Obviously, London is geographically in the South East, never mind what HYUFD thinks.
The statistical regions are in some cases entirely artificial, and not supposed to trump everyday usage.
Personally, as I may have mentioned, I largely follow the watersheds, but correct using the the traditional county lines to avoid dismembering counties.
That puts Oxon, Berks, Herts, Essex, London, Surrey, Sussex and Kent in the South East (or perhaps better, “Thames”).
Northants, Beds, Cambs, and East Anglia (Norfolk, Suffolk) are all “Eastern” counties.
Hampshire, Dorset and Wiltshire are “Wessex”, Somerset and Dorset are “South West”, and Cornwall is Cornwall.
The Midlands start with Gloucs and then run up through Warks, Leics, Rutland, Lincs.
My judgment on this matter is final.
Alfred’s judgement was final.
Oxford is in Mercia
Yet, earlier, someone put Herefordshire in the West Midlands (= Mercia)
An outrage. I grew up in Herefordshire and everyone there deeply resented the idea of being lumped in with the horrors of Birmingham and Wolverhampton
Herefordshire is in the Marches. It is the beautiful defensive zone of England as it butts up against Wales. The Marches are lovely. West Midlands is not lovely
The West Midlands are in fact very lovely, or at least they were until somebody put Birmingham there.
The Malverns, Cannock Chase, the Shropshire Hills, the Clent Hills, Dovedale, Shrewsbury, Lichfield and Stratford are all in the Midlands. It is surprising to hear them described as ‘not lovely.’
Another day another 730 Russians reported as liquidated by the Ukrainians. Rule of thumb would be double that number wounded. How many days can pass with the Russians losing 2000 people on the battlefield before something cracks I wonder.
Oxfordshire is difficult. Henley is South-East, Banbury is Midlands, Chipping Norton is Cotswolds, and Oxford is a huge ever growing pulsating brain that rules from the centre of the ultraworld, but with a traffic problem.
The village of Bicester is part of London too.
Not sure if that puts it in the South East... oh shit, sorry 🤦🏻♂️
Voters in the historic “red wall” seat of Sedgefield in County Durham, where Tony Blair was once elected to parliament, are willing to give Rishi Sunak a chance to improve their prospects as the cost of living crisis deepens, since Keir Starmer is “not making a case for himself”.
Members of a focus group, conducted by UK More in Common for the Guardian, described Sunak as “the money man” with a CV that proves he was the “best of a bad bunch” of Conservative leadership candidates……
“Winning back their confidence won’t be easy. But the good news for Rishi Sunak was that they thought he was the best person to clean up the mess, and didn’t think that anyone else, including Keir Starmer, would do a better job.”
Which plays into yesterday's suggestion that Rishi's faux Boris act at PMQs is deeply mistaken, and that he should revert to being the calm financial technocrat instead.
And proves once again that people will forgive the Tories anything, like a cheating husband who keeps worming his way back into the marriage. Incredible.
The reality of the situation is that Rishi is a welcome change from Truss and Boris. It’s a low bar he can walk under. Arguing to the contrary is a waste of time. He will be thanked for that, at least in the short term.
What will become clear is that change whilst necessary, was insufficient. We are starting to see that already. The government is still a mess.
The Conservative party is still split and confused, the ministers are still tired, the economy is on its knees and Tory solutions have demonstrably failed. Your taxes are going up, your costs are going up. They will both likely stay up into 2024.
So the question will be do you want another 5 years of that? If Labour can demonstrate another way, the answer will be no.
Labour have yet to seal the deal. However, as you say, if they can demonstrate another way and not simply be there as the voice of various single issue lobby groups.
They need to engage with communities and understand what they want. Not talk down to them and tell them what they think they want. They need to regard the red wall, not as sinners repenting, but as a failure of Labour to engage.
I hope they do. This Tory govt does not deserve to be re-elected but, currently, labour has not demonstrated it deserves to be elevated to govt.
Voters in the historic “red wall” seat of Sedgefield in County Durham, where Tony Blair was once elected to parliament, are willing to give Rishi Sunak a chance to improve their prospects as the cost of living crisis deepens, since Keir Starmer is “not making a case for himself”.
Members of a focus group, conducted by UK More in Common for the Guardian, described Sunak as “the money man” with a CV that proves he was the “best of a bad bunch” of Conservative leadership candidates.
AOTBE I'd expect some 'redwall' seats to stay blue next time, especially those which have been trending that way for some time.
The seats where old coal mining sites have been converted to brownfield commuter estates have probably changed for good- probably from safe Labour to classic marginal.
When you look at some of them it is hard to see why they stayed so solidly labour for so long, certainly up here.
I did have a scan through the geographic regions piece - why argue? Economically there is London and then southern England and then everywhere else.
London's economy and importance is so big that it sits by itself. Dahn Sarf isn't London, but pays insane prices for things like houses. I have *no clue* - genuinely - how anyone can buy property down there where a shitbox semi is half a million.
Where southern England stops and rEngland starts is vague. Depends on how far the wealth spreads. Would put the Cotswolds in Southern England but not Cornwall or Norfolk.
As for other labels, north, north west, north east, doesn't that depend on what perspective you have? I grew up in the North West. I thought. But its a long way south of the North East. So just call all of it north, which other than a choice of stupid accent isn't that dissimilar to the midlands.
Scotland is easier I think. Borders, Central Belt, North East, Highlands and Islands. Wales? That woollyback strip along the top, the valleys and Cardiff at the bottom, and dragon country for the rest.
Another day another 730 Russians reported as liquidated by the Ukrainians. Rule of thumb would be double that number wounded. How many days can pass with the Russians losing 2000 people on the battlefield before something cracks I wonder.
At that rate the mobilised troops will be chewed up by the spring.
Voters in the historic “red wall” seat of Sedgefield in County Durham, where Tony Blair was once elected to parliament, are willing to give Rishi Sunak a chance to improve their prospects as the cost of living crisis deepens, since Keir Starmer is “not making a case for himself”.
Members of a focus group, conducted by UK More in Common for the Guardian, described Sunak as “the money man” with a CV that proves he was the “best of a bad bunch” of Conservative leadership candidates……
“Winning back their confidence won’t be easy. But the good news for Rishi Sunak was that they thought he was the best person to clean up the mess, and didn’t think that anyone else, including Keir Starmer, would do a better job.”
Which plays into yesterday's suggestion that Rishi's faux Boris act at PMQs is deeply mistaken, and that he should revert to being the calm financial technocrat instead.
And proves once again that people will forgive the Tories anything, like a cheating husband who keeps worming his way back into the marriage. Incredible.
The reality of the situation is that Rishi is a welcome change from Truss and Boris. It’s a low bar he can walk under. Arguing to the contrary is a waste of time. He will be thanked for that, at least in the short term.
What will become clear is that change whilst necessary, was insufficient. We are starting to see that already. The government is still a mess.
The Conservative party is still split and confused, the ministers are still tired, the economy is on its knees and Tory solutions have demonstrably failed. Your taxes are going up, your costs are going up. They will both likely stay up into 2024.
So the question will be do you want another 5 years of that? If Labour can demonstrate another way, the answer will be no.
Matt Hancock could be disqualified from Bushtucker Trials on I'm A Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here! after it has been reported the former Health Secretary is battling a secret health condition. However, it has now been reported that viewers may be unable to vote for Mr Hancock to do the resilience tests as he is said to have developed trench foot while filming Celebrity SAS Who Dares Wins.
Voters in the historic “red wall” seat of Sedgefield in County Durham, where Tony Blair was once elected to parliament, are willing to give Rishi Sunak a chance to improve their prospects as the cost of living crisis deepens, since Keir Starmer is “not making a case for himself”.
Members of a focus group, conducted by UK More in Common for the Guardian, described Sunak as “the money man” with a CV that proves he was the “best of a bad bunch” of Conservative leadership candidates……
“Winning back their confidence won’t be easy. But the good news for Rishi Sunak was that they thought he was the best person to clean up the mess, and didn’t think that anyone else, including Keir Starmer, would do a better job.”
Which plays into yesterday's suggestion that Rishi's faux Boris act at PMQs is deeply mistaken, and that he should revert to being the calm financial technocrat instead.
And proves once again that people will forgive the Tories anything, like a cheating husband who keeps worming his way back into the marriage. Incredible.
The reality of the situation is that Rishi is a welcome change from Truss and Boris. It’s a low bar he can walk under. Arguing to the contrary is a waste of time. He will be thanked for that, at least in the short term.
What will become clear is that change whilst necessary, was insufficient. We are starting to see that already. The government is still a mess.
The Conservative party is still split and confused, the ministers are still tired, the economy is on its knees and Tory solutions have demonstrably failed. Your taxes are going up, your costs are going up. They will both likely stay up into 2024.
So the question will be do you want another 5 years of that? If Labour can demonstrate another way, the answer will be no.
Labour have yet to seal the deal. However, as you say, if they can demonstrate another way and not simply be there as the voice of various single issue lobby groups.
They need to engage with communities and understand what they want. Not talk down to them and tell them what they think they want. They need to regard the red wall, not as sinners repenting, but as a failure of Labour to engage.
I hope they do. This Tory govt does not deserve to be re-elected but, currently, labour has not demonstrated it deserves to be elevated to govt.
This concept of ‘sealing the deal’ is always a weird one, but no opposition has ever sealed the deal two years out. Not even Blair, who famously remained anxious up until the end of the 1997 campaign.
Not sealing the deal at this stage is completely fine. My view is that Labour have a chance of winning, which is remarkable given the started at 200 seats and with their worst result since 1935. It’s a hell of a long way back. People’s opinions really don’t change all that fast. There will be doubts. What’s encouraging is the opposition opera seems to be professionally run and informed by good research. So it’s possible to remain hopeful tgat Labour can seize the opportunity.
The Telegraph reports that the Home Office is attempting to block book the entire 4 star Novotel in Ipswich for dinghy people. For months, is the implication
The optics of this for HMG are implausibly bad. I imagine a large chunk of financially hard pressed Brits would love to spend the winter in a 4 star Novotel. With everything provided - from food to heating
Yet Albanians come first? AND YOU HAVE TO PAY FOR THEM
Another day another 730 Russians reported as liquidated by the Ukrainians. Rule of thumb would be double that number wounded. How many days can pass with the Russians losing 2000 people on the battlefield before something cracks I wonder.
At that rate the mobilised troops will be chewed up by the spring.
Much as I would cheer the demise of the Russian army, I think it is easy to get carried away and start hopecasting.
At various times we have seen numerous forecasts that the Russian economy is going collapse in weeks, and more recently, their army in the south will crumble and disappear.
One thing for a group of discredited clinicians to put their name to a self-serving letter. Quite another for an NHS Trust - rated inadequate by CQC for care in this area, at the heart of a model found desperately wanting an independent review - to back this.
The children’s safeguarding lead at @TaviAndPort won an employment tribunal against them after she was discriminated against after whistleblowing about concerns. Concerns that have been vindicated by CQC, High Court, Cass Review and others. One might think reflection was in order
The Telegraph reports that the Home Office is attempting to block book the entire 4 star Novotel in Ipswich for dinghy people. For months, is the implication
The optics of this for HMG are implausibly bad. I imagine a large chunk of financially hard pressed Brits would love to spend the winter in a 4 star Novotel. With everything provided - from food to heating
Yet Albanians come first? AND YOU HAVE TO PAY FOR THEM
Obviously, London is geographically in the South East, never mind what HYUFD thinks.
The statistical regions are in some cases entirely artificial, and not supposed to trump everyday usage.
Personally, as I may have mentioned, I largely follow the watersheds, but correct using the the traditional county lines to avoid dismembering counties.
That puts Oxon, Berks, Herts, Essex, London, Surrey, Sussex and Kent in the South East (or perhaps better, “Thames”).
Northants, Beds, Cambs, and East Anglia (Norfolk, Suffolk) are all “Eastern” counties.
Hampshire, Dorset and Wiltshire are “Wessex”, Somerset and Dorset are “South West”, and Cornwall is Cornwall.
The Midlands start with Gloucs and then run up through Warks, Leics, Rutland, Lincs.
My judgment on this matter is final.
Alfred’s judgement was final.
Oxford is in Mercia
Yet, earlier, someone put Herefordshire in the West Midlands (= Mercia)
An outrage. I grew up in Herefordshire and everyone there deeply resented the idea of being lumped in with the horrors of Birmingham and Wolverhampton
Herefordshire is in the Marches. It is the beautiful defensive zone of England as it butts up against Wales. The Marches are lovely. West Midlands is not lovely
The West Midlands are in fact very lovely, or at least they were until somebody put Birmingham there.
The Malverns, Cannock Chase, the Shropshire Hills, the Clent Hills, Dovedale, Shrewsbury, Lichfield and Stratford are all in the Midlands. It is surprising to hear them described as ‘not lovely.’
Quite a lot of Stratford is not very lovely. Decent theatre, though.
I’d hope not many PBers would look on this mob as oracles, but a handy crib sheet of people to whom one should pay no fcuking attention ever again.
I believe all three of the PB Trussites, who shall remain nameless to save their embarrassment, remained solid in their support for Truss throughout.
(Although LuckyGuy, WilliamG, and Barty could correct me if I have that wrong.)
Wrong on my account, I called for Truss to go the second she said the Triple Lock would remain in place.
I stand by being glad politically that she won because she abolished the Health and Social Care Levy which is what I wanted politically. I remain pissed off she won fiscally because she cost me £5000 and eternal "humility" rights.
Voters in the historic “red wall” seat of Sedgefield in County Durham, where Tony Blair was once elected to parliament, are willing to give Rishi Sunak a chance to improve their prospects as the cost of living crisis deepens, since Keir Starmer is “not making a case for himself”.
Members of a focus group, conducted by UK More in Common for the Guardian, described Sunak as “the money man” with a CV that proves he was the “best of a bad bunch” of Conservative leadership candidates……
“Winning back their confidence won’t be easy. But the good news for Rishi Sunak was that they thought he was the best person to clean up the mess, and didn’t think that anyone else, including Keir Starmer, would do a better job.”
Which plays into yesterday's suggestion that Rishi's faux Boris act at PMQs is deeply mistaken, and that he should revert to being the calm financial technocrat instead.
And proves once again that people will forgive the Tories anything, like a cheating husband who keeps worming his way back into the marriage. Incredible.
The reality of the situation is that Rishi is a welcome change from Truss and Boris. It’s a low bar he can walk under. Arguing to the contrary is a waste of time. He will be thanked for that, at least in the short term.
