Can anyone explain to me how the Truss/Kwarteng mini budget created a £30bn black hole? Has the cost of government borrowing permanently gone up as a result?
No, those costs are back where they otherwise would have been (relative to similar economies). As ever, it’s a massive oversimplification and nonsense to say there’s a £30Bn “blackhole”* because of the Tories. However them’s the breaks. Labour wasn’t responsible for the 2008/9 crash and the Tories did what all the talking heads recommended on the ERM. Facts and politics are different countries and always have been.
*The “blackhole” phrase bothers me as, given the origin, surely it should mean that our finances are infinitely dense, not that there’s an absence.
I think it’s the Tories putting this BS out there ahead of the budget, to justify their money grab.
Beth used 30 billion, many newspapers now say sixty billion.
There was a fantastic graph on PB last week, I think Ping, borrowing costs have gone up the same across Europe (except we seemed to start from a higher base) so that’s not fault of Truss and tge budget either. Nor the temporary run on the pound caused by US interest rates and strength of dollar against every currency. Nor were any of Truss tax cuts or policies actually implemented. Sunak’s policies have maxxed out the UK credit card with money pits like eat out to help out, Sunak is the one who presided over the mess pension schemes have got into.
So my theory is Sunak and Hunt are bullshitters - they need money for services like NHS, need money to bail out councils, need money to buck the energy market till April - they need money to pay for THEIR policies and invent rubbish about black holes to justify their “mug everyone” budget.
It might be £100bn by Thursday 👿
Peanuts! Why can't it be £200 basquillion? The OBR really need to pull their finger out - it's all a bit tame.
Can anyone explain to me how the Truss/Kwarteng mini budget created a £30bn black hole? Has the cost of government borrowing permanently gone up as a result?
No, those costs are back where they otherwise would have been (relative to similar economies). As ever, it’s a massive oversimplification and nonsense to say there’s a £30Bn “blackhole”* because of the Tories. However them’s the breaks. Labour wasn’t responsible for the 2008/9 crash and the Tories did what all the talking heads recommended on the ERM. Facts and politics are different countries and always have been.
*The “blackhole” phrase bothers me as, given the origin, surely it should mean that our finances are infinitely dense, not that there’s an absence.
I think it’s the Tories putting this BS out there ahead of the budget, to justify their money grab.
Beth used 30 billion, many newspapers now say sixty billion.
There was a fantastic graph on PB last week, I think Ping, borrowing costs have gone up the same across Europe (except we seemed to start from a higher base) so that’s not fault of Truss and tge budget either. Nor the temporary run on the pound caused by US interest rates and strength of dollar against every currency. Nor were any of Truss tax cuts or policies actually implemented. Sunak’s policies have maxxed out the UK credit card with money pits like eat out to help out, Sunak is the one who presided over the mess pension schemes have got into.
So my theory is Sunak and Hunt are bullshitters - they need money for services like NHS, need money to bail out councils, need money to buck the energy market till April - they need money to pay for THEIR policies and invent rubbish about black holes to justify their “mug everyone” budget.
It might be £100bn by Thursday 👿
The cost of Truss plan to buck energy markets for two years, she lifted from Starmer without any original though from her own team, other than she liked to boast how much GDP the policy was burning up (I recall a TSE thread heaping praise on Starmer for coming up with this policy) would have cost the British People about £200bn - to go to April alone must be £60bn. These are my figures, but let’s see what pricing the OBR put against these policies.
Can anyone explain to me how the Truss/Kwarteng mini budget created a £30bn black hole? Has the cost of government borrowing permanently gone up as a result?
No, those costs are back where they otherwise would have been (relative to similar economies). As ever, it’s a massive oversimplification and nonsense to say there’s a £30Bn “blackhole”* because of the Tories. However them’s the breaks. Labour wasn’t responsible for the 2008/9 crash and the Tories did what all the talking heads recommended on the ERM. Facts and politics are different countries and always have been.
*The “blackhole” phrase bothers me as, given the origin, surely it should mean that our finances are infinitely dense, not that there’s an absence.
I think it’s the Tories putting this BS out there ahead of the budget, to justify their money grab.
Beth used 30 billion, many newspapers now say sixty billion.
There was a fantastic graph on PB last week, I think Ping, borrowing costs have gone up the same across Europe (except we seemed to start from a higher base) so that’s not fault of Truss and tge budget either. Nor the temporary run on the pound caused by US interest rates and strength of dollar against every currency. Nor were any of Truss tax cuts or policies actually implemented. Sunak’s policies have maxxed out the UK credit card with money pits like eat out to help out, Sunak is the one who presided over the mess pension schemes have got into.
So my theory is Sunak and Hunt are bullshitters - they need money for services like NHS, need money to bail out councils, need money to buck the energy market till April - they need money to pay for THEIR policies and invent rubbish about black holes to justify their “mug everyone” budget.
It might be £100bn by Thursday 👿
Whatever plans are announced I assume that, if it restores some confidence (even if meaning a further polling hit), then I'd expect said plans to be scaled back in 6-12 months - tax rises deferred, cuts delayed - once the government has shown willing at least.
Planned spending increases and a raft of tax cuts in time for oooo Budget 2024. So Autumn Statement next year for the pre-election tax cuts.
Another one's referred to below, and you can see lots of examples of it in videos of the police in London.
@MPSHomerton To the two members of the public who tried to obstruct us whilst we were dealing with a group of youths in Retreat place E9 tonight, shouting at us & accusing us of harassing the youths, if you tried to listen to us we may have been able to show you what we found.
I don't rate Beth Rigby but he was equally evasive on Ch4 and on the BBC. Gary Gibbon gave him a really torrid time and the questions had nothing to do with deficits or Liz Truss. They were about his shady Cabinet appointments.
At first i thought Gibbon was going too far but after several minutes of Sunak's evasion I could understand why. He just wouldn't answer his questions. He was being slippery Just prepared answers to questions he wasn't asked.
The Boris Johnson technique in other words. He came across as slippery. Chris Mason asked the same questions and got the same treatment. Sunak has a lot to learn. Having a personal PR company will only take you so far
He'll probably get better but you can at the moment see a young and inexperienced politician not comfortable with scrutiny.
Thank god he's got plenty of time to learn his trade before he gets into a position with the power to really mess things up.
Not answering the question and/or answering your own question instead is standard practise for politicians.
I upset Tony Benn by repeatedly asking the same question until he was forced to answer it.
Can anyone explain to me how the Truss/Kwarteng mini budget created a £30bn black hole? Has the cost of government borrowing permanently gone up as a result?
No, those costs are back where they otherwise would have been (relative to similar economies). As ever, it’s a massive oversimplification and nonsense to say there’s a £30Bn “blackhole”* because of the Tories. However them’s the breaks. Labour wasn’t responsible for the 2008/9 crash and the Tories did what all the talking heads recommended on the ERM. Facts and politics are different countries and always have been.
*The “blackhole” phrase bothers me as, given the origin, surely it should mean that our finances are infinitely dense, not that there’s an absence.
I think the Special Financial Operation is the black hole, and the 30bn is what gets within its event horizon.
I like this idea that the Truss budget suddenly put a massive hole in the public finances.
I am not sure it did all of that on its own. This additional deficit could well be based on the forecasts & the difference between one OBR report back when and now. At one time the OBR didnt foresee inflation at the levels its at & and expected growth which isnt going to happen. The Truss budget didnt create either of those. Its damage on the public finances was borrowing costs which the budget was responsible for.
