Hunt has calmed the markets, if he quits then it will be carnage, so Truss cannot afford to lose him, he will do whatever he wants.
What happens if Monday comes and the markets aren’t calmed?
The way this usually happens is there can be two weeks of calm - people say the markets have been calmed, but then it all erupts again.
Obviously you all know my theory - £400bn of Rishi splaffing (and wasting a lot) to get us through covid has maxxed out the credit - now they want to (unnecessarily, needlessly) try to get another £200bn more borrowing - the markets won’t calm till that plan is dead.
Or the £200bn becomes more like £20bn. Everything now turns on the future price of gas.
I don’t want to be really rude David, but you keep posting that “If gas falls sufficiently, the cost of the energy cap freeze drops” means don’t think you really understand it. That thinking is utter bollox.
1. We haven’t had an OBR how much Tories total promise is likely to cost. The Tories have promised to buck the UK energy market for two and a half years regardless what global energy price does. Some think tanks have had a go at pricing this and come to a quarter of a trillion pound. To be found by tax rises, borrowing or cuts or mixture thereof. Quarter of a trillion on that one policy alone. 2. Variable one. Energy prices can go down, yes, but also up, it’s a very fluid situation in supply and demand over this coming period - but at which point do energy companies need to commit to buying it in advance, so commit to passing on THAT price to both customers AND onto a government commitment to bucking the market? 3. Variable two. If global prices do come down, to what degree is the saving on the quarter of a trillion eaten into or obliterated by the more expensive borrowing costs? Out of these two variable’s, borrowing costs for this policy look certain to remain high now, the greater doubt is if energy prices will come down and stay down isn’t it?
You really think that whole £200bn comes down to £20bn? 🥹 We all know what’s really behind “but the bill freeze looks like turning out much cheaper because gas prices are coming down” argument we get spun from Tory’s on TV and on PB - they privately hate this lumbering Labour policy Tory party has adopted, they hate the ENORMOUS amount of borrowing maxing out UKs credit limit, and the regressive unConservative way the money is spewed out in indiscriminate handouts.
But. They are only fooling themselves spinning that comfort blanket, because, yes, there are variables, but the variables are very much against them.
Don’t be one of them.
There is no defence to this insane policy, Truss has been hiding behind all week.
I would agree we don't know what this policy is going to cost and I would agree that there are significant risks on the upside but there is also some reason for hope on the low side.
The government have committed to the average house bill being no more than £2500 a year. At the moment the price of gas futures are 263p/therm. It has been over 700p and has averaged around 400p of late. The cost of the UK subsidy is directly relational to that price against the price that fixes the £2500 pa average. I have been unable to work out exactly what that is because there are quite a number of other variables. Energy companies are bumping up their fixed charges as well. My best guess is that £2500 per household is going be equivalent to something like 200p/therm, roughly twice what it was last winter.
But I am not wrong is saying that there is a chance that the cost of the scheme will prove to be much lower than the worst estimates. It could also be higher of course. If it stays somewhere near our current price or goes even lower then the cost of the scheme will be less. If it goes back up again we are in trouble, no doubt about it.
Edit, and btw the OBR will have no better idea than the rest of us, it is simply unknowable.
You telling us It’s unknowable wasn’t the impression I got when you reduced it from £200bn to £20bn to spark my reply. 🙂
We know enough overall price can’t come down that much. Because the bit you seem to be avoiding is commodity price drop is to some extent offset by borrowing cost increase - goes back to the unknowable being very guessable in that the borrowing cost won’t be based on “maybe the commodity price drops and stays at x price”, who lends money on that basis?
You accept the part of the equation, political and economic, it is not necessary to provide help in this way, there other options such as sliding scale to target help where needed, not wasted where not needed, and virtually pays for itself?
I believe most UK government borrowing is fixed rate. So the increase only kicks in as new debt is issued.
Interesting the current (March) forecast it from debt interest this year to be c £83bn but to *fall* to £47bn next year… a cut in public spending baked in
If you listened to what the mini budget said - the Energy Price Freeze (a quarter of a trillion pounds) will be paid for by new borrowing, no new taxes no new cuts.
If you listed to what Liz Truss said Wednesday, public spending overall total will not show any cuts under her, simply because the quarter of a trillion Energy Price Freeze is being added to the public spending total.
What I am arguing in this thread, we don’t have to fund a quarter of a trillion pound scheme when other realistic options are available better targeted and virtually paying for themselves, I’m also arguing against those saying commodity price coming down proves the end bill will definitely be cheaper, because even with cuts even with more tax, this scheme will always need a huge amount of new borrowing at the new higher borrowing rates.
Correct me where wrong.
But I am now adding a third facet to my argument - anyone who claims Kwarteng and Truss mini budget crashed the markets I am calling an idiot peddling a myth. And I can prove it. That spiking gilt market graph they use over and over in media, expand it to see the previous 12 months and see the trajectory is up up up long before Truss got anywhere near number 10 - my argument is the budget exacerbated an already underlying problem.
Anyone want to own the claim if the mini budget is reversed, annulled, reset, the trajectory on the borrowings chart graph would be down when it hasn’t been all year?
I’m arguing anyone who peddles Labour Party lies that Kwarteng and Truss mini budget crashed the markets I am calling an idiot peddling a myth, and sure I can win this argument.
I’ve been drinking all afternoon, don’t anyone want to take me on?
And then lay siege to Petersfield...
Edit bugger I hate the way edits get incorporated into quotes. To rescue the joke your last line used to read "I’ve been drinking all afternoon, don’t anyone want to take Meon?"
Pharmacists are trained medical professionals. They are not going to just hand these out like candy
Won't that lead to conflict if a customer thinks they should have them but the pharmacist doesn't?
GPs already get aggressive patients demanding all kinds of stuff.
My old GP would prescribe anything you asked him for. He would give me antibiotics unprompted. A couple of times I asked - hang on, I have a virus. Are you worried about an infection as well?
I used to joke that I should ask for some diamorphine - just to see if he would hand it out.
His daughter, who took over, is much better.
In a number of countries I have visited, pharmacies will hand out medicines that are prescription only in the U.K. I’m pretty sure antibiotics are among them.
The Kwarteng chancellorship was a major Cambridge University fail. The crème brûlée and Great Court Run college in particular. Re-establish the monasteries and give them their assets back?
Creme Brulee is Caius, not arriviste Trinity Burnt Cream.
My apologies. What's the difference, or is it only the nomenclature?
Doesn't the idea come from Catalonia anyway?
Despite my possible faux pas, it's true that Kwasi Kwarteng was in the in crowd at both Eton and Trinity and he ballsed up the Chancellor job as nobody has ever ballsed it up before so fast. And he doesn't have the humility and charm of Eddie the Eagle. No way would he have been promoted so high if he'd gone to the school down the road or even a second division private boarding school somewhere, or if he'd gone to, well, probably any university apart from Oxford and Cambridge.
And we can't blame the Tory party's membership in this instance.
Top post. Eton and Cambridge must be deeply embarrassed to have turned out such a tone-deaf incompetent.
He was at Cambridge with Richard Burgon, I believe, who was in the next door college?
Do people now understand why so many Cambridge politicians have been passed over before now?
Which would be a valid argument if the Oxford ones who get in weren't just as useless.
The real apex of entitled and ignorant cretinism in the education system is neither Oxford nor Cambridge, but Eton College. The first action of an incoming Labour Government should be to whistle up a squadron of RAF Typhoons armed with precision guided bombs and reduce the whole place to a pile of smouldering rubble.
Truss went to a comprehensive not Eton. The only Tory major winners in the last 40 years went to Eton
The only three PMs to win majorities in the last thirty years went to public schools. Two Eton, one Fettes.
Prior to that, the previous four (Major, Thatcher, Wilson, Heath) were all at state schools.
Yes, all 4 grammar school educated. Truss the first PM educated fully at a comprehensive for secondary education.
Starmer also educated at private and grammar school
People who went to school before the advent of comprehensives didn't go to a comprehensive. What a revelation.
As an aside on rabbits, when I was a kid I lived in a very specific middle of nowhere where nothing ever happens, and my father gave my sister tortoiseshell rabbits that were kept in a hutch. My sister was a hippy from birth, and she released them all into the wild, and in the end there was massive amounts of tortoiseshell rabbits living wild.
“a very specific middle of nowhere where nothing ever happens”
For the first time in a long time I believe we have a grown up in what is now the most powerful political position in the country
I wish Hunt all the best not just for the conservative party but for the country
Truss is over, it is just the question of when but it won't be long
But he is in favour of fox hunting don't forget.
Good. So am I.
With or without dogs?
Is this a trick question?
No. Fox hunting is still legal isn't it? As long as you don't use dogs. I was against the ban. But there are deer living near us and the local oiks try hunting them with their pitbull-type dogs. And I hate that.
So I decided I shouldn't support toffs hunting foxes with dogs either.
Well, in non American English hunting means, with dogs. Using rifles is called shooting. It kills 10x the foxes hunting ever did, with the availability of military grade night sight equipment, and because foxes have never learned to lick their wounds those which are shot but not killed die very slowly and horribly of gangrene. And foxhunting unlike say pheasant shooting was never the preserve of rich toffs.
Agree about the pitbull types though.
Something that I've wondered about this, maybe you lot can help, is - is killing more foxes necessarily better? Are foxes a natural predator of something that means there needs to be an amount of foxes in circulation to bump off the other thing? Obviously eg with deer the british environment needs to be managed in some sense and the argument for foxhunting was that it was a manner of managing things that had worked for a long time. If we were killing more foxes now, but with guns or slingshots or trebuchets, would there be another problem? Apols if word salad.
Foxes keep down rabbits, and rabbits are more of a pain than you think (undermining walls and so on). They also take a LOT of lambs in the spring, which is obviously unhelpful. But the reason they are thwacked in industrial quantities is commercial pheasant shooting which is an horrific enterprise - breeding 10s of thousands of the things to be killed for sport and turned into cat food, which gets a free pass from bigG and his family because they know no more about it than they know about fox hunting, but think mammals are inherently cuddlier than birds.
So, no, exterminating foxes to enable a monoculture of pheasants isn't a policy most people would see much merit in. Balanced and natural ecosystems are best. The efect of the hunting ban has been a huge decrease in the fox population, because there is no incentive to retain the balance.
Would you ban grouse and pheasant shooting too then?
At least the grouse and pheasent get eaten. I would have more sympathy if the Unspeakable actually ate the foxes...
The pheasent (sic) bloody don't, except out of tins by cats. An absolutely cracking example of ignorant bigotry, well done.
You don't know what the fuck you are talking about. Loads of pheasant get eaten. Go into any rural butchers and you will see they are selling them. We eat more pheasant and partridge than almost any other meat during the winter.
For the first time in a long time I believe we have a grown up in what is now the most powerful political position in the country
I wish Hunt all the best not just for the conservative party but for the country
Truss is over, it is just the question of when but it won't be long
But he is in favour of fox hunting don't forget.
Good. So am I.
With or without dogs?
Is this a trick question?
No. Fox hunting is still legal isn't it? As long as you don't use dogs. I was against the ban. But there are deer living near us and the local oiks try hunting them with their pitbull-type dogs. And I hate that.
So I decided I shouldn't support toffs hunting foxes with dogs either.
Well, in non American English hunting means, with dogs. Using rifles is called shooting. It kills 10x the foxes hunting ever did, with the availability of military grade night sight equipment, and because foxes have never learned to lick their wounds those which are shot but not killed die very slowly and horribly of gangrene. And foxhunting unlike say pheasant shooting was never the preserve of rich toffs.
Agree about the pitbull types though.
Something that I've wondered about this, maybe you lot can help, is - is killing more foxes necessarily better? Are foxes a natural predator of something that means there needs to be an amount of foxes in circulation to bump off the other thing? Obviously eg with deer the british environment needs to be managed in some sense and the argument for foxhunting was that it was a manner of managing things that had worked for a long time. If we were killing more foxes now, but with guns or slingshots or trebuchets, would there be another problem? Apols if word salad.
Foxes keep down rabbits, and rabbits are more of a pain than you think (undermining walls and so on). They also take a LOT of lambs in the spring, which is obviously unhelpful. But the reason they are thwacked in industrial quantities is commercial pheasant shooting which is an horrific enterprise - breeding 10s of thousands of the things to be killed for sport and turned into cat food, which gets a free pass from bigG and his family because they know no more about it than they know about fox hunting, but think mammals are inherently cuddlier than birds.
So, no, exterminating foxes to enable a monoculture of pheasants isn't a policy most people would see much merit in. Balanced and natural ecosystems are best. The efect of the hunting ban has been a huge decrease in the fox population, because there is no incentive to retain the balance.
Would you ban grouse and pheasant shooting too then?
At least the grouse and pheasent get eaten. I would have more sympathy if the Unspeakable actually ate the foxes...
The pheasent (sic) bloody don't, except out of tins by cats. An absolutely cracking example of ignorant bigotry, well done.
Au Contraire. My in-laws often get pheasants from the shoots near their farm. It is not grouse country, so none of them.
The Kwarteng chancellorship was a major Cambridge University fail. The crème brûlée and Great Court Run college in particular. Re-establish the monasteries and give them their assets back?
Creme Brulee is Caius, not arriviste Trinity Burnt Cream.
My apologies. What's the difference, or is it only the nomenclature?
Doesn't the idea come from Catalonia anyway?
Despite my possible faux pas, it's true that Kwasi Kwarteng was in the in crowd at both Eton and Trinity and he ballsed up the Chancellor job as nobody has ever ballsed it up before so fast. And he doesn't have the humility and charm of Eddie the Eagle. No way would he have been promoted so high if he'd gone to the school down the road or even a second division private boarding school somewhere, or if he'd gone to, well, probably any university apart from Oxford and Cambridge.
And we can't blame the Tory party's membership in this instance.
Top post. Eton and Cambridge must be deeply embarrassed to have turned out such a tone-deaf incompetent.
He was at Cambridge with Richard Burgon, I believe, who was in the next door college?
Do people now understand why so many Cambridge politicians have been passed over before now?
Which would be a valid argument if the Oxford ones who get in weren't just as useless.
The real apex of entitled and ignorant cretinism in the education system is neither Oxford nor Cambridge, but Eton College. The first action of an incoming Labour Government should be to whistle up a squadron of RAF Typhoons armed with precision guided bombs and reduce the whole place to a pile of smouldering rubble.
Truss went to a comprehensive not Eton. The only Tory major winners in the last 40 years went to Eton
I agree. The Truss being Figurehead Leader in Name Only just isn't going to hold up under the pressures of the next few weeks. The Tories might be able to indulge that fantasy for a little while, but all it takes is another PMQs or media round from Liz and it will all fall apart.
Let's have some stability now until the GE. Keep things as they are. Truss doing regular car-crash interviews and pressers, Hunt being the common sense technocrat calling the shots and applying Labour policies, preventing economic meltdown through a couple of bleak years of mild recession.
Then, when the polls have narrowed a bit or time has run out, the Tories can call a GE with a Truss-led campaign leading to electoral wipe-out.
Hunt takes over as LOTO and begins the long Tory Party rebuild process. If there's anything left to rebuild.
Sounds like the least worst outlook to me. Shit, but ultimately survivable.
There is zero chance Tory members will elect Hunt as Leader of the Opposition. At present if Truss and Hunt lead the Tories to heavy defeat, the membership will likely conclude she was not rightwing enough and elect Braverman as Leader of the Opposition to PM Starmer's government.
At best Hunt can be Mandelson to Truss' Brown and steady the ship
I fear you are right in your analysis of Conservative members, but Braverman would be an absolute disaster for your party, much as Corbyn was and remains a disaster for Labour.
After Corbyn there are still left leaning voters who don't trust the Party not to jettison Starmer and replace with Burgon or Pidcock, or some other moon howler.