What will become clear is that change whilst necessary, was insufficient. We are starting to see that already. The government is still a mess.
The Conservative party is still split and confused, the ministers are still tired, the economy is on its knees and Tory solutions have demonstrably failed. Your taxes are going up, your costs are going up. They will both likely stay up into 2024.
So the question will be do you want another 5 years of that? If Labour can demonstrate another way, the answer will be no.
Is Labour going to lower tax and public spending?
I suspect "tax" will be reorganised, along with public spending. Different sized slices of an increasing volume of cake.
The Telegraph reports that the Home Office is attempting to block book the entire 4 star Novotel in Ipswich for dinghy people. For months, is the implication
The optics of this for HMG are implausibly bad. I imagine a large chunk of financially hard pressed Brits would love to spend the winter in a 4 star Novotel. With everything provided - from food to heating
Yet Albanians come first? AND YOU HAVE TO PAY FOR THEM
This story is a political Chernobyl
I was astonished on Monday. PB has known for years about the channel crisis and I thought the story was Braverman has no answer to it. Turned out the story was there's a channel crisis!! And Braverman is really, really opposed to it!!! That's now unravelling.
The Telegraph reports that the Home Office is attempting to block book the entire 4 star Novotel in Ipswich for dinghy people. For months, is the implication
The optics of this for HMG are implausibly bad. I imagine a large chunk of financially hard pressed Brits would love to spend the winter in a 4 star Novotel. With everything provided - from food to heating
Yet Albanians come first? AND YOU HAVE TO PAY FOR THEM
Voters in the historic “red wall” seat of Sedgefield in County Durham, where Tony Blair was once elected to parliament, are willing to give Rishi Sunak a chance to improve their prospects as the cost of living crisis deepens, since Keir Starmer is “not making a case for himself”.
Members of a focus group, conducted by UK More in Common for the Guardian, described Sunak as “the money man” with a CV that proves he was the “best of a bad bunch” of Conservative leadership candidates……
“Winning back their confidence won’t be easy. But the good news for Rishi Sunak was that they thought he was the best person to clean up the mess, and didn’t think that anyone else, including Keir Starmer, would do a better job.”
Which plays into yesterday's suggestion that Rishi's faux Boris act at PMQs is deeply mistaken, and that he should revert to being the calm financial technocrat instead.
And proves once again that people will forgive the Tories anything, like a cheating husband who keeps worming his way back into the marriage. Incredible.
The reality of the situation is that Rishi is a welcome change from Truss and Boris. It’s a low bar he can walk under. Arguing to the contrary is a waste of time. He will be thanked for that, at least in the short term.
What will become clear is that change whilst necessary, was insufficient. We are starting to see that already. The government is still a mess.
The Conservative party is still split and confused, the ministers are still tired, the economy is on its knees and Tory solutions have demonstrably failed. Your taxes are going up, your costs are going up. They will both likely stay up into 2024.
So the question will be do you want another 5 years of that? If Labour can demonstrate another way, the answer will be no.
Is Labour going to lower tax and public spending?
I suspect "tax" will be reorganised, along with public spending. Different sized slices of an increasing volume of cake.
I also suspect tax will rise or be levied on people who got away with it before.
Voters in the historic “red wall” seat of Sedgefield in County Durham, where Tony Blair was once elected to parliament, are willing to give Rishi Sunak a chance to improve their prospects as the cost of living crisis deepens, since Keir Starmer is “not making a case for himself”.
Members of a focus group, conducted by UK More in Common for the Guardian, described Sunak as “the money man” with a CV that proves he was the “best of a bad bunch” of Conservative leadership candidates……
“Winning back their confidence won’t be easy. But the good news for Rishi Sunak was that they thought he was the best person to clean up the mess, and didn’t think that anyone else, including Keir Starmer, would do a better job.”
Which plays into yesterday's suggestion that Rishi's faux Boris act at PMQs is deeply mistaken, and that he should revert to being the calm financial technocrat instead.
And proves once again that people will forgive the Tories anything, like a cheating husband who keeps worming his way back into the marriage. Incredible.
The reality of the situation is that Rishi is a welcome change from Truss and Boris. It’s a low bar he can walk under. Arguing to the contrary is a waste of time. He will be thanked for that, at least in the short term.
What will become clear is that change whilst necessary, was insufficient. We are starting to see that already. The government is still a mess.
The Conservative party is still split and confused, the ministers are still tired, the economy is on its knees and Tory solutions have demonstrably failed. Your taxes are going up, your costs are going up. They will both likely stay up into 2024.
So the question will be do you want another 5 years of that? If Labour can demonstrate another way, the answer will be no.
Is Labour going to lower tax and public spending?
I expect Labour to offer something similar to 1997. Pledging to stick within an overall flattish envelope aligned roughly to the Conservatives , whilst differentiating by promoting key policies for working families that may include targeted tax cuts and spending. These will be paid for by targeting tax and spending changes elsewhere.
The recipe worked well before, no reason it can’t do so again.
To re-state a question I asked earlier why have UK gas prices spiked again?
Probably because there's very little storage, and an LNG cargo has been diverted to Rotterdam.
Really? Something like that and they spike? No sort of clever market people with 9 screens and coffee addiction peering into the future and getting a sense of something they don’t like? Just one walky-talks conversation “Sorry Biffur, all full, try Rotterdam.”
Would it be unduly expensive to use tankers as storage and pay to keep a few moored in Milford Haven through the winter?
It’s a good question. The answer as you sugggest, with these tankers worth their weight in gold right now, it could be too expensive to moor one down like that.
I think the issue is that if they are moored then they are not off getting your next load so you are just creating a bigger problem down the line
Basically - once again - the government (along with most other people) forgot that one of their primary roles is structural resilience
LNG vessels are not great looking term stores of natural gas, because - while they are well insulated - they have no way to actually cool the gas. An LNG vessel will therefore see its gas warming and expanding and ultimately returning to a gaseous state.
LNG Returning to a gaseous state would be cool to watch though…
A blow-by-blow account of that Wednesday in Parliament, rather than an analysis of the entire (sic) premiership, but well worth a listen!
The rumours of her resignation started emerging from No 10 when a junior staffer spotted that someone had moved the lecturn, in readiness for being carried outside...
Coffey is apparently Truss's long time karaoke partner!
Voters in the historic “red wall” seat of Sedgefield in County Durham, where Tony Blair was once elected to parliament, are willing to give Rishi Sunak a chance to improve their prospects as the cost of living crisis deepens, since Keir Starmer is “not making a case for himself”.
Members of a focus group, conducted by UK More in Common for the Guardian, described Sunak as “the money man” with a CV that proves he was the “best of a bad bunch” of Conservative leadership candidates……
“Winning back their confidence won’t be easy. But the good news for Rishi Sunak was that they thought he was the best person to clean up the mess, and didn’t think that anyone else, including Keir Starmer, would do a better job.”
Which plays into yesterday's suggestion that Rishi's faux Boris act at PMQs is deeply mistaken, and that he should revert to being the calm financial technocrat instead.
And proves once again that people will forgive the Tories anything, like a cheating husband who keeps worming his way back into the marriage. Incredible.
The reality of the situation is that Rishi is a welcome change from Truss and Boris. It’s a low bar he can walk under. Arguing to the contrary is a waste of time. He will be thanked for that, at least in the short term.
What will become clear is that change whilst necessary, was insufficient. We are starting to see that already. The government is still a mess.
The Conservative party is still split and confused, the ministers are still tired, the economy is on its knees and Tory solutions have demonstrably failed. Your taxes are going up, your costs are going up. They will both likely stay up into 2024.
So the question will be do you want another 5 years of that? If Labour can demonstrate another way, the answer will be no.
Is Labour going to lower tax and public spending?
I expect Labour to offer something similar to 1997. Pledging to stick within an overall flattish envelope aligned roughly to the Conservatives , whilst differentiating by promoting key policies for working families that may include targeted tax cuts and spending. These will be paid for by targeting tax and spending changes elsewhere.
The recipe worked well before, no reason it can’t do so again.
The Telegraph reports that the Home Office is attempting to block book the entire 4 star Novotel in Ipswich for dinghy people. For months, is the implication
The optics of this for HMG are implausibly bad. I imagine a large chunk of financially hard pressed Brits would love to spend the winter in a 4 star Novotel. With everything provided - from food to heating
Yet Albanians come first? AND YOU HAVE TO PAY FOR THEM
This story is a political Chernobyl
I was astonished on Monday. PB has known for years about the channel crisis and I thought the story was Braverman has no answer to it. Turned out the story was there's a channel crisis!! And Braverman is really, really opposed to it!!! That's now unravelling.
According to Twitter (DYOR) the story gets worse on analysis. Apparently the Home Office has block booked the entire hotel until April - for “asylum seekers” - they’ve sacked all the hotel staff and cancelled all local weddings. And people in Ipswich are not happy - and the local Labour council is fighting this in the courts
It’s a disaster for the government but the total lack of solutions from Labour makes this a disaster for British politics. A spineless elite of virtue signallers and clueless non-managers
Another day another 730 Russians reported as liquidated by the Ukrainians. Rule of thumb would be double that number wounded. How many days can pass with the Russians losing 2000 people on the battlefield before something cracks I wonder.
100 vehicles a day for the past week too, including a couple of hundred tanks in total. They’re genuinely short of equipment going into the winter, as the mud turns to ice.
Oh, and the soldiers haven’t been paid, just to add to their morale problem.
Voters in the historic “red wall” seat of Sedgefield in County Durham, where Tony Blair was once elected to parliament, are willing to give Rishi Sunak a chance to improve their prospects as the cost of living crisis deepens, since Keir Starmer is “not making a case for himself”.
Members of a focus group, conducted by UK More in Common for the Guardian, described Sunak as “the money man” with a CV that proves he was the “best of a bad bunch” of Conservative leadership candidates……
“Winning back their confidence won’t be easy. But the good news for Rishi Sunak was that they thought he was the best person to clean up the mess, and didn’t think that anyone else, including Keir Starmer, would do a better job.”
Which plays into yesterday's suggestion that Rishi's faux Boris act at PMQs is deeply mistaken, and that he should revert to being the calm financial technocrat instead.
And proves once again that people will forgive the Tories anything, like a cheating husband who keeps worming his way back into the marriage. Incredible.
The reality of the situation is that Rishi is a welcome change from Truss and Boris. It’s a low bar he can walk under. Arguing to the contrary is a waste of time. He will be thanked for that, at least in the short term.
What will become clear is that change whilst necessary, was insufficient. We are starting to see that already. The government is still a mess.
The Conservative party is still split and confused, the ministers are still tired, the economy is on its knees and Tory solutions have demonstrably failed. Your taxes are going up, your costs are going up. They will both likely stay up into 2024.
So the question will be do you want another 5 years of that? If Labour can demonstrate another way, the answer will be no.
Is Labour going to lower tax and public spending?
I expect Labour to offer something similar to 1997. Pledging to stick within an overall flattish envelope aligned roughly to the Conservatives , whilst differentiating by promoting key policies for working families that may include targeted tax cuts and spending. These will be paid for by targeting tax and spending changes elsewhere.
The recipe worked well before, no reason it can’t do so again.
Voters in the historic “red wall” seat of Sedgefield in County Durham, where Tony Blair was once elected to parliament, are willing to give Rishi Sunak a chance to improve their prospects as the cost of living crisis deepens, since Keir Starmer is “not making a case for himself”.
Members of a focus group, conducted by UK More in Common for the Guardian, described Sunak as “the money man” with a CV that proves he was the “best of a bad bunch” of Conservative leadership candidates……
“Winning back their confidence won’t be easy. But the good news for Rishi Sunak was that they thought he was the best person to clean up the mess, and didn’t think that anyone else, including Keir Starmer, would do a better job.”
Which plays into yesterday's suggestion that Rishi's faux Boris act at PMQs is deeply mistaken, and that he should revert to being the calm financial technocrat instead.
And proves once again that people will forgive the Tories anything, like a cheating husband who keeps worming his way back into the marriage. Incredible.
The reality of the situation is that Rishi is a welcome change from Truss and Boris. It’s a low bar he can walk under. Arguing to the contrary is a waste of time. He will be thanked for that, at least in the short term.
What will become clear is that change whilst necessary, was insufficient. We are starting to see that already. The government is still a mess.
The Conservative party is still split and confused, the ministers are still tired, the economy is on its knees and Tory solutions have demonstrably failed. Your taxes are going up, your costs are going up. They will both likely stay up into 2024.
So the question will be do you want another 5 years of that? If Labour can demonstrate another way, the answer will be no.
Is Labour going to lower tax and public spending?
I expect Labour to offer something similar to 1997. Pledging to stick within an overall flattish envelope aligned roughly to the Conservatives , whilst differentiating by promoting key policies for working families that may include targeted tax cuts and spending. These will be paid for by targeting tax and spending changes elsewhere.
The recipe worked well before, no reason it can’t do so again.
Good morning
I was pleasantly surprised to hear Wes Streeting saying that ministers cannot keep just throwing ever increasing amounts of money at the NHS without significant changes to modernise the system
Voters in the historic “red wall” seat of Sedgefield in County Durham, where Tony Blair was once elected to parliament, are willing to give Rishi Sunak a chance to improve their prospects as the cost of living crisis deepens, since Keir Starmer is “not making a case for himself”.
Members of a focus group, conducted by UK More in Common for the Guardian, described Sunak as “the money man” with a CV that proves he was the “best of a bad bunch” of Conservative leadership candidates……
“Winning back their confidence won’t be easy. But the good news for Rishi Sunak was that they thought he was the best person to clean up the mess, and didn’t think that anyone else, including Keir Starmer, would do a better job.”
Which plays into yesterday's suggestion that Rishi's faux Boris act at PMQs is deeply mistaken, and that he should revert to being the calm financial technocrat instead.
And proves once again that people will forgive the Tories anything, like a cheating husband who keeps worming his way back into the marriage. Incredible.
The reality of the situation is that Rishi is a welcome change from Truss and Boris. It’s a low bar he can walk under. Arguing to the contrary is a waste of time. He will be thanked for that, at least in the short term.
What will become clear is that change whilst necessary, was insufficient. We are starting to see that already. The government is still a mess.
The Conservative party is still split and confused, the ministers are still tired, the economy is on its knees and Tory solutions have demonstrably failed. Your taxes are going up, your costs are going up. They will both likely stay up into 2024.
So the question will be do you want another 5 years of that? If Labour can demonstrate another way, the answer will be no.