Ukraine & Poland
Whilst we wait for firm confirmation of what exactly landed on Polish soil what we can say is: 1. Yes it could have been a Ukrainian long range air defence missile 2. It could have been a Russian air to ground or surface to surface missile 3. It could have been a Russian air defence missile of the same type as the Ukrainians. The Russians have been using S300s in an improvised surface to surface role for many weeks. 4. There is a long range Polish radar station that has complete sight of anything in that region and the area is has enough ground & air sensors that it could microwave your brain. They will already have a high if not 100% confidence on its origin
One other thing, amid the idea of a winter pause in hostilities as if its some kind of football league, why should their be one? The Ukrainians are getting an awful lot of gear designed to operate in all but the harshest winter weather. Any pause is just as likely to be regroup, resupply and battlefield prep related as it is seasonal.
If it's an S-300, as seems probable, then it's Ukrainian as it's too far west to be Russian. (S-300 range = few hundred km at best.)
No idea but I'd assume its launch point if it was Russian surface to surface was from Belarus.
Bit of a blind spot there from 'expert' Dura Ace.
Well we don't know, its all speculation at this point and some of the speculation is running counter to others. There are people who do know what the story is, but they arent on here
I don't rate Beth Rigby but he was equally evasive on Ch4 and on the BBC. Gary Gibbon gave him a really torrid time and the questions had nothing to do with deficits or Liz Truss. They were about his shady Cabinet appointments.
At first i thought Gibbon was going too far but after several minutes of Sunak's evasion I could understand why. He just wouldn't answer his questions. He was being slippery Just prepared answers to questions he wasn't asked.
The Boris Johnson technique in other words. He came across as slippery. Chris Mason asked the same questions and got the same treatment. Sunak has a lot to learn. Having a personal PR company will only take you so far
He'll probably get better but you can at the moment see a young and inexperienced politician not comfortable with scrutiny.
My take on Sunak is a very strong desire to be accepted by his peers.
Well since doesn’t know anyone working class he kind of needs their approval
I don't think he is after working class approval; I think he said precisely that silly thing to be 'in the club' with his posh mates. I am not posh and didn’t go to a posh school, but I've said daft supercillious things to fit in with a group before.
But if you are a Soton doctor's son who goes to Winchester n Oxford, where are you going to pick up working class mates?
Nowhere, but the 'don't know any WORKING class people obvs.!' was said with a little bit of a flourish, and wasn't he with fellow students when he said it? Fairly classic playing to the gallery, as was his speech about 'we had to re-route spending away from the urban poor' - again, playing to the gallery, asking to be accepted. Both times by dumping on the wc incidentally.
Like I said, I don't blame him, at all. But I do see him round a table cracking jokes at the expense of the lumpen Hartlepoolites as he signs us up to God knows what stupidity for a clap on the back from Justin Trudeau.
I don't rate Beth Rigby but he was equally evasive on Ch4 and on the BBC. Gary Gibbon gave him a really torrid time and the questions had nothing to do with deficits or Liz Truss. They were about his shady Cabinet appointments.
At first i thought Gibbon was going too far but after several minutes of Sunak's evasion I could understand why. He just wouldn't answer his questions. He was being slippery Just prepared answers to questions he wasn't asked.
The Boris Johnson technique in other words. He came across as slippery. Chris Mason asked the same questions and got the same treatment. Sunak has a lot to learn. Having a personal PR company will only take you so far
He'll probably get better but you can at the moment see a young and inexperienced politician not comfortable with scrutiny.
My take on Sunak is a very strong desire to be accepted by his peers.
Well since doesn’t know anyone working class he kind of needs their approval
O I don't think he is after working class approval; I think he said precisely that silly thing to be 'in the club' with his posh mates. I am not posh and didn’t go to a posh school, but I've said daft supercillious things to fit in with a group before.
My post was ambiguous, but what I meant was he needs his peers approval as he doesn’t know anyone else
This is the first time the UK has changed Prime Ministers during a Parliament by having a full leadership contest, and going to membership - and look where it’s left the parties party’s ratings in eyes of the voters.
Liz Truss was the second time. Boris Johnson was the first.
True! 🤦♀️ I have been speedily corrected by a cold breakfast dish of rolled oats.
Where were you when I got the Senator Laxhalt tattoo?
Another one's referred to below, and you can see lots of examples of it in videos of the police in London.
@MPSHomerton To the two members of the public who tried to obstruct us whilst we were dealing with a group of youths in Retreat place E9 tonight, shouting at us & accusing us of harassing the youths, if you tried to listen to us we may have been able to show you what we found.
Perfectly good laws to deal with those interfering with the police. They ought to be taught a lesson. If you’re going to do it, then be very sure you have good cause and be willing to face the consequences.
Another one's referred to below, and you can see lots of examples of it in videos of the police in London.
@MPSHomerton To the two members of the public who tried to obstruct us whilst we were dealing with a group of youths in Retreat place E9 tonight, shouting at us & accusing us of harassing the youths, if you tried to listen to us we may have been able to show you what we found.
It seems a good use of social media, and the activities themselves are encouraging. Perhaps Suella's exhortations are being listened to, and perhaps the forces are improving after the long time under Dick.
I don't rate Beth Rigby but he was equally evasive on Ch4 and on the BBC. Gary Gibbon gave him a really torrid time and the questions had nothing to do with deficits or Liz Truss. They were about his shady Cabinet appointments.
At first i thought Gibbon was going too far but after several minutes of Sunak's evasion I could understand why. He just wouldn't answer his questions. He was being slippery Just prepared answers to questions he wasn't asked.
The Boris Johnson technique in other words. He came across as slippery. Chris Mason asked the same questions and got the same treatment. Sunak has a lot to learn. Having a personal PR company will only take you so far
He'll probably get better but you can at the moment see a young and inexperienced politician not comfortable with scrutiny.
My take on Sunak is a very strong desire to be accepted by his peers.
Well since doesn’t know anyone working class he kind of needs their approval
O I don't think he is after working class approval; I think he said precisely that silly thing to be 'in the club' with his posh mates. I am not posh and didn’t go to a posh school, but I've said daft supercillious things to fit in with a group before.
My post was ambiguous, but what I meant was he needs his peers approval as he doesn’t know anyone else
Meanwhile the Russian defence ministry seems to be saying it wasn't even manufactured in Russia.
Interesting questions that could be answered to some extent by those without an inside track include 1) how far was the location from the landing places of missiles that are known to have been launched by Russian forces today? 2) what sites did those missiles hit? 3) how accurate was the targeting? That's what a serious newspaper would ask... but there don't seem to be any.
If RCS is right and I've no reason to doubt him it just shows that the central problem is really one of growth. The UK economy is still smaller than it was pre-pandemic and there is little forecast for growth. Why?
Not enough growth budgets? Just borrowed out, taxed up, creaking public services fire fighting budgets.
Why did you stop at the pandemic, when was the last year, or couple of years, of decent growth for UK?
I don't rate Beth Rigby but he was equally evasive on Ch4 and on the BBC. Gary Gibbon gave him a really torrid time and the questions had nothing to do with deficits or Liz Truss. They were about his shady Cabinet appointments.
At first i thought Gibbon was going too far but after several minutes of Sunak's evasion I could understand why. He just wouldn't answer his questions. He was being slippery Just prepared answers to questions he wasn't asked.
The Boris Johnson technique in other words. He came across as slippery. Chris Mason asked the same questions and got the same treatment. Sunak has a lot to learn. Having a personal PR company will only take you so far
He'll probably get better but you can at the moment see a young and inexperienced politician not comfortable with scrutiny.
My take on Sunak is a very strong desire to be accepted by his peers.