Should Braverman ever become Leader her spectral legacy would be, one of we Centists can't vote for a one nation feudal Tory Party because they might replace a sensible leader with Mark Francois, or Phillip Davies.
The die would be cast, as it is for Labour. To be on the safe side, perhaps we should all vote LibDem.
There is a risk that you look at what happens on the left of the labour party and assume the right of the Conservative party will do the same thing. Braverman and Badenoch are both quite smart people, they are not saddled with progressive ideology and will be scarred by having watched Truss crash and burn. There are only a handful of true idiots in the Parliamentary party, they are insignificant enough to be ignored and sidelined.
If you look at the membership of the Conservative party, I would also note that Sunak got 40%, his supporters are not likely to regret their vote given the catastrophe that has unfolded. And of Trusses voters, it is hard to believe that any of them could overlook the total, catastrophic failure that has just occurred. It isn't a case of the policies being rejected, they got to try to implement the policies and it caused untold chaos in the markets and sunk the party to its lowest poll ratings in 30 years. There is no centrist/remainer conspiracy here, we all watched the whole thing play out in real time and no one can be blamed but Liz Truss and the people that surround her. Perhaps some of the members who are in denial about the situation will tear up their membership cards but this is only a positive thing for the party, they should be goaded in to doing so.
I think that things are going in the right direction for the Conservative party, and I personally think people need to join the Conservative party to try and keep them on the right path. Once Truss is despatched to the backbenches, then the tories can still get back in to position of being the party of economic competence. They can still win the next election, because the labour party will start to get arrogant and their true nature will quickly reveal itself, as was the case in 1992. They are relying entirely on Starmer to project an image of competence and no politician is infallible.
The right of the party would rather lose to Starmer and rebuild in opposition under a rightwing leader now than win with Hunt or Sunak. Not that that is likely anyway
OK, but have they got the numbers in the parliamentary party or in the membership to make any difference? And are they not completely undermined by what has just happened to Truss? They've just had a go at government and failed miserably. Surely they cannot be in denial about this?
I am genuinely interested in your view of this @HYUFD , as you are closer to the action than me.
The membership largely agrees with them and they have the numbers to get a candidate to the membership again
So what exactly do the membership make of the current Truss administration? Is it the analysis that she had the correct ideas but was compromised by 'centrist' elements, and what is really needed is someone even more radical; with a purge of the Sunakesque centrists?
For the first time in a long time I believe we have a grown up in what is now the most powerful political position in the country
I wish Hunt all the best not just for the conservative party but for the country
Truss is over, it is just the question of when but it won't be long
But he is in favour of fox hunting don't forget.
Good. So am I.
With or without dogs?
Is this a trick question?
No. Fox hunting is still legal isn't it? As long as you don't use dogs. I was against the ban. But there are deer living near us and the local oiks try hunting them with their pitbull-type dogs. And I hate that.
So I decided I shouldn't support toffs hunting foxes with dogs either.
Well, in non American English hunting means, with dogs. Using rifles is called shooting. It kills 10x the foxes hunting ever did, with the availability of military grade night sight equipment, and because foxes have never learned to lick their wounds those which are shot but not killed die very slowly and horribly of gangrene. And foxhunting unlike say pheasant shooting was never the preserve of rich toffs.
Agree about the pitbull types though.
Something that I've wondered about this, maybe you lot can help, is - is killing more foxes necessarily better? Are foxes a natural predator of something that means there needs to be an amount of foxes in circulation to bump off the other thing? Obviously eg with deer the british environment needs to be managed in some sense and the argument for foxhunting was that it was a manner of managing things that had worked for a long time. If we were killing more foxes now, but with guns or slingshots or trebuchets, would there be another problem? Apols if word salad.
Foxes keep down rabbits, and rabbits are more of a pain than you think (undermining walls and so on). They also take a LOT of lambs in the spring, which is obviously unhelpful. But the reason they are thwacked in industrial quantities is commercial pheasant shooting which is an horrific enterprise - breeding 10s of thousands of the things to be killed for sport and turned into cat food, which gets a free pass from bigG and his family because they know no more about it than they know about fox hunting, but think mammals are inherently cuddlier than birds.
So, no, exterminating foxes to enable a monoculture of pheasants isn't a policy most people would see much merit in. Balanced and natural ecosystems are best. The efect of the hunting ban has been a huge decrease in the fox population, because there is no incentive to retain the balance.
Would you ban grouse and pheasant shooting too then?
At least the grouse and pheasent get eaten. I would have more sympathy if the Unspeakable actually ate the foxes...
The pheasent (sic) bloody don't, except out of tins by cats. An absolutely cracking example of ignorant bigotry, well done.
Au Contraire. My in-laws often get pheasants from the shoots near their farm. It is not grouse country, so none of them.
I agree. The Truss being Figurehead Leader in Name Only just isn't going to hold up under the pressures of the next few weeks. The Tories might be able to indulge that fantasy for a little while, but all it takes is another PMQs or media round from Liz and it will all fall apart.
Let's have some stability now until the GE. Keep things as they are. Truss doing regular car-crash interviews and pressers, Hunt being the common sense technocrat calling the shots and applying Labour policies, preventing economic meltdown through a couple of bleak years of mild recession.
Then, when the polls have narrowed a bit or time has run out, the Tories can call a GE with a Truss-led campaign leading to electoral wipe-out.
Hunt takes over as LOTO and begins the long Tory Party rebuild process. If there's anything left to rebuild.
Sounds like the least worst outlook to me. Shit, but ultimately survivable.
There is zero chance Tory members will elect Hunt as Leader of the Opposition. At present if Truss and Hunt lead the Tories to heavy defeat, the membership will likely conclude she was not rightwing enough and elect Braverman as Leader of the Opposition to PM Starmer's government.
At best Hunt can be Mandelson to Truss' Brown and steady the ship
I fear you are right in your analysis of Conservative members, but Braverman would be an absolute disaster for your party, much as Corbyn was and remains a disaster for Labour.
After Corbyn there are still left leaning voters who don't trust the Party not to jettison Starmer and replace with Burgon or Pidcock, or some other moon howler.
Should Braverman ever become Leader her spectral legacy would be, one of we Centists can't vote for a one nation feudal Tory Party because they might replace a sensible leader with Mark Francois, or Phillip Davies.
The die would be cast, as it is for Labour. To be on the safe side, perhaps we should all vote LibDem.
There is a risk that you look at what happens on the left of the labour party and assume the right of the Conservative party will do the same thing. Braverman and Badenoch are both quite smart people, they are not saddled with progressive ideology and will be scarred by having watched Truss crash and burn. There are only a handful of true idiots in the Parliamentary party, they are insignificant enough to be ignored and sidelined.
If you look at the membership of the Conservative party, I would also note that Sunak got 40%, his supporters are not likely to regret their vote given the catastrophe that has unfolded. And of Trusses voters, it is hard to believe that any of them could overlook the total, catastrophic failure that has just occurred. It isn't a case of the policies being rejected, they got to try to implement the policies and it caused untold chaos in the markets and sunk the party to its lowest poll ratings in 30 years. There is no centrist/remainer conspiracy here, we all watched the whole thing play out in real time and no one can be blamed but Liz Truss and the people that surround her. Perhaps some of the members who are in denial about the situation will tear up their membership cards but this is only a positive thing for the party, they should be goaded in to doing so.
I think that things are going in the right direction for the Conservative party, and I personally think people need to join the Conservative party to try and keep them on the right path. Once Truss is despatched to the backbenches, then the tories can still get back in to position of being the party of economic competence. They can still win the next election, because the labour party will start to get arrogant and their true nature will quickly reveal itself, as was the case in 1992. They are relying entirely on Starmer to project an image of competence and no politician is infallible.
The right of the party would rather lose to Starmer and rebuild in opposition under a rightwing leader now than win with Hunt or Sunak. Not that that is likely anyway
In every post you demonstrate your Corbyn like ideology and frankly it is time conservatives called out those in the ERG and Farage group as a very present danger to the extinction of the party
To be very very honest, I’ve never associated HY politics with Farage and Blukip, but with Team Boris and that being a very different thing.
Borisism just as unrealistic, stupid and with unsavoury bits, yet still very different than Farage and blukip
Pharmacists are trained medical professionals. They are not going to just hand these out like candy
Won't that lead to conflict if a customer thinks they should have them but the pharmacist doesn't?
GPs already get aggressive patients demanding all kinds of stuff.
My old GP would prescribe anything you asked him for. He would give me antibiotics unprompted. A couple of times I asked - hang on, I have a virus. Are you worried about an infection as well?
I used to joke that I should ask for some diamorphine - just to see if he would hand it out.
His daughter, who took over, is much better.
In a number of countries I have visited, pharmacies will hand out medicines that are prescription only in the U.K. I’m pretty sure antibiotics are among them.
Daughter of a doctor got a place at Med School. Fancy that.
Hunt has calmed the markets, if he quits then it will be carnage, so Truss cannot afford to lose him, he will do whatever he wants.
What happens if Monday comes and the markets aren’t calmed?
The way this usually happens is there can be two weeks of calm - people say the markets have been calmed, but then it all erupts again.
Obviously you all know my theory - £400bn of Rishi splaffing (and wasting a lot) to get us through covid has maxxed out the credit - now they want to (unnecessarily, needlessly) try to get another £200bn more borrowing - the markets won’t calm till that plan is dead.
Or the £200bn becomes more like £20bn. Everything now turns on the future price of gas.
I don’t want to be really rude David, but you keep posting that “If gas falls sufficiently, the cost of the energy cap freeze drops” means don’t think you really understand it. That thinking is utter bollox.
1. We haven’t had an OBR how much Tories total promise is likely to cost. The Tories have promised to buck the UK energy market for two and a half years regardless what global energy price does. Some think tanks have had a go at pricing this and come to a quarter of a trillion pound. To be found by tax rises, borrowing or cuts or mixture thereof. Quarter of a trillion on that one policy alone. 2. Variable one. Energy prices can go down, yes, but also up, it’s a very fluid situation in supply and demand over this coming period - but at which point do energy companies need to commit to buying it in advance, so commit to passing on THAT price to both customers AND onto a government commitment to bucking the market? 3. Variable two. If global prices do come down, to what degree is the saving on the quarter of a trillion eaten into or obliterated by the more expensive borrowing costs? Out of these two variable’s, borrowing costs for this policy look certain to remain high now, the greater doubt is if energy prices will come down and stay down isn’t it?
You really think that whole £200bn comes down to £20bn? 🥹 We all know what’s really behind “but the bill freeze looks like turning out much cheaper because gas prices are coming down” argument we get spun from Tory’s on TV and on PB - they privately hate this lumbering Labour policy Tory party has adopted, they hate the ENORMOUS amount of borrowing maxing out UKs credit limit, and the regressive unConservative way the money is spewed out in indiscriminate handouts.
But. They are only fooling themselves spinning that comfort blanket, because, yes, there are variables, but the variables are very much against them.
Don’t be one of them.
There is no defence to this insane policy, Truss has been hiding behind all week.
I would agree we don't know what this policy is going to cost and I would agree that there are significant risks on the upside but there is also some reason for hope on the low side.
The government have committed to the average house bill being no more than £2500 a year. At the moment the price of gas futures are 263p/therm. It has been over 700p and has averaged around 400p of late. The cost of the UK subsidy is directly relational to that price against the price that fixes the £2500 pa average. I have been unable to work out exactly what that is because there are quite a number of other variables. Energy companies are bumping up their fixed charges as well. My best guess is that £2500 per household is going be equivalent to something like 200p/therm, roughly twice what it was last winter.
But I am not wrong is saying that there is a chance that the cost of the scheme will prove to be much lower than the worst estimates. It could also be higher of course. If it stays somewhere near our current price or goes even lower then the cost of the scheme will be less. If it goes back up again we are in trouble, no doubt about it.
Edit, and btw the OBR will have no better idea than the rest of us, it is simply unknowable.
You telling us It’s unknowable wasn’t the impression I got when you reduced it from £200bn to £20bn to spark my reply. 🙂
We know enough overall price can’t come down that much. Because the bit you seem to be avoiding is commodity price drop is to some extent offset by borrowing cost increase - goes back to the unknowable being very guessable in that the borrowing cost won’t be based on “maybe the commodity price drops and stays at x price”, who lends money on that basis?
You accept the part of the equation, political and economic, it is not necessary to provide help in this way, there other options such as sliding scale to target help where needed, not wasted where not needed, and virtually pays for itself?
I believe most UK government borrowing is fixed rate. So the increase only kicks in as new debt is issued.
Interesting the current (March) forecast it from debt interest this year to be c £83bn but to *fall* to £47bn next year… a cut in public spending baked in
If you listened to what the mini budget said - the Energy Price Freeze (a quarter of a trillion pounds) will be paid for by new borrowing, no new taxes no new cuts.
If you listed to what Liz Truss said Wednesday, public spending overall total will not show any cuts under her, simply because the quarter of a trillion Energy Price Freeze is being added to the public spending total.
What I am arguing in this thread, we don’t have to fund a quarter of a trillion pound scheme when other realistic options are available better targeted and virtually paying for themselves, I’m also arguing against those saying commodity price coming down proves the end bill will definitely be cheaper, because even with cuts even with more tax, this scheme will always need a huge amount of new borrowing at the new higher borrowing rates.
Correct me where wrong.
But I am now adding a third facet to my argument - anyone who claims Kwarteng and Truss mini budget crashed the markets I am calling an idiot peddling a myth. And I can prove it. That spiking gilt market graph they use over and over in media, expand it to see the previous 12 months and see the trajectory is up up up long before Truss got anywhere near number 10 - my argument is the budget exacerbated an already underlying problem.
Anyone want to own the claim if the mini budget is reversed, annulled, reset, the trajectory on the borrowings chart graph would be down when it hasn’t been all year?
I’m arguing anyone who peddles Labour Party lies that Kwarteng and Truss mini budget crashed the markets I am calling an idiot peddling a myth, and sure I can win this argument.
I’ve been drinking all afternoon, don’t anyone want to take me on?
And then lay siege to Petersfield...
Edit bugger I hate the way edits get incorporated into quotes. To rescue the joke your last line used to read "I’ve been drinking all afternoon, don’t anyone want to take Meon?"
you bin 2 de races or watching on telly?
Watching on telly today but going to Cheltenham for Friday and Saturday like I did last year.
A bit of friendly advice to our Tory contributors...
Your party is in deep, deep shit. Reopening the hunting debate is not likely to help.
A friendly rejoinder: I am not a tory, the hunting debate is done and dusted, but ignorance, stupidity and ill informed prejudice are to combatted wherever they appear. This really shouldn't be difficult for someone like you who claim to have general ecological interests rather than the petty minded spite which motivates BigG: is it better to have people who want there to be a reasonable number of foxes so they can kill 4 a week, or people who want there to be no foxes and pay people to kill 20 a night?
The Kwarteng chancellorship was a major Cambridge University fail. The crème brûlée and Great Court Run college in particular. Re-establish the monasteries and give them their assets back?
Creme Brulee is Caius, not arriviste Trinity Burnt Cream.
My apologies. What's the difference, or is it only the nomenclature?
Doesn't the idea come from Catalonia anyway?
Despite my possible faux pas, it's true that Kwasi Kwarteng was in the in crowd at both Eton and Trinity and he ballsed up the Chancellor job as nobody has ever ballsed it up before so fast. And he doesn't have the humility and charm of Eddie the Eagle. No way would he have been promoted so high if he'd gone to the school down the road or even a second division private boarding school somewhere, or if he'd gone to, well, probably any university apart from Oxford and Cambridge.
And we can't blame the Tory party's membership in this instance.
Top post. Eton and Cambridge must be deeply embarrassed to have turned out such a tone-deaf incompetent.
He was at Cambridge with Richard Burgon, I believe, who was in the next door college?