Is Labour going to lower tax and public spending?
I expect Labour to offer something similar to 1997. Pledging to stick within an overall flattish envelope aligned roughly to the Conservatives , whilst differentiating by promoting key policies for working families that may include targeted tax cuts and spending. These will be paid for by targeting tax and spending changes elsewhere.
The recipe worked well before, no reason it can’t do so again.
Lol. This is not 1997. If it only it was
What is it a parallel to, if not 97, in your view Leon ?
Voters in the historic “red wall” seat of Sedgefield in County Durham, where Tony Blair was once elected to parliament, are willing to give Rishi Sunak a chance to improve their prospects as the cost of living crisis deepens, since Keir Starmer is “not making a case for himself”.
Members of a focus group, conducted by UK More in Common for the Guardian, described Sunak as “the money man” with a CV that proves he was the “best of a bad bunch” of Conservative leadership candidates……
“Winning back their confidence won’t be easy. But the good news for Rishi Sunak was that they thought he was the best person to clean up the mess, and didn’t think that anyone else, including Keir Starmer, would do a better job.”
Which plays into yesterday's suggestion that Rishi's faux Boris act at PMQs is deeply mistaken, and that he should revert to being the calm financial technocrat instead.
And proves once again that people will forgive the Tories anything, like a cheating husband who keeps worming his way back into the marriage. Incredible.
The reality of the situation is that Rishi is a welcome change from Truss and Boris. It’s a low bar he can walk under. Arguing to the contrary is a waste of time. He will be thanked for that, at least in the short term.
What will become clear is that change whilst necessary, was insufficient. We are starting to see that already. The government is still a mess.
The Conservative party is still split and confused, the ministers are still tired, the economy is on its knees and Tory solutions have demonstrably failed. Your taxes are going up, your costs are going up. They will both likely stay up into 2024.
So the question will be do you want another 5 years of that? If Labour can demonstrate another way, the answer will be no.
Is Labour going to lower tax and public spending?
I expect Labour to offer something similar to 1997. Pledging to stick within an overall flattish envelope aligned roughly to the Conservatives , whilst differentiating by promoting key policies for working families that may include targeted tax cuts and spending. These will be paid for by targeting tax and spending changes elsewhere.
The recipe worked well before, no reason it can’t do so again.
Lol. This is not 1997. If it only it was
Clearly you want Labour to be bolder. Maybe they shall. To be fair the Tories are wasting billions right now. So there many scope for more.
Extreme disruption to NHS services has been driving a sharp spike in heart disease deaths since the start of the pandemic, a charity has warned.
The British Heart Foundation (BHF) said ambulance delays, inaccessible care and waits for surgery are linked to 30,000 excess cardiac deaths in England.
And that's before winter really gets started. Gonna be tough.
A blow-by-blow account of that Wednesday in Parliament, rather than an analysis of the entire (sic) premiership, but well worth a listen!
The rumours of her resignation started emerging from No 10 when a junior staffer spotted that someone had moved the lecturn, in readiness for being carried outside...
Coffey is apparently Truss's long time karaoke partner!
Voters in the historic “red wall” seat of Sedgefield in County Durham, where Tony Blair was once elected to parliament, are willing to give Rishi Sunak a chance to improve their prospects as the cost of living crisis deepens, since Keir Starmer is “not making a case for himself”.
Members of a focus group, conducted by UK More in Common for the Guardian, described Sunak as “the money man” with a CV that proves he was the “best of a bad bunch” of Conservative leadership candidates……
“Winning back their confidence won’t be easy. But the good news for Rishi Sunak was that they thought he was the best person to clean up the mess, and didn’t think that anyone else, including Keir Starmer, would do a better job.”
Which plays into yesterday's suggestion that Rishi's faux Boris act at PMQs is deeply mistaken, and that he should revert to being the calm financial technocrat instead.
And proves once again that people will forgive the Tories anything, like a cheating husband who keeps worming his way back into the marriage. Incredible.
The reality of the situation is that Rishi is a welcome change from Truss and Boris. It’s a low bar he can walk under. Arguing to the contrary is a waste of time. He will be thanked for that, at least in the short term.
What will become clear is that change whilst necessary, was insufficient. We are starting to see that already. The government is still a mess.
The Conservative party is still split and confused, the ministers are still tired, the economy is on its knees and Tory solutions have demonstrably failed. Your taxes are going up, your costs are going up. They will both likely stay up into 2024.
So the question will be do you want another 5 years of that? If Labour can demonstrate another way, the answer will be no.
Is Labour going to lower tax and public spending?
Growth would allow lower tax and higher public spending. Liz Truss was not completely wrong.
To re-state a question I asked earlier why have UK gas prices spiked again?
Probably because there's very little storage, and an LNG cargo has been diverted to Rotterdam.
Really? Something like that and they spike? No sort of clever market people with 9 screens and coffee addiction peering into the future and getting a sense of something they don’t like? Just one walky-talks conversation “Sorry Biffur, all full, try Rotterdam.”
Would it be unduly expensive to use tankers as storage and pay to keep a few moored in Milford Haven through the winter?
It’s a good question. The answer as you sugggest, with these tankers worth their weight in gold right now, it could be too expensive to moor one down like that.
I think the issue is that if they are moored then they are not off getting your next load so you are just creating a bigger problem down the line
Basically - once again - the government (along with most other people) forgot that one of their primary roles is structural resilience
LNG vessels are not great looking term stores of natural gas, because - while they are well insulated - they have no way to actually cool the gas. An LNG vessel will therefore see its gas warming and expanding and ultimately returning to a gaseous state.
LNG Returning to a gaseous state would be cool to watch though…
Very cool considering the compression amount was 600 to 1. Either an explosion happens or a rocket propelled ship!
Voters in the historic “red wall” seat of Sedgefield in County Durham, where Tony Blair was once elected to parliament, are willing to give Rishi Sunak a chance to improve their prospects as the cost of living crisis deepens, since Keir Starmer is “not making a case for himself”.
Members of a focus group, conducted by UK More in Common for the Guardian, described Sunak as “the money man” with a CV that proves he was the “best of a bad bunch” of Conservative leadership candidates……
“Winning back their confidence won’t be easy. But the good news for Rishi Sunak was that they thought he was the best person to clean up the mess, and didn’t think that anyone else, including Keir Starmer, would do a better job.”
Which plays into yesterday's suggestion that Rishi's faux Boris act at PMQs is deeply mistaken, and that he should revert to being the calm financial technocrat instead.
And proves once again that people will forgive the Tories anything, like a cheating husband who keeps worming his way back into the marriage. Incredible.
The reality of the situation is that Rishi is a welcome change from Truss and Boris. It’s a low bar he can walk under. Arguing to the contrary is a waste of time. He will be thanked for that, at least in the short term.
What will become clear is that change whilst necessary, was insufficient. We are starting to see that already. The government is still a mess.
The Conservative party is still split and confused, the ministers are still tired, the economy is on its knees and Tory solutions have demonstrably failed. Your taxes are going up, your costs are going up. They will both likely stay up into 2024.
So the question will be do you want another 5 years of that? If Labour can demonstrate another way, the answer will be no.
Is Labour going to lower tax and public spending?
I expect Labour to offer something similar to 1997. Pledging to stick within an overall flattish envelope aligned roughly to the Conservatives , whilst differentiating by promoting key policies for working families that may include targeted tax cuts and spending. These will be paid for by targeting tax and spending changes elsewhere.
The recipe worked well before, no reason it can’t do so again.
Good morning
I was pleasantly surprised to hear Wes Streeting saying that ministers cannot keep just throwing ever increasing amounts of money at the NHS without significant changes to modernise the system
Voters in the historic “red wall” seat of Sedgefield in County Durham, where Tony Blair was once elected to parliament, are willing to give Rishi Sunak a chance to improve their prospects as the cost of living crisis deepens, since Keir Starmer is “not making a case for himself”.
Members of a focus group, conducted by UK More in Common for the Guardian, described Sunak as “the money man” with a CV that proves he was the “best of a bad bunch” of Conservative leadership candidates……
“Winning back their confidence won’t be easy. But the good news for Rishi Sunak was that they thought he was the best person to clean up the mess, and didn’t think that anyone else, including Keir Starmer, would do a better job.”
Which plays into yesterday's suggestion that Rishi's faux Boris act at PMQs is deeply mistaken, and that he should revert to being the calm financial technocrat instead.
And proves once again that people will forgive the Tories anything, like a cheating husband who keeps worming his way back into the marriage. Incredible.
The reality of the situation is that Rishi is a welcome change from Truss and Boris. It’s a low bar he can walk under. Arguing to the contrary is a waste of time. He will be thanked for that, at least in the short term.
What will become clear is that change whilst necessary, was insufficient. We are starting to see that already. The government is still a mess.
The Conservative party is still split and confused, the ministers are still tired, the economy is on its knees and Tory solutions have demonstrably failed. Your taxes are going up, your costs are going up. They will both likely stay up into 2024.
So the question will be do you want another 5 years of that? If Labour can demonstrate another way, the answer will be no.
Is Labour going to lower tax and public spending?
I expect Labour to offer something similar to 1997. Pledging to stick within an overall flattish envelope aligned roughly to the Conservatives , whilst differentiating by promoting key policies for working families that may include targeted tax cuts and spending. These will be paid for by targeting tax and spending changes elsewhere.
The recipe worked well before, no reason it can’t do so again.
Good morning
I was pleasantly surprised to hear Wes Streeting saying that ministers cannot keep just throwing ever increasing amounts of money at the NHS without significant changes to modernise the system
While I have frequently railed against aspects of the way the NHS is organised (GPs....) I would ask whether a major reorganisation which will inevitably create more work and lead to a reduction in the amount of time and money spent on patient care is the right choice at this moment.
Voters in the historic “red wall” seat of Sedgefield in County Durham, where Tony Blair was once elected to parliament, are willing to give Rishi Sunak a chance to improve their prospects as the cost of living crisis deepens, since Keir Starmer is “not making a case for himself”.
Members of a focus group, conducted by UK More in Common for the Guardian, described Sunak as “the money man” with a CV that proves he was the “best of a bad bunch” of Conservative leadership candidates……
“Winning back their confidence won’t be easy. But the good news for Rishi Sunak was that they thought he was the best person to clean up the mess, and didn’t think that anyone else, including Keir Starmer, would do a better job.”
Which plays into yesterday's suggestion that Rishi's faux Boris act at PMQs is deeply mistaken, and that he should revert to being the calm financial technocrat instead.
And proves once again that people will forgive the Tories anything, like a cheating husband who keeps worming his way back into the marriage. Incredible.
The reality of the situation is that Rishi is a welcome change from Truss and Boris. It’s a low bar he can walk under. Arguing to the contrary is a waste of time. He will be thanked for that, at least in the short term.
What will become clear is that change whilst necessary, was insufficient. We are starting to see that already. The government is still a mess.
The Conservative party is still split and confused, the ministers are still tired, the economy is on its knees and Tory solutions have demonstrably failed. Your taxes are going up, your costs are going up. They will both likely stay up into 2024.
So the question will be do you want another 5 years of that? If Labour can demonstrate another way, the answer will be no.
Voters in the historic “red wall” seat of Sedgefield in County Durham, where Tony Blair was once elected to parliament, are willing to give Rishi Sunak a chance to improve their prospects as the cost of living crisis deepens, since Keir Starmer is “not making a case for himself”.
Members of a focus group, conducted by UK More in Common for the Guardian, described Sunak as “the money man” with a CV that proves he was the “best of a bad bunch” of Conservative leadership candidates……
“Winning back their confidence won’t be easy. But the good news for Rishi Sunak was that they thought he was the best person to clean up the mess, and didn’t think that anyone else, including Keir Starmer, would do a better job.”
Which plays into yesterday's suggestion that Rishi's faux Boris act at PMQs is deeply mistaken, and that he should revert to being the calm financial technocrat instead.
And proves once again that people will forgive the Tories anything, like a cheating husband who keeps worming his way back into the marriage. Incredible.
The reality of the situation is that Rishi is a welcome change from Truss and Boris. It’s a low bar he can walk under. Arguing to the contrary is a waste of time. He will be thanked for that, at least in the short term.
What will become clear is that change whilst necessary, was insufficient. We are starting to see that already. The government is still a mess.
The Conservative party is still split and confused, the ministers are still tired, the economy is on its knees and Tory solutions have demonstrably failed. Your taxes are going up, your costs are going up. They will both likely stay up into 2024.
So the question will be do you want another 5 years of that? If Labour can demonstrate another way, the answer will be no.
Is Labour going to lower tax and public spending?
I suspect "tax" will be reorganised, along with public spending. Different sized slices of an increasing volume of cake.
Labour will be better and growth will be higher because Reasons.
Voters in the historic “red wall” seat of Sedgefield in County Durham, where Tony Blair was once elected to parliament, are willing to give Rishi Sunak a chance to improve their prospects as the cost of living crisis deepens, since Keir Starmer is “not making a case for himself”.
Members of a focus group, conducted by UK More in Common for the Guardian, described Sunak as “the money man” with a CV that proves he was the “best of a bad bunch” of Conservative leadership candidates……
“Winning back their confidence won’t be easy. But the good news for Rishi Sunak was that they thought he was the best person to clean up the mess, and didn’t think that anyone else, including Keir Starmer, would do a better job.”
Which plays into yesterday's suggestion that Rishi's faux Boris act at PMQs is deeply mistaken, and that he should revert to being the calm financial technocrat instead.
And proves once again that people will forgive the Tories anything, like a cheating husband who keeps worming his way back into the marriage. Incredible.
The reality of the situation is that Rishi is a welcome change from Truss and Boris. It’s a low bar he can walk under. Arguing to the contrary is a waste of time. He will be thanked for that, at least in the short term.
What will become clear is that change whilst necessary, was insufficient. We are starting to see that already. The government is still a mess.
The Conservative party is still split and confused, the ministers are still tired, the economy is on its knees and Tory solutions have demonstrably failed. Your taxes are going up, your costs are going up. They will both likely stay up into 2024.
So the question will be do you want another 5 years of that? If Labour can demonstrate another way, the answer will be no.
Is Labour going to lower tax and public spending?
I expect Labour to offer something similar to 1997. Pledging to stick within an overall flattish envelope aligned roughly to the Conservatives , whilst differentiating by promoting key policies for working families that may include targeted tax cuts and spending. These will be paid for by targeting tax and spending changes elsewhere.
The recipe worked well before, no reason it can’t do so again.
