 1947, which went on to become the World Trade Organisation in 1995.
World Trade 1929-1933, as % of World GDP
Source: League of Nations’ World Economic Survey 1932-33
It is true that the benefits of free trade appear very unequal: to an unemployed steel worker in Sunderland, the 1% in his country have gotten wealthier, as have the people of China and other emerging markets, while he has found himself without a job. The problem is that the proposed alternatives – of erecting tariff barriers – make the problem worse.
Raising tariff barriers on – say – imported steel to maintain jobs in Redcar or Port Talbot won’t save those jobs. Or, if it temporarily does, it will do so at the expense of the steel consumers of the UK – car makers and the like.
But let us imagine this issue could be solved (and that we could avoid retaliatory tariffs from those affected by our actions): who would be the purchaser of manufactured products from us if we attempted to protect our industries? We would be making a conscious decision to produce goods at above world market prices. And we need our exports: because without exports of goods and services, we cannot afford the natural gas and oil and the like we need.
As we discussed in Why We Were Rich, above, the developed world used to have the monopoly on manufacturing goods. It no longer does. Attempting to protect industries that are no longer competitive will not help them, it will merely unbalance economies further. Recognising this is painful. Not recognising it is worse.
Sure, I am not saying that tariffs are the answer. The answer is to be competitive and sell enough of what the world wants to pay for our standard of living and, ideally, slowly improve it. Tariffs, at best, buy time for the change but it would be economically ruinous for us to use steel produced here at £500 a tonne if our competitors are getting it from China at £50.
The challenge for politicians is to shape our economy (or not get in the road so that it can shape itself) towards the areas where we have competitive advantages or can develop competitive advantages through additional education, training or research. Instead politicians in this country, the US and many other western countries have focused on boosting consumption because it helps them get elected. The areas in which we are competitive have shrunk as a result with the consequence that those in those areas get a larger and larger share of the cake, increasing inequality.
Have just noticed. The video of Truss meeting the King. Lots of comments about her appalling courtesy thing. And his "you're back again? Dear oh dear". But listen between "again" and "dear". He grimaces and sucks his teeth loudly. Its comedy gold!
I am no fan of Truss but, quite frankly, I find it rude of the entitled, privileged, white male Monarch to react in that way.
There is no need for it.
People approving of such ignorant behaviour because its towards someone they politically do not like would not be so accomodating if it was someone like Starmer or Davey.
Utter rubbish, Truss is the most hapless and unpopular PM in 100 years. It was a mild remark reflecting on the complete calamity of the current government before the King swiftly moved the conversation on.
I have no problem with it at all and given she was open in her republicanism in the past who could blame Charles in enjoying secretly the calamity of her first month in office!
What annoys me reading tonight is that all the blame for where we are is being put on truss and kwasi. Have they made things worse certainly they have and I have no liking for either.
However where we are is the end point of 30 odd years of centrist social democratic style governement. It has left millions in this country unable to live despite working 40 hours a week without having to rely on governement handouts or food banks or both.
Most of that time spent within the EU before anyone goes yeah but brexit. Centrist governments have failed a lot of people in this country while companies and their directors made out like bandits. The difference now is it is beginning to hit people on this board most of whom weren't in those bottom cohorts so now you are starting to cry and whine about it.
Welcome to the poorhouse you deserve it.
Forget Brexit.
What is it you propose?
Where is prospering, and what policies have they implemented that are appropriate for the UK?
And there are two massive headwinds you need to at the very least acknowledge.
Firstly, there's demographics. Secondly, there's all the people in the world - and we're not talking immigrants - who are prepared to do your job for less.
I don't believe anywhere in the west is prospering when you consider the life of the median citizen, they are finding housing costs rising, tax rising,energy price rising and food rising all more than their pay over the last 3 to 4 decades. All the west has been doing the social democratic lie of we can have more and more public services but not raise tax and funded it through borrowing. UK, germany, france etc.