Do people now understand why so many Cambridge politicians have been passed over before now?
Which would be a valid argument if the Oxford ones who get in weren't just as useless.
The real apex of entitled and ignorant cretinism in the education system is neither Oxford nor Cambridge, but Eton College. The first action of an incoming Labour Government should be to whistle up a squadron of RAF Typhoons armed with precision guided bombs and reduce the whole place to a pile of smouldering rubble.
Revoke its charitable status and start taxing it. That will hurt more than the Typhoons...
That's reasonable. There's no reason why the private schooling sector should benefit from charitable tax breaks. It contributes nothing of value to wider society.
That charitable status helps it provide scholarships and bursaries and it also shares facilities with the local community
If we tax them then the whole country can share
Private school parents already pay tax for state schools despite sending their children private
And many childless people pay tax for educating state school children. We are childless and for the last 20 years of my teaching career I worked in the independent sector so the county wasn't paying my wages either.
Reflecting on yesterday's events - let's be fair, Kwarteng isn't the first Chancellor to be sacked or "asked to stand aside" to use the euphemism in recent times. We've had Sunak, Lawson and Lamont to name but three.
The one thing the change of Chancellor (voluntary or otherwise) is supposed to do is demonstrate the authority of the Prime Minister (primus inter pares) and it strengthens the notion of that authority to be seen to be able to dismiss someone as senior as the Chancellor.
Indeed, go back to the "Night of the Long Knives" and the dismissal of Thorneycroft, Birch and Powell by Harold MacMillan in 1958 (could one argue they were the first real Thatcherites?) and you see how a "little local difficulty" can build a Prime Minister's authority.
Yet the more I look at the circumstances of Kwarteng's resignation the more I see not a confirmation of Prime Ministerial authority but a confirmation of Prime Ministerial weakness. This isn't Blair giving Brown a free hand on the economy - this was a Prime Minister and Chancellor "in lockstep" so we were told.
An ill-timed and poorly communicated policy change which badly misread the public mood and the market reaction has claimed the carer of its creator (so we are to believe). Pace MacMillan, Truss has taken a axe to the "pro-growthers" ad cleared them out from the stables.
I can only assume Hunt has exacted a heavy price from Truss for taking this on - Campbell may be right to a point but Truss still has plenty of allies in Cabinet who can either defend her or join in the feeding frenzy.
However, to paraphrase Oscar Wilde, "to lose one Prime Minister may be regarded as misfortune, to lose two might be considered careless". Will enough people want a careless party in charge to allow the Conservatives another term in office?
I have mixed feelings on it. I think the ban was basically an early example of virtue-signalling legislation. A very obvious target, based on an incorrect perception that it was conducted by posh twats, and inconsistent with animal welfare legislation elsewhere.
Still agree with the ban though.
I was very much involved in the core group who worked on the ban. Nobody to my recollection ever mentioned posh twats - it's an explanation put around by hunting fans to evade the issue that hunting animals for fun is morally indecent. We banned hare coursing at the same time, which was a traditional working class sport. The class of the people doing something cruel is really irrelevant.
Hunt has calmed the markets, if he quits then it will be carnage, so Truss cannot afford to lose him, he will do whatever he wants.
What happens if Monday comes and the markets aren’t calmed?
The way this usually happens is there can be two weeks of calm - people say the markets have been calmed, but then it all erupts again.
Obviously you all know my theory - £400bn of Rishi splaffing (and wasting a lot) to get us through covid has maxxed out the credit - now they want to (unnecessarily, needlessly) try to get another £200bn more borrowing - the markets won’t calm till that plan is dead.
Or the £200bn becomes more like £20bn. Everything now turns on the future price of gas.
I don’t want to be really rude David, but you keep posting that “If gas falls sufficiently, the cost of the energy cap freeze drops” means don’t think you really understand it. That thinking is utter bollox.
1. We haven’t had an OBR how much Tories total promise is likely to cost. The Tories have promised to buck the UK energy market for two and a half years regardless what global energy price does. Some think tanks have had a go at pricing this and come to a quarter of a trillion pound. To be found by tax rises, borrowing or cuts or mixture thereof. Quarter of a trillion on that one policy alone. 2. Variable one. Energy prices can go down, yes, but also up, it’s a very fluid situation in supply and demand over this coming period - but at which point do energy companies need to commit to buying it in advance, so commit to passing on THAT price to both customers AND onto a government commitment to bucking the market? 3. Variable two. If global prices do come down, to what degree is the saving on the quarter of a trillion eaten into or obliterated by the more expensive borrowing costs? Out of these two variable’s, borrowing costs for this policy look certain to remain high now, the greater doubt is if energy prices will come down and stay down isn’t it?
You really think that whole £200bn comes down to £20bn? 🥹 We all know what’s really behind “but the bill freeze looks like turning out much cheaper because gas prices are coming down” argument we get spun from Tory’s on TV and on PB - they privately hate this lumbering Labour policy Tory party has adopted, they hate the ENORMOUS amount of borrowing maxing out UKs credit limit, and the regressive unConservative way the money is spewed out in indiscriminate handouts.
But. They are only fooling themselves spinning that comfort blanket, because, yes, there are variables, but the variables are very much against them.
Don’t be one of them.
There is no defence to this insane policy, Truss has been hiding behind all week.
I would agree we don't know what this policy is going to cost and I would agree that there are significant risks on the upside but there is also some reason for hope on the low side.
The government have committed to the average house bill being no more than £2500 a year. At the moment the price of gas futures are 263p/therm. It has been over 700p and has averaged around 400p of late. The cost of the UK subsidy is directly relational to that price against the price that fixes the £2500 pa average. I have been unable to work out exactly what that is because there are quite a number of other variables. Energy companies are bumping up their fixed charges as well. My best guess is that £2500 per household is going be equivalent to something like 200p/therm, roughly twice what it was last winter.
But I am not wrong is saying that there is a chance that the cost of the scheme will prove to be much lower than the worst estimates. It could also be higher of course. If it stays somewhere near our current price or goes even lower then the cost of the scheme will be less. If it goes back up again we are in trouble, no doubt about it.
Edit, and btw the OBR will have no better idea than the rest of us, it is simply unknowable.
You telling us It’s unknowable wasn’t the impression I got when you reduced it from £200bn to £20bn to spark my reply. 🙂
We know enough overall price can’t come down that much. Because the bit you seem to be avoiding is commodity price drop is to some extent offset by borrowing cost increase - goes back to the unknowable being very guessable in that the borrowing cost won’t be based on “maybe the commodity price drops and stays at x price”, who lends money on that basis?
You accept the part of the equation, political and economic, it is not necessary to provide help in this way, there other options such as sliding scale to target help where needed, not wasted where not needed, and virtually pays for itself?
I believe most UK government borrowing is fixed rate. So the increase only kicks in as new debt is issued.
Interesting the current (March) forecast it from debt interest this year to be c £83bn but to *fall* to £47bn next year… a cut in public spending baked in
If you listened to what the mini budget said - the Energy Price Freeze (a quarter of a trillion pounds) will be paid for by new borrowing, no new taxes no new cuts.
If you listed to what Liz Truss said Wednesday, public spending overall total will not show any cuts under her, simply because the quarter of a trillion Energy Price Freeze is being added to the public spending total.
What I am arguing in this thread, we don’t have to fund a quarter of a trillion pound scheme when other realistic options are available better targeted and virtually paying for themselves, I’m also arguing against those saying commodity price coming down proves the end bill will definitely be cheaper, because even with cuts even with more tax, this scheme will always need a huge amount of new borrowing at the new higher borrowing rates.
Correct me where wrong.
But I am now adding a third facet to my argument - anyone who claims Kwarteng and Truss mini budget crashed the markets I am calling an idiot peddling a myth. And I can prove it. That spiking gilt market graph they use over and over in media, expand it to see the previous 12 months and see the trajectory is up up up long before Truss got anywhere near number 10 - my argument is the budget exacerbated an already underlying problem.
Anyone want to own the claim if the mini budget is reversed, annulled, reset, the trajectory on the borrowings chart graph would be down when it hasn’t been all year?
I’m arguing anyone who peddles Labour Party lies that Kwarteng and Truss mini budget crashed the markets I am calling an idiot peddling a myth, and sure I can win this argument.
I’ve been drinking all afternoon, don’t anyone want to take me on?
And then lay siege to Petersfield...
Edit bugger I hate the way edits get incorporated into quotes. To rescue the joke your last line used to read "I’ve been drinking all afternoon, don’t anyone want to take Meon?"
you bin 2 de races or watching on telly?
Watching on telly today but going to Cheltenham for Friday and Saturday like I did last year.
Hunt has calmed the markets, if he quits then it will be carnage, so Truss cannot afford to lose him, he will do whatever he wants.
What happens if Monday comes and the markets aren’t calmed?
The way this usually happens is there can be two weeks of calm - people say the markets have been calmed, but then it all erupts again.
Obviously you all know my theory - £400bn of Rishi splaffing (and wasting a lot) to get us through covid has maxxed out the credit - now they want to (unnecessarily, needlessly) try to get another £200bn more borrowing - the markets won’t calm till that plan is dead.
Or the £200bn becomes more like £20bn. Everything now turns on the future price of gas.
I don’t want to be really rude David, but you keep posting that “If gas falls sufficiently, the cost of the energy cap freeze drops” means don’t think you really understand it. That thinking is utter bollox.
1. We haven’t had an OBR how much Tories total promise is likely to cost. The Tories have promised to buck the UK energy market for two and a half years regardless what global energy price does. Some think tanks have had a go at pricing this and come to a quarter of a trillion pound. To be found by tax rises, borrowing or cuts or mixture thereof. Quarter of a trillion on that one policy alone. 2. Variable one. Energy prices can go down, yes, but also up, it’s a very fluid situation in supply and demand over this coming period - but at which point do energy companies need to commit to buying it in advance, so commit to passing on THAT price to both customers AND onto a government commitment to bucking the market? 3. Variable two. If global prices do come down, to what degree is the saving on the quarter of a trillion eaten into or obliterated by the more expensive borrowing costs? Out of these two variable’s, borrowing costs for this policy look certain to remain high now, the greater doubt is if energy prices will come down and stay down isn’t it?
You really think that whole £200bn comes down to £20bn? 🥹 We all know what’s really behind “but the bill freeze looks like turning out much cheaper because gas prices are coming down” argument we get spun from Tory’s on TV and on PB - they privately hate this lumbering Labour policy Tory party has adopted, they hate the ENORMOUS amount of borrowing maxing out UKs credit limit, and the regressive unConservative way the money is spewed out in indiscriminate handouts.
But. They are only fooling themselves spinning that comfort blanket, because, yes, there are variables, but the variables are very much against them.
Don’t be one of them.
There is no defence to this insane policy, Truss has been hiding behind all week.
I would agree we don't know what this policy is going to cost and I would agree that there are significant risks on the upside but there is also some reason for hope on the low side.
The government have committed to the average house bill being no more than £2500 a year. At the moment the price of gas futures are 263p/therm. It has been over 700p and has averaged around 400p of late. The cost of the UK subsidy is directly relational to that price against the price that fixes the £2500 pa average. I have been unable to work out exactly what that is because there are quite a number of other variables. Energy companies are bumping up their fixed charges as well. My best guess is that £2500 per household is going be equivalent to something like 200p/therm, roughly twice what it was last winter.
But I am not wrong is saying that there is a chance that the cost of the scheme will prove to be much lower than the worst estimates. It could also be higher of course. If it stays somewhere near our current price or goes even lower then the cost of the scheme will be less. If it goes back up again we are in trouble, no doubt about it.
Edit, and btw the OBR will have no better idea than the rest of us, it is simply unknowable.
You telling us It’s unknowable wasn’t the impression I got when you reduced it from £200bn to £20bn to spark my reply. 🙂
We know enough overall price can’t come down that much. Because the bit you seem to be avoiding is commodity price drop is to some extent offset by borrowing cost increase - goes back to the unknowable being very guessable in that the borrowing cost won’t be based on “maybe the commodity price drops and stays at x price”, who lends money on that basis?
You accept the part of the equation, political and economic, it is not necessary to provide help in this way, there other options such as sliding scale to target help where needed, not wasted where not needed, and virtually pays for itself?
I believe most UK government borrowing is fixed rate. So the increase only kicks in as new debt is issued.
Interesting the current (March) forecast it from debt interest this year to be c £83bn but to *fall* to £47bn next year… a cut in public spending baked in
If you listened to what the mini budget said - the Energy Price Freeze (a quarter of a trillion pounds) will be paid for by new borrowing, no new taxes no new cuts.
If you listed to what Liz Truss said Wednesday, public spending overall total will not show any cuts under her, simply because the quarter of a trillion Energy Price Freeze is being added to the public spending total.
What I am arguing in this thread, we don’t have to fund a quarter of a trillion pound scheme when other realistic options are available better targeted and virtually paying for themselves, I’m also arguing against those saying commodity price coming down proves the end bill will definitely be cheaper, because even with cuts even with more tax, this scheme will always need a huge amount of new borrowing at the new higher borrowing rates.
Correct me where wrong.
But I am now adding a third facet to my argument - anyone who claims Kwarteng and Truss mini budget crashed the markets I am calling an idiot peddling a myth. And I can prove it. That spiking gilt market graph they use over and over in media, expand it to see the previous 12 months and see the trajectory is up up up long before Truss got anywhere near number 10 - my argument is the budget exacerbated an already underlying problem.
Anyone want to own the claim if the mini budget is reversed, annulled, reset, the trajectory on the borrowings chart graph would be down when it hasn’t been all year?
I’m arguing anyone who peddles Labour Party lies that Kwarteng and Truss mini budget crashed the markets I am calling an idiot peddling a myth, and sure I can win this argument.
I’ve been drinking all afternoon, don’t anyone want to take me on?
And then lay siege to Petersfield...
Edit bugger I hate the way edits get incorporated into quotes. To rescue the joke your last line used to read "I’ve been drinking all afternoon, don’t anyone want to take Meon?"
you bin 2 de races or watching on telly?
Watching on telly today but going to Cheltenham for Friday and Saturday like I did last year.
Watching on telly today but going to Cheltenham for Friday and Saturday like I did last year.
I don't move in such exalted circles, Windsor for me on Monday and my autumn jumping diet of Plumpton, Lingfield, Fontwell and perhaps a trip to Huntingdon beckons...
The Kwarteng chancellorship was a major Cambridge University fail. The crème brûlée and Great Court Run college in particular. Re-establish the monasteries and give them their assets back?
Creme Brulee is Caius, not arriviste Trinity Burnt Cream.
My apologies. What's the difference, or is it only the nomenclature?
Doesn't the idea come from Catalonia anyway?
Despite my possible faux pas, it's true that Kwasi Kwarteng was in the in crowd at both Eton and Trinity and he ballsed up the Chancellor job as nobody has ever ballsed it up before so fast. And he doesn't have the humility and charm of Eddie the Eagle. No way would he have been promoted so high if he'd gone to the school down the road or even a second division private boarding school somewhere, or if he'd gone to, well, probably any university apart from Oxford and Cambridge.
And we can't blame the Tory party's membership in this instance.
Top post. Eton and Cambridge must be deeply embarrassed to have turned out such a tone-deaf incompetent.
He was at Cambridge with Richard Burgon, I believe, who was in the next door college?
Do people now understand why so many Cambridge politicians have been passed over before now?
Which would be a valid argument if the Oxford ones who get in weren't just as useless.
The real apex of entitled and ignorant cretinism in the education system is neither Oxford nor Cambridge, but Eton College. The first action of an incoming Labour Government should be to whistle up a squadron of RAF Typhoons armed with precision guided bombs and reduce the whole place to a pile of smouldering rubble.