Good morning
I was pleasantly surprised to hear Wes Streeting saying that ministers cannot keep just throwing ever increasing amounts of money at the NHS without significant changes to modernise the system
To re-state a question I asked earlier why have UK gas prices spiked again?
Probably because there's very little storage, and an LNG cargo has been diverted to Rotterdam.
Really? Something like that and they spike? No sort of clever market people with 9 screens and coffee addiction peering into the future and getting a sense of something they don’t like? Just one walky-talks conversation “Sorry Biffur, all full, try Rotterdam.”
Would it be unduly expensive to use tankers as storage and pay to keep a few moored in Milford Haven through the winter?
It’s a good question. The answer as you sugggest, with these tankers worth their weight in gold right now, it could be too expensive to moor one down like that.
I think the issue is that if they are moored then they are not off getting your next load so you are just creating a bigger problem down the line
Basically - once again - the government (along with most other people) forgot that one of their primary roles is structural resilience
LNG vessels are not great looking term stores of natural gas, because - while they are well insulated - they have no way to actually cool the gas. An LNG vessel will therefore see its gas warming and expanding and ultimately returning to a gaseous state.
LNG Returning to a gaseous state would be cool to watch though…
Very cool considering the compression amount was 600 to 1. Either an explosion happens or a rocket propelled ship!
If it was an explosion, surely the thermal nature of waste energy would make it hot, not cool.
Voters in the historic “red wall” seat of Sedgefield in County Durham, where Tony Blair was once elected to parliament, are willing to give Rishi Sunak a chance to improve their prospects as the cost of living crisis deepens, since Keir Starmer is “not making a case for himself”.
Members of a focus group, conducted by UK More in Common for the Guardian, described Sunak as “the money man” with a CV that proves he was the “best of a bad bunch” of Conservative leadership candidates……
“Winning back their confidence won’t be easy. But the good news for Rishi Sunak was that they thought he was the best person to clean up the mess, and didn’t think that anyone else, including Keir Starmer, would do a better job.”
Which plays into yesterday's suggestion that Rishi's faux Boris act at PMQs is deeply mistaken, and that he should revert to being the calm financial technocrat instead.
And proves once again that people will forgive the Tories anything, like a cheating husband who keeps worming his way back into the marriage. Incredible.
The reality of the situation is that Rishi is a welcome change from Truss and Boris. It’s a low bar he can walk under. Arguing to the contrary is a waste of time. He will be thanked for that, at least in the short term.
What will become clear is that change whilst necessary, was insufficient. We are starting to see that already. The government is still a mess.
The Conservative party is still split and confused, the ministers are still tired, the economy is on its knees and Tory solutions have demonstrably failed. Your taxes are going up, your costs are going up. They will both likely stay up into 2024.
So the question will be do you want another 5 years of that? If Labour can demonstrate another way, the answer will be no.
Voters in the historic “red wall” seat of Sedgefield in County Durham, where Tony Blair was once elected to parliament, are willing to give Rishi Sunak a chance to improve their prospects as the cost of living crisis deepens, since Keir Starmer is “not making a case for himself”.
Members of a focus group, conducted by UK More in Common for the Guardian, described Sunak as “the money man” with a CV that proves he was the “best of a bad bunch” of Conservative leadership candidates……
“Winning back their confidence won’t be easy. But the good news for Rishi Sunak was that they thought he was the best person to clean up the mess, and didn’t think that anyone else, including Keir Starmer, would do a better job.”
Which plays into yesterday's suggestion that Rishi's faux Boris act at PMQs is deeply mistaken, and that he should revert to being the calm financial technocrat instead.
And proves once again that people will forgive the Tories anything, like a cheating husband who keeps worming his way back into the marriage. Incredible.
The reality of the situation is that Rishi is a welcome change from Truss and Boris. It’s a low bar he can walk under. Arguing to the contrary is a waste of time. He will be thanked for that, at least in the short term.
What will become clear is that change whilst necessary, was insufficient. We are starting to see that already. The government is still a mess.
The Conservative party is still split and confused, the ministers are still tired, the economy is on its knees and Tory solutions have demonstrably failed. Your taxes are going up, your costs are going up. They will both likely stay up into 2024.
So the question will be do you want another 5 years of that? If Labour can demonstrate another way, the answer will be no.
Is Labour going to lower tax and public spending?
I suspect "tax" will be reorganised, along with public spending. Different sized slices of an increasing volume of cake.
Labour will be better and growth will be higher because Reasons.
Voters in the historic “red wall” seat of Sedgefield in County Durham, where Tony Blair was once elected to parliament, are willing to give Rishi Sunak a chance to improve their prospects as the cost of living crisis deepens, since Keir Starmer is “not making a case for himself”.
Members of a focus group, conducted by UK More in Common for the Guardian, described Sunak as “the money man” with a CV that proves he was the “best of a bad bunch” of Conservative leadership candidates……
“Winning back their confidence won’t be easy. But the good news for Rishi Sunak was that they thought he was the best person to clean up the mess, and didn’t think that anyone else, including Keir Starmer, would do a better job.”
Which plays into yesterday's suggestion that Rishi's faux Boris act at PMQs is deeply mistaken, and that he should revert to being the calm financial technocrat instead.
And proves once again that people will forgive the Tories anything, like a cheating husband who keeps worming his way back into the marriage. Incredible.
The reality of the situation is that Rishi is a welcome change from Truss and Boris. It’s a low bar he can walk under. Arguing to the contrary is a waste of time. He will be thanked for that, at least in the short term.
What will become clear is that change whilst necessary, was insufficient. We are starting to see that already. The government is still a mess.
The Conservative party is still split and confused, the ministers are still tired, the economy is on its knees and Tory solutions have demonstrably failed. Your taxes are going up, your costs are going up. They will both likely stay up into 2024.
So the question will be do you want another 5 years of that? If Labour can demonstrate another way, the answer will be no.
Is Labour going to lower tax and public spending?
I expect Labour to offer something similar to 1997. Pledging to stick within an overall flattish envelope aligned roughly to the Conservatives , whilst differentiating by promoting key policies for working families that may include targeted tax cuts and spending. These will be paid for by targeting tax and spending changes elsewhere.
The recipe worked well before, no reason it can’t do so again.
In short, that means targeting pensioners.
There are no other easy options for tax and spending changes elsewhere.
In reality, I expect them to try and tax even more as borrowing won't be possible.
Of those with mortgages, most have yet to experience any pain from recent events. In each year since about 2014, more than 90% of new borrowers have opted for fixed rate deals, and of these 5 year deals have risen to 45% of the total last year from under 30% in 2021. So few will have had to renew their mortgage deals this summer, but most mortgage deals will come up for renewal before the end of 2024. Only 5 year deals taken out after 2019 won't mature in time to be affected.
The Conservatives are going to be blamed for rapidly rising interest rates. But while people will be worried now, I think that the polling effect of rising mortgage rates will be most marked only when people are actually paying much higher mortgages.
So there's going to be a delayed polling effect and that will be a strong factor that will tend to maintain or conceivably even extend the current Labour poll lead. So I agree with Mike's scepticism that it is reasonable to expect a "huge turn back to the Tories" in polling, other than in temporarily response to short term events that buck the underlying trend.
Extreme disruption to NHS services has been driving a sharp spike in heart disease deaths since the start of the pandemic, a charity has warned.
The British Heart Foundation (BHF) said ambulance delays, inaccessible care and waits for surgery are linked to 30,000 excess cardiac deaths in England.
And that's before winter really gets started. Gonna be tough.
Ah! Proof vaccines damage hearts. Conspiracy theory incoming in 3, 2, 1...
To re-state a question I asked earlier why have UK gas prices spiked again?
Probably because there's very little storage, and an LNG cargo has been diverted to Rotterdam.
Really? Something like that and they spike? No sort of clever market people with 9 screens and coffee addiction peering into the future and getting a sense of something they don’t like? Just one walky-talks conversation “Sorry Biffur, all full, try Rotterdam.”
Would it be unduly expensive to use tankers as storage and pay to keep a few moored in Milford Haven through the winter?
It’s a good question. The answer as you sugggest, with these tankers worth their weight in gold right now, it could be too expensive to moor one down like that.
I think the issue is that if they are moored then they are not off getting your next load so you are just creating a bigger problem down the line
Basically - once again - the government (along with most other people) forgot that one of their primary roles is structural resilience
LNG vessels are not great looking term stores of natural gas, because - while they are well insulated - they have no way to actually cool the gas. An LNG vessel will therefore see its gas warming and expanding and ultimately returning to a gaseous state.
LNG Returning to a gaseous state would be cool to watch though…
The Telegraph reports that the Home Office is attempting to block book the entire 4 star Novotel in Ipswich for dinghy people. For months, is the implication
The optics of this for HMG are implausibly bad. I imagine a large chunk of financially hard pressed Brits would love to spend the winter in a 4 star Novotel. With everything provided - from food to heating
Yet Albanians come first? AND YOU HAVE TO PAY FOR THEM
This story is a political Chernobyl
I was astonished on Monday. PB has known for years about the channel crisis and I thought the story was Braverman has no answer to it. Turned out the story was there's a channel crisis!! And Braverman is really, really opposed to it!!! That's now unravelling.
According to Twitter (DYOR) the story gets worse on analysis. Apparently the Home Office has block booked the entire hotel until April - for “asylum seekers” - they’ve sacked all the hotel staff and cancelled all local weddings. And people in Ipswich are not happy - and the local Labour council is fighting this in the courts
It’s a disaster for the government but the total lack of solutions from Labour makes this a disaster for British politics. A spineless elite of virtue signallers and clueless non-managers
I have just listened to Anneliese Dodds for labour and their solution is to catch the people smugglers and negotiate an international agreement with France
The pursuit of these people smugglers is already taking place with the cooperation of France, and other EU countries, and just how long does labour expect it will take to achieve an international agreement
Apart from stopping the Rwanda scheme which has 42%/37% support they simply have no answer themselves
The Telegraph reports that the Home Office is attempting to block book the entire 4 star Novotel in Ipswich for dinghy people. For months, is the implication
The optics of this for HMG are implausibly bad. I imagine a large chunk of financially hard pressed Brits would love to spend the winter in a 4 star Novotel. With everything provided - from food to heating
Yet Albanians come first? AND YOU HAVE TO PAY FOR THEM
This story is a political Chernobyl
If you have a solution please share it.
Put them on planes, fly them back. Don't even bother with a process, Albania is a safe country.
First ConHome rankings on the Sunak cabinet. Kemi Badenoch is second, only to Ben Wallace while Suella Braverman - the supposed ‘darling of the right’ - is much less popular than some of the commentary would suggest.
Voters in the historic “red wall” seat of Sedgefield in County Durham, where Tony Blair was once elected to parliament, are willing to give Rishi Sunak a chance to improve their prospects as the cost of living crisis deepens, since Keir Starmer is “not making a case for himself”.
Members of a focus group, conducted by UK More in Common for the Guardian, described Sunak as “the money man” with a CV that proves he was the “best of a bad bunch” of Conservative leadership candidates……
“Winning back their confidence won’t be easy. But the good news for Rishi Sunak was that they thought he was the best person to clean up the mess, and didn’t think that anyone else, including Keir Starmer, would do a better job.”
Which plays into yesterday's suggestion that Rishi's faux Boris act at PMQs is deeply mistaken, and that he should revert to being the calm financial technocrat instead.
And proves once again that people will forgive the Tories anything, like a cheating husband who keeps worming his way back into the marriage. Incredible.
The reality of the situation is that Rishi is a welcome change from Truss and Boris. It’s a low bar he can walk under. Arguing to the contrary is a waste of time. He will be thanked for that, at least in the short term.
What will become clear is that change whilst necessary, was insufficient. We are starting to see that already. The government is still a mess.
The Conservative party is still split and confused, the ministers are still tired, the economy is on its knees and Tory solutions have demonstrably failed. Your taxes are going up, your costs are going up. They will both likely stay up into 2024.
So the question will be do you want another 5 years of that? If Labour can demonstrate another way, the answer will be no.
Voters in the historic “red wall” seat of Sedgefield in County Durham, where Tony Blair was once elected to parliament, are willing to give Rishi Sunak a chance to improve their prospects as the cost of living crisis deepens, since Keir Starmer is “not making a case for himself”.
Members of a focus group, conducted by UK More in Common for the Guardian, described Sunak as “the money man” with a CV that proves he was the “best of a bad bunch” of Conservative leadership candidates……
“Winning back their confidence won’t be easy. But the good news for Rishi Sunak was that they thought he was the best person to clean up the mess, and didn’t think that anyone else, including Keir Starmer, would do a better job.”
Which plays into yesterday's suggestion that Rishi's faux Boris act at PMQs is deeply mistaken, and that he should revert to being the calm financial technocrat instead.
And proves once again that people will forgive the Tories anything, like a cheating husband who keeps worming his way back into the marriage. Incredible.
The reality of the situation is that Rishi is a welcome change from Truss and Boris. It’s a low bar he can walk under. Arguing to the contrary is a waste of time. He will be thanked for that, at least in the short term.
What will become clear is that change whilst necessary, was insufficient. We are starting to see that already. The government is still a mess.
The Conservative party is still split and confused, the ministers are still tired, the economy is on its knees and Tory solutions have demonstrably failed. Your taxes are going up, your costs are going up. They will both likely stay up into 2024.
So the question will be do you want another 5 years of that? If Labour can demonstrate another way, the answer will be no.
Is Labour going to lower tax and public spending?
I suspect "tax" will be reorganised, along with public spending. Different sized slices of an increasing volume of cake.
Labour will be better and growth will be higher because Reasons.
Fantasy.
It was last time.
And an entirely different and benign economic environment from 1993 to 2007.
The Telegraph reports that the Home Office is attempting to block book the entire 4 star Novotel in Ipswich for dinghy people. For months, is the implication
The optics of this for HMG are implausibly bad. I imagine a large chunk of financially hard pressed Brits would love to spend the winter in a 4 star Novotel. With everything provided - from food to heating
Yet Albanians come first? AND YOU HAVE TO PAY FOR THEM
This story is a political Chernobyl
If you have a solution please share it.
Put them on planes, fly them back. Don't even bother with a process, Albania is a safe country.
I agree, but if you don't bother with a process then hordes of left-wing lawyers will appeal it to death.
The Telegraph reports that the Home Office is attempting to block book the entire 4 star Novotel in Ipswich for dinghy people. For months, is the implication
The optics of this for HMG are implausibly bad. I imagine a large chunk of financially hard pressed Brits would love to spend the winter in a 4 star Novotel. With everything provided - from food to heating
Yet Albanians come first? AND YOU HAVE TO PAY FOR THEM
This story is a political Chernobyl
If you have a solution please share it.