Well since doesn’t know anyone working class he kind of needs their approval
I don't think he is after working class approval; I think he said precisely that silly thing to be 'in the club' with his posh mates. I am not posh and didn’t go to a posh school, but I've said daft supercillious things to fit in with a group before.
But if you are a Soton doctor's son who goes to Winchester n Oxford, where are you going to pick up working class mates?
Nowhere, but the 'don't know any WORKING class people obvs.!' was said with a little bit of a flourish, and wasn't he with fellow students when he said it? Fairly classic playing to the gallery, as was his speech about 'we had to re-route spending away from the urban poor' - again, playing to the gallery, asking to be accepted. Both times by dumping on the wc incidentally.
Like I said, I don't blame him, at all. But I do see him round a table cracking jokes at the expense of the lumpen Hartlepoolites as he signs us up to God knows what stupidity for a clap on the back from Justin Trudeau.
Sunak strikes me as being even more out of touch with how the vast majority of people live than TMay and Johnson were. Funnily enough of the last four Tory PMs the one whose background would make her least out of touch "should" be Truss, but she's so batsh*t that she lives in her own world anyway - and there are people like that in all social classes.
This is the first time the UK has changed Prime Ministers during a Parliament by having a full leadership contest, and going to membership - and look where it’s left the parties party’s ratings in eyes of the voters.
Liz Truss was the second time. Boris Johnson was the first.
Johnson did hold an election shortly afterwards.
Yes, and the Tories won GE2019 despite it following a contested leadership election.
To say their current polling woes are the result of this summer’s leadership contest is to confuse correlation with causation.
This is the first time the UK has changed Prime Ministers during a Parliament by having a full leadership contest, and going to membership - and look where it’s left the parties party’s ratings in eyes of the voters.
Liz Truss was the second time. Boris Johnson was the first.
Johnson did hold an election shortly afterwards.
Yes, and the Tories won GE2019 despite it following a contested leadership election.
To say their current polling woes are the result of this summer’s leadership contest is to confuse correlation with causation. And that analysis is further undermined when the person making it fails to get basic facts right, such as claiming Truss was the first PM elected in a full leadership contest (as per the comment I quoted).
I readily admit I got that one fact wrong, but your feeble attempt to then dismiss the whole argument I made makes you look a bit of a clown, because it’s plain for everyone to see you haven’t actually argued how months of blue on blue even after Truss had won, has had zero impact at all on the polling have you?
Unless you want to dismiss voters hate split parties as a fact as well?
2019 had a lot of get Brexit done, Boris love, Corbyn fear going on - so poor example for you to use to dismiss blue on blue, split parties costs votes as a strong argument I made.
I don't rate Beth Rigby but he was equally evasive on Ch4 and on the BBC. Gary Gibbon gave him a really torrid time and the questions had nothing to do with deficits or Liz Truss. They were about his shady Cabinet appointments.
At first i thought Gibbon was going too far but after several minutes of Sunak's evasion I could understand why. He just wouldn't answer his questions. He was being slippery Just prepared answers to questions he wasn't asked.
The Boris Johnson technique in other words. He came across as slippery. Chris Mason asked the same questions and got the same treatment. Sunak has a lot to learn. Having a personal PR company will only take you so far
He'll probably get better but you can at the moment see a young and inexperienced politician not comfortable with scrutiny.
My take on Sunak is a very strong desire to be accepted by his peers.
Well since doesn’t know anyone working class he kind of needs their approval
I don't think he is after working class approval; I think he said precisely that silly thing to be 'in the club' with his posh mates. I am not posh and didn’t go to a posh school, but I've said daft supercillious things to fit in with a group before.
But if you are a Soton doctor's son who goes to Winchester n Oxford, where are you going to pick up working class mates?
Nowhere, but the 'don't know any WORKING class people obvs.!' was said with a little bit of a flourish, and wasn't he with fellow students when he said it? Fairly classic playing to the gallery, as was his speech about 'we had to re-route spending away from the urban poor' - again, playing to the gallery, asking to be accepted. Both times by dumping on the wc incidentally.
Like I said, I don't blame him, at all. But I do see him round a table cracking jokes at the expense of the lumpen Hartlepoolites as he signs us up to God knows what stupidity for a clap on the back from Justin Trudeau.
Sunak strikes me as being even more out of touch with how the vast majority of people live than TMay and Johnson were. Funnily enough of the last four Tory PMs the one whose background would make her least out of touch "should" be Truss, but she's so batsh*t that she lives in her own world anyway - and there are people like that in all social classes.
Perhaps Truss was overcompensating for her background in seeking to ingratiate herself with the rich and powerful.
Meanwhile the Russian defence ministry seems to be saying it wasn't even manufactured in Russia.
Interesting questions that could be answered to some extent by those without an inside track include 1) how far was the location from the landing places of missiles that are known to have been launched by Russian forces today? 2) what sites did those missiles hit? 3) how accurate was the targeting? That's what a serious newspaper would ask... but there don't seem to be any.
Russian made doesn't confirm it came from Ukraine yet. It only leaves the possibility open. It could still have been launched by Russia but either malfunctioned or got knocked out by Ukrainian air defences.
This is the first time the UK has changed Prime Ministers during a Parliament by having a full leadership contest, and going to membership - and look where it’s left the parties party’s ratings in eyes of the voters.
Liz Truss was the second time. Boris Johnson was the first.
True! 🤦♀️ I have been speedily corrected by a cold breakfast dish of rolled oats.
Where were you when I got the Senator Laxhalt tattoo?
MR (ahem!) this one's for you . . .
NYT (Monday) - How Democrats Held On to Nevada - interview with Jon Ralston of The Nevada independent (excerpts below)
[Candidates]
Ms. Cortez Masto . . ran an almost flawless campaign. And I've seen a lot of them. She was disciplined. She was constantly on-message. She won everywhere she had to. And her media going after Laxalt was some of the best I've ever seen in terms of just really defining him in a way that he did not want to be defined.
And what my friends in the national media missed about this race is that Laxalt was as bad a candidate as Blake Masters or Hershel Walker. It's just that they didn't let him speak too much, so you couldn't really tell. And when he did, he got in trouble, saying Roe v Wade was a "joke."
[Harry Reid machine]
The Harry Reid machine . . . was still there, even after he passed away. And the woman who is the architect of the machine - Rebecca Lambe, one of the best political operatives in the country - is obsessive. She works 24/7 and she hires these great young people to operate the levers of the machine. They are very data-driven and they model everything, and they find voters and they register them and they turn them out.
This has worked every cycle since 2008, with the exception of 2014 . . . [The] machine is still there. . . .
[Making call that Cortez Masto would win]
. . . I don't just look at what the data shows. I also have to think about all the stuff we just talked about. And I thought there would be ticket splitters, and I thought that Cortez Masto would survive because she had a better campaign, because the machine would put her over the top. . . .
Speaking of Harry Reid, when I predicted he would survive in 2010, no one believed that - and he did win.
I don't rate Beth Rigby but he was equally evasive on Ch4 and on the BBC. Gary Gibbon gave him a really torrid time and the questions had nothing to do with deficits or Liz Truss. They were about his shady Cabinet appointments.
At first i thought Gibbon was going too far but after several minutes of Sunak's evasion I could understand why. He just wouldn't answer his questions. He was being slippery Just prepared answers to questions he wasn't asked.
The Boris Johnson technique in other words. He came across as slippery. Chris Mason asked the same questions and got the same treatment. Sunak has a lot to learn. Having a personal PR company will only take you so far
He'll probably get better but you can at the moment see a young and inexperienced politician not comfortable with scrutiny.
My take on Sunak is a very strong desire to be accepted by his peers.