Truss went to a comprehensive not Eton. The only Tory major winners in the last 40 years went to Eton
The only three PMs to win majorities in the last thirty years went to public schools. Two Eton, one Fettes.
Prior to that, the previous four (Major, Thatcher, Wilson, Heath) were all at state schools.
Yes, all 4 grammar school educated. Truss the first PM educated fully at a comprehensive for secondary education.
Starmer also educated at private and grammar school
People who went to school before the advent of comprehensives didn't go to a comprehensive. What a revelation.
Major would have come within the comprehensive era, although I'm not sure how many there were in London at the time. Not the others.
Wasn't Brown technically at a comp as well, albeit in the fast stream of it?
I have mixed feelings on it. I think the ban was basically an early example of virtue-signalling legislation. A very obvious target, based on an incorrect perception that it was conducted by posh twats, and inconsistent with animal welfare legislation elsewhere.
Still agree with the ban though.
I was very much involved in the core group who worked on the ban. Nobody to my recollection ever mentioned posh twats - it's an explanation put around by hunting fans to evade the issue that hunting animals for fun is morally indecent. We banned hare coursing at the same time, which was a traditional working class sport. The class of the people doing something cruel is really irrelevant.
Reflecting on yesterday's events - let's be fair, Kwarteng isn't the first Chancellor to be sacked or "asked to stand aside" to use the euphemism in recent times. We've had Sunak, Lawson and Lamont to name but three.
The one thing the change of Chancellor (voluntary or otherwise) is supposed to do is demonstrate the authority of the Prime Minister (primus inter pares) and it strengthens the notion of that authority to be seen to be able to dismiss someone as senior as the Chancellor.
Indeed, go back to the "Night of the Long Knives" and the dismissal of Thorneycroft, Birch and Powell by Harold MacMillan in 1958 (could one argue they were the first real Thatcherites?) and you see how a "little local difficulty" can build a Prime Minister's authority.
Yet the more I look at the circumstances of Kwarteng's resignation the more I see not a confirmation of Prime Ministerial authority but a confirmation of Prime Ministerial weakness. This isn't Blair giving Brown a free hand on the economy - this was a Prime Minister and Chancellor "in lockstep" so we were told.
An ill-timed and poorly communicated policy change which badly misread the public mood and the market reaction has claimed the carer of its creator (so we are to believe). Pace MacMillan, Truss has taken a axe to the "pro-growthers" ad cleared them out from the stables.
I can only assume Hunt has exacted a heavy price from Truss for taking this on - Campbell may be right to a point but Truss still has plenty of allies in Cabinet who can either defend her or join in the feeding frenzy.
However, to paraphrase Oscar Wilde, "to lose one Prime Minister may be regarded as misfortune, to lose two might be considered careless". Will enough people want a careless party in charge to allow the Conservatives another term in office?
Off top my head, Sunak not sacked and knight of Long Knives wasn’t 58, it was sixties when Super Mac in trouble?
A bit of friendly advice to our Tory contributors...
Your party is in deep, deep shit. Reopening the hunting debate is not likely to help.
It's totally foxed. up.
No one is going down that route. Not least because in reality fox hunting has never stopped. It goes on day in day out.
No it doesn't, trail hunting is trail hunting. I know this because I do it regularly. As with fox hunting, you have never done it, you don't know a thing about it, you just don't like people on horses.
Absolutely correct. Anyone who knows anything about the subject is well aware that the banning of digging out was at the core of the legislation and that's very much NOT the pastime that the "posh twats" indulge in. The Hunting Act has had very little effect on fox populations because fox hunting still continues. I've monitored over 20 hunts this season since the end of August and its full on fox hunting.
Absolutely correct. Anyone who knows anything about the subject is well aware that the banning of digging out was at the core of the legislation and that's very much NOT the pastime that the "posh twats" indulge in. The Hunting Act has had very little effect on fox populations because fox hunting still continues. I've monitored over 20 hunts this season since the end of August and its full on fox hunting.
For the first time in a long time I believe we have a grown up in what is now the most powerful political position in the country
I wish Hunt all the best not just for the conservative party but for the country
Truss is over, it is just the question of when but it won't be long
But he is in favour of fox hunting don't forget.
Good. So am I.
With or without dogs?
Is this a trick question?
No. Fox hunting is still legal isn't it? As long as you don't use dogs. I was against the ban. But there are deer living near us and the local oiks try hunting them with their pitbull-type dogs. And I hate that.
So I decided I shouldn't support toffs hunting foxes with dogs either.
Well, in non American English hunting means, with dogs. Using rifles is called shooting. It kills 10x the foxes hunting ever did, with the availability of military grade night sight equipment, and because foxes have never learned to lick their wounds those which are shot but not killed die very slowly and horribly of gangrene. And foxhunting unlike say pheasant shooting was never the preserve of rich toffs.
Agree about the pitbull types though.
Something that I've wondered about this, maybe you lot can help, is - is killing more foxes necessarily better? Are foxes a natural predator of something that means there needs to be an amount of foxes in circulation to bump off the other thing? Obviously eg with deer the british environment needs to be managed in some sense and the argument for foxhunting was that it was a manner of managing things that had worked for a long time. If we were killing more foxes now, but with guns or slingshots or trebuchets, would there be another problem? Apols if word salad.
Foxes keep down rabbits, and rabbits are more of a pain than you think (undermining walls and so on). They also take a LOT of lambs in the spring, which is obviously unhelpful. But the reason they are thwacked in industrial quantities is commercial pheasant shooting which is an horrific enterprise - breeding 10s of thousands of the things to be killed for sport and turned into cat food, which gets a free pass from bigG and his family because they know no more about it than they know about fox hunting, but think mammals are inherently cuddlier than birds.
So, no, exterminating foxes to enable a monoculture of pheasants isn't a policy most people would see much merit in. Balanced and natural ecosystems are best. The efect of the hunting ban has been a huge decrease in the fox population, because there is no incentive to retain the balance.
Would you ban grouse and pheasant shooting too then?
At least the grouse and pheasent get eaten. I would have more sympathy if the Unspeakable actually ate the foxes...
The pheasent (sic) bloody don't, except out of tins by cats. An absolutely cracking example of ignorant bigotry, well done.
I'm pretty certain most pheasants shot aren't eaten by humans.
I have mixed feelings on it. I think the ban was basically an early example of virtue-signalling legislation. A very obvious target, based on an incorrect perception that it was conducted by posh twats, and inconsistent with animal welfare legislation elsewhere.
Still agree with the ban though.
I was very much involved in the core group who worked on the ban. Nobody to my recollection ever mentioned posh twats - it's an explanation put around by hunting fans to evade the issue that hunting animals for fun is morally indecent. We banned hare coursing at the same time, which was a traditional working class sport. The class of the people doing something cruel is really irrelevant.
Hoey references it - but from the defence - in this article from 2003
Reflecting on yesterday's events - let's be fair, Kwarteng isn't the first Chancellor to be sacked or "asked to stand aside" to use the euphemism in recent times. We've had Sunak, Lawson and Lamont to name but three.
The one thing the change of Chancellor (voluntary or otherwise) is supposed to do is demonstrate the authority of the Prime Minister (primus inter pares) and it strengthens the notion of that authority to be seen to be able to dismiss someone as senior as the Chancellor.
Indeed, go back to the "Night of the Long Knives" and the dismissal of Thorneycroft, Birch and Powell by Harold MacMillan in 1958 (could one argue they were the first real Thatcherites?) and you see how a "little local difficulty" can build a Prime Minister's authority.
Yet the more I look at the circumstances of Kwarteng's resignation the more I see not a confirmation of Prime Ministerial authority but a confirmation of Prime Ministerial weakness. This isn't Blair giving Brown a free hand on the economy - this was a Prime Minister and Chancellor "in lockstep" so we were told.
An ill-timed and poorly communicated policy change which badly misread the public mood and the market reaction has claimed the carer of its creator (so we are to believe). Pace MacMillan, Truss has taken a axe to the "pro-growthers" ad cleared them out from the stables.
I can only assume Hunt has exacted a heavy price from Truss for taking this on - Campbell may be right to a point but Truss still has plenty of allies in Cabinet who can either defend her or join in the feeding frenzy.
However, to paraphrase Oscar Wilde, "to lose one Prime Minister may be regarded as misfortune, to lose two might be considered careless". Will enough people want a careless party in charge to allow the Conservatives another term in office?
Off top my head, Sunak not sacked and knight of Long Knives wasn’t 58, it was sixties when Super Mac in trouble?
To you he was knight of Long Knives, to me he will always be Sir Lance a Lot.
Watching on telly today but going to Cheltenham for Friday and Saturday like I did last year.
I don't move in such exalted circles, Windsor for me on Monday and my autumn jumping diet of Plumpton, Lingfield, Fontwell and perhaps a trip to Huntingdon beckons...
I'm going to Plumpton on the 14th November, is it to be recommended
A bit of friendly advice to our Tory contributors...
Your party is in deep, deep shit. Reopening the hunting debate is not likely to help.
A friendly rejoinder: I am not a tory, the hunting debate is done and dusted, but ignorance, stupidity and ill informed prejudice are to combatted wherever they appear. This really shouldn't be difficult for someone like you who claim to have general ecological interests rather than the petty minded spite which motivates BigG: is it better to have people who want there to be a reasonable number of foxes so they can kill 4 a week, or people who want there to be no foxes and pay people to kill 20 a night?
You are offering a false choice. My answer is "neither".
We are miles apart on this so best that we accept this and banter on other issues.
I have mixed feelings on it. I think the ban was basically an early example of virtue-signalling legislation. A very obvious target, based on an incorrect perception that it was conducted by posh twats, and inconsistent with animal welfare legislation elsewhere.
Still agree with the ban though.
I was very much involved in the core group who worked on the ban. Nobody to my recollection ever mentioned posh twats - it's an explanation put around by hunting fans to evade the issue that hunting animals for fun is morally indecent. We banned hare coursing at the same time, which was a traditional working class sport. The class of the people doing something cruel is really irrelevant.
Was it ever considered in core group that foxes are not very nice creatures at all, just 110% menace with no redeeming features and if they all died out in UK to only exist in France instead that wouldn’t be such a bad thing for this country at all?
Well, as a perfect solution to the core groups opposition to hunting them.
A bit of friendly advice to our Tory contributors...
Your party is in deep, deep shit. Reopening the hunting debate is not likely to help.
It's totally foxed. up.
No one is going down that route. Not least because in reality fox hunting has never stopped. It goes on day in day out.
No it doesn't, trail hunting is trail hunting. I know this because I do it regularly. As with fox hunting, you have never done it, you don't know a thing about it, you just don't like people on horses.
Which fake "trail" hunt would that be? You're wither hugely gullible or a liar
For the first time in a long time I believe we have a grown up in what is now the most powerful political position in the country
I wish Hunt all the best not just for the conservative party but for the country
Truss is over, it is just the question of when but it won't be long
But he is in favour of fox hunting don't forget.
Good. So am I.
But BigG definitely isn't. During the Johnson/Hunt leadership contest it was a deal breaker for his vote.
Fox hunting is a long way outside the Chncellors remit though
I am implacably opposed to fox hunting but I really do not see this as an issue at this time
Because you know absolutely nothing about it.
There is not one person across our family who supports fox hunting
I support fox hunting.
How do you think packs of wild wolves hunt Moose in the Yukon? Or any other predator for that matter? Why is that inferior to snaring or shooting?
Hunting is perfectly natural. Rest is class warfare and absurd emotional sentimentality.
Riding dressed in hunting pinks on artificially bred horses and killing the neighbourhood cats with packs of artificially bred C. familiaris is natural?
Very weak. Yes, compared to shooting them with Czech rifles fitted with Russian night vision scopes.
i'm assuming as they're Russian they usually shoot far more ammunition than they need, destroy everything around the fox and then let it wander away unhurt while the marksman is declaring a great victory?
No, they do work. I assume because the officer class nicks all the good stuff and ebays it in the west.
Years ago, I knew someone who killed foxes for the farmers. Used a reproduction Sharps in 50-90. With a vast flash suppressor, and a night vision scope. Hand loads with a (relatively) flashless powder.
The theory was that if you hit the fox, no matter where, it was dead.
Pharmacists are trained medical professionals. They are not going to just hand these out like candy
Won't that lead to conflict if a customer thinks they should have them but the pharmacist doesn't?
GPs already get aggressive patients demanding all kinds of stuff.
My old GP would prescribe anything you asked him for. He would give me antibiotics unprompted. A couple of times I asked - hang on, I have a virus. Are you worried about an infection as well?
I used to joke that I should ask for some diamorphine - just to see if he would hand it out.
His daughter, who took over, is much better.
In a number of countries I have visited, pharmacies will hand out medicines that are prescription only in the U.K. I’m pretty sure antibiotics are among them.
Daughter of a doctor got a place at Med School. Fancy that.
Child tends to follow parents trade. As has happened since trades were invented.
Watching on telly today but going to Cheltenham for Friday and Saturday like I did last year.
I don't move in such exalted circles, Windsor for me on Monday and my autumn jumping diet of Plumpton, Lingfield, Fontwell and perhaps a trip to Huntingdon beckons...
We have a friend in Cheltenham who lives on a long road by a police station who can put us up so we can enjoy a good long leisurely weekend of it. There is good boutique shopping in Cheltenham too, though food and nite life nowhere good as London imo
Watching on telly today but going to Cheltenham for Friday and Saturday like I did last year.
I don't move in such exalted circles, Windsor for me on Monday and my autumn jumping diet of Plumpton, Lingfield, Fontwell and perhaps a trip to Huntingdon beckons...
I'm going to Plumpton on the 14th November, is it to be recommended
For the first time in a long time I believe we have a grown up in what is now the most powerful political position in the country
I wish Hunt all the best not just for the conservative party but for the country
Truss is over, it is just the question of when but it won't be long
But he is in favour of fox hunting don't forget.
Good. So am I.
With or without dogs?
Is this a trick question?
No. Fox hunting is still legal isn't it? As long as you don't use dogs. I was against the ban. But there are deer living near us and the local oiks try hunting them with their pitbull-type dogs. And I hate that.
So I decided I shouldn't support toffs hunting foxes with dogs either.
Well, in non American English hunting means, with dogs. Using rifles is called shooting. It kills 10x the foxes hunting ever did, with the availability of military grade night sight equipment, and because foxes have never learned to lick their wounds those which are shot but not killed die very slowly and horribly of gangrene. And foxhunting unlike say pheasant shooting was never the preserve of rich toffs.
Agree about the pitbull types though.
Something that I've wondered about this, maybe you lot can help, is - is killing more foxes necessarily better? Are foxes a natural predator of something that means there needs to be an amount of foxes in circulation to bump off the other thing? Obviously eg with deer the british environment needs to be managed in some sense and the argument for foxhunting was that it was a manner of managing things that had worked for a long time. If we were killing more foxes now, but with guns or slingshots or trebuchets, would there be another problem? Apols if word salad.
Foxes keep down rabbits, and rabbits are more of a pain than you think (undermining walls and so on). They also take a LOT of lambs in the spring, which is obviously unhelpful. But the reason they are thwacked in industrial quantities is commercial pheasant shooting which is an horrific enterprise - breeding 10s of thousands of the things to be killed for sport and turned into cat food, which gets a free pass from bigG and his family because they know no more about it than they know about fox hunting, but think mammals are inherently cuddlier than birds.
So, no, exterminating foxes to enable a monoculture of pheasants isn't a policy most people would see much merit in. Balanced and natural ecosystems are best. The efect of the hunting ban has been a huge decrease in the fox population, because there is no incentive to retain the balance.
Would you ban grouse and pheasant shooting too then?
At least the grouse and pheasent get eaten. I would have more sympathy if the Unspeakable actually ate the foxes...
The pheasent (sic) bloody don't, except out of tins by cats. An absolutely cracking example of ignorant bigotry, well done.