Put them on planes, fly them back. Don't even bother with a process, Albania is a safe country.
What do you do with refugees/immigrants/asylum-seekers who refuse to say where they came from?
Voters in the historic “red wall” seat of Sedgefield in County Durham, where Tony Blair was once elected to parliament, are willing to give Rishi Sunak a chance to improve their prospects as the cost of living crisis deepens, since Keir Starmer is “not making a case for himself”.
Members of a focus group, conducted by UK More in Common for the Guardian, described Sunak as “the money man” with a CV that proves he was the “best of a bad bunch” of Conservative leadership candidates……
“Winning back their confidence won’t be easy. But the good news for Rishi Sunak was that they thought he was the best person to clean up the mess, and didn’t think that anyone else, including Keir Starmer, would do a better job.”
Which plays into yesterday's suggestion that Rishi's faux Boris act at PMQs is deeply mistaken, and that he should revert to being the calm financial technocrat instead.
And proves once again that people will forgive the Tories anything, like a cheating husband who keeps worming his way back into the marriage. Incredible.
The reality of the situation is that Rishi is a welcome change from Truss and Boris. It’s a low bar he can walk under. Arguing to the contrary is a waste of time. He will be thanked for that, at least in the short term.
What will become clear is that change whilst necessary, was insufficient. We are starting to see that already. The government is still a mess.
The Conservative party is still split and confused, the ministers are still tired, the economy is on its knees and Tory solutions have demonstrably failed. Your taxes are going up, your costs are going up. They will both likely stay up into 2024.
So the question will be do you want another 5 years of that? If Labour can demonstrate another way, the answer will be no.
Is Labour going to lower tax and public spending?
Growth would allow lower tax and higher public spending. Liz Truss was not completely wrong.
It would.
How are you going to get growth? Do you think a higher UK growth rate magically appears the moment Labour take office?
Of those with mortgages, most have yet to experience any pain from recent events. In each year since about 2014, more than 90% of new borrowers have opted for fixed rate deals, and of these 5 year deals have risen to 45% of the total last year from under 30% in 2021. So few will have had to renew their mortgage deals this summer, but most mortgage deals will come up for renewal before the end of 2024. Only 5 year deals taken out after 2019 won't mature in time to be affected.
The Conservatives are going to be blamed for rapidly rising interest rates. But while people will be worried now, I think that the polling effect of rising mortgage rates will be most marked only when people are actually paying much higher mortgages.
So there's going to be a delayed polling effect and that will be a strong factor that will tend to maintain or conceivably even extend the current Labour poll lead. So I agree with Mike's scepticism that it is reasonable to expect a "huge turn back to the Tories" in polling, other than in temporarily response to short term events that buck the underlying trend.
BUT if you are buying a property you generally will need a new mortgage which will be at 6% interest or higher. For many this will be unaffordable so they wont be able to buy the house. The housing market will collapse. New builds will slow. Do you want me to go on?
The Telegraph reports that the Home Office is attempting to block book the entire 4 star Novotel in Ipswich for dinghy people. For months, is the implication
The optics of this for HMG are implausibly bad. I imagine a large chunk of financially hard pressed Brits would love to spend the winter in a 4 star Novotel. With everything provided - from food to heating
Yet Albanians come first? AND YOU HAVE TO PAY FOR THEM
This story is a political Chernobyl
I was astonished on Monday. PB has known for years about the channel crisis and I thought the story was Braverman has no answer to it. Turned out the story was there's a channel crisis!! And Braverman is really, really opposed to it!!! That's now unravelling.
According to Twitter (DYOR) the story gets worse on analysis. Apparently the Home Office has block booked the entire hotel until April - for “asylum seekers” - they’ve sacked all the hotel staff and cancelled all local weddings. And people in Ipswich are not happy - and the local Labour council is fighting this in the courts
It’s a disaster for the government but the total lack of solutions from Labour makes this a disaster for British politics. A spineless elite of virtue signallers and clueless non-managers
I have just listened to Anneliese Dodds for labour and their solution is to catch the people smugglers and negotiate an international agreement with France
The pursuit of these people smugglers is already taking place with the cooperation of France, and other EU countries, and just how long does labour expect it will take to achieve an international agreement
Apart from stopping the Rwanda scheme which has 42%/37% support they simply have no answer themselves
The Rwanda scheme is classic Boris Johnson. Conceptually simple. Stick all our problems on an plane and fly them far, far away. It’s a seductive vision. Like so many Boris initiatives, it sucks people in.
It has one problem, shared by many of Boris’ promises and oversimplified populist solutions.
It doesn’t work.
I’m honestly surprised you’re still buying it. I thought you had moved on from Boris.
The Telegraph reports that the Home Office is attempting to block book the entire 4 star Novotel in Ipswich for dinghy people. For months, is the implication
The optics of this for HMG are implausibly bad. I imagine a large chunk of financially hard pressed Brits would love to spend the winter in a 4 star Novotel. With everything provided - from food to heating
Yet Albanians come first? AND YOU HAVE TO PAY FOR THEM
This story is a political Chernobyl
I was astonished on Monday. PB has known for years about the channel crisis and I thought the story was Braverman has no answer to it. Turned out the story was there's a channel crisis!! And Braverman is really, really opposed to it!!! That's now unravelling.
According to Twitter (DYOR) the story gets worse on analysis. Apparently the Home Office has block booked the entire hotel until April - for “asylum seekers” - they’ve sacked all the hotel staff and cancelled all local weddings. And people in Ipswich are not happy - and the local Labour council is fighting this in the courts
It’s a disaster for the government but the total lack of solutions from Labour makes this a disaster for British politics. A spineless elite of virtue signallers and clueless non-managers
I have just listened to Anneliese Dodds for labour and their solution is to catch the people smugglers and negotiate an international agreement with France
The pursuit of these people smugglers is already taking place with the cooperation of France, and other EU countries, and just how long does labour expect it will take to achieve an international agreement
Apart from stopping the Rwanda scheme which has 42%/37% support they simply have no answer themselves
There is no 'easy', or perhaps even moral, answer to this. Labour will struggle with this issue as much as the Conservatives do - although the Labour base might not be as het up about it.
First ConHome rankings on the Sunak cabinet. Kemi Badenoch is second, only to Ben Wallace while Suella Braverman - the supposed ‘darling of the right’ - is much less popular than some of the commentary would suggest.
Some interesting ratings there. Like Tugendhat so high up. But James Cleverly? What on earth has he done that's so deserving of great popularity? Or indeed what did Shapps do to piss them off so much?
First ConHome rankings on the Sunak cabinet. Kemi Badenoch is second, only to Ben Wallace while Suella Braverman - the supposed ‘darling of the right’ - is much less popular than some of the commentary would suggest.
Poor Mr Ross - less popular than Ms Braverman. Wonder if he'd be more or less popular if he had stuck to his guns over the last year instead of u-turning several times?
Of those with mortgages, most have yet to experience any pain from recent events. In each year since about 2014, more than 90% of new borrowers have opted for fixed rate deals, and of these 5 year deals have risen to 45% of the total last year from under 30% in 2021. So few will have had to renew their mortgage deals this summer, but most mortgage deals will come up for renewal before the end of 2024. Only 5 year deals taken out after 2019 won't mature in time to be affected.
The Conservatives are going to be blamed for rapidly rising interest rates. But while people will be worried now, I think that the polling effect of rising mortgage rates will be most marked only when people are actually paying much higher mortgages.
So there's going to be a delayed polling effect and that will be a strong factor that will tend to maintain or conceivably even extend the current Labour poll lead. So I agree with Mike's scepticism that it is reasonable to expect a "huge turn back to the Tories" in polling, other than in temporarily response to short term events that buck the underlying trend.
BUT if you are buying a property you generally will need a new mortgage which will be at 6% interest or higher. For many this will be unaffordable so they wont be able to buy the house. The housing market will collapse. New builds will slow. Do you want me to go on?
One very immediate consequence of higher interest rates and more expensive mortgages will be higher rental costs.
@HYUFD I know you like linking to the internet for your facts so try looking up London in Wikapedia. It says: 'It stands on the River Thames in south-east England'
Now I don't believe everything I read on the internet, but you do so what do you say to that?
See you haven't either conceded IHT wasn't at the bottom of that table (last thread) as you said, but over half way up, although we can all see it.
You do look silly by not bailing.
The River Thames also goes through Oxfordshire and Berkshire in South East England yes, London doesn't.
It also says 'London, also known as Greater London, is one of nine regions of England and the top subdivision covering most of the city's metropolis.' London is 1 of those 9 regions, South East another
To re-state a question I asked earlier why have UK gas prices spiked again?
Probably because there's very little storage, and an LNG cargo has been diverted to Rotterdam.
Really? Something like that and they spike? No sort of clever market people with 9 screens and coffee addiction peering into the future and getting a sense of something they don’t like? Just one walky-talks conversation “Sorry Biffur, all full, try Rotterdam.”
Would it be unduly expensive to use tankers as storage and pay to keep a few moored in Milford Haven through the winter?
It’s a good question. The answer as you sugggest, with these tankers worth their weight in gold right now, it could be too expensive to moor one down like that.
I think the issue is that if they are moored then they are not off getting your next load so you are just creating a bigger problem down the line
Basically - once again - the government (along with most other people) forgot that one of their primary roles is structural resilience
LNG vessels are not great looking term stores of natural gas, because - while they are well insulated - they have no way to actually cool the gas. An LNG vessel will therefore see its gas warming and expanding and ultimately returning to a gaseous state.
LNG Returning to a gaseous state would be cool to watch though…
Depends how quickly it does it
I've forgotten my O level physics. As the temperature rises to the LNG boiling point, presumably the ship would just burst under the pressure of boiled off gas?
I assume there are safety valves that would release first?
The Telegraph reports that the Home Office is attempting to block book the entire 4 star Novotel in Ipswich for dinghy people. For months, is the implication
The optics of this for HMG are implausibly bad. I imagine a large chunk of financially hard pressed Brits would love to spend the winter in a 4 star Novotel. With everything provided - from food to heating
Yet Albanians come first? AND YOU HAVE TO PAY FOR THEM
This story is a political Chernobyl
I was astonished on Monday. PB has known for years about the channel crisis and I thought the story was Braverman has no answer to it. Turned out the story was there's a channel crisis!! And Braverman is really, really opposed to it!!! That's now unravelling.
According to Twitter (DYOR) the story gets worse on analysis. Apparently the Home Office has block booked the entire hotel until April - for “asylum seekers” - they’ve sacked all the hotel staff and cancelled all local weddings. And people in Ipswich are not happy - and the local Labour council is fighting this in the courts
It’s a disaster for the government but the total lack of solutions from Labour makes this a disaster for British politics. A spineless elite of virtue signallers and clueless non-managers
I have just listened to Anneliese Dodds for labour and their solution is to catch the people smugglers and negotiate an international agreement with France
The pursuit of these people smugglers is already taking place with the cooperation of France, and other EU countries, and just how long does labour expect it will take to achieve an international agreement
Apart from stopping the Rwanda scheme which has 42%/37% support they simply have no answer themselves
The Rwanda scheme is classic Boris Johnson. Conceptually simple. Stick all our problems on an plane and fly them far, far away. It’s a seductive vision. Like so many Boris initiatives, it sucks people in.
It has one problem, shared by many of Boris’ promises and oversimplified populist solutions.
It doesn’t work.
I’m honestly surprised you’re still buying it. I thought you had moved on from Boris.
It's purely a shibboleth in the Biblical sense - it's how you can tell the Tories apart from the goats (or sheep, according to taste).
The Telegraph reports that the Home Office is attempting to block book the entire 4 star Novotel in Ipswich for dinghy people. For months, is the implication
The optics of this for HMG are implausibly bad. I imagine a large chunk of financially hard pressed Brits would love to spend the winter in a 4 star Novotel. With everything provided - from food to heating
Yet Albanians come first? AND YOU HAVE TO PAY FOR THEM
This story is a political Chernobyl
I was astonished on Monday. PB has known for years about the channel crisis and I thought the story was Braverman has no answer to it. Turned out the story was there's a channel crisis!! And Braverman is really, really opposed to it!!! That's now unravelling.
According to Twitter (DYOR) the story gets worse on analysis. Apparently the Home Office has block booked the entire hotel until April - for “asylum seekers” - they’ve sacked all the hotel staff and cancelled all local weddings. And people in Ipswich are not happy - and the local Labour council is fighting this in the courts
It’s a disaster for the government but the total lack of solutions from Labour makes this a disaster for British politics. A spineless elite of virtue signallers and clueless non-managers
I have just listened to Anneliese Dodds for labour and their solution is to catch the people smugglers and negotiate an international agreement with France
The pursuit of these people smugglers is already taking place with the cooperation of France, and other EU countries, and just how long does labour expect it will take to achieve an international agreement
Apart from stopping the Rwanda scheme which has 42%/37% support they simply have no answer themselves
The Rwanda scheme is classic Boris Johnson. Conceptually simple. Stick all our problems on an plane and fly them far, far away. It’s a seductive vision. Like so many Boris initiatives, it sucks people in.
It has one problem, shared by many of Boris’ promises and oversimplified populist solutions.
It doesn’t work.
I’m honestly surprised you’re still buying it. I thought you had moved on from Boris.
I am not buying it, I am making the point it is not as unpopular as some think it is and it is, like most of this problem, held up by the legal challenges
I would prefer they were not sent to Rwanda but a solution of some form is urgently needed
Voters in the historic “red wall” seat of Sedgefield in County Durham, where Tony Blair was once elected to parliament, are willing to give Rishi Sunak a chance to improve their prospects as the cost of living crisis deepens, since Keir Starmer is “not making a case for himself”.
Members of a focus group, conducted by UK More in Common for the Guardian, described Sunak as “the money man” with a CV that proves he was the “best of a bad bunch” of Conservative leadership candidates……
“Winning back their confidence won’t be easy. But the good news for Rishi Sunak was that they thought he was the best person to clean up the mess, and didn’t think that anyone else, including Keir Starmer, would do a better job.”
Which plays into yesterday's suggestion that Rishi's faux Boris act at PMQs is deeply mistaken, and that he should revert to being the calm financial technocrat instead.
And proves once again that people will forgive the Tories anything, like a cheating husband who keeps worming his way back into the marriage. Incredible.