Well since doesn’t know anyone working class he kind of needs their approval
I don't think he is after working class approval; I think he said precisely that silly thing to be 'in the club' with his posh mates. I am not posh and didn’t go to a posh school, but I've said daft supercillious things to fit in with a group before.
But if you are a Soton doctor's son who goes to Winchester n Oxford, where are you going to pick up working class mates?
Nowhere, but the 'don't know any WORKING class people obvs.!' was said with a little bit of a flourish, and wasn't he with fellow students when he said it? Fairly classic playing to the gallery, as was his speech about 'we had to re-route spending away from the urban poor' - again, playing to the gallery, asking to be accepted. Both times by dumping on the wc incidentally.
Like I said, I don't blame him, at all. But I do see him round a table cracking jokes at the expense of the lumpen Hartlepoolites as he signs us up to God knows what stupidity for a clap on the back from Justin Trudeau.
Sunak strikes me as being even more out of touch with how the vast majority of people live than TMay and Johnson were. Funnily enough of the last four Tory PMs the one whose background would make her least out of touch "should" be Truss, but she's so batsh*t that she lives in her own world anyway - and there are people like that in all social classes.
Perhaps Truss was overcompensating for her background in seeking to ingratiate herself with the rich and powerful.
Whatever else you can accuse Truss of, ingratiating herself with the powerful isn't it. She was ballsy in the extreme when it came to dealing with the powerful - to her ultimate political cost.
Meanwhile the Russian defence ministry seems to be saying it wasn't even manufactured in Russia.
Interesting questions that could be answered to some extent by those without an inside track include 1) how far was the location from the landing places of missiles that are known to have been launched by Russian forces today? 2) what sites did those missiles hit? 3) how accurate was the targeting? That's what a serious newspaper would ask... but there don't seem to be any.
Russian made doesn't confirm it came from Ukraine yet. It only leaves the possibility open. It could still have been launched by Russia but either malfunctioned or got knocked out by Ukrainian air defences.
Ukraine has Russian manufactured missile kit, Russia has Ukrainian manufactured missile kit.
This is the first time the UK has changed Prime Ministers during a Parliament by having a full leadership contest, and going to membership - and look where it’s left the parties party’s ratings in eyes of the voters.
Liz Truss was the second time. Boris Johnson was the first.
True! 🤦♀️ I have been speedily corrected by a cold breakfast dish of rolled oats.
Where were you when I got the Senator Laxhalt tattoo?
MR (ahem!) this one's for you . . .
NYT (Monday) - How Democrats Held On to Nevada - interview with Jon Ralston of The Nevada independent (excerpts below)
[Candidates]
Ms. Cortez Masto . . ran an almost flawless campaign. And I've seen a lot of them. She was disciplined. She was constantly on-message. She won everywhere she had to. And her media going after Laxalt was some of the best I've ever seen in terms of just really defining him in a way that he did not want to be defined.
And what my friends in the national media missed about this race is that Laxalt was as bad a candidate as Blake Masters or Hershel Walker. It's just that they didn't let him speak too much, so you couldn't really tell. And when he did, he got in trouble, saying Roe v Wade was a "joke."
[Harry Reid machine]
The Harry Reid machine . . . was still there, even after he passed away. And the woman who is the architect of the machine - Rebecca Lambe, one of the best political operatives in the country - is obsessive. She works 24/7 and she hires these great young people to operate the levers of the machine. They are very data-driven and they model everything, and they find voters and they register them and they turn them out.
This has worked every cycle since 2008, with the exception of 2014 . . . [The] machine is still there. . . .
[Making call that Cortez Masto would win]
. . . I don't just look at what the data shows. I also have to think about all the stuff we just talked about. And I thought there would be ticket splitters, and I thought that Cortez Masto would survive because she had a better campaign, because the machine would put her over the top. . . .
Speaking of Harry Reid, when I predicted he would survive in 2010, no one believed that - and he did win.
Good for them, after all the hard work put in.
Wake up Republicans - with your vote losing Trumpian candidates.
I don't rate Beth Rigby but he was equally evasive on Ch4 and on the BBC. Gary Gibbon gave him a really torrid time and the questions had nothing to do with deficits or Liz Truss. They were about his shady Cabinet appointments.
At first i thought Gibbon was going too far but after several minutes of Sunak's evasion I could understand why. He just wouldn't answer his questions. He was being slippery Just prepared answers to questions he wasn't asked.
The Boris Johnson technique in other words. He came across as slippery. Chris Mason asked the same questions and got the same treatment. Sunak has a lot to learn. Having a personal PR company will only take you so far
He'll probably get better but you can at the moment see a young and inexperienced politician not comfortable with scrutiny.
My take on Sunak is a very strong desire to be accepted by his peers.
Well since doesn’t know anyone working class he kind of needs their approval
I don't think he is after working class approval; I think he said precisely that silly thing to be 'in the club' with his posh mates. I am not posh and didn’t go to a posh school, but I've said daft supercillious things to fit in with a group before.
But if you are a Soton doctor's son who goes to Winchester n Oxford, where are you going to pick up working class mates?
Nowhere, but the 'don't know any WORKING class people obvs.!' was said with a little bit of a flourish, and wasn't he with fellow students when he said it? Fairly classic playing to the gallery, as was his speech about 'we had to re-route spending away from the urban poor' - again, playing to the gallery, asking to be accepted. Both times by dumping on the wc incidentally.
Like I said, I don't blame him, at all. But I do see him round a table cracking jokes at the expense of the lumpen Hartlepoolites as he signs us up to God knows what stupidity for a clap on the back from Justin Trudeau.
Sunak strikes me as being even more out of touch with how the vast majority of people live than TMay and Johnson were. Funnily enough of the last four Tory PMs the one whose background would make her least out of touch "should" be Truss, but she's so batsh*t that she lives in her own world anyway - and there are people like that in all social classes.
Perhaps Truss was overcompensating for her background in seeking to ingratiate herself with the rich and powerful.
Whatever else you can accuse Truss of, ingratiating herself with the powerful isn't it. She was ballsy in the extreme when it came to dealing with the powerful - to her ultimate political cost.
I don't rate Beth Rigby but he was equally evasive on Ch4 and on the BBC. Gary Gibbon gave him a really torrid time and the questions had nothing to do with deficits or Liz Truss. They were about his shady Cabinet appointments.
At first i thought Gibbon was going too far but after several minutes of Sunak's evasion I could understand why. He just wouldn't answer his questions. He was being slippery Just prepared answers to questions he wasn't asked.
The Boris Johnson technique in other words. He came across as slippery. Chris Mason asked the same questions and got the same treatment. Sunak has a lot to learn. Having a personal PR company will only take you so far
He'll probably get better but you can at the moment see a young and inexperienced politician not comfortable with scrutiny.
My take on Sunak is a very strong desire to be accepted by his peers.
Well since doesn’t know anyone working class he kind of needs their approval
I don't think he is after working class approval; I think he said precisely that silly thing to be 'in the club' with his posh mates. I am not posh and didn’t go to a posh school, but I've said daft supercillious things to fit in with a group before.
But if you are a Soton doctor's son who goes to Winchester n Oxford, where are you going to pick up working class mates?
Nowhere, but the 'don't know any WORKING class people obvs.!' was said with a little bit of a flourish, and wasn't he with fellow students when he said it? Fairly classic playing to the gallery, as was his speech about 'we had to re-route spending away from the urban poor' - again, playing to the gallery, asking to be accepted. Both times by dumping on the wc incidentally.
Like I said, I don't blame him, at all. But I do see him round a table cracking jokes at the expense of the lumpen Hartlepoolites as he signs us up to God knows what stupidity for a clap on the back from Justin Trudeau.