Time to be realistic. We need to fund those public services we consider essential properly. We need to stop putting the cost of that on generations unborn. What we cant fund we need to tell people I am sorry we cant fund that and cut it.
I laid out the 5 tenets of where I come from.
Personally I prefer a small state but the 5 principles I think is where we need to be before we even talk about small state vs big state....fiscal stability
I wrote a piece of research about six or seven years ago which said pretty much the same thing:
For much of the post war period, developed countries – and their citizens – had it pretty good.
Unemployment was negligible, crime low, and each generation successively richer. A German, Japanese or American father could look down on his children and feel confident that their lives would be better than his.
But then something changed. The children of the 2000s ceased being wealthier than their parents. And while incomes had apparently risen, so had the prices of petrol, of energy and of rent. While families of the 1970s could survive - or even prosper – with one working parent, it now required two. Young people were leaving college with ever larger amounts of debt and failing to find the kind of secure, well paid jobs their father’s had.
We see these trends wherever we look. Take the US, generally considered (by us in Europe at least) to have been the most successful developed economy in the world in the recent past. According to the US Federal Reserve, real median household income is down almost 10% since peaking in 1999.
That’s an unprecedented reduction, and is all the more shocking in the context of a country where headline GDP growth has been relatively strong.
"While families of the 1970s could survive - or even prosper – with one working parent, it now required two."
There is a type of multiplayer Prisoner's Dilemma here. For an individual family it is better when two adults work rather than one. But because most people choose to take the action that improves their personal lot, the overall effect on society is negative. Over time it becomes more or less necessary for both adults to work. A concrete example is allowing the size of a mortgage to be assessed using joint incomes rather than just one income. It allows one family with two working parents to buy a bigger house, but over a 20 year time scale the benefits have just been swallowed up by house price inflation.
The overall effect on society is not negative. A larger economy means more stuff, means more surplus to spend on the things we like. More teachers, more artists, more healthcare workers. These are good things, we should celebrate them!
The downside is that, for the things which are in fixed supply, the prices of those have increased to the point that two incomes are required to buy them instead of one. In particular housing costs have increased enormously as house building failed to keep up with population increases. So to buy the same amount of housing as your parents requires twice the income (or more, recently, given historically low interest rates).
That was the restrained but devastating conclusion of NickP too - 'out of her depth'.
That's also the response to the accusation of mysogyny. I rather like Liz Truss - she remains notably calm under fire, as even the ever-unpleasant Quentin Letts admits, and her occasional shy smile is rather endearing. She also seems to have integrity - I'd certainly rather lend her £100 than Boris.
But I don't think one can get away from the facts: (a) she is deeply wedded to a libertarian branch of conservatism to the point that she ignores short-term difficulties in implementing it and (b) she doesn't think through what is actually politically viable. Possibly (b) will improve with the current baptism of fire. (a) should be acknowledged as a problem even if one likes the ideas (which obviously I don't).
By the way, I don't think Charles was deliberately being dismissive of Truss - I take his murmur as a self-deprecating aside about her being delighted to see him amid the general turmoil.
Thanks Nick for rounding that out, and yes I agree with you about Charles. I think the murmur is being widely and wildly misinterpreted.
My grandfather muttered and murmured like Charles. Dear oh dear is an old person's utterance to fill space in a conversation with someone unfamiliar...
There's an alternative Universe where Gordon Brown not only doesn't knife Wendy Alexander in the back he actually goes all in on "Bring It On" and agrees to have a SIndy ref in 2009.
Given the economic circumstances Yes would have been lucky to get 35%. Brown would have gone into a 2010 not just the saviour of the banking sector but also of the Union.
For one short but pretty hilarious period pre 18/09/14, he was the saviour of the Union, even among PB Tories/Yoons.