The reality of the situation is that Rishi is a welcome change from Truss and Boris. It’s a low bar he can walk under. Arguing to the contrary is a waste of time. He will be thanked for that, at least in the short term.
What will become clear is that change whilst necessary, was insufficient. We are starting to see that already. The government is still a mess.
The Conservative party is still split and confused, the ministers are still tired, the economy is on its knees and Tory solutions have demonstrably failed. Your taxes are going up, your costs are going up. They will both likely stay up into 2024.
So the question will be do you want another 5 years of that? If Labour can demonstrate another way, the answer will be no.
Is Labour going to lower tax and public spending?
Growth would allow lower tax and higher public spending. Liz Truss was not completely wrong.
It would.
How are you going to get growth? Do you think a higher UK growth rate magically appears the moment Labour take office?
Labour has two structural advantages when it comes to growth: 1. It is not wedded to a sovereignty-first Brexit so will not go to war with itself over a closer trading relationship with the EU that might involve giving up some sovereignty. 2. It is not so electorally reliant on an elderly, home owning demographic, so has more space on multiple issues relating to housing and infrastructure. Neither makes growth magically appear, but both make it more likely.
Voters in the historic “red wall” seat of Sedgefield in County Durham, where Tony Blair was once elected to parliament, are willing to give Rishi Sunak a chance to improve their prospects as the cost of living crisis deepens, since Keir Starmer is “not making a case for himself”.
Members of a focus group, conducted by UK More in Common for the Guardian, described Sunak as “the money man” with a CV that proves he was the “best of a bad bunch” of Conservative leadership candidates……
“Winning back their confidence won’t be easy. But the good news for Rishi Sunak was that they thought he was the best person to clean up the mess, and didn’t think that anyone else, including Keir Starmer, would do a better job.”
Which plays into yesterday's suggestion that Rishi's faux Boris act at PMQs is deeply mistaken, and that he should revert to being the calm financial technocrat instead.
And proves once again that people will forgive the Tories anything, like a cheating husband who keeps worming his way back into the marriage. Incredible.
The reality of the situation is that Rishi is a welcome change from Truss and Boris. It’s a low bar he can walk under. Arguing to the contrary is a waste of time. He will be thanked for that, at least in the short term.
What will become clear is that change whilst necessary, was insufficient. We are starting to see that already. The government is still a mess.
The Conservative party is still split and confused, the ministers are still tired, the economy is on its knees and Tory solutions have demonstrably failed. Your taxes are going up, your costs are going up. They will both likely stay up into 2024.
So the question will be do you want another 5 years of that? If Labour can demonstrate another way, the answer will be no.
Is Labour going to lower tax and public spending?
Growth would allow lower tax and higher public spending. Liz Truss was not completely wrong.
It would.
How are you going to get growth? Do you think a higher UK growth rate magically appears the moment Labour take office?
Labour has two structural advantages when it comes to growth: 1. It is not wedded to a sovereignty-first Brexit so will not go to war with itself over a closer trading relationship with the EU that might involve giving up some sovereignty. 2. It is not so electorally reliant on an elderly, home owning demographic, so has more space on multiple issues relating to housing and infrastructure. Neither makes growth magically appear, but both make it more likely.
On the other hand the Tories ought to be the ones to make the move on the triple lock on a Nixon in China basis?
Voters in the historic “red wall” seat of Sedgefield in County Durham, where Tony Blair was once elected to parliament, are willing to give Rishi Sunak a chance to improve their prospects as the cost of living crisis deepens, since Keir Starmer is “not making a case for himself”.
Members of a focus group, conducted by UK More in Common for the Guardian, described Sunak as “the money man” with a CV that proves he was the “best of a bad bunch” of Conservative leadership candidates……
“Winning back their confidence won’t be easy. But the good news for Rishi Sunak was that they thought he was the best person to clean up the mess, and didn’t think that anyone else, including Keir Starmer, would do a better job.”
Which plays into yesterday's suggestion that Rishi's faux Boris act at PMQs is deeply mistaken, and that he should revert to being the calm financial technocrat instead.
And proves once again that people will forgive the Tories anything, like a cheating husband who keeps worming his way back into the marriage. Incredible.
The reality of the situation is that Rishi is a welcome change from Truss and Boris. It’s a low bar he can walk under. Arguing to the contrary is a waste of time. He will be thanked for that, at least in the short term.
What will become clear is that change whilst necessary, was insufficient. We are starting to see that already. The government is still a mess.
The Conservative party is still split and confused, the ministers are still tired, the economy is on its knees and Tory solutions have demonstrably failed. Your taxes are going up, your costs are going up. They will both likely stay up into 2024.
So the question will be do you want another 5 years of that? If Labour can demonstrate another way, the answer will be no.
Is Labour going to lower tax and public spending?
Growth would allow lower tax and higher public spending. Liz Truss was not completely wrong.
It would.
How are you going to get growth? Do you think a higher UK growth rate magically appears the moment Labour take office?
First ConHome rankings on the Sunak cabinet. Kemi Badenoch is second, only to Ben Wallace while Suella Braverman - the supposed ‘darling of the right’ - is much less popular than some of the commentary would suggest.
Poor Mr Ross - less popular than Ms Braverman. Wonder if he'd be more or less popular if he had stuck to his guns over the last year instead of u-turning several times?
Voters in the historic “red wall” seat of Sedgefield in County Durham, where Tony Blair was once elected to parliament, are willing to give Rishi Sunak a chance to improve their prospects as the cost of living crisis deepens, since Keir Starmer is “not making a case for himself”.
Members of a focus group, conducted by UK More in Common for the Guardian, described Sunak as “the money man” with a CV that proves he was the “best of a bad bunch” of Conservative leadership candidates……
“Winning back their confidence won’t be easy. But the good news for Rishi Sunak was that they thought he was the best person to clean up the mess, and didn’t think that anyone else, including Keir Starmer, would do a better job.”
Which plays into yesterday's suggestion that Rishi's faux Boris act at PMQs is deeply mistaken, and that he should revert to being the calm financial technocrat instead.
And proves once again that people will forgive the Tories anything, like a cheating husband who keeps worming his way back into the marriage. Incredible.
The reality of the situation is that Rishi is a welcome change from Truss and Boris. It’s a low bar he can walk under. Arguing to the contrary is a waste of time. He will be thanked for that, at least in the short term.
What will become clear is that change whilst necessary, was insufficient. We are starting to see that already. The government is still a mess.
The Conservative party is still split and confused, the ministers are still tired, the economy is on its knees and Tory solutions have demonstrably failed. Your taxes are going up, your costs are going up. They will both likely stay up into 2024.
So the question will be do you want another 5 years of that? If Labour can demonstrate another way, the answer will be no.
Is Labour going to lower tax and public spending?
Growth would allow lower tax and higher public spending. Liz Truss was not completely wrong.
It would.
How are you going to get growth? Do you think a higher UK growth rate magically appears the moment Labour take office?
Labour has two structural advantages when it comes to growth: 1. It is not wedded to a sovereignty-first Brexit so will not go to war with itself over a closer trading relationship with the EU that might involve giving up some sovereignty. 2. It is not so electorally reliant on an elderly, home owning demographic, so has more space on multiple issues relating to housing and infrastructure. Neither makes growth magically appear, but both make it more likely.
On the other hand the Tories ought to be the ones to make the move on the triple lock on a Nixon in China basis?
The Telegraph reports that the Home Office is attempting to block book the entire 4 star Novotel in Ipswich for dinghy people. For months, is the implication
The optics of this for HMG are implausibly bad. I imagine a large chunk of financially hard pressed Brits would love to spend the winter in a 4 star Novotel. With everything provided - from food to heating
Yet Albanians come first? AND YOU HAVE TO PAY FOR THEM
This story is a political Chernobyl
If you have a solution please share it.
Put them on planes, fly them back. Don't even bother with a process, Albania is a safe country.
I agree, but if you don't bother with a process then hordes of left-wing lawyers will appeal it to death.
First ConHome rankings on the Sunak cabinet. Kemi Badenoch is second, only to Ben Wallace while Suella Braverman - the supposed ‘darling of the right’ - is much less popular than some of the commentary would suggest. img src="https://us.v-cdn.net/5020679/uploads/editor/sc/i9m2f7di99gw.jpeg" alt="" />
Obviously, London is geographically in the South East, never mind what HYUFD thinks.
The statistical regions are in some cases entirely artificial, and not supposed to trump everyday usage.
Personally, as I may have mentioned, I largely follow the watersheds, but correct using the the traditional county lines to avoid dismembering counties.
That puts Oxon, Berks, Herts, Essex, London, Surrey, Sussex and Kent in the South East (or perhaps better, “Thames”).
Northants, Beds, Cambs, and East Anglia (Norfolk, Suffolk) are all “Eastern” counties.
Hampshire, Dorset and Wiltshire are “Wessex”, Somerset and Dorset are “South West”, and Cornwall is Cornwall.
The Midlands start with Gloucs and then run up through Warks, Leics, Rutland, Lincs.
Voters in the historic “red wall” seat of Sedgefield in County Durham, where Tony Blair was once elected to parliament, are willing to give Rishi Sunak a chance to improve their prospects as the cost of living crisis deepens, since Keir Starmer is “not making a case for himself”.
Members of a focus group, conducted by UK More in Common for the Guardian, described Sunak as “the money man” with a CV that proves he was the “best of a bad bunch” of Conservative leadership candidates……
“Winning back their confidence won’t be easy. But the good news for Rishi Sunak was that they thought he was the best person to clean up the mess, and didn’t think that anyone else, including Keir Starmer, would do a better job.”
Which plays into yesterday's suggestion that Rishi's faux Boris act at PMQs is deeply mistaken, and that he should revert to being the calm financial technocrat instead.
And proves once again that people will forgive the Tories anything, like a cheating husband who keeps worming his way back into the marriage. Incredible.
The reality of the situation is that Rishi is a welcome change from Truss and Boris. It’s a low bar he can walk under. Arguing to the contrary is a waste of time. He will be thanked for that, at least in the short term.
What will become clear is that change whilst necessary, was insufficient. We are starting to see that already. The government is still a mess.
The Conservative party is still split and confused, the ministers are still tired, the economy is on its knees and Tory solutions have demonstrably failed. Your taxes are going up, your costs are going up. They will both likely stay up into 2024.
So the question will be do you want another 5 years of that? If Labour can demonstrate another way, the answer will be no.
Is Labour going to lower tax and public spending?
Growth would allow lower tax and higher public spending. Liz Truss was not completely wrong.
It would.
How are you going to get growth? Do you think a higher UK growth rate magically appears the moment Labour take office?
Labour has two structural advantages when it comes to growth: 1. It is not wedded to a sovereignty-first Brexit so will not go to war with itself over a closer trading relationship with the EU that might involve giving up some sovereignty. 2. It is not so electorally reliant on an elderly, home owning demographic, so has more space on multiple issues relating to housing and infrastructure. Neither makes growth magically appear, but both make it more likely.
Yes, those are some answers. So Labour would join the single market, go to war with NIMBYs and cut back on pensioner benefits.
Creates some headroom. Probably not as much as you think. Politically very difficult. Would take several years to pay off.
The Telegraph reports that the Home Office is attempting to block book the entire 4 star Novotel in Ipswich for dinghy people. For months, is the implication
The optics of this for HMG are implausibly bad. I imagine a large chunk of financially hard pressed Brits would love to spend the winter in a 4 star Novotel. With everything provided - from food to heating
Yet Albanians come first? AND YOU HAVE TO PAY FOR THEM
This story is a political Chernobyl
If you have a solution please share it.
Put them on planes, fly them back. Don't even bother with a process, Albania is a safe country.
What do you do with refugees/immigrants/asylum-seekers who refuse to say where they came from?
Also ship them to Albania. No process, just get on with it.
I think it's clear from the discussion on here this morning that Labour have no better answers other than wishful thinking.
As soon as attention turns to them and their programme for office this will be sniffed out - the public aren't stupid.
That's why I'm not betting on a Labour majority right now.
Be careful on this one. It looks like your heart is ruling your head here.
I would not bet on a Labour majority, simply because Scotland makes it so much tougher to achieve. That said, I would not bet on the Tories being in power after the next GE either. It’s likely to be quite a messy result.
To re-state a question I asked earlier why have UK gas prices spiked again?
Probably because there's very little storage, and an LNG cargo has been diverted to Rotterdam.
Really? Something like that and they spike? No sort of clever market people with 9 screens and coffee addiction peering into the future and getting a sense of something they don’t like? Just one walky-talks conversation “Sorry Biffur, all full, try Rotterdam.”
Would it be unduly expensive to use tankers as storage and pay to keep a few moored in Milford Haven through the winter?
It’s a good question. The answer as you sugggest, with these tankers worth their weight in gold right now, it could be too expensive to moor one down like that.
I think the issue is that if they are moored then they are not off getting your next load so you are just creating a bigger problem down the line
Basically - once again - the government (along with most other people) forgot that one of their primary roles is structural resilience
LNG vessels are not great looking term stores of natural gas, because - while they are well insulated - they have no way to actually cool the gas. An LNG vessel will therefore see its gas warming and expanding and ultimately returning to a gaseous state.
LNG Returning to a gaseous state would be cool to watch though…
Depends how quickly it does it
I've forgotten my O level physics. As the temperature rises to the LNG boiling point, presumably the ship would just burst under the pressure of boiled off gas?
I assume there are safety valves that would release first?
Only if the tank can hold the considerably increased pressure, or the safety vents can release the evolved gas quickly enough to keep the buildup of pressure down.
One point however is that evaporation of gas will itself cool the liquid somewhat.
If the pressure does build up there will be considerable energy stored in the compressed gas - which will sooner or later cause an explosion in its own right, quite apart from the effect of suddenly creating a mixed gas of methane and air, and enough debris and macerated electrical stuff to cause a spark.
Such explosions were a big thing in the C19 with railway locos and dodgy factory boilers running steam for engines.
The former effect is much feared sufficiently to be known I believe as a BLEVE
Here the heat is coming from ane xternal fire - but of course there is no fire inside the tank and you can see that the explosion precedes the ignition of the internal fuel.
The Telegraph reports that the Home Office is attempting to block book the entire 4 star Novotel in Ipswich for dinghy people. For months, is the implication
The optics of this for HMG are implausibly bad. I imagine a large chunk of financially hard pressed Brits would love to spend the winter in a 4 star Novotel. With everything provided - from food to heating
Yet Albanians come first? AND YOU HAVE TO PAY FOR THEM
This story is a political Chernobyl
If you have a solution please share it.