Sunak strikes me as being even more out of touch with how the vast majority of people live than TMay and Johnson were. Funnily enough of the last four Tory PMs the one whose background would make her least out of touch "should" be Truss, but she's so batsh*t that she lives in her own world anyway - and there are people like that in all social classes.
Perhaps Truss was overcompensating for her background in seeking to ingratiate herself with the rich and powerful.
Whatever else you can accuse Truss of, ingratiating herself with the powerful isn't it. She was ballsy in the extreme when it came to dealing with the powerful - to her ultimate political cost.
The reverse of the truth. She as PM buckled before Grady as 22 chairman.
I don't rate Beth Rigby but he was equally evasive on Ch4 and on the BBC. Gary Gibbon gave him a really torrid time and the questions had nothing to do with deficits or Liz Truss. They were about his shady Cabinet appointments.
At first i thought Gibbon was going too far but after several minutes of Sunak's evasion I could understand why. He just wouldn't answer his questions. He was being slippery Just prepared answers to questions he wasn't asked.
The Boris Johnson technique in other words. He came across as slippery. Chris Mason asked the same questions and got the same treatment. Sunak has a lot to learn. Having a personal PR company will only take you so far
He'll probably get better but you can at the moment see a young and inexperienced politician not comfortable with scrutiny.
My take on Sunak is a very strong desire to be accepted by his peers.
Well since doesn’t know anyone working class he kind of needs their approval
I don't think he is after working class approval; I think he said precisely that silly thing to be 'in the club' with his posh mates. I am not posh and didn’t go to a posh school, but I've said daft supercillious things to fit in with a group before.
But if you are a Soton doctor's son who goes to Winchester n Oxford, where are you going to pick up working class mates?
Nowhere, but the 'don't know any WORKING class people obvs.!' was said with a little bit of a flourish, and wasn't he with fellow students when he said it? Fairly classic playing to the gallery, as was his speech about 'we had to re-route spending away from the urban poor' - again, playing to the gallery, asking to be accepted. Both times by dumping on the wc incidentally.
Like I said, I don't blame him, at all. But I do see him round a table cracking jokes at the expense of the lumpen Hartlepoolites as he signs us up to God knows what stupidity for a clap on the back from Justin Trudeau.
Sunak strikes me as being even more out of touch with how the vast majority of people live than TMay and Johnson were. Funnily enough of the last four Tory PMs the one whose background would make her least out of touch "should" be Truss, but she's so batsh*t that she lives in her own world anyway - and there are people like that in all social classes.
Perhaps Truss was overcompensating for her background in seeking to ingratiate herself with the rich and powerful.
Whatever else you can accuse Truss of, ingratiating herself with the powerful isn't it. She was ballsy in the extreme when it came to dealing with the powerful - to her ultimate political cost.
"James Lambert @hellofasandwich · Kern County Clerk Mary Bedard says it may take "weeks" for them to count their ~70,000 outstanding ballots because they only have one sorting machine.
"GEOFFREY SKELLEY NOV. 15, 7:20 PM We’d hoped to find out the winner in Maine’s 2nd District tonight, as state officials planned to run the ranked-choice voting tabulation to determine whether Democratic Rep. Jared Golden or his challenger, former Republican Rep. Bruce Poliquin, would clear the 50 percent mark after reallocating the second preferences of voters who cast a ballot for independent Tiffany Bond. But issues with memory sticks provided by two municipalities prevented the tabulation, which means state officials now have to retrieve the ballots from those localities and rescan them. As a result, we probably won’t know the final outcome until sometime tomorrow afternoon or evening. Golden has 153,051 first-choice votes (48.5 percent), ahead of Poliquin’s 141,191 (44.7 percent) and Bond’s 21,581 (6.8 percent), so the incumbent is not far away from the 50 percent + 1 mark needed to win."
This is the first time the UK has changed Prime Ministers during a Parliament by having a full leadership contest, and going to membership - and look where it’s left the parties party’s ratings in eyes of the voters.
Liz Truss was the second time. Boris Johnson was the first.
Johnson did hold an election shortly afterwards.
Yes, and the Tories won GE2019 despite it following a contested leadership election.
To say their current polling woes are the result of this summer’s leadership contest is to confuse correlation with causation. And that analysis is further undermined when the person making it fails to get basic facts right, such as claiming Truss was the first PM elected in a full leadership contest (as per the comment I quoted).
I readily admit I got that one fact wrong, but your feeble attempt to then dismiss the whole argument I made makes you look a bit of a clown, because it’s plain for everyone to see you haven’t actually argued how months of blue on blue even after Truss had won, has had zero impact at all on the polling have you?
Unless you want to dismiss voters hate split parties as a fact as well?
2019 had a lot of get Brexit done, Boris love, Corbyn fear going on - so poor example for you to use to dismiss blue on blue, split parties costs votes as a strong argument I made.
Not edited to remove any rudeness 😝
And to think that I was worried about being rude. Oh well.
You are right that I “haven’t actually argued how months of blue on blue even after Truss had won [comma removed] has had zero impact at all on the polling” because that’s not the point I was making.
It’s overly reductive to link the current poor polling figures to the leadership election without also taking into account other factors contributing to the Tories’ declining popularity: Partygate, Paterson, Pincher, the replacement of the charismatic Johnson with the awkward Truss, the cost of living, the disastrous mini-budget, governmental fatigue and so on.
I don’t think it makes me a clown to say that pointing at the summer leadership contest then pointing at the current polling figures and declaring that A led to B is too simplistic. It’s much more complex than that.
"James Lambert @hellofasandwich · Kern County Clerk Mary Bedard says it may take "weeks" for them to count their ~70,000 outstanding ballots because they only have one sorting machine.
"GEOFFREY SKELLEY NOV. 15, 7:20 PM We’d hoped to find out the winner in Maine’s 2nd District tonight, as state officials planned to run the ranked-choice voting tabulation to determine whether Democratic Rep. Jared Golden or his challenger, former Republican Rep. Bruce Poliquin, would clear the 50 percent mark after reallocating the second preferences of voters who cast a ballot for independent Tiffany Bond. But issues with memory sticks provided by two municipalities prevented the tabulation, which means state officials now have to retrieve the ballots from those localities and rescan them. As a result, we probably won’t know the final outcome until sometime tomorrow afternoon or evening. Golden has 153,051 first-choice votes (48.5 percent), ahead of Poliquin’s 141,191 (44.7 percent) and Bond’s 21,581 (6.8 percent), so the incumbent is not far away from the 50 percent + 1 mark needed to win."
"James Lambert @hellofasandwich · Kern County Clerk Mary Bedard says it may take "weeks" for them to count their ~70,000 outstanding ballots because they only have one sorting machine.
"GEOFFREY SKELLEY NOV. 15, 7:20 PM We’d hoped to find out the winner in Maine’s 2nd District tonight, as state officials planned to run the ranked-choice voting tabulation to determine whether Democratic Rep. Jared Golden or his challenger, former Republican Rep. Bruce Poliquin, would clear the 50 percent mark after reallocating the second preferences of voters who cast a ballot for independent Tiffany Bond. But issues with memory sticks provided by two municipalities prevented the tabulation, which means state officials now have to retrieve the ballots from those localities and rescan them. As a result, we probably won’t know the final outcome until sometime tomorrow afternoon or evening. Golden has 153,051 first-choice votes (48.5 percent), ahead of Poliquin’s 141,191 (44.7 percent) and Bond’s 21,581 (6.8 percent), so the incumbent is not far away from the 50 percent + 1 mark needed to win."