Au Contraire. My in-laws often get pheasants from the shoots near their farm. It is not grouse country, so none of them.
Everyone is very happy go lucky?
They seem happy with the pheasants - they are even offered as raffle prizes in the village hall from time to time.
I have mixed feelings on it. I think the ban was basically an early example of virtue-signalling legislation. A very obvious target, based on an incorrect perception that it was conducted by posh twats, and inconsistent with animal welfare legislation elsewhere.
Still agree with the ban though.
I was very much involved in the core group who worked on the ban. Nobody to my recollection ever mentioned posh twats - it's an explanation put around by hunting fans to evade the issue that hunting animals for fun is morally indecent. We banned hare coursing at the same time, which was a traditional working class sport. The class of the people doing something cruel is really irrelevant.
Yes, but your fundamental dishonesty is not in doubt. You are far too intelligent and well informed not to know that the big commercial pheasant shoots are putting down 30,000 birds a year, deliberately bred to shoot for fun, and that the vast majority of those at one stage were bulldozed into burial pits and , now they have realised that is a bit unacceptable, become tinned catfood. And as part of that, 10x as many foxes are shot these days as hounds ever killed. You may not have felt prejudice against posh twats yourself, but you weaponised it in others like BigG to produce an outcome which utterly predictably increased animal suffering a hundredfold. One has to ask, why?
Reflecting on yesterday's events - let's be fair, Kwarteng isn't the first Chancellor to be sacked or "asked to stand aside" to use the euphemism in recent times. We've had Sunak, Lawson and Lamont to name but three.
The one thing the change of Chancellor (voluntary or otherwise) is supposed to do is demonstrate the authority of the Prime Minister (primus inter pares) and it strengthens the notion of that authority to be seen to be able to dismiss someone as senior as the Chancellor.
Indeed, go back to the "Night of the Long Knives" and the dismissal of Thorneycroft, Birch and Powell by Harold MacMillan in 1958 (could one argue they were the first real Thatcherites?) and you see how a "little local difficulty" can build a Prime Minister's authority.
Yet the more I look at the circumstances of Kwarteng's resignation the more I see not a confirmation of Prime Ministerial authority but a confirmation of Prime Ministerial weakness. This isn't Blair giving Brown a free hand on the economy - this was a Prime Minister and Chancellor "in lockstep" so we were told.
An ill-timed and poorly communicated policy change which badly misread the public mood and the market reaction has claimed the carer of its creator (so we are to believe). Pace MacMillan, Truss has taken a axe to the "pro-growthers" ad cleared them out from the stables.
I can only assume Hunt has exacted a heavy price from Truss for taking this on - Campbell may be right to a point but Truss still has plenty of allies in Cabinet who can either defend her or join in the feeding frenzy.
However, to paraphrase Oscar Wilde, "to lose one Prime Minister may be regarded as misfortune, to lose two might be considered careless". Will enough people want a careless party in charge to allow the Conservatives another term in office?
Off top my head, Sunak not sacked and knight of Long Knives wasn’t 58, it was sixties when Super Mac in trouble?
To you he was knight of Long Knives, to me he will always be Sir Lance a Lot.
Whatever you’ve taken this evening, you’ve never had it so good 😆
OT. Just listened to Lisa Nandy being interviewed in depth by Nick Robinson. I have to say she's a very impressive person and politician and not at all belonging in the box I'd put her in with Rayner and Long Bailey. An object lesson in not judging someone by the number of letters they drop. On the basis of that interview I reckon she'd make a formidable leader.
Quite a few of us voted for her in 2020.
Nice that you have realised that not all northerners are thick.
Nandy is a complete lightweight, had she been leading Labour not Starmer I doubt Labour would now be 25% ahead in the polls
She's actually anything but. You're as guilty as I am in rushing to judgements without the facts. She's well educated bright and has had a distinguished career in public service. Knowing you to be a snob you might also be impressed that her Grandfather was a Lord. Furthermore she's a Mancunian and it's common knowledge that most of the brightest and most creative originate in Manchester
OT. Just listened to Lisa Nandy being interviewed in depth by Nick Robinson. I have to say she's a very impressive person and politician and not at all belonging in the box I'd put her in with Rayner and Long Bailey. An object lesson in not judging someone by the number of letters they drop. On the basis of that interview I reckon she'd make a formidable leader.
Quite a few of us voted for her in 2020.
Nice that you have realised that not all northerners are thick.
Nandy is a complete lightweight, had she been leading Labour not Starmer I doubt Labour would now be 25% ahead in the polls
She's actually anything but. You're as guilty as I am in rushing to judgements without the facts. She's well educated bright and has had a distinguished career in public service. Knowing you to be a snob you might also be impressed that her Grandfather was a Lord. Furthermore she's a Mancunian and it's common knowledge that most of the brightest and most creative originate in Manchester
I find it difficult to see a return to Osborne -style austerity - as favoured by Hunt and Sunak - being popular in electoral terms. The markets are likely to calm down but the impact on household budgets and public services is unlikely to be helpful to the Tories after 12 years in office - particularly when combined with the effects of tighter monetary policies via higher interest rates feeding through to very substantial jumps in mortgage repayments.
All true but there is also the fact that the public has been educated to the dangers of increasing the deficit. That will make it very difficult for Starmer to promise large increases in public expenditure because the funding will have to be genuinely realistic now even during an election campaign.
In my opinion here is only one area of relatively pain free expenditure savings and boosting of living standards and that is watering down or abandoning Net Zero. I'm not sure any of the major parties are up for that (yet). Unfortunately the current Net Zero Plans look certain to fail so will have to be changed drastically but that will probably only happen when things really hit the fan in a couple of years.
I suggest that the Covid pandemic and the ongoing Energy crisis has clearly demonstrated to the public that considerable flexibility is possible in managing the public finances when the need is sufficiently great. Johnson was very little concerned at the scale of public borrowing - and pretty well got away with it to the extent hat it raises serious questions as to whether Osborne's Austerity policies during the Coalition years were necessary after all. Increasingly they appear to have been a policy choice rather than an economic necessity.
For the first time in a long time I believe we have a grown up in what is now the most powerful political position in the country
I wish Hunt all the best not just for the conservative party but for the country
Truss is over, it is just the question of when but it won't be long
But he is in favour of fox hunting don't forget.
Good. So am I.
But BigG definitely isn't. During the Johnson/Hunt leadership contest it was a deal breaker for his vote.
Fox hunting is a long way outside the Chncellors remit though
I am implacably opposed to fox hunting but I really do not see this as an issue at this time
Because you know absolutely nothing about it.
There is not one person across our family who supports fox hunting
I support fox hunting.
How do you think packs of wild wolves hunt Moose in the Yukon? Or any other predator for that matter? Why is that inferior to snaring or shooting?
Hunting is perfectly natural. Rest is class warfare and absurd emotional sentimentality.
Riding dressed in hunting pinks on artificially bred horses and killing the neighbourhood cats with packs of artificially bred C. familiaris is natural?
Very weak. Yes, compared to shooting them with Czech rifles fitted with Russian night vision scopes.
i'm assuming as they're Russian they usually shoot far more ammunition than they need, destroy everything around the fox and then let it wander away unhurt while the marksman is declaring a great victory?
No, they do work. I assume because the officer class nicks all the good stuff and ebays it in the west.
Years ago, I knew someone who killed foxes for the farmers. Used a reproduction Sharps in 50-90. With a vast flash suppressor, and a night vision scope. Hand loads with a (relatively) flashless powder.
The theory was that if you hit the fox, no matter where, it was dead.
Pharmacists are trained medical professionals. They are not going to just hand these out like candy
Won't that lead to conflict if a customer thinks they should have them but the pharmacist doesn't?
GPs already get aggressive patients demanding all kinds of stuff.
My old GP would prescribe anything you asked him for. He would give me antibiotics unprompted. A couple of times I asked - hang on, I have a virus. Are you worried about an infection as well?
I used to joke that I should ask for some diamorphine - just to see if he would hand it out.
His daughter, who took over, is much better.
In a number of countries I have visited, pharmacies will hand out medicines that are prescription only in the U.K. I’m pretty sure antibiotics are among them.
Daughter of a doctor got a place at Med School. Fancy that.
Child tends to follow parents trade. As has happened since trades were invented.
Film at 11
I have no problem with the daughter wanting to go into medicine. It is the fact that it is so much easier for someone in her position to get into Med School than for those without the connections to facilitate the CV enhancing shadowing and work experience that pisses me off.
The Kwarteng chancellorship was a major Cambridge University fail. The crème brûlée and Great Court Run college in particular. Re-establish the monasteries and give them their assets back?
Creme Brulee is Caius, not arriviste Trinity Burnt Cream.
My apologies. What's the difference, or is it only the nomenclature?
Doesn't the idea come from Catalonia anyway?
Despite my possible faux pas, it's true that Kwasi Kwarteng was in the in crowd at both Eton and Trinity and he ballsed up the Chancellor job as nobody has ever ballsed it up before so fast. And he doesn't have the humility and charm of Eddie the Eagle. No way would he have been promoted so high if he'd gone to the school down the road or even a second division private boarding school somewhere, or if he'd gone to, well, probably any university apart from Oxford and Cambridge.
And we can't blame the Tory party's membership in this instance.
Top post. Eton and Cambridge must be deeply embarrassed to have turned out such a tone-deaf incompetent.
He was at Cambridge with Richard Burgon, I believe, who was in the next door college?
Do people now understand why so many Cambridge politicians have been passed over before now?
Which would be a valid argument if the Oxford ones who get in weren't just as useless.
The real apex of entitled and ignorant cretinism in the education system is neither Oxford nor Cambridge, but Eton College. The first action of an incoming Labour Government should be to whistle up a squadron of RAF Typhoons armed with precision guided bombs and reduce the whole place to a pile of smouldering rubble.
Truss went to a comprehensive not Eton. The only Tory major winners in the last 40 years went to Eton
One of a number of reasons to bring back Grammar schools.....
@elonmusk The hell with it … even though Starlink is still losing money & other companies are getting billions of taxpayer $, we’ll just keep funding Ukraine govt for free
I have mixed feelings on it. I think the ban was basically an early example of virtue-signalling legislation. A very obvious target, based on an incorrect perception that it was conducted by posh twats, and inconsistent with animal welfare legislation elsewhere.
Still agree with the ban though.
I was very much involved in the core group who worked on the ban. Nobody to my recollection ever mentioned posh twats - it's an explanation put around by hunting fans to evade the issue that hunting animals for fun is morally indecent. We banned hare coursing at the same time, which was a traditional working class sport. The class of the people doing something cruel is really irrelevant.
Was it ever considered in core group that foxes are not very nice creatures at all, just 110% menace with no redeeming features and if they all died out in UK to only exist in France instead that wouldn’t be such a bad thing for this country at all?
Well, as a perfect solution to the core groups opposition to hunting them.
I'm doubtful about attributing niceness or otherwise to wild animals and I don't think that ever came up either. I'm against hunting anything for fun - rats, toads, bluebottles, whatever. It's not in any case an efficient form of fox control (and is not intended to be - it's a sport for enjoyment, not a serious culling operation). My uncle was a keen huntsman - he conceded that it wasn't useful and "not very nice for the fox" but felt it was a glorious spectacle.
OT. Just listened to Lisa Nandy being interviewed in depth by Nick Robinson. I have to say she's a very impressive person and politician and not at all belonging in the box I'd put her in with Rayner and Long Bailey. An object lesson in not judging someone by the number of letters they drop. On the basis of that interview I reckon she'd make a formidable leader.
Quite a few of us voted for her in 2020.
Nice that you have realised that not all northerners are thick.
Nandy is a complete lightweight, had she been leading Labour not Starmer I doubt Labour would now be 25% ahead in the polls
She's actually anything but. You're as guilty as I am in rushing to judgements without the facts. She's well educated bright and has had a distinguished career in public service. Knowing you to be a snob you might also be impressed that her Grandfather was a Lord. Furthermore she's a Mancunian and it's common knowledge that most of the brightest and most creative originate in Manchester
I know this isn't really important. But in all the zoom calls with politicians during lockdown I thought Lisa Nandy had the nicest room.
OT. Just listened to Lisa Nandy being interviewed in depth by Nick Robinson. I have to say she's a very impressive person and politician and not at all belonging in the box I'd put her in with Rayner and Long Bailey. An object lesson in not judging someone by the number of letters they drop. On the basis of that interview I reckon she'd make a formidable leader.
Quite a few of us voted for her in 2020.
Nice that you have realised that not all northerners are thick.
Nandy is a complete lightweight, had she been leading Labour not Starmer I doubt Labour would now be 25% ahead in the polls
She's actually anything but. You're as guilty as I am in rushing to judgements without the facts. She's well educated bright and has had a distinguished career in public service. Knowing you to be a snob you might also be impressed that her Grandfather was a Lord. Furthermore she's a Mancunian and it's common knowledge that most of the brightest and most creative originate in Manchester
I know this isn't really important. But in all the zoom calls with politicians during lockdown I thought Lisa Nandy had the nicest room.
Reflecting on yesterday's events - let's be fair, Kwarteng isn't the first Chancellor to be sacked or "asked to stand aside" to use the euphemism in recent times. We've had Sunak, Lawson and Lamont to name but three.
The one thing the change of Chancellor (voluntary or otherwise) is supposed to do is demonstrate the authority of the Prime Minister (primus inter pares) and it strengthens the notion of that authority to be seen to be able to dismiss someone as senior as the Chancellor.
Indeed, go back to the "Night of the Long Knives" and the dismissal of Thorneycroft, Birch and Powell by Harold MacMillan in 1958 (could one argue they were the first real Thatcherites?) and you see how a "little local difficulty" can build a Prime Minister's authority.
Yet the more I look at the circumstances of Kwarteng's resignation the more I see not a confirmation of Prime Ministerial authority but a confirmation of Prime Ministerial weakness. This isn't Blair giving Brown a free hand on the economy - this was a Prime Minister and Chancellor "in lockstep" so we were told.
An ill-timed and poorly communicated policy change which badly misread the public mood and the market reaction has claimed the carer of its creator (so we are to believe). Pace MacMillan, Truss has taken a axe to the "pro-growthers" ad cleared them out from the stables.
I can only assume Hunt has exacted a heavy price from Truss for taking this on - Campbell may be right to a point but Truss still has plenty of allies in Cabinet who can either defend her or join in the feeding frenzy.
However, to paraphrase Oscar Wilde, "to lose one Prime Minister may be regarded as misfortune, to lose two might be considered careless". Will enough people want a careless party in charge to allow the Conservatives another term in office?
Off top my head, Sunak not sacked and knight of Long Knives wasn’t 58, it was sixties when Super Mac in trouble?
To you he was knight of Long Knives, to me he will always be Sir Lance a Lot.
Whatever you’ve taken this evening, you’ve never had it so good 😆
2 x gin and red vermouth, 1 x glass Chilean pinot noir, 1 x and counting Cotes du Rhone Villages. Signing off now to watch a zombie movie. I have a 55" with stereo now, and a pretty big TV.
PS the way to approach Pinot Noir is to think of it as still, red champagne. Which is what it is.
The Kwarteng chancellorship was a major Cambridge University fail. The crème brûlée and Great Court Run college in particular. Re-establish the monasteries and give them their assets back?
Creme Brulee is Caius, not arriviste Trinity Burnt Cream.
My apologies. What's the difference, or is it only the nomenclature?
Doesn't the idea come from Catalonia anyway?
Despite my possible faux pas, it's true that Kwasi Kwarteng was in the in crowd at both Eton and Trinity and he ballsed up the Chancellor job as nobody has ever ballsed it up before so fast. And he doesn't have the humility and charm of Eddie the Eagle. No way would he have been promoted so high if he'd gone to the school down the road or even a second division private boarding school somewhere, or if he'd gone to, well, probably any university apart from Oxford and Cambridge.