Put them on planes, fly them back. Don't even bother with a process, Albania is a safe country.
I agree, but if you don't bother with a process then hordes of left-wing lawyers will appeal it to death.
Law needs to be changed first.
Too late, they'll be back in Albania by then.
Why stop at Albanians? If we're going down the without due process route then I'm sure if we polled the UK, or sought counsel from various groups there would be many others we could send back to where they came from.
The Telegraph reports that the Home Office is attempting to block book the entire 4 star Novotel in Ipswich for dinghy people. For months, is the implication
The optics of this for HMG are implausibly bad. I imagine a large chunk of financially hard pressed Brits would love to spend the winter in a 4 star Novotel. With everything provided - from food to heating
Yet Albanians come first? AND YOU HAVE TO PAY FOR THEM
This story is a political Chernobyl
If you have a solution please share it.
Put them on planes, fly them back. Don't even bother with a process, Albania is a safe country.
I agree, but if you don't bother with a process then hordes of left-wing lawyers will appeal it to death.
Law needs to be changed first.
Do you see criminal defence lawyers as pro-murder? Are there no right-wing lawyers who want to uphold the, erm, law?
Voters in the historic “red wall” seat of Sedgefield in County Durham, where Tony Blair was once elected to parliament, are willing to give Rishi Sunak a chance to improve their prospects as the cost of living crisis deepens, since Keir Starmer is “not making a case for himself”.
Members of a focus group, conducted by UK More in Common for the Guardian, described Sunak as “the money man” with a CV that proves he was the “best of a bad bunch” of Conservative leadership candidates……
“Winning back their confidence won’t be easy. But the good news for Rishi Sunak was that they thought he was the best person to clean up the mess, and didn’t think that anyone else, including Keir Starmer, would do a better job.”
Which plays into yesterday's suggestion that Rishi's faux Boris act at PMQs is deeply mistaken, and that he should revert to being the calm financial technocrat instead.
And proves once again that people will forgive the Tories anything, like a cheating husband who keeps worming his way back into the marriage. Incredible.
The reality of the situation is that Rishi is a welcome change from Truss and Boris. It’s a low bar he can walk under. Arguing to the contrary is a waste of time. He will be thanked for that, at least in the short term.
What will become clear is that change whilst necessary, was insufficient. We are starting to see that already. The government is still a mess.
The Conservative party is still split and confused, the ministers are still tired, the economy is on its knees and Tory solutions have demonstrably failed. Your taxes are going up, your costs are going up. They will both likely stay up into 2024.
So the question will be do you want another 5 years of that? If Labour can demonstrate another way, the answer will be no.
Is Labour going to lower tax and public spending?
Growth would allow lower tax and higher public spending. Liz Truss was not completely wrong.
It would.
How are you going to get growth? Do you think a higher UK growth rate magically appears the moment Labour take office?
How are you going to get growth? Not by austerity, that's for sure.
Every pound saved on public services, or by real-terms tax rises / pay cuts / benefit cuts on the poor, takes money out of the economy.
Every pound saved by tax rises on the rich takes money out of the property bubble, off-shore accounts, stocks and shares, foreign holidays, etc. etc.
Obviously, London is geographically in the South East, never mind what HYUFD thinks.
The statistical regions are in some cases entirely artificial, and not supposed to trump everyday usage.
Personally, as I may have mentioned, I largely follow the watersheds, but correct using the the traditional county lines to avoid dismembering counties.
That puts Oxon, Berks, Herts, Essex, London, Surrey, Sussex and Kent in the South East (or perhaps better, “Thames”).
Northants, Beds, Cambs, and East Anglia (Norfolk, Suffolk) are all “Eastern” counties.
Hampshire, Dorset and Wiltshire are “Wessex”, Somerset and Dorset are “South West”, and Cornwall is Cornwall.
The Midlands start with Gloucs and then run up through Warks, Leics, Rutland, Lincs.
My judgment on this matter is final.
Alfred’s judgement was final.
Oxford is in Mercia
Except for the bit of Oxford across the Thames south of Folly Bridge - though that was a Victorian suburb admittedly.
Voters in the historic “red wall” seat of Sedgefield in County Durham, where Tony Blair was once elected to parliament, are willing to give Rishi Sunak a chance to improve their prospects as the cost of living crisis deepens, since Keir Starmer is “not making a case for himself”.
Members of a focus group, conducted by UK More in Common for the Guardian, described Sunak as “the money man” with a CV that proves he was the “best of a bad bunch” of Conservative leadership candidates……
“Winning back their confidence won’t be easy. But the good news for Rishi Sunak was that they thought he was the best person to clean up the mess, and didn’t think that anyone else, including Keir Starmer, would do a better job.”
Which plays into yesterday's suggestion that Rishi's faux Boris act at PMQs is deeply mistaken, and that he should revert to being the calm financial technocrat instead.
And proves once again that people will forgive the Tories anything, like a cheating husband who keeps worming his way back into the marriage. Incredible.
The reality of the situation is that Rishi is a welcome change from Truss and Boris. It’s a low bar he can walk under. Arguing to the contrary is a waste of time. He will be thanked for that, at least in the short term.
What will become clear is that change whilst necessary, was insufficient. We are starting to see that already. The government is still a mess.
The Conservative party is still split and confused, the ministers are still tired, the economy is on its knees and Tory solutions have demonstrably failed. Your taxes are going up, your costs are going up. They will both likely stay up into 2024.
So the question will be do you want another 5 years of that? If Labour can demonstrate another way, the answer will be no.
Is Labour going to lower tax and public spending?
Growth would allow lower tax and higher public spending. Liz Truss was not completely wrong.
It would.
How are you going to get growth? Do you think a higher UK growth rate magically appears the moment Labour take office?
Labour has two structural advantages when it comes to growth: 1. It is not wedded to a sovereignty-first Brexit so will not go to war with itself over a closer trading relationship with the EU that might involve giving up some sovereignty. 2. It is not so electorally reliant on an elderly, home owning demographic, so has more space on multiple issues relating to housing and infrastructure. Neither makes growth magically appear, but both make it more likely.
And yet Labour has backed the triple lock and opposed liberalisation of planning. Starmer has also repeatedly ruled out a closer relationship with the EU.
You're projecting your own wishes onto the party. In reality they will keep the triple lock, bitterly oppose planning reform, shovel money to the public sector and cut investment to pay for it. Also tax rises, to rates that stifle wealth creation. When Liz Truss was the alternative it was still the least worst option, now it isn't.
I think it's clear from the discussion on here this morning that Labour have no better answers other than wishful thinking.
As soon as attention turns to them and their programme for office this will be sniffed out - the public aren't stupid.
That's why I'm not betting on a Labour majority right now.
Be careful on this one. It looks like your heart is ruling your head here.
I would not bet on a Labour majority, simply because Scotland makes it so much tougher to achieve. That said, I would not bet on the Tories being in power after the next GE either. It’s likely to be quite a messy result.
I agree. I think it will be close and messy. There are many reasons to doubt a Labour majority, but the current debate on immigration is not one of them.
The government is presiding over a total mess of their making. The opposition is right to challenge them. It's their job. The fact the government then has no solution and turns around and says 'well what would you do' is a sign of the government's weakness, not Labours.
You see this sort of thing when governments get tired and heading to opposition.
The Telegraph reports that the Home Office is attempting to block book the entire 4 star Novotel in Ipswich for dinghy people. For months, is the implication
The optics of this for HMG are implausibly bad. I imagine a large chunk of financially hard pressed Brits would love to spend the winter in a 4 star Novotel. With everything provided - from food to heating
Yet Albanians come first? AND YOU HAVE TO PAY FOR THEM
This story is a political Chernobyl
If you have a solution please share it.
Put them on planes, fly them back. Don't even bother with a process, Albania is a safe country.
I agree, but if you don't bother with a process then hordes of left-wing lawyers will appeal it to death.
Law needs to be changed first.
Too late, they'll be back in Albania by then.
Why stop at Albanians? If we're going down the without due process route then I'm sure if we polled the UK, or sought counsel from various groups there would be many others we could send back to where they came from.
If they've arrived here illegally from a safe country, sure. You want to overcomplicate it to try and make a point, yet this isn't complicated. Thousands of illegal immigrants are arriving from a safe country where they are citizens, sending them back isn't controversial. We do it with visa overstayers all the time.
Voters in the historic “red wall” seat of Sedgefield in County Durham, where Tony Blair was once elected to parliament, are willing to give Rishi Sunak a chance to improve their prospects as the cost of living crisis deepens, since Keir Starmer is “not making a case for himself”.
Members of a focus group, conducted by UK More in Common for the Guardian, described Sunak as “the money man” with a CV that proves he was the “best of a bad bunch” of Conservative leadership candidates……
“Winning back their confidence won’t be easy. But the good news for Rishi Sunak was that they thought he was the best person to clean up the mess, and didn’t think that anyone else, including Keir Starmer, would do a better job.”
Which plays into yesterday's suggestion that Rishi's faux Boris act at PMQs is deeply mistaken, and that he should revert to being the calm financial technocrat instead.
And proves once again that people will forgive the Tories anything, like a cheating husband who keeps worming his way back into the marriage. Incredible.
The reality of the situation is that Rishi is a welcome change from Truss and Boris. It’s a low bar he can walk under. Arguing to the contrary is a waste of time. He will be thanked for that, at least in the short term.
What will become clear is that change whilst necessary, was insufficient. We are starting to see that already. The government is still a mess.
The Conservative party is still split and confused, the ministers are still tired, the economy is on its knees and Tory solutions have demonstrably failed. Your taxes are going up, your costs are going up. They will both likely stay up into 2024.
So the question will be do you want another 5 years of that? If Labour can demonstrate another way, the answer will be no.
Is Labour going to lower tax and public spending?
Growth would allow lower tax and higher public spending. Liz Truss was not completely wrong.
It would.
How are you going to get growth? Do you think a higher UK growth rate magically appears the moment Labour take office?
How are you going to get growth? Not by austerity, that's for sure.
Every pound saved on public services, or by real-terms tax rises / pay cuts / benefit cuts on the poor, takes money out of the economy.
Every pound saved by tax rises on the rich takes money out of the property bubble, off-shore accounts, stocks and shares, foreign holidays, etc. etc.
The only problem with taxing the rich is there are not enough of them, and the seriously rich just leave and pay their taxes elsewhere
Taxing the rich is sensible as long as it is proportional and doesn’t encourage widespread tax evasion and loss of entrepreneurs skills to the UK
To re-state a question I asked earlier why have UK gas prices spiked again?
Probably because there's very little storage, and an LNG cargo has been diverted to Rotterdam.
Really? Something like that and they spike? No sort of clever market people with 9 screens and coffee addiction peering into the future and getting a sense of something they don’t like? Just one walky-talks conversation “Sorry Biffur, all full, try Rotterdam.”
Would it be unduly expensive to use tankers as storage and pay to keep a few moored in Milford Haven through the winter?
It’s a good question. The answer as you sugggest, with these tankers worth their weight in gold right now, it could be too expensive to moor one down like that.
I think the issue is that if they are moored then they are not off getting your next load so you are just creating a bigger problem down the line
Basically - once again - the government (along with most other people) forgot that one of their primary roles is structural resilience
LNG vessels are not great looking term stores of natural gas, because - while they are well insulated - they have no way to actually cool the gas. An LNG vessel will therefore see its gas warming and expanding and ultimately returning to a gaseous state.
LNG Returning to a gaseous state would be cool to watch though…
Depends how quickly it does it
I've forgotten my O level physics. As the temperature rises to the LNG boiling point, presumably the ship would just burst under the pressure of boiled off gas?
I assume there are safety valves that would release first?
Yep they will have vent valves but of course that would lose them the cargo (though better than exploding).
The carriers have to keep their cargo at around -160 degrees C. Gaseous natural gas has 625x the volume of LNG and the biggest carriers hold around 250,000 cubic metres of LNG. So you can see that if the temperature rises it gets to be a problem very, very quickly.
Obviously, London is geographically in the South East, never mind what HYUFD thinks.
The statistical regions are in some cases entirely artificial, and not supposed to trump everyday usage.
Personally, as I may have mentioned, I largely follow the watersheds, but correct using the the traditional county lines to avoid dismembering counties.
That puts Oxon, Berks, Herts, Essex, London, Surrey, Sussex and Kent in the South East (or perhaps better, “Thames”).
Northants, Beds, Cambs, and East Anglia (Norfolk, Suffolk) are all “Eastern” counties.
Hampshire, Dorset and Wiltshire are “Wessex”, Somerset and Dorset are “South West”, and Cornwall is Cornwall.
The Midlands start with Gloucs and then run up through Warks, Leics, Rutland, Lincs.
Voters in the historic “red wall” seat of Sedgefield in County Durham, where Tony Blair was once elected to parliament, are willing to give Rishi Sunak a chance to improve their prospects as the cost of living crisis deepens, since Keir Starmer is “not making a case for himself”.
Members of a focus group, conducted by UK More in Common for the Guardian, described Sunak as “the money man” with a CV that proves he was the “best of a bad bunch” of Conservative leadership candidates……
“Winning back their confidence won’t be easy. But the good news for Rishi Sunak was that they thought he was the best person to clean up the mess, and didn’t think that anyone else, including Keir Starmer, would do a better job.”
Which plays into yesterday's suggestion that Rishi's faux Boris act at PMQs is deeply mistaken, and that he should revert to being the calm financial technocrat instead.
And proves once again that people will forgive the Tories anything, like a cheating husband who keeps worming his way back into the marriage. Incredible.
The reality of the situation is that Rishi is a welcome change from Truss and Boris. It’s a low bar he can walk under. Arguing to the contrary is a waste of time. He will be thanked for that, at least in the short term.
What will become clear is that change whilst necessary, was insufficient. We are starting to see that already. The government is still a mess.
The Conservative party is still split and confused, the ministers are still tired, the economy is on its knees and Tory solutions have demonstrably failed. Your taxes are going up, your costs are going up. They will both likely stay up into 2024.
So the question will be do you want another 5 years of that? If Labour can demonstrate another way, the answer will be no.
Is Labour going to lower tax and public spending?
Growth would allow lower tax and higher public spending. Liz Truss was not completely wrong.
It would.
How are you going to get growth? Do you think a higher UK growth rate magically appears the moment Labour take office?