With respect to the Great State of Maine, issues with memory sticks were a constant issue for King Co Elections in WA State, back when we still had voting at large numbers of polling places AND poll-site tabulating machines. Out of hundreds of machines, generally a half dozen to a dozen would have issues. Which meant that instead of including poll votes from those precincts in ENight returns, they were tabulated (using a different machine) at election HQ the next day then added to the totals.
Sorry that the candidates and other Mainers (and bettors) have to wait even longer, but sometimes that's the way the cookie crumbles (apologies to Cookie).
This is the first time the UK has changed Prime Ministers during a Parliament by having a full leadership contest, and going to membership - and look where it’s left the parties party’s ratings in eyes of the voters.
Liz Truss was the second time. Boris Johnson was the first.
True! 🤦♀️ I have been speedily corrected by a cold breakfast dish of rolled oats.
Where were you when I got the Senator Laxhalt tattoo?
MR (ahem!) this one's for you . . .
NYT (Monday) - How Democrats Held On to Nevada - interview with Jon Ralston of The Nevada independent (excerpts below)
[Candidates]
Ms. Cortez Masto . . ran an almost flawless campaign. And I've seen a lot of them. She was disciplined. She was constantly on-message. She won everywhere she had to. And her media going after Laxalt was some of the best I've ever seen in terms of just really defining him in a way that he did not want to be defined.
And what my friends in the national media missed about this race is that Laxalt was as bad a candidate as Blake Masters or Hershel Walker. It's just that they didn't let him speak too much, so you couldn't really tell. And when he did, he got in trouble, saying Roe v Wade was a "joke."
[Harry Reid machine]
The Harry Reid machine . . . was still there, even after he passed away. And the woman who is the architect of the machine - Rebecca Lambe, one of the best political operatives in the country - is obsessive. She works 24/7 and she hires these great young people to operate the levers of the machine. They are very data-driven and they model everything, and they find voters and they register them and they turn them out.
This has worked every cycle since 2008, with the exception of 2014 . . . [The] machine is still there. . . .
[Making call that Cortez Masto would win]
. . . I don't just look at what the data shows. I also have to think about all the stuff we just talked about. And I thought there would be ticket splitters, and I thought that Cortez Masto would survive because she had a better campaign, because the machine would put her over the top. . . .
Speaking of Harry Reid, when I predicted he would survive in 2010, no one believed that - and he did win.
Good for them, after all the hard work put in.
Wake up Republicans - with your vote losing Trumpian candidates.
What I was always taught - and pass along as part of my sage counsel - is that good field is worth perhaps a couple of percentage-points to a candidate's final result.
In Nevada, Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto is currently winning re-election by margin of +0.89% over Laxalt.
This is the first time the UK has changed Prime Ministers during a Parliament by having a full leadership contest, and going to membership - and look where it’s left the parties party’s ratings in eyes of the voters.
Liz Truss was the second time. Boris Johnson was the first.
Johnson did hold an election shortly afterwards.
Yes, and the Tories won GE2019 despite it following a contested leadership election.
To say their current polling woes are the result of this summer’s leadership contest is to confuse correlation with causation. And that analysis is further undermined when the person making it fails to get basic facts right, such as claiming Truss was the first PM elected in a full leadership contest (as per the comment I quoted).
I readily admit I got that one fact wrong, but your feeble attempt to then dismiss the whole argument I made makes you look a bit of a clown, because it’s plain for everyone to see you haven’t actually argued how months of blue on blue even after Truss had won, has had zero impact at all on the polling have you?
Unless you want to dismiss voters hate split parties as a fact as well?
2019 had a lot of get Brexit done, Boris love, Corbyn fear going on - so poor example for you to use to dismiss blue on blue, split parties costs votes as a strong argument I made.
Not edited to remove any rudeness 😝
And to think that I was worried about being rude. Oh well.
You are right that I “haven’t actually argued how months of blue on blue even after Truss had won [comma removed] has had zero impact at all on the polling” because that’s not the point I was making.
It’s overly reductive to link the current poor polling figures to the leadership election without also taking into account other factors contributing to the Tories’ declining popularity: Partygate, Paterson, Pincher, the replacement of the charismatic Johnson with the awkward Truss, the cost of living, the disastrous mini-budget, governmental fatigue and so on.
I don’t think it makes me a clown to say that pointing at the summer leadership contest then pointing at the current polling figures and declaring that A led to B is too simplistic. It’s much more complex than that.
With Trump announcing another run, can’t help but think the republicans are buggered for 24
I'm not sure the Primaries will go his way.... I imagine if he doesnt get the funding early on (and the big money goes to a rival) his campaign will fizzle out, like sleepy Joe he aint getting any younger
Meanwhile the Russian defence ministry seems to be saying it wasn't even manufactured in Russia.
Interesting questions that could be answered to some extent by those without an inside track include 1) how far was the location from the landing places of missiles that are known to have been launched by Russian forces today? 2) what sites did those missiles hit? 3) how accurate was the targeting? That's what a serious newspaper would ask... but there don't seem to be any.
If it is not Russian, then my guess would be that they were air-defence missiles fired by the Ukrainians that missed their targets and fell over the border in Poland.
Another guess is that Ukraine and Poland (and indeed other neighbouring countries) will have lots of radars studying the area, and the likelihood is that they will have detected where the missiles came from. As much as studying the missile debris, it'll be a case of studying and corelating all the recorded air defence data. As previous incidents have shown, that can take a day or two to do and get into the hands of governments.
Wherever the missile came from, the cause is the hundred missiles Russia threw at a civilian population, in an effort to deny tens of millions electricity during a Ukrainian winter.
After emergency G7 meeting, Biden says there’s “plenty of information to contest” the idea that the missile was fired from Russia. He says it’s “unlikely...that it was fired from Russia.”
President Biden, who just participated in a mangrove tree planting ceremony with other world leaders in Bali, was asked if he has a reaction to Donald Trump's 2024 campaign launch.
Donald Trump running for President again? I was the one walking over broken glass at 4 a.m. after the Jan. 6th insurrection with pages carrying the mahogany boxes of electoral ballots. Democracy prevailed that day.
Informative thread on the potential consequences of the Russian attacks.
Today, RU has fired nearly 100 missiles at civilian targets. It is still trying to destroy heating and power generation and distribution to make many cities uninhabitable this winter.
This seems to be a fairly common claim on social media, perhaps instigated by a Denis MacShane tweet(?)
But is anyone aware of a decent source?
Includes members of both Commons and Lords. Ireland, Cyprus and Malta seem to be the commonest.
Claims about the number of UK parliamentarians with Irish passports have been widely shared on Twitter, including by the Labour MP Chris Bryant and the former MP and Europe minister Denis MacShane. The same claims have also appeared on Facebook.
As far as we can tell, these claims are not correct. They seem to originate with an anonymous Twitter account, which has provided no source for them, and has previously said “I make things up to amuse myself”.
It appears that neither the Houses of Parliament nor the Irish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which handles passport applications, routinely collects this data.
i) not UK citizens, ii) dual or multiple nationals, iii)) a breakdown of the countries involved, iii) dual national MP's and also Government Ministers.
This information is not held by the House of Commons. Members of Parliament are not employees of the House and this information is not routinely collected for business purposes, so we hold no comprehensive list of this nature.
Nevertheless, it does seem appropriate to gather this information. Exactly how many MPs and Lords have other citizenships? Ireland fair enough. Bought Maltese and Cypriot? Less so. But Russian, Iranian, Chinese? Er….
Australia doesn’t allow parliamentarians to have any other citizenships. Julia Gillard (originally from Wales) had to renounce UK citizenship when she first ran for an election.
Three U.S. officials told the @AP that preliminary assessments indicate the missile that struck Poland had been fired by Ukrainian forces at an incoming Russian missile.