And we can't blame the Tory party's membership in this instance.
Top post. Eton and Cambridge must be deeply embarrassed to have turned out such a tone-deaf incompetent.
He was at Cambridge with Richard Burgon, I believe, who was in the next door college?
Do people now understand why so many Cambridge politicians have been passed over before now?
Which would be a valid argument if the Oxford ones who get in weren't just as useless.
The real apex of entitled and ignorant cretinism in the education system is neither Oxford nor Cambridge, but Eton College. The first action of an incoming Labour Government should be to whistle up a squadron of RAF Typhoons armed with precision guided bombs and reduce the whole place to a pile of smouldering rubble.
Truss went to a comprehensive not Eton. The only Tory major winners in the last 40 years went to Eton
The only three PMs to win majorities in the last thirty years went to public schools. Two Eton, one Fettes.
Prior to that, the previous four (Major, Thatcher, Wilson, Heath) were all at state schools.
Yes, all 4 grammar school educated. Truss the first PM educated fully at a comprehensive for secondary education.
Starmer also educated at private and grammar school
Truss is hardly the great advert for comprehensive education. Be a while before the next, you'd think. Which is annoying. Going to be giving the posho wankers a clear run at it for decades....
Truss has explained how her hateful Comprehensive Education has been a millstone she has had to overcome through hard work and graft.
You are making the very fair assumption that after the magnificent Conservative renaissance over the last 24 hours, Labour remain very much unelectable, and will for generations to come, by which time Prime Minister HYUFD will have restored the Grammar School system.
OT. Just listened to Lisa Nandy being interviewed in depth by Nick Robinson. I have to say she's a very impressive person and politician and not at all belonging in the box I'd put her in with Rayner and Long Bailey. An object lesson in not judging someone by the number of letters they drop. On the basis of that interview I reckon she'd make a formidable leader.
Quite a few of us voted for her in 2020.
Nice that you have realised that not all northerners are thick.
Nandy is a complete lightweight, had she been leading Labour not Starmer I doubt Labour would now be 25% ahead in the polls
She's actually anything but. You're as guilty as I am in rushing to judgements without the facts. She's well educated bright and has had a distinguished career in public service. Knowing you to be a snob you might also be impressed that her Grandfather was a Lord. Furthermore she's a Mancunian and it's common knowledge that most of the brightest and most creative originate in Manchester
I know this isn't really important. But in all the zoom calls with politicians during lockdown I thought Lisa Nandy had the nicest room.
Actually it is important. You can tell a lot about a politician from their decor.
Reference Nadine Dorries’s ghastly curtains, which told anyone who didn’t know already that she shouldn’t have been allowed anywhere near Parliament, let alone Cabinet.
I have mixed feelings on it. I think the ban was basically an early example of virtue-signalling legislation. A very obvious target, based on an incorrect perception that it was conducted by posh twats, and inconsistent with animal welfare legislation elsewhere.
Still agree with the ban though.
I was very much involved in the core group who worked on the ban. Nobody to my recollection ever mentioned posh twats - it's an explanation put around by hunting fans to evade the issue that hunting animals for fun is morally indecent. We banned hare coursing at the same time, which was a traditional working class sport. The class of the people doing something cruel is really irrelevant.
Was it ever considered in core group that foxes are not very nice creatures at all, just 110% menace with no redeeming features and if they all died out in UK to only exist in France instead that wouldn’t be such a bad thing for this country at all?
Well, as a perfect solution to the core groups opposition to hunting them.
I'm doubtful about attributing niceness or otherwise to wild animals and I don't think that ever came up either. I'm against hunting anything for fun - rats, toads, bluebottles, whatever. It's not in any case an efficient form of fox control (and is not intended to be - it's a sport for enjoyment, not a serious culling operation). My uncle was a keen huntsman - he conceded that it wasn't useful and "not very nice for the fox" but felt it was a glorious spectacle.
but not pheasants.
As I say, there are shoots putting down 30,000 birds a year. Not a squeak from you lot. Why not?
Something everyone seems to be conveniently forgetting: Hunt got only 18 votes in the first round of the contest, 5% of total votes.
What is the relevance? Nobody is trying to have him retrospectively declared winner of that contest. The fact he has virtually no faction behind him actually strengthens his value as a compromise caretaker.
Something everyone conveniently forgets iis that Boris decided not to even enter the 2016 contest, therefore he should really not have been allowed to enter the 2019 contest at all. Past performance is everything.
3 year gap with that example. Hunt got 18 votes 3 or 4 months ago.
Reflecting on yesterday's events - let's be fair, Kwarteng isn't the first Chancellor to be sacked or "asked to stand aside" to use the euphemism in recent times. We've had Sunak, Lawson and Lamont to name but three.
The one thing the change of Chancellor (voluntary or otherwise) is supposed to do is demonstrate the authority of the Prime Minister (primus inter pares) and it strengthens the notion of that authority to be seen to be able to dismiss someone as senior as the Chancellor.
Indeed, go back to the "Night of the Long Knives" and the dismissal of Thorneycroft, Birch and Powell by Harold MacMillan in 1958 (could one argue they were the first real Thatcherites?) and you see how a "little local difficulty" can build a Prime Minister's authority.
Yet the more I look at the circumstances of Kwarteng's resignation the more I see not a confirmation of Prime Ministerial authority but a confirmation of Prime Ministerial weakness. This isn't Blair giving Brown a free hand on the economy - this was a Prime Minister and Chancellor "in lockstep" so we were told.
An ill-timed and poorly communicated policy change which badly misread the public mood and the market reaction has claimed the carer of its creator (so we are to believe). Pace MacMillan, Truss has taken a axe to the "pro-growthers" ad cleared them out from the stables.
I can only assume Hunt has exacted a heavy price from Truss for taking this on - Campbell may be right to a point but Truss still has plenty of allies in Cabinet who can either defend her or join in the feeding frenzy.
However, to paraphrase Oscar Wilde, "to lose one Prime Minister may be regarded as misfortune, to lose two might be considered careless". Will enough people want a careless party in charge to allow the Conservatives another term in office?
Peter Thorneycroft and his Treasury team were not dismissed by Macmillan in 1958 - they resigned!
I have mixed feelings on it. I think the ban was basically an early example of virtue-signalling legislation. A very obvious target, based on an incorrect perception that it was conducted by posh twats, and inconsistent with animal welfare legislation elsewhere.
Still agree with the ban though.
I was very much involved in the core group who worked on the ban. Nobody to my recollection ever mentioned posh twats - it's an explanation put around by hunting fans to evade the issue that hunting animals for fun is morally indecent. We banned hare coursing at the same time, which was a traditional working class sport. The class of the people doing something cruel is really irrelevant.
Was it ever considered in core group that foxes are not very nice creatures at all, just 110% menace with no redeeming features and if they all died out in UK to only exist in France instead that wouldn’t be such a bad thing for this country at all?
Well, as a perfect solution to the core groups opposition to hunting them.
I'm doubtful about attributing niceness or otherwise to wild animals and I don't think that ever came up either. I'm against hunting anything for fun - rats, toads, bluebottles, whatever. It's not in any case an efficient form of fox control (and is not intended to be - it's a sport for enjoyment, not a serious culling operation). My uncle was a keen huntsman - he conceded that it wasn't useful and "not very nice for the fox" but felt it was a glorious spectacle.
Reflecting on yesterday's events - let's be fair, Kwarteng isn't the first Chancellor to be sacked or "asked to stand aside" to use the euphemism in recent times. We've had Sunak, Lawson and Lamont to name but three.
The one thing the change of Chancellor (voluntary or otherwise) is supposed to do is demonstrate the authority of the Prime Minister (primus inter pares) and it strengthens the notion of that authority to be seen to be able to dismiss someone as senior as the Chancellor.
Indeed, go back to the "Night of the Long Knives" and the dismissal of Thorneycroft, Birch and Powell by Harold MacMillan in 1958 (could one argue they were the first real Thatcherites?) and you see how a "little local difficulty" can build a Prime Minister's authority.
Yet the more I look at the circumstances of Kwarteng's resignation the more I see not a confirmation of Prime Ministerial authority but a confirmation of Prime Ministerial weakness. This isn't Blair giving Brown a free hand on the economy - this was a Prime Minister and Chancellor "in lockstep" so we were told.
An ill-timed and poorly communicated policy change which badly misread the public mood and the market reaction has claimed the carer of its creator (so we are to believe). Pace MacMillan, Truss has taken a axe to the "pro-growthers" ad cleared them out from the stables.
I can only assume Hunt has exacted a heavy price from Truss for taking this on - Campbell may be right to a point but Truss still has plenty of allies in Cabinet who can either defend her or join in the feeding frenzy.
However, to paraphrase Oscar Wilde, "to lose one Prime Minister may be regarded as misfortune, to lose two might be considered careless". Will enough people want a careless party in charge to allow the Conservatives another term in office?
Off top my head, Sunak not sacked and knight of Long Knives wasn’t 58, it was sixties when Super Mac in trouble?
Correct . Sunak resigned - and the Night of the Long Knives was Summer 1962 when Selwyn Lloyd was dismissed.
I have mixed feelings on it. I think the ban was basically an early example of virtue-signalling legislation. A very obvious target, based on an incorrect perception that it was conducted by posh twats, and inconsistent with animal welfare legislation elsewhere.
Still agree with the ban though.
I was very much involved in the core group who worked on the ban. Nobody to my recollection ever mentioned posh twats - it's an explanation put around by hunting fans to evade the issue that hunting animals for fun is morally indecent. We banned hare coursing at the same time, which was a traditional working class sport. The class of the people doing something cruel is really irrelevant.
Was it ever considered in core group that foxes are not very nice creatures at all, just 110% menace with no redeeming features and if they all died out in UK to only exist in France instead that wouldn’t be such a bad thing for this country at all?
Well, as a perfect solution to the core groups opposition to hunting them.
I'm doubtful about attributing niceness or otherwise to wild animals and I don't think that ever came up either. I'm against hunting anything for fun - rats, toads, bluebottles, whatever. It's not in any case an efficient form of fox control (and is not intended to be - it's a sport for enjoyment, not a serious culling operation). My uncle was a keen huntsman - he conceded that it wasn't useful and "not very nice for the fox" but felt it was a glorious spectacle.
But you see my point though, as a New Labour MP? Tough on fox hunting, tough on causes of fox hunting? Which of course is the existence of foxes in this country. Logically, you sign a deal with a foreign country, who promise to treat them well and look after them okay through life, and fly them out there. Without ever revealing how much it costs overall, and avoiding a vote in the House of Commons.
OT. Just listened to Lisa Nandy being interviewed in depth by Nick Robinson. I have to say she's a very impressive person and politician and not at all belonging in the box I'd put her in with Rayner and Long Bailey. An object lesson in not judging someone by the number of letters they drop. On the basis of that interview I reckon she'd make a formidable leader.
Quite a few of us voted for her in 2020.
Nice that you have realised that not all northerners are thick.
Nandy is a complete lightweight, had she been leading Labour not Starmer I doubt Labour would now be 25% ahead in the polls
She's actually anything but. You're as guilty as I am in rushing to judgements without the facts. She's well educated bright and has had a distinguished career in public service. Knowing you to be a snob you might also be impressed that her Grandfather was a Lord. Furthermore she's a Mancunian and it's common knowledge that most of the brightest and most creative originate in Manchester
Reflecting on yesterday's events - let's be fair, Kwarteng isn't the first Chancellor to be sacked or "asked to stand aside" to use the euphemism in recent times. We've had Sunak, Lawson and Lamont to name but three.
The one thing the change of Chancellor (voluntary or otherwise) is supposed to do is demonstrate the authority of the Prime Minister (primus inter pares) and it strengthens the notion of that authority to be seen to be able to dismiss someone as senior as the Chancellor.
Indeed, go back to the "Night of the Long Knives" and the dismissal of Thorneycroft, Birch and Powell by Harold MacMillan in 1958 (could one argue they were the first real Thatcherites?) and you see how a "little local difficulty" can build a Prime Minister's authority.
Yet the more I look at the circumstances of Kwarteng's resignation the more I see not a confirmation of Prime Ministerial authority but a confirmation of Prime Ministerial weakness. This isn't Blair giving Brown a free hand on the economy - this was a Prime Minister and Chancellor "in lockstep" so we were told.
An ill-timed and poorly communicated policy change which badly misread the public mood and the market reaction has claimed the carer of its creator (so we are to believe). Pace MacMillan, Truss has taken a axe to the "pro-growthers" ad cleared them out from the stables.
I can only assume Hunt has exacted a heavy price from Truss for taking this on - Campbell may be right to a point but Truss still has plenty of allies in Cabinet who can either defend her or join in the feeding frenzy.
However, to paraphrase Oscar Wilde, "to lose one Prime Minister may be regarded as misfortune, to lose two might be considered careless". Will enough people want a careless party in charge to allow the Conservatives another term in office?
Off top my head, Sunak not sacked and knight of Long Knives wasn’t 58, it was sixties when Super Mac in trouble?
To you he was knight of Long Knives, to me he will always be Sir Lance a Lot.
Whatever you’ve taken this evening, you’ve never had it so good 😆
2 x gin and red vermouth, 1 x glass Chilean pinot noir, 1 x and counting Cotes du Rhone Villages. Signing off now to watch a zombie movie. I have a 55" with stereo now, and a pretty big TV.
PS the way to approach Pinot Noir is to think of it as still, red champagne. Which is what it is.
"I have a 55" with stereo now, and a pretty big TV."
Hold on. If you have a pretty big TV what does the 55" refer to.
Am in a nice post-h*****g fug (3pm meets as is the way these days) right now as we're sharing, with a glass of Waitrose Bourgogne blanc and a bottle of Ch. Tour St Bonnet 2010 waiting for later
The band of Ute people who called the Pikes Peak region their home were the Tabeguache, whose name means the "People of Sun Mountain".[4] Tava or "sun", is the Ute word that was given by these first people to the mountain that we now call Pikes Peak. It is thought that the Ute people first arrived in Colorado about 500 A.D.,[citation needed] however their oral history states that they were created on Tava. In the 1800s, when the Arapaho people arrived in Colorado, they knew the mountain as Heey-otoyoo' meaning "Long Mountain".[5]
Throughout its history, European peoples have called the mountain El Capitán, Grand Peak, Great Peak, James Peak, Long Mountain, and Pike's Peak.[3]
Early Spanish explorers named the mountain "El Capitán," meaning "The Leader". American explorer Zebulon Pike named the mountain "Highest Peak" in 1806, and the mountain was later commonly known as "Pike's Highest Peak." American explorer Stephen Harriman Long named the mountain "James Peak" in honor of Edwin James who climbed to the summit during Long's Expedition of 1820. The mountain was later renamed "Pike's Peak" in honor of Pike. The name was simplified to "Pikes Peak" by the United States Board on Geographic Names in 1890.
SSI - Current common name for this mountain, testifies to the American love of alliteration.
@elonmusk The hell with it … even though Starlink is still losing money & other companies are getting billions of taxpayer $, we’ll just keep funding Ukraine govt for free
If the companies making NLAWs and Javelins are being paid I'm not sure why Starlink isn't, but Musk should really cheer up about this. The use of Starlink by Ukraine in this war has been great advertising for them. We've been looking at houses in rural Ireland, and it's noticeable that there's a price differential for those without access to decent broadband, and Starlink looks like a practical alternative, and it's not even that much more expensive than Irish broadband prices.
A recommendation from the soldiers of Ukraine is pretty good in my book.
Reflecting on yesterday's events - let's be fair, Kwarteng isn't the first Chancellor to be sacked or "asked to stand aside" to use the euphemism in recent times. We've had Sunak, Lawson and Lamont to name but three.