Do you not believe in Trussonomics? Or the economic benefits of Brexit? Or of ending austerity, should Hunt be stupid enough to impose it? Rishi Sunak has, or at least had, a plan to use the tax system to drive investment. Boris wanted to increase immigration for growth. So you see, growth is entirely possible even without a Labour government.
Voters in the historic “red wall” seat of Sedgefield in County Durham, where Tony Blair was once elected to parliament, are willing to give Rishi Sunak a chance to improve their prospects as the cost of living crisis deepens, since Keir Starmer is “not making a case for himself”.
Members of a focus group, conducted by UK More in Common for the Guardian, described Sunak as “the money man” with a CV that proves he was the “best of a bad bunch” of Conservative leadership candidates……
“Winning back their confidence won’t be easy. But the good news for Rishi Sunak was that they thought he was the best person to clean up the mess, and didn’t think that anyone else, including Keir Starmer, would do a better job.”
Which plays into yesterday's suggestion that Rishi's faux Boris act at PMQs is deeply mistaken, and that he should revert to being the calm financial technocrat instead.
And proves once again that people will forgive the Tories anything, like a cheating husband who keeps worming his way back into the marriage. Incredible.
The reality of the situation is that Rishi is a welcome change from Truss and Boris. It’s a low bar he can walk under. Arguing to the contrary is a waste of time. He will be thanked for that, at least in the short term.
What will become clear is that change whilst necessary, was insufficient. We are starting to see that already. The government is still a mess.
The Conservative party is still split and confused, the ministers are still tired, the economy is on its knees and Tory solutions have demonstrably failed. Your taxes are going up, your costs are going up. They will both likely stay up into 2024.
So the question will be do you want another 5 years of that? If Labour can demonstrate another way, the answer will be no.
Is Labour going to lower tax and public spending?
Growth would allow lower tax and higher public spending. Liz Truss was not completely wrong.
It would.
How are you going to get growth? Do you think a higher UK growth rate magically appears the moment Labour take office?
Labour has two structural advantages when it comes to growth: 1. It is not wedded to a sovereignty-first Brexit so will not go to war with itself over a closer trading relationship with the EU that might involve giving up some sovereignty. 2. It is not so electorally reliant on an elderly, home owning demographic, so has more space on multiple issues relating to housing and infrastructure. Neither makes growth magically appear, but both make it more likely.
And yet Labour has backed the triple lock and opposed liberalisation of planning. Starmer has also repeatedly ruled out a closer relationship with the EU.
You're projecting your own wishes onto the party. In reality they will keep the triple lock, bitterly oppose planning reform, shovel money to the public sector and cut investment to pay for it. Also tax rises, to rates that stifle wealth creation. When Liz Truss was the alternative it was still the least worst option, now it isn't.
Being accused of projecting by someone who is projecting is amusing! I didn’t mention the triple lock. Neither side will get rid of that, unfortunately.
Voters in the historic “red wall” seat of Sedgefield in County Durham, where Tony Blair was once elected to parliament, are willing to give Rishi Sunak a chance to improve their prospects as the cost of living crisis deepens, since Keir Starmer is “not making a case for himself”.
Members of a focus group, conducted by UK More in Common for the Guardian, described Sunak as “the money man” with a CV that proves he was the “best of a bad bunch” of Conservative leadership candidates……
“Winning back their confidence won’t be easy. But the good news for Rishi Sunak was that they thought he was the best person to clean up the mess, and didn’t think that anyone else, including Keir Starmer, would do a better job.”
Which plays into yesterday's suggestion that Rishi's faux Boris act at PMQs is deeply mistaken, and that he should revert to being the calm financial technocrat instead.
And proves once again that people will forgive the Tories anything, like a cheating husband who keeps worming his way back into the marriage. Incredible.
The reality of the situation is that Rishi is a welcome change from Truss and Boris. It’s a low bar he can walk under. Arguing to the contrary is a waste of time. He will be thanked for that, at least in the short term.
What will become clear is that change whilst necessary, was insufficient. We are starting to see that already. The government is still a mess.
The Conservative party is still split and confused, the ministers are still tired, the economy is on its knees and Tory solutions have demonstrably failed. Your taxes are going up, your costs are going up. They will both likely stay up into 2024.
So the question will be do you want another 5 years of that? If Labour can demonstrate another way, the answer will be no.
Is Labour going to lower tax and public spending?
Growth would allow lower tax and higher public spending. Liz Truss was not completely wrong.
It would.
How are you going to get growth? Do you think a higher UK growth rate magically appears the moment Labour take office?
How are you going to get growth? Not by austerity, that's for sure.
Every pound saved on public services, or by real-terms tax rises / pay cuts / benefit cuts on the poor, takes money out of the economy.
Every pound saved by tax rises on the rich takes money out of the property bubble, off-shore accounts, stocks and shares, foreign holidays, etc. etc.
We have also passed the point where public sector savings make any actual savings even over the medium term let alone the long term.
Temporary pot hole fixes every year cost a lot more than repairing the roads to last ten years, but are cheaper in year 1.
Losing experienced staff over a couple of % differences on pay rises may save money in year 1, but we end up spending more on agency staff and training as well as ending up with lower quality services.
These kind of mistakes are repeated throughout our public sector. Year 1 savings are no longer creating savings but actually increase the cost burden.
If we really want to cut public spending, we could do less healthcare, less education or less pensions. Otherwise we should recognise what we want and work out how to pay for it.
Comments
Not sure if that puts it in the South East... oh shit, sorry 🤦🏻♂️
They need to engage with communities and understand what they want. Not talk down to them and tell them what they think they want. They need to regard the red wall, not as sinners repenting, but as a failure of Labour to engage.
I hope they do. This Tory govt does not deserve to be re-elected but, currently, labour has not demonstrated it deserves to be elevated to govt.
London's economy and importance is so big that it sits by itself. Dahn Sarf isn't London, but pays insane prices for things like houses. I have *no clue* - genuinely - how anyone can buy property down there where a shitbox semi is half a million.
Where southern England stops and rEngland starts is vague. Depends on how far the wealth spreads. Would put the Cotswolds in Southern England but not Cornwall or Norfolk.
As for other labels, north, north west, north east, doesn't that depend on what perspective you have? I grew up in the North West. I thought. But its a long way south of the North East. So just call all of it north, which other than a choice of stupid accent isn't that dissimilar to the midlands.
Scotland is easier I think. Borders, Central Belt, North East, Highlands and Islands. Wales? That woollyback strip along the top, the valleys and Cardiff at the bottom, and dragon country for the rest.
https://twitter.com/uamemesforces/status/1572479003218546688
(Although LuckyGuy, WilliamG, and Barty could correct me if I have that wrong.)
Matt Hancock could be disqualified from Bushtucker Trials on I'm A Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here! after it has been reported the former Health Secretary is battling a secret health condition. However, it has now been reported that viewers may be unable to vote for Mr Hancock to do the resilience tests as he is said to have developed trench foot while filming Celebrity SAS Who Dares Wins.
Not sealing the deal at this stage is completely fine. My view is that Labour have a chance of winning, which is remarkable given the started at 200 seats and with their worst result since 1935. It’s a hell of a long way back. People’s opinions really don’t change all that fast. There will be doubts. What’s encouraging is the opposition opera seems to be professionally run and informed by good research. So it’s possible to remain hopeful tgat Labour can seize the opportunity.
The optics of this for HMG are implausibly bad. I imagine a large chunk of financially hard pressed Brits would love to spend the winter in a 4 star Novotel. With everything provided - from food to heating
Yet Albanians come first? AND YOU HAVE TO PAY FOR THEM
This story is a political Chernobyl
At various times we have seen numerous forecasts that the Russian economy is going collapse in weeks, and more recently, their army in the south will crumble and disappear.
One thing for a group of discredited clinicians to put their name to a self-serving letter. Quite another for an NHS Trust - rated inadequate by CQC for care in this area, at the heart of a model found desperately wanting an independent review - to back this.
The children’s safeguarding lead at @TaviAndPort won an employment tribunal against them after she was discriminated against after whistleblowing about concerns. Concerns that have been vindicated by CQC, High Court, Cass Review and others. One might think reflection was in order
https://twitter.com/soniasodha/status/1587968428236840962
Decent theatre, though.
I stand by being glad politically that she won because she abolished the Health and Social Care Levy which is what I wanted politically.
I remain pissed off she won fiscally because she cost me £5000 and eternal "humility" rights.
😂
The recipe worked well before, no reason it can’t do so again.
The rumours of her resignation started emerging from No 10 when a junior staffer spotted that someone had moved the lecturn, in readiness for being carried outside...
Coffey is apparently Truss's long time karaoke partner!
It’s a disaster for the government but the total lack of solutions from Labour makes this a disaster for British politics. A spineless elite of virtue signallers and clueless non-managers
Oh, and the soldiers haven’t been paid, just to add to their morale problem.
I was pleasantly surprised to hear Wes Streeting saying that ministers cannot keep just throwing ever increasing amounts of money at the NHS without significant changes to modernise the system
I expect this will also be the position of Hunt
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2022/11/02/nhs-will-cease-exist-ever-throw-taxpayers-money-warns-labour/
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-63494181
And the NHS crisis is killing literally thousands
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-63486547
Extreme disruption to NHS services has been driving a sharp spike in heart disease deaths since the start of the pandemic, a charity has warned.
The British Heart Foundation (BHF) said ambulance delays, inaccessible care and waits for surgery are linked to 30,000 excess cardiac deaths in England.
And that's before winter really gets started. Gonna be tough.
It's usually a mix of songs
Is Labour going to lower tax and public spending? Labour will be better and growth will be higher because Reasons.
Fantasy.
Ah, my coat...
There are no other easy options for tax and spending changes elsewhere.
In reality, I expect them to try and tax even more as borrowing won't be possible.
Of those with mortgages, most have yet to experience any pain from recent events. In each year since about 2014, more than 90% of new borrowers have opted for fixed rate deals, and of these 5 year deals have risen to 45% of the total last year from under 30% in 2021. So few will have had to renew their mortgage deals this summer, but most mortgage deals will come up for renewal before the end of 2024. Only 5 year deals taken out after 2019 won't mature in time to be affected.
The Conservatives are going to be blamed for rapidly rising interest rates. But while people will be worried now, I think that the polling effect of rising mortgage rates will be most marked only when people are actually paying much higher mortgages.
So there's going to be a delayed polling effect and that will be a strong factor that will tend to maintain or conceivably even extend the current Labour poll lead. So I agree with Mike's scepticism that it is reasonable to expect a "huge turn back to the Tories" in polling, other than in temporarily response to short term events that buck the underlying trend.
The pursuit of these people smugglers is already taking place with the cooperation of France, and other EU countries, and just how long does labour expect it will take to achieve an international agreement
Apart from stopping the Rwanda scheme which has 42%/37% support they simply have no answer themselves
Thank you @tompeck for this lovely quote:
“An ingenious and hilarious reminder that absolutely everything has been one man's fault.”
👇
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Boris-Johnson-Neverending-Adventure-Control/dp/1787636925
https://twitter.com/JAHeale/status/1588085103716081665
Tony Blair struck gold, economically.
Law needs to be changed first.
How are you going to get growth? Do you think a higher UK growth rate magically appears the moment Labour take office?
It has one problem, shared by many of Boris’ promises and oversimplified populist solutions.
It doesn’t work.
I’m honestly surprised you’re still buying it. I thought you had moved on from Boris.
As soon as attention turns to them and their programme for office this will be sniffed out - the public aren't stupid.
That's why I'm not betting on a Labour majority right now.
I assume there are safety valves that would release first?
I would prefer they were not sent to Rwanda but a solution of some form is urgently needed
1. It is not wedded to a sovereignty-first Brexit so will not go to war with itself over a closer trading relationship with the EU that might involve giving up some sovereignty.
2. It is not so electorally reliant on an elderly, home owning demographic, so has more space on multiple issues relating to housing and infrastructure.
Neither makes growth magically appear, but both make it more likely.
Because it consists of billions of bidirectional interactions per day, Twitter can be thought of as a collective, cybernetic super-intelligence
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1588081971221053440
She’s unpopular with me, because there’s currently a 6-8 week wait for a legal visit visa, which is somewhat disrupting my family’s Christmas plans.
Creates some headroom. Probably not as much as you think. Politically very difficult. Would take several years to pay off.
One point however is that evaporation of gas will itself cool the liquid somewhat.
If the pressure does build up there will be considerable energy stored in the compressed gas - which will sooner or later cause an explosion in its own right, quite apart from the effect of suddenly creating a mixed gas of methane and air, and enough debris and macerated electrical stuff to cause a spark.
Such explosions were a big thing in the C19 with railway locos and dodgy factory boilers running steam for engines.
The former effect is much feared sufficiently to be known I believe as a BLEVE
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_liquid_expanding_vapor_explosion
Here the heat is coming from ane xternal fire - but of course there is no fire inside the tank and you can see that the explosion precedes the ignition of the internal fuel.
https://risk-safety.com/bleve/
Every pound saved on public services, or by real-terms tax rises / pay cuts / benefit cuts on the poor, takes money out of the economy.
Every pound saved by tax rises on the rich takes money out of the property bubble, off-shore accounts, stocks and shares, foreign holidays, etc. etc.
You're projecting your own wishes onto the party. In reality they will keep the triple lock, bitterly oppose planning reform, shovel money to the public sector and cut investment to pay for it. Also tax rises, to rates that stifle wealth creation. When Liz Truss was the alternative it was still the least worst option, now it isn't.
The government is presiding over a total mess of their making. The opposition is right to challenge them. It's their job. The fact the government then has no solution and turns around and says 'well what would you do' is a sign of the government's weakness, not Labours.
You see this sort of thing when governments get tired and heading to opposition.
Taxing the rich is sensible as long as it is proportional and doesn’t encourage widespread tax evasion and loss of entrepreneurs skills to the UK
The carriers have to keep their cargo at around -160 degrees C. Gaseous natural gas has 625x the volume of LNG and the biggest carriers hold around 250,000 cubic metres of LNG. So you can see that if the temperature rises it gets to be a problem very, very quickly.
Temporary pot hole fixes every year cost a lot more than repairing the roads to last ten years, but are cheaper in year 1.
Losing experienced staff over a couple of % differences on pay rises may save money in year 1, but we end up spending more on agency staff and training as well as ending up with lower quality services.
These kind of mistakes are repeated throughout our public sector. Year 1 savings are no longer creating savings but actually increase the cost burden.
If we really want to cut public spending, we could do less healthcare, less education or less pensions. Otherwise we should recognise what we want and work out how to pay for it.