Fingers crossed it was indeed an errant air defence missile from the Ukranian side. Unfortunate for those directly involved, but accepted as an accident and unlikely to generate a massive escalation from either side.
In this morning’s good news, it looks like the FTX bankruptcy is going to take out dozens of other crypto-related companies. Many exchanges have now suspended withdrawals.
I'm not holding my breath, but I really hope it does.
Do they even care? As far as most of those involved are concerned, the $20bn spent in all of the 48 states was the whole purpose of the project, if the rocket actually takes off then that’s a nice bonus.
Yes, Qatari labour laws are well behind even the rest of the Middle East.
Also note the huge problem with local ‘agents’ from India, Banglasdesh and Nepal, where the authorities either don’t care or are paid off. There needs to be a large publicity campaign in those countries, to stop people paying gangsters for job opportunities abroad, and a clampdown on the activity.
I'm not holding my breath, but I really hope it does.
Do they even care? As far as most of those involved are concerned, the $20bn spent in all of the 48 states was the whole purpose of the project, if the rocket actually takes off then that’s a nice bonus.
If you are interested in a permanent manned presence in space, you should care. Why?
If you want a permanent manned presence in space, then we need commerce and industry up there. To do that, we need to get mass into orbit, and that requires heavy-lift orbiters. And to avoid Shuttle-style pauses in programs, we need at least two or three heavy-lift launchers.
At the moment, America has zero. The world essentially has zero (Falcon Heavy is not a real heavy-lift rocket; it has less than half the lift mass of Apollo V).
SpaceX might get a true heavy-lift vehicle with SH/SS. BO might get there with New Glenn and it successor. Until they do, I am very happy with the US developing a third system.
Once SS/SH and NG+ get going, I am more than happy for the SLS to be put to bed.
Esfahan Steel Company (Zob-e-Ahan) is one of the biggest metal factories in Iran. The workers stopped working and going on strike. Across Iran, lots of industries and merchants are going on a 3 days of strikes & protests marking the “#IranBloodyNov” in 2019. #IranRevolution2022 https://twitter.com/M0iraR0se/status/1592526208948129792
In this morning’s good news, it looks like the FTX bankruptcy is going to take out dozens of other crypto-related companies. Many exchanges have now suspended withdrawals.
The only regulation that's needed is that if someone has a coin with an exchange then the coin should be held by that exchange. The coin might be worthless or worth £100,000 but that isn't the regulators issue.
I'm not holding my breath, but I really hope it does.
Do they even care? As far as most of those involved are concerned, the $20bn spent in all of the 48 states was the whole purpose of the project, if the rocket actually takes off then that’s a nice bonus.
If you are interested in a permanent manned presence in space, you should care. Why?
If you want a permanent manned presence in space, then we need commerce and industry up there. To do that, we need to get mass into orbit, and that requires heavy-lift orbiters. And to avoid Shuttle-style pauses in programs, we need at least two or three heavy-lift launchers.
At the moment, America has zero. The world essentially has zero (Falcon Heavy is not a real heavy-lift rocket; it has less than half the lift mass of Apollo V).
SpaceX might get a true heavy-lift vehicle with SH/SS. BO might get there with New Glenn and it successor. Until they do, I am very happy with the US developing a third system.
Once SS/SH and NG+ get going, I am more than happy for the SLS to be put to bed.
Of course, like most people with an interest in science I’m all for it - but this particular project has been one big pork-barrelled boondoggle for the past two decades.
Oh, launch on hold due to some technical issue. There’s a two-hour window just started.
Looks like Artemis 1 is likely to go ahead. Once they restart the clock at ten minutes, AIUI a scrub means they have to roll the rocket back to the hall for a lot of work.
Yes, Qatari labour laws are well behind even the rest of the Middle East.
Also note the huge problem with local ‘agents’ from India, Banglasdesh and Nepal, where the authorities either don’t care or are paid off. There needs to be a large publicity campaign in those countries, to stop people paying gangsters for job opportunities abroad, and a clampdown on the activity.
This isnt just restricted to Qatar or even the Middle East - Singapore, Brunei etc are also complicit in this model of modern slavery oiled by middlemen and organisations across the world... its useful that its brought to light during World Cup but simply blaming Qatar and ignoring the wider piece is wrong. Those politicians who want to emulate Singapore's `success' dont talk about the million plus guys living in shipping containers and slums
“The Consumer Prices Index including owner occupiers' housing costs (CPIH) rose by 9.6% in the 12 months to October 2022, up from 8.8% in September 2022.
The largest upward contributions to the annual CPIH inflation rate in October 2022 came from housing and household services (principally from electricity, gas, and other fuels), food and non-alcoholic beverages, and transport (principally motor fuels).
On a monthly basis, CPIH rose by 1.6% in October 2022, compared with a rise of 0.9% in October 2021. The Consumer Prices Index (CPI) rose by 11.1% in the 12 months to October 2022, up from 10.1% in September 2022.
On a monthly basis, CPI rose by 2.0% in October 2022, compared with a rise of 1.1% in October 2021.
Despite the introduction of the government's Energy Price Guarantee, gas and electricity prices made the largest upward contribution to the change in both the CPIH and CPI annual inflation rates between September and October 2022.
Rising food prices also made a large upward contribution to change with transport (principally motor fuels and second-hand car prices) making the largest, partially offsetting, downward contribution to the change in the rates.”
I'm not holding my breath, but I really hope it does.
Do they even care? As far as most of those involved are concerned, the $20bn spent in all of the 48 states was the whole purpose of the project, if the rocket actually takes off then that’s a nice bonus.
If you are interested in a permanent manned presence in space, you should care. Why?
If you want a permanent manned presence in space, then we need commerce and industry up there. To do that, we need to get mass into orbit, and that requires heavy-lift orbiters. And to avoid Shuttle-style pauses in programs, we need at least two or three heavy-lift launchers.
At the moment, America has zero. The world essentially has zero (Falcon Heavy is not a real heavy-lift rocket; it has less than half the lift mass of Apollo V).
SpaceX might get a true heavy-lift vehicle with SH/SS. BO might get there with New Glenn and it successor. Until they do, I am very happy with the US developing a third system.
Once SS/SH and NG+ get going, I am more than happy for the SLS to be put to bed.
Sandpits pov on this is surely borne by world weary waiting on eternal delays, scrubs and the never quite there seeming approach of NASA. I'm always pleasantly surprised when a launch like today's does actually happen.
The question for me is whether or not the tories are going to have the guts to tax rich pensioners more. This goes down to the essential question of whether they are governing for all the people or just one interest group. The state pension plus a defined benefit pension means many people get the same income in retirement as they did whilst working, but they don't pay national insurance, so they are even richer; yet this group use a lot of public services. Pensioners should be able to get an income up to something like the living wage without being heavily taxed, but after that, they need to start paying the same tax as everyone else.
I'm not holding my breath, but I really hope it does.
Do they even care? As far as most of those involved are concerned, the $20bn spent in all of the 48 states was the whole purpose of the project, if the rocket actually takes off then that’s a nice bonus.
If you are interested in a permanent manned presence in space, you should care. Why?
If you want a permanent manned presence in space, then we need commerce and industry up there. To do that, we need to get mass into orbit, and that requires heavy-lift orbiters. And to avoid Shuttle-style pauses in programs, we need at least two or three heavy-lift launchers.
At the moment, America has zero. The world essentially has zero (Falcon Heavy is not a real heavy-lift rocket; it has less than half the lift mass of Apollo V).