The one thing the change of Chancellor (voluntary or otherwise) is supposed to do is demonstrate the authority of the Prime Minister (primus inter pares) and it strengthens the notion of that authority to be seen to be able to dismiss someone as senior as the Chancellor.
Indeed, go back to the "Night of the Long Knives" and the dismissal of Thorneycroft, Birch and Powell by Harold MacMillan in 1958 (could one argue they were the first real Thatcherites?) and you see how a "little local difficulty" can build a Prime Minister's authority.
Yet the more I look at the circumstances of Kwarteng's resignation the more I see not a confirmation of Prime Ministerial authority but a confirmation of Prime Ministerial weakness. This isn't Blair giving Brown a free hand on the economy - this was a Prime Minister and Chancellor "in lockstep" so we were told.
An ill-timed and poorly communicated policy change which badly misread the public mood and the market reaction has claimed the carer of its creator (so we are to believe). Pace MacMillan, Truss has taken a axe to the "pro-growthers" ad cleared them out from the stables.
I can only assume Hunt has exacted a heavy price from Truss for taking this on - Campbell may be right to a point but Truss still has plenty of allies in Cabinet who can either defend her or join in the feeding frenzy.
However, to paraphrase Oscar Wilde, "to lose one Prime Minister may be regarded as misfortune, to lose two might be considered careless". Will enough people want a careless party in charge to allow the Conservatives another term in office?
Off top my head, Sunak not sacked and knight of Long Knives wasn’t 58, it was sixties when Super Mac in trouble?
To you he was knight of Long Knives, to me he will always be Sir Lance a Lot.
Whatever you’ve taken this evening, you’ve never had it so good 😆
2 x gin and red vermouth, 1 x glass Chilean pinot noir, 1 x and counting Cotes du Rhone Villages. Signing off now to watch a zombie movie. I have a 55" with stereo now, and a pretty big TV.
PS the way to approach Pinot Noir is to think of it as still, red champagne. Which is what it is.
"I have a 55" with stereo now, and a pretty big TV."
Hold on. If you have a pretty big TV what does the 55" refer to.
Am in a nice post-h*****g fug (3pm meets as is the way these days) right now as we're sharing, with a glass of Waitrose Bourgogne blanc and a bottle of Ch. Tour St Bonnet 2010 waiting for later
Do you know it’s just occurred to me, Leon in the states is now on Wild West time, he’ll only be posting overnight. Arguing with RCS. We will miss it all.
Hunt has calmed the markets, if he quits then it will be carnage, so Truss cannot afford to lose him, he will do whatever he wants.
What happens if Monday comes and the markets aren’t calmed?
The way this usually happens is there can be two weeks of calm - people say the markets have been calmed, but then it all erupts again.
Obviously you all know my theory - £400bn of Rishi splaffing (and wasting a lot) to get us through covid has maxxed out the credit - now they want to (unnecessarily, needlessly) try to get another £200bn more borrowing - the markets won’t calm till that plan is dead.
Or the £200bn becomes more like £20bn. Everything now turns on the future price of gas.
I don’t want to be really rude David, but you keep posting that “If gas falls sufficiently, the cost of the energy cap freeze drops” means don’t think you really understand it. That thinking is utter bollox.
1. We haven’t had an OBR how much Tories total promise is likely to cost. The Tories have promised to buck the UK energy market for two and a half years regardless what global energy price does. Some think tanks have had a go at pricing this and come to a quarter of a trillion pound. To be found by tax rises, borrowing or cuts or mixture thereof. Quarter of a trillion on that one policy alone. 2. Variable one. Energy prices can go down, yes, but also up, it’s a very fluid situation in supply and demand over this coming period - but at which point do energy companies need to commit to buying it in advance, so commit to passing on THAT price to both customers AND onto a government commitment to bucking the market? 3. Variable two. If global prices do come down, to what degree is the saving on the quarter of a trillion eaten into or obliterated by the more expensive borrowing costs? Out of these two variable’s, borrowing costs for this policy look certain to remain high now, the greater doubt is if energy prices will come down and stay down isn’t it?
You really think that whole £200bn comes down to £20bn? 🥹 We all know what’s really behind “but the bill freeze looks like turning out much cheaper because gas prices are coming down” argument we get spun from Tory’s on TV and on PB - they privately hate this lumbering Labour policy Tory party has adopted, they hate the ENORMOUS amount of borrowing maxing out UKs credit limit, and the regressive unConservative way the money is spewed out in indiscriminate handouts.
But. They are only fooling themselves spinning that comfort blanket, because, yes, there are variables, but the variables are very much against them.
Don’t be one of them.
There is no defence to this insane policy, Truss has been hiding behind all week.
I would agree we don't know what this policy is going to cost and I would agree that there are significant risks on the upside but there is also some reason for hope on the low side.
The government have committed to the average house bill being no more than £2500 a year. At the moment the price of gas futures are 263p/therm. It has been over 700p and has averaged around 400p of late. The cost of the UK subsidy is directly relational to that price against the price that fixes the £2500 pa average. I have been unable to work out exactly what that is because there are quite a number of other variables. Energy companies are bumping up their fixed charges as well. My best guess is that £2500 per household is going be equivalent to something like 200p/therm, roughly twice what it was last winter.
But I am not wrong is saying that there is a chance that the cost of the scheme will prove to be much lower than the worst estimates. It could also be higher of course. If it stays somewhere near our current price or goes even lower then the cost of the scheme will be less. If it goes back up again we are in trouble, no doubt about it.
Edit, and btw the OBR will have no better idea than the rest of us, it is simply unknowable.
You telling us It’s unknowable wasn’t the impression I got when you reduced it from £200bn to £20bn to spark my reply. 🙂
We know enough overall price can’t come down that much. Because the bit you seem to be avoiding is commodity price drop is to some extent offset by borrowing cost increase - goes back to the unknowable being very guessable in that the borrowing cost won’t be based on “maybe the commodity price drops and stays at x price”, who lends money on that basis?
You accept the part of the equation, political and economic, it is not necessary to provide help in this way, there other options such as sliding scale to target help where needed, not wasted where not needed, and virtually pays for itself?
I believe most UK government borrowing is fixed rate. So the increase only kicks in as new debt is issued.
Interesting the current (March) forecast it from debt interest this year to be c £83bn but to *fall* to £47bn next year… a cut in public spending baked in
If you listened to what the mini budget said - the Energy Price Freeze (a quarter of a trillion pounds) will be paid for by new borrowing, no new taxes no new cuts.
If you listed to what Liz Truss said Wednesday, public spending overall total will not show any cuts under her, simply because the quarter of a trillion Energy Price Freeze is being added to the public spending total.
What I am arguing in this thread, we don’t have to fund a quarter of a trillion pound scheme when other realistic options are available better targeted and virtually paying for themselves, I’m also arguing against those saying commodity price coming down proves the end bill will definitely be cheaper, because even with cuts even with more tax, this scheme will always need a huge amount of new borrowing at the new higher borrowing rates.
Correct me where wrong.
But I am now adding a third facet to my argument - anyone who claims Kwarteng and Truss mini budget crashed the markets I am calling an idiot peddling a myth. And I can prove it. That spiking gilt market graph they use over and over in media, expand it to see the previous 12 months and see the trajectory is up up up long before Truss got anywhere near number 10 - my argument is the budget exacerbated an already underlying problem. Anyone want to own the claim if the mini budget is reversed, annulled, reset, the trajectory on the borrowings chart graph would be down when it hasn’t been all year?
I’m arguing anyone who peddles Labour Party lies that Kwarteng and Truss mini budget crashed the markets I am calling an idiot peddling a myth, and sure I can win this argument.
I’ve been drinking all afternoon, don’t anyone want to take me on?
You're probably sleeping it off right now, but just in case, I will!
You and @Luckyguy1983 are making a similar argument, and its nonsense.
You're arguing two different things. The first is a straw man, and obviously false: "Anyone want to own the claim if the mini budget is reversed, annulled, reset, the trajectory on the borrowings chart graph would be down when it hasn’t been all year?" Nah, no thanks, the economy was already getting worse before the Trustterf*ck.
The second argument obviously doesn't follow: "I’m arguing anyone who peddles Labour Party lies that Kwarteng and Truss mini budget crashed the markets I am calling an idiot peddling a myth, and sure I can win this argument." Nah you can't. The markets were already pretty unhappy, they dropped a Trussterbomb in the middle of it. They bear full responsibility for moving the markets from 'err...we don't really like this
If I was to say, sorry about that clusterbomb I dropped last week, I'll just clean up all the shrapnel from my clusterbomb and pretend it never happened, the maimed children might have something to say about it.
The Lab hunting ban was like Brexit. At its core a few people who were principled but everyone else just prejudiced. And each group benefited from the other.
OT. Just listened to Lisa Nandy being interviewed in depth by Nick Robinson. I have to say she's a very impressive person and politician and not at all belonging in the box I'd put her in with Rayner and Long Bailey. An object lesson in not judging someone by the number of letters they drop. On the basis of that interview I reckon she'd make a formidable leader.
Quite a few of us voted for her in 2020.
Nice that you have realised that not all northerners are thick.
Nandy is a complete lightweight, had she been leading Labour not Starmer I doubt Labour would now be 25% ahead in the polls
She's actually anything but. You're as guilty as I am in rushing to judgements without the facts. She's well educated bright and has had a distinguished career in public service. Knowing you to be a snob you might also be impressed that her Grandfather was a Lord. Furthermore she's a Mancunian and it's common knowledge that most of the brightest and most creative originate in Manchester
I know this isn't really important. But in all the zoom calls with politicians during lockdown I thought Lisa Nandy had the nicest room.
Extremely important. All clues. If only voters had seen Truss curtsy before electing her a catastrophe may have been avoided
@BethRigby I had heard via sources that Truss team had sounded out Javid. As a former CX who’d backed Truss, he’d have been an obvious choice for CX. When you need to win the party, this sort of briefing so damaging.
OT. Just listened to Lisa Nandy being interviewed in depth by Nick Robinson. I have to say she's a very impressive person and politician and not at all belonging in the box I'd put her in with Rayner and Long Bailey. An object lesson in not judging someone by the number of letters they drop. On the basis of that interview I reckon she'd make a formidable leader.
Quite a few of us voted for her in 2020.
Nice that you have realised that not all northerners are thick.
Nandy is a complete lightweight, had she been leading Labour not Starmer I doubt Labour would now be 25% ahead in the polls
She's actually anything but. You're as guilty as I am in rushing to judgements without the facts. She's well educated bright and has had a distinguished career in public service. Knowing you to be a snob you might also be impressed that her Grandfather was a Lord. Furthermore she's a Mancunian and it's common knowledge that most of the brightest and most creative originate in Manchester
I have mixed feelings on it. I think the ban was basically an early example of virtue-signalling legislation. A very obvious target, based on an incorrect perception that it was conducted by posh twats, and inconsistent with animal welfare legislation elsewhere.
Still agree with the ban though.
I was very much involved in the core group who worked on the ban. Nobody to my recollection ever mentioned posh twats - it's an explanation put around by hunting fans to evade the issue that hunting animals for fun is morally indecent. We banned hare coursing at the same time, which was a traditional working class sport. The class of the people doing something cruel is really irrelevant.
Was it ever considered in core group that foxes are not very nice creatures at all, just 110% menace with no redeeming features and if they all died out in UK to only exist in France instead that wouldn’t be such a bad thing for this country at all?
Well, as a perfect solution to the core groups opposition to hunting them.
I'm doubtful about attributing niceness or otherwise to wild animals and I don't think that ever came up either. I'm against hunting anything for fun - rats, toads, bluebottles, whatever. It's not in any case an efficient form of fox control (and is not intended to be - it's a sport for enjoyment, not a serious culling operation). My uncle was a keen huntsman - he conceded that it wasn't useful and "not very nice for the fox" but felt it was a glorious spectacle.
Technically, a keen hunting man. There's only one huntsman, the bloke with the hunting horn.
This is v interesting, you are the only PBer about whom I know which public school their father attended, and you resent your uncle (his brother?) too. My question is this: what have a hundred foxes a year got that 30 000 pheasants haven't? Think what you would say if a hunt bred 30,000 foxes a year and aimed to kill 25,000 of them. If you think birds are in some way inferior to mammals google BF Skinner. Why the complete and utter silence on this topic? Except that you've fucked them toffs on horses who remind you of your dad, so job done?
@BethRigby I had heard via sources that Truss team had sounded out Javid. As a former CX who’d backed Truss, he’d have been an obvious choice for CX. When you need to win the party, this sort of briefing so damaging.
Pharmacists are trained medical professionals. They are not going to just hand these out like candy
Won't that lead to conflict if a customer thinks they should have them but the pharmacist doesn't?
GPs already get aggressive patients demanding all kinds of stuff.
My old GP would prescribe anything you asked him for. He would give me antibiotics unprompted. A couple of times I asked - hang on, I have a virus. Are you worried about an infection as well?
I used to joke that I should ask for some diamorphine - just to see if he would hand it out.
His daughter, who took over, is much better.
In a number of countries I have visited, pharmacies will hand out medicines that are prescription only in the U.K. I’m pretty sure antibiotics are among them.
Other countries are even more strict, though, on what can be bought "over the counter". When I worked in Norway and was going home for weekends, work colleagues would ask me to smuggle in Benylin.
For the first time in a long time I believe we have a grown up in what is now the most powerful political position in the country
I wish Hunt all the best not just for the conservative party but for the country
Truss is over, it is just the question of when but it won't be long
But he is in favour of fox hunting don't forget.
Good. So am I.
But BigG definitely isn't. During the Johnson/Hunt leadership contest it was a deal breaker for his vote.
Fox hunting is a long way outside the Chncellors remit though
I am implacably opposed to fox hunting but I really do not see this as an issue at this time
Because you know absolutely nothing about it.
There is not one person across our family who supports fox hunting
I support fox hunting.
How do you think packs of wild wolves hunt Moose in the Yukon? Or any other predator for that matter? Why is that inferior to snaring or shooting?
Hunting is perfectly natural. Rest is class warfare and absurd emotional sentimentality.
Riding dressed in hunting pinks on artificially bred horses and killing the neighbourhood cats with packs of artificially bred C. familiaris is natural?
Very weak. Yes, compared to shooting them with Czech rifles fitted with Russian night vision scopes.
i'm assuming as they're Russian they usually shoot far more ammunition than they need, destroy everything around the fox and then let it wander away unhurt while the marksman is declaring a great victory?
No, they do work. I assume because the officer class nicks all the good stuff and ebays it in the west.
Years ago, I knew someone who killed foxes for the farmers. Used a reproduction Sharps in 50-90. With a vast flash suppressor, and a night vision scope. Hand loads with a (relatively) flashless powder.
The theory was that if you hit the fox, no matter where, it was dead.
Pharmacists are trained medical professionals. They are not going to just hand these out like candy
Won't that lead to conflict if a customer thinks they should have them but the pharmacist doesn't?
GPs already get aggressive patients demanding all kinds of stuff.
My old GP would prescribe anything you asked him for. He would give me antibiotics unprompted. A couple of times I asked - hang on, I have a virus. Are you worried about an infection as well?
I used to joke that I should ask for some diamorphine - just to see if he would hand it out.
His daughter, who took over, is much better.
In a number of countries I have visited, pharmacies will hand out medicines that are prescription only in the U.K. I’m pretty sure antibiotics are among them.
Daughter of a doctor got a place at Med School. Fancy that.
Child tends to follow parents trade. As has happened since trades were invented.
Film at 11
I have no problem with the daughter wanting to go into medicine. It is the fact that it is so much easier for someone in her position to get into Med School than for those without the connections to facilitate the CV enhancing shadowing and work experience that pisses me off.
My GF was first in her family to go to uni, straight into med school and currently looking after people in an Edinburgh A&E.