The fundamental issue is this. Will Liz Truss's current strategy reassure the markets on 31 October. No. So she either ditches her strategy, in which case she no longer has any authority. Or she sticks with her strategy, the markets collapse, and the economy falls off a cliff. https://twitter.com/DPJHodges/status/1580476214254268416
That was the restrained but devastating conclusion of NickP too - 'out of her depth'.
That's also the response to the accusation of mysogyny. I rather like Liz Truss - she remains notably calm under fire, as even the ever-unpleasant Quentin Letts admits, and her occasional shy smile is rather endearing. She also seems to have integrity - I'd certainly rather lend her £100 than Boris.
But I don't think one can get away from the facts: (a) she is deeply wedded to a libertarian branch of conservatism to the point that she ignores short-term difficulties in implementing it and (b) she doesn't think through what is actually politically viable. Possibly (b) will improve with the current baptism of fire. (a) should be acknowledged as a problem even if one likes the ideas (which obviously I don't).
By the way, I don't think Charles was deliberately being dismissive of Truss - I take his murmur as a self-deprecating aside about her being delighted to see him amid the general turmoil.
I took it as an empathetic murmur of consolation to somebody in a bit of a bind and going through a tough time. "Dear oh dear" in this context works best coming from an older person to younger person, and where the issue is serious but not a matter of life and death, and where the younger person being consoled is to some extent responsible for the mess they are in. All 3 apply here.
Have just noticed. The video of Truss meeting the King. Lots of comments about her appalling courtesy thing. And his "you're back again? Dear oh dear". But listen between "again" and "dear". He grimaces and sucks his teeth loudly. Its comedy gold!
I am no fan of Truss but, quite frankly, I find it rude of the entitled, privileged, white male Monarch to react in that way.
There is no need for it.
People approving of such ignorant behaviour because its towards someone they politically do not like would not be so accomodating if it was someone like Starmer or Davey.
Utter rubbish, Truss is the most hapless and unpopular PM in 100 years. It was a mild remark reflecting on the complete calamity of the current government before the King swiftly moved the conversation on.
I have no problem with it at all and given she was open in her republicanism in the past who could blame Charles in enjoying secretly the calamity of her first month in office!
Comments
But, this also happened with Theresa May and Boris Johnson and they were out shortly after.
Yet listen to any political debate or media programme from the pre-internet age and you cannot avoid seeing how modern discourse has actually been dumbed down, to the point where too many people reject actual facts and information almost in principle.
They gave the membership two choices, and then refused to get behind the new leader. If they couldn’t work with Liz Truss, they shouldn’t have nominated her. They should also have known, from the very first members’ poll, that Rishi Sunak wasn’t going to win, despite his expensive campaign among the MPs themselves, to make himself appear inevitable.
https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1580339069531279361?t=K52HxP8FKWYr4pkmYTIyJA&s=19
There is no need for it.
People approving of such ignorant behaviour because its towards someone they politically do not like would not be so accomodating if it was someone like Starmer or Davey.
The intelligence was that there were two or three weeks of constant bombardment of Ukrainian cities coming, but they only managed to keep it up for one night.
Lots of announcement of air defence reinforcements from friendly nations too. The enemy lost four helicopters in one raid yesterday.
I think that Yuval Noah Harari has the best insight in to all this - that the British empire was part of an inevitable evolutionary process associated with industrialisation, and that it is too big to really judge, you can find abundant evidence of good and evil in it. (I am paraphrasing what he actually says, but this is the jist).
Certainly, if you want to stop colonialism then I would expect condemnation of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. But we haven't heard much concern about that from the current Indian government.
Speaking of which it's almost time for this year's. Could they take Truss and Kwarteng. Please. And leave them there.
If he was going against the mood of the country then we would have a big problem. As it is he just adds colour to what is already funny. Where I do agree with you is "there is no need for it" where my definition of "it" is the monarchy.
If Charles brings the firm into disrepute, great.