SpaceX might get a true heavy-lift vehicle with SH/SS. BO might get there with New Glenn and it successor. Until they do, I am very happy with the US developing a third system.
Once SS/SH and NG+ get going, I am more than happy for the SLS to be put to bed.
Sandpits pov on this is surely borne by world weary waiting on eternal delays, scrubs and the never quite there seeming approach of NASA. I'm always pleasantly surprised when a launch like today's does actually happen.
IMV the SLS's project is simple: it did not have a mission. The US government decided it wanted a heavy-lift rocket, but did not want to fund a mission for it. First there was the nebulous asteroid-redirect mission; then a midway point to the Moon. If they had been given a firm, funded mission (like Artemis), and a date, then the project would have been very different.
Instead, there was no urgency and no real idea of *what* they were building the rocket for. This caused a multitude of problems for the project.
And BTW, there're some cool shots from the ICPS second stage in space.
Incidentally, does anything Biden said discount it having been a missile fired from Belarussian territory?
No, I don’t think so. But note the methodical, patient response, set against our panic about armegeddon last night.
Shame that I missed that last night. Were a lot of people quoting things from Twitter.
Many on PB can't make their minds up whether Twitter is doomed to a Friends Reunited extinction event, now that Musk has bought it, or remains the fount of all knowledge wherein every tweet is a hotline to the minds of presidents and prime ministers.
And speaking of hotlines, Biden's categoric response to the Polish issue suggests strongly that the back channels between the US and Russia (which we learned of officially recently) are in fully functioning mode.
Incidentally, does anything Biden said discount it having been a missile fired from Belarussian territory?
No, I don’t think so. But note the methodical, patient response, set against our panic about armegeddon last night.
Shame that I missed that last night. Were a lot of people quoting things from Twitter.
Many on PB can't make their minds up whether Twitter is doomed for a Friends Reunited extinction event, now that Musk has bought it, or remains the fount of all knowledge wherein every tweet is a hotline to the minds of presidents and prime ministers.
And speaking of hotlines, Biden's categoric response to the Polish issue suggests strongly that the back channels between the US and Russia (which we learned of officially recently) are in fully functioning mode.
And I think you're not really reading what people are saying, and are just thinking what you want people to be saying.
Yes, Qatari labour laws are well behind even the rest of the Middle East.
Also note the huge problem with local ‘agents’ from India, Banglasdesh and Nepal, where the authorities either don’t care or are paid off. There needs to be a large publicity campaign in those countries, to stop people paying gangsters for job opportunities abroad, and a clampdown on the activity.
This isnt just restricted to Qatar or even the Middle East - Singapore, Brunei etc are also complicit in this model of modern slavery oiled by middlemen and organisations across the world... its useful that its brought to light during World Cup but simply blaming Qatar and ignoring the wider piece is wrong. Those politicians who want to emulate Singapore's `success' dont talk about the million plus guys living in shipping containers and slums
It’s the same thing we see with the Channel migrants, many of whom have paid ‘agents’ a lot of money for their travel, and the ‘agents’ know their families ‘back home’.
I’ve lived in the UAE for 15 years now, and pretty much every year there’s a new labour law aimed at stopping abuse of employees. Workers have to be paid by the locally licenced company that sponsors their visa, directly into a local bank account. It’s illegal to take payments from workers for visas and transport. Domestic staff are only allowed to be employed by licenced agencies and not by individuals. Workers with certain qualifications are allowed to sponsor themselves for residence visas. There’s meaningful fines for industrial accidents that result in serious injury or death.
What they can’t do anything about, is the foreign gangsters terrorising families in other countries.
I have a somewhat pragmatic view on things like accommodation arrangements for workers, even the very worst of which are quite normal in the countries where these workers originate.
I am very sceptical about the 'living wage'. Two incomes at the living wage (At £10.40 per hour) is a household take home pay of £3000 per month. In most cases this is going to far exceed likely household expenditure. It seems to me that the problems in the UK relate mainly to housing costs which is a problem that is concentrated very heavily in the South. By creating a 'one size fits all' solution you end up driving inflation without tackling the underlying problem.
The other problem that I foresee is that it will increase 'self employment' at sub minimum wage level, and turns lots of existing skilled work in to minimum wage work, particularly in the public sector where politicians veto pay rises.
Incidentally, does anything Biden said discount it having been a missile fired from Belarussian territory?
No, I don’t think so. But note the methodical, patient response, set against our panic about armegeddon last night.
Shame that I missed that last night. Were a lot of people quoting things from Twitter.
Many on PB can't make their minds up whether Twitter is doomed for a Friends Reunited extinction event, now that Musk has bought it, or remains the fount of all knowledge wherein every tweet is a hotline to the minds of presidents and prime ministers.
And speaking of hotlines, Biden's categoric response to the Polish issue suggests strongly that the back channels between the US and Russia (which we learned of officially recently) are in fully functioning mode.
And I think you're not really reading what people are saying, and are just thinking what you want people to be saying.
@Nigelb: "set against our panic about armageddon last night."
I just said I missed it are you calling our Nige a fabricator?
I'm not holding my breath, but I really hope it does.
Do they even care? As far as most of those involved are concerned, the $20bn spent in all of the 48 states was the whole purpose of the project, if the rocket actually takes off then that’s a nice bonus.
If you are interested in a permanent manned presence in space, you should care. Why?
If you want a permanent manned presence in space, then we need commerce and industry up there. To do that, we need to get mass into orbit, and that requires heavy-lift orbiters. And to avoid Shuttle-style pauses in programs, we need at least two or three heavy-lift launchers.
At the moment, America has zero. The world essentially has zero (Falcon Heavy is not a real heavy-lift rocket; it has less than half the lift mass of Apollo V).
SpaceX might get a true heavy-lift vehicle with SH/SS. BO might get there with New Glenn and it successor. Until they do, I am very happy with the US developing a third system.
Once SS/SH and NG+ get going, I am more than happy for the SLS to be put to bed.
Sandpits pov on this is surely borne by world weary waiting on eternal delays, scrubs and the never quite there seeming approach of NASA. I'm always pleasantly surprised when a launch like today's does actually happen.
IMV the SLS's project is simple: it did not have a mission. The US government decided it wanted a heavy-lift rocket, but did not want to fund a mission for it. First there was the nebulous asteroid-redirect mission; then a midway point to the Moon. If they had been given a firm, funded mission (like Artemis), and a date, then the project would have been very different.
Instead, there was no urgency and no real idea of *what* they were building the rocket for. This caused a multitude of problems for the project.
And BTW, there're some cool shots from the ICPS second stage in space.
Long term the missions dont change much. Achieved: Boots on the moon Earth orbit space station
To do Lunar orbit base Lunar base Orbital, boots base for Mars. Gerard K O'Neill stuff in earth orbit.
Incidentally, does anything Biden said discount it having been a missile fired from Belarussian territory?
No, I don’t think so. But note the methodical, patient response, set against our panic about armegeddon last night.
Shame that I missed that last night. Were a lot of people quoting things from Twitter.
Many on PB can't make their minds up whether Twitter is doomed to a Friends Reunited extinction event, now that Musk has bought it, or remains the fount of all knowledge wherein every tweet is a hotline to the minds of presidents and prime ministers.
And speaking of hotlines, Biden's categoric response to the Polish issue suggests strongly that the back channels between the US and Russia (which we learned of officially recently) are in fully functioning mode.
Biden is having a good week. Coming over authoritative, calm and in command of the situation.
Incidentally, does anything Biden said discount it having been a missile fired from Belarussian territory?
No, I don’t think so. But note the methodical, patient response, set against our panic about armegeddon last night.
Shame that I missed that last night. Were a lot of people quoting things from Twitter