Slight problem - she went to a grammar school. Now, I get the rationale behind not supporting them. But everyone I know from that background who has done really well has had some sort of leg up (eg foster kid on bursary at Gordonstoun) or went into the OPITO/Merchant Navy
OT. Just listened to Lisa Nandy being interviewed in depth by Nick Robinson. I have to say she's a very impressive person and politician and not at all belonging in the box I'd put her in with Rayner and Long Bailey. An object lesson in not judging someone by the number of letters they drop. On the basis of that interview I reckon she'd make a formidable leader.
Quite a few of us voted for her in 2020.
Nice that you have realised that not all northerners are thick.
Nandy is a complete lightweight, had she been leading Labour not Starmer I doubt Labour would now be 25% ahead in the polls
She's actually anything but. You're as guilty as I am in rushing to judgements without the facts. She's well educated bright and has had a distinguished career in public service. Knowing you to be a snob you might also be impressed that her Grandfather was a Lord. Furthermore she's a Mancunian and it's common knowledge that most of the brightest and most creative originate in Manchester
I know this isn't really important. But in all the zoom calls with politicians during lockdown I thought Lisa Nandy had the nicest room.
The account 'Bookcase credibility' judging public figures' backdrops during lockdown was a hoot, shame it had to naturally peter out.
@BethRigby I had heard via sources that Truss team had sounded out Javid. As a former CX who’d backed Truss, he’d have been an obvious choice for CX. When you need to win the party, this sort of briefing so damaging.
For the first time in a long time I believe we have a grown up in what is now the most powerful political position in the country
I wish Hunt all the best not just for the conservative party but for the country
Truss is over, it is just the question of when but it won't be long
But he is in favour of fox hunting don't forget.
Good. So am I.
But BigG definitely isn't. During the Johnson/Hunt leadership contest it was a deal breaker for his vote.
Fox hunting is a long way outside the Chncellors remit though
I am implacably opposed to fox hunting but I really do not see this as an issue at this time
Because you know absolutely nothing about it.
There is not one person across our family who supports fox hunting
Ignorance and prejudice often cluster in families.
The North Ledbury Hunt took the stirrup cup in the car park of the Crown in Cradley, almost opposite where I lived. The hounds lost the scent of the fox in our back garden. How my father laughed as 30 dogs trampled his perfectly manicured garden. I thought good on the fox who had leapt the fences half an hour earlier. A very angry Assistant Hunt Master had to dismount and come into our garden and collect his dogs. I suggested "this one got away", to which he retorted "we'll dig the bastard out and feed him to the dogs anyway" which didn't seem very sporting. Anyway the fox had the last laugh, because when she died Last Wachter, the Hunt Master had all her horses and hounds put down as part of her will.
For the first time in a long time I believe we have a grown up in what is now the most powerful political position in the country
I wish Hunt all the best not just for the conservative party but for the country
Truss is over, it is just the question of when but it won't be long
But he is in favour of fox hunting don't forget.
Good. So am I.
But BigG definitely isn't. During the Johnson/Hunt leadership contest it was a deal breaker for his vote.
Fox hunting is a long way outside the Chncellors remit though
I am implacably opposed to fox hunting but I really do not see this as an issue at this time
Because you know absolutely nothing about it.
There is not one person across our family who supports fox hunting
I support fox hunting.
How do you think packs of wild wolves hunt Moose in the Yukon? Or any other predator for that matter? Why is that inferior to snaring or shooting?
Hunting is perfectly natural. Rest is class warfare and absurd emotional sentimentality.
Riding dressed in hunting pinks on artificially bred horses and killing the neighbourhood cats with packs of artificially bred C. familiaris is natural?
But why should the uniforms and ceremony bother you?
Just checking your claim that "hunting is perfectly natural".
So, hang on, we have to strip naked before we can claim that our actions are, relatively speaking, natural? (And natural is only ever relatively speaking, you think foxes haven't evolved in lockstep with human farming practices?)
Yes, the only way to do it properly is on foot with flint microlith spears and dressed in fur jockstraps. I am specifrically referring to CR's contention that it was all "perfectly natural", unless 'perfect' has some other meaning I'm not aware of.
Of course the modern environment is substantially artificial and of course foxes respond in innate and learned behaviours and physiology as a result. IIRC there are a number of actual/potential cases of human predation etc. affecting vertebrate evolution though I forget the details - fish breeding age in the North Sea and so on.
I've seen it suggested urban foxes are developing the sorts of signs of neoteny that are seen in domestication.
I watched a YouTube documentary that described the evidence for fox domestication in the Bronze Age and late Neolithic.
Reflecting on yesterday's events - let's be fair, Kwarteng isn't the first Chancellor to be sacked or "asked to stand aside" to use the euphemism in recent times. We've had Sunak, Lawson and Lamont to name but three.
The one thing the change of Chancellor (voluntary or otherwise) is supposed to do is demonstrate the authority of the Prime Minister (primus inter pares) and it strengthens the notion of that authority to be seen to be able to dismiss someone as senior as the Chancellor.
Indeed, go back to the "Night of the Long Knives" and the dismissal of Thorneycroft, Birch and Powell by Harold MacMillan in 1958 (could one argue they were the first real Thatcherites?) and you see how a "little local difficulty" can build a Prime Minister's authority.
Yet the more I look at the circumstances of Kwarteng's resignation the more I see not a confirmation of Prime Ministerial authority but a confirmation of Prime Ministerial weakness. This isn't Blair giving Brown a free hand on the economy - this was a Prime Minister and Chancellor "in lockstep" so we were told.
An ill-timed and poorly communicated policy change which badly misread the public mood and the market reaction has claimed the carer of its creator (so we are to believe). Pace MacMillan, Truss has taken a axe to the "pro-growthers" ad cleared them out from the stables.
I can only assume Hunt has exacted a heavy price from Truss for taking this on - Campbell may be right to a point but Truss still has plenty of allies in Cabinet who can either defend her or join in the feeding frenzy.
However, to paraphrase Oscar Wilde, "to lose one Prime Minister may be regarded as misfortune, to lose two might be considered careless". Will enough people want a careless party in charge to allow the Conservatives another term in office?
Off top my head, Sunak not sacked and knight of Long Knives wasn’t 58, it was sixties when Super Mac in trouble?
Correct . Sunak resigned - and the Night of the Long Knives was Summer 1962 when Selwyn Lloyd was dismissed.
Yes.
I recall he made 48 before being turned inside out and edging to gully. And so it started, Knight of long Nightlife’s, or something 34 years before I was born.
The gruesome phrase, so inappropriate on anniversary of Sir David’s death, I presume is a Shakespeare reference?
OT. Just listened to Lisa Nandy being interviewed in depth by Nick Robinson. I have to say she's a very impressive person and politician and not at all belonging in the box I'd put her in with Rayner and Long Bailey. An object lesson in not judging someone by the number of letters they drop. On the basis of that interview I reckon she'd make a formidable leader.
Quite a few of us voted for her in 2020.
Nice that you have realised that not all northerners are thick.
Nandy is a complete lightweight, had she been leading Labour not Starmer I doubt Labour would now be 25% ahead in the polls
She's actually anything but. You're as guilty as I am in rushing to judgements without the facts. She's well educated bright and has had a distinguished career in public service. Knowing you to be a snob you might also be impressed that her Grandfather was a Lord. Furthermore she's a Mancunian and it's common knowledge that most of the brightest and most creative originate in Manchester
I know this isn't really important. But in all the zoom calls with politicians during lockdown I thought Lisa Nandy had the nicest room.
The account 'Bookcase credibility' judging public figures' backdrops during lockdown was a hoot, shame it had to naturally peter out.
I wonder what they'd make of me - three bookcases, one with history, one with history and theology, and one with music.
Comments
Edit bugger I hate the way edits get incorporated into quotes. To rescue the joke your last line used to read "I’ve been drinking all afternoon, don’t anyone want to take Meon?"
you bin 2 de races or watching on telly?
My old GP would prescribe anything you asked him for. He would give me antibiotics unprompted. A couple of times I asked - hang on, I have a virus. Are you worried about an infection as well?
I used to joke that I should ask for some diamorphine - just to see if he would hand it out.
His daughter, who took over, is much better.
In a number of countries I have visited, pharmacies will hand out medicines that are prescription only in the U.K. I’m pretty sure antibiotics are among them.
Sounds like Lincolnshire.
Let us hunt Brexiteers!
Borisism just as unrealistic, stupid and with unsavoury bits, yet still very different than Farage and blukip
It was a main story link from The Guardian who referenced their source, which was very decent of them although I see they've now dropped it.
I avoid the mail but it's a big story, hence why The Guardian covered it.
Reflecting on yesterday's events - let's be fair, Kwarteng isn't the first Chancellor to be sacked or "asked to stand aside" to use the euphemism in recent times. We've had Sunak, Lawson and Lamont to name but three.
The one thing the change of Chancellor (voluntary or otherwise) is supposed to do is demonstrate the authority of the Prime Minister (primus inter pares) and it strengthens the notion of that authority to be seen to be able to dismiss someone as senior as the Chancellor.
Indeed, go back to the "Night of the Long Knives" and the dismissal of Thorneycroft, Birch and Powell by Harold MacMillan in 1958 (could one argue they were the first real Thatcherites?) and you see how a "little local difficulty" can build a Prime Minister's authority.
Yet the more I look at the circumstances of Kwarteng's resignation the more I see not a confirmation of Prime Ministerial authority but a confirmation of Prime Ministerial weakness. This isn't Blair giving Brown a free hand on the economy - this was a Prime Minister and Chancellor "in lockstep" so we were told.
An ill-timed and poorly communicated policy change which badly misread the public mood and the market reaction has claimed the carer of its creator (so we are to believe). Pace MacMillan, Truss has taken a axe to the "pro-growthers" ad cleared them out from the stables.
I can only assume Hunt has exacted a heavy price from Truss for taking this on - Campbell may be right to a point but Truss still has plenty of allies in Cabinet who can either defend her or join in the feeding frenzy.
However, to paraphrase Oscar Wilde, "to lose one Prime Minister may be regarded as misfortune, to lose two might be considered careless". Will enough people want a careless party in charge to allow the Conservatives another term in office?
Wasn't Brown technically at a comp as well, albeit in the fast stream of it?
Get a life.
https://amp.theguardian.com/politics/2003/jul/01/immigrationpolicy.hunting
We are miles apart on this so best that we accept this and banter on other issues.
Well, as a perfect solution to the core groups opposition to hunting them.
The theory was that if you hit the fox, no matter where, it was dead. Child tends to follow parents trade. As has happened since trades were invented.
Film at 11
That time has been beaten now - someone cheated by using an EV car, which has no loss of power at altitude.
Unlike @Leon I would guess. Doing anything at all at that kind of height without acclimatising is difficult.
Nobody grouses about it......
But I do prefer it.
The hell with it … even though Starlink is still losing money & other companies are getting billions of taxpayer $, we’ll just keep funding Ukraine govt for free
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1581345747777179651
Fox are pests.
I’ve no idea why it’s such a shibboleth in the UK.
2 x gin and red vermouth, 1 x glass Chilean pinot noir, 1 x and counting Cotes du Rhone Villages. Signing off now to watch a zombie movie. I have a 55" with stereo now, and a pretty big TV.
PS the way to approach Pinot Noir is to think of it as still, red champagne. Which is what it is.
You are making the very fair assumption that after the magnificent Conservative renaissance over the last 24 hours, Labour remain very much unelectable, and will for
generations to come, by which time Prime Minister HYUFD will have restored the Grammar School system.
Reference Nadine Dorries’s ghastly curtains, which told anyone who didn’t know already that she shouldn’t have been allowed anywhere near Parliament, let alone Cabinet.
As I say, there are shoots putting down 30,000 birds a year. Not a squeak from you lot. Why not?
And it’s not a comfortable read is it? Not at all.
Hold on. If you have a pretty big TV what does the 55" refer to.
Am in a nice post-h*****g fug (3pm meets as is the way these days) right now as we're sharing, with a glass of Waitrose Bourgogne blanc and a bottle of Ch. Tour St Bonnet 2010 waiting for later
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pikes_Peak
The band of Ute people who called the Pikes Peak region their home were the Tabeguache, whose name means the "People of Sun Mountain".[4] Tava or "sun", is the Ute word that was given by these first people to the mountain that we now call Pikes Peak. It is thought that the Ute people first arrived in Colorado about 500 A.D.,[citation needed] however their oral history states that they were created on Tava. In the 1800s, when the Arapaho people arrived in Colorado, they knew the mountain as Heey-otoyoo' meaning "Long Mountain".[5]
Throughout its history, European peoples have called the mountain El Capitán, Grand Peak, Great Peak, James Peak, Long Mountain, and Pike's Peak.[3]
Early Spanish explorers named the mountain "El Capitán," meaning "The Leader". American explorer Zebulon Pike named the mountain "Highest Peak" in 1806, and the mountain was later commonly known as "Pike's Highest Peak." American explorer Stephen Harriman Long named the mountain "James Peak" in honor of Edwin James who climbed to the summit during Long's Expedition of 1820. The mountain was later renamed "Pike's Peak" in honor of Pike. The name was simplified to "Pikes Peak" by the United States Board on Geographic Names in 1890.
SSI - Current common name for this mountain, testifies to the American love of alliteration.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pikes_Peak_Cog_Railway
Note that you can also take a cog railway to the top of Mount Washington, New Hampshire
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Washington_Cog_Railway
A recommendation from the soldiers of Ukraine is pretty good in my book.
Oh dear.
You and @Luckyguy1983 are making a similar argument, and its nonsense.
You're arguing two different things. The first is a straw man, and obviously false: "Anyone want to own the claim if the mini budget is reversed, annulled, reset, the trajectory on the borrowings chart graph would be down when it hasn’t been all year?" Nah, no thanks, the economy was already getting worse before the Trustterf*ck.
The second argument obviously doesn't follow: "I’m arguing anyone who peddles Labour Party lies that Kwarteng and Truss mini budget crashed the markets I am calling an idiot peddling a myth, and sure I can win this argument." Nah you can't. The markets were already pretty unhappy, they dropped a Trussterbomb in the middle of it. They bear full responsibility for moving the markets from 'err...we don't really like this
If I was to say, sorry about that clusterbomb I dropped last week, I'll just clean up all the shrapnel from my clusterbomb and pretend it never happened, the maimed children might have something to say about it.
I had heard via sources that Truss team had sounded out Javid. As a former CX who’d backed Truss, he’d have been an obvious choice for CX. When you need to win the party, this sort of briefing so damaging.
https://twitter.com/BethRigby/status/1581350588540805120
You are never one to blow your own oboe, are you
And as regards animal welfare, I’d prefer to do something meaningful like a complete ban on battery caging for hens.
This is v interesting, you are the only PBer about whom I know which public school their father attended, and you resent your uncle (his brother?) too. My question is this: what have a hundred foxes a year got that 30 000 pheasants haven't? Think what you would say if a hunt bred 30,000 foxes a year and aimed to kill 25,000 of them. If you think birds are in some way inferior to mammals google BF Skinner. Why the complete and utter silence on this topic? Except that you've fucked them toffs on horses who remind you of your dad, so job done?
When I worked in Norway and was going home for weekends, work colleagues would ask me to smuggle in Benylin.
Slight problem - she went to a grammar school. Now, I get the rationale behind not supporting them. But everyone I know from that background who has done really well has had some sort of leg up (eg foster kid on bursary at Gordonstoun) or went into the OPITO/Merchant Navy
With the sad exception of his recent comments about his brother’s suicide, I’ve never heard him say a single thing either useful or interesting.
I recall he made 48 before being turned inside out and edging to gully. And so it started, Knight of long Nightlife’s, or something 34 years before I was born.
The gruesome phrase, so inappropriate on anniversary of Sir David’s death, I presume is a Shakespeare reference?