EU social democratic governments may be struggling to imagine and articulate a counter to the predominant economic model, but to suggest they are responsible for it as someone did above is a stretch (being polite).
https://twitter.com/kateferguson4/status/1580458408041656320
Liz Truss is clearly out of her depth, nonetheless the misogynistic hatred propelled towards her is appalling. Her performance at PMQs was no worse than pretty much every Johnson PMQ performance, yet she has been hung out to dry whilst Johnson was lauded for his satirical genius.
Truss could do worse than quote Julia Guillard's decade old "misogyny speech" verbatim.
I am sympathetic to the radical Green view, but that is easier once you are already older and reasonable well off, and taking a longer view the explanation as to how it avoids leaving us like the Amish is still missing.
https://twitter.com/DAVID_FIRTH/status/1575473269351845888
Truss has one choice, change and reverse some of the measures otherwise it is over for her
Mind you I believe it is over for her even if she does reverse course
Perhaps, it's the 24 hour news cycle - where everything is accompanied by the obligatory breathless excitement. Like a six-year who's stayed up too late.
On most days, very little new happens. When you can't differentiate between world-shattering news and nothing very much, you end up manic. It's the raison-d'etre of the press, but you don't need to indulge them.
OK, a pandemic folllowed by a European war is unusual, but even without those, the press would go full disaster-mode. It's what they do
Politically, in national news, the Tories have picked a dud, who they will probably replace soon enough. It will cost them votes, and a it's a reasonable discussion point for PB. The Labour party managed to saddle itself with Corbyn but have recovered and are now electable. Er ... that's it.
The discussions on here can be amusing, and it keeps me coming. But I doubt any will change my mind much, even though I'm now an undecided..
Is the hate towards Truss because she's a woman? Or because of her policies? Was the hate towards Johnson because he was a man? Or because of the endless lies?
This - quite literally - is her entire platform. If she bins all of it then what is she about? What is her offer? And how could she possibly lead the party to back her?
Very few opinions are ever changed on here though.
That she is continually shifting her position suggests that she still believes she can survive. The next few weeks and months are going to be politically interesting, if sadly very damaging to the country.
She blamed most of the hate she got on her gender, but really it was because she is a vile human being.
It's because she's fucking useless.
The number of possible things that might happen is much greater than the number of those that actually will, and while most of what is imagined is more outlandish than a generally pedestrian reality, every so often something happens for real that would have seemed ludicrous if imagined in advance.
Noa Hoffman
@hoffman_noa
·
1h
Source told The Sun: “It's clear that there is widespread frustration in gov with Suella’s freelancing. She's running a blatant leadership campaign but it’s having a destabilising effect on the gov. She needs to focus on the day job and stop her antics or she won’t last long."
*Edit: NFN, as the medics say.
I've noticed quite a few on the Right, in their shock and bewilderment, staggering around blaming everyone but themselves for this clusterfuck.
I'll just stick to "f-ing useless and way out of her depth".
It’s always your fault.
Good leadership comes once you accept that. https://twitter.com/pippacrerar/status/1580461097857208320
The Guardian has a different take on the cabinet rows: 'Liz Truss on collision course with Jacob Rees-Mogg over solar power ban.'
Apparently he is in favour of farmers farming solar panels, she isn't!
I think she is out of her depth and needs to go but I have detected a degree of misogyny in some comments that is not necessary
KCIII should know better and be able to keep up a facade, but the whole country can understand his reaction, because we're thinking the same.
Truss being an abject failure was widely predicted on here, with one or two dissenters.
Were any on here predicting in February that Russia would fail to win a short war against Ukraine? I seem to remember quite a few predictions of rapid Russian economic collapse, and of the West failing to support Ukraine, both of which were wrong.
Why would you stop this? I know that the spin line is "we promote Nuclear and the other parties don't". But if they authorise a new nuclear plant today its 2030 at best before it generates electricity. Whereas solar can generate power as soon as they are plugged in...
https://twitter.com/bbcr4today/status/1580468411175665664
True equality.
It makes sense if you remember that Truss is a Norfolk MP, and her constituents would rather see green fields than solar farms.
That's it.
If returning items helps us diplomatically I'd say do it. Let the public know they're here for one more year then they're gone. And find something else in the basement to display.
But I don't think one can get away from the facts: (a) she is deeply wedded to a libertarian branch of conservatism to the point that she ignores short-term difficulties in implementing it and (b) she doesn't think through what is actually politically viable. Possibly (b) will improve with the current baptism of fire. (a) should be acknowledged as a problem even if one likes the ideas (which obviously I don't).
By the way, I don't think Charles was deliberately being dismissive of Truss - I take his murmur as a self-deprecating aside about her being delighted to see him amid the general turmoil.
There is no great clash of principle here. No sweeping ban. It's a slight change in emphasis. A tweak. A light hand on the tiller.
Now, if you spent the time to look at it in detail you could probably make a case for one side or the other of the debate, but it's being elevated in importance out of all proportion to its effect.
Arguing about this is pure displacement activity. There are much bigger issues that need to be grasped.
I have a friend whose Dad is selling their family home as neither of the kids want to take it on. They have an iconic painting of one of their ancestors who was chairman of the EIC. Can’t find anyone who wants to take it (not even the East India Club who apparently want to play down their links to the company!). They are probably going to end up giving it to the NPG
"I put together a very conservative platform that was in line with the instincts of the members. I did my best to deliver it but it's now clear that the voters don't like it and MPs aren't going to vote for it. Instead I'm going to make a new cabinet with talent from all across the party and pursue a program with wider appeal."
Well, Mark Field anyway.
Pretend you’re a member of the UK government by pointing to your arse and saying it’s your elbow.
https://twitter.com/GlennyRodge/status/1580269145991487488
https://youtube.com/shorts/v41JzqxwzlU?feature=share
Which makes it even more ironic that the Hindu nationalist Modi is getting his knickers in a twist over it.
*I say 'given'. He was aged 11 at the time.
Given the economic circumstances Yes would have been lucky to get 35%. Brown would have gone into a 2010 not just the saviour of the banking sector but also of the Union.
The other complication on that subject, of course, is that it was substantially recut by Queen Victoria so is rather different from the diamond ceded in 1849.
https://thehill.com/blogs/in-the-know/3683520-michael-cohen-says-he-fears-for-his-safety-if-trump-becomes-president-again/
Michael Cohen says he fears for his safety if Donald Trump ever becomes president again.
“Yeah, I am,” Trump’s former personal lawyer said when asked if he’s worried about his well-being should the 45th commander in chief return to the Oval Office.
“Actually, I’m worried for your safety, too,” he said, “and everybody else in America.”
“My fear is that you’re going to see like what you see in Russia right now,” Cohen added in an interview with ITK this week. “All of these individuals flying out of windows or mysterious deaths of suicide. Donald has a very long list of — we’ll call it an enemies list — and I’m certain that I am definitively on it.”...
Never make assumptions.
The challenge for politicians is to shape our economy (or not get in the road so that it can shape itself) towards the areas where we have competitive advantages or can develop competitive advantages through additional education, training or research. Instead politicians in this country, the US and many other western countries have focused on boosting consumption because it helps them get elected. The areas in which we are competitive have shrunk as a result with the consequence that those in those areas get a larger and larger share of the cake, increasing inequality.
I have no problem with it at all and given she was open in her republicanism in the past who could blame Charles in enjoying secretly the calamity of her first month in office!
The downside is that, for the things which are in fixed supply, the prices of those have increased to the point that two incomes are required to buy them instead of one. In particular housing costs have increased enormously as house building failed to keep up with population increases. So to buy the same amount of housing as your parents requires twice the income (or more, recently, given historically low interest rates).
'I'm no fan of Brown, but..'
https://twitter.com/DPJHodges/status/1580476214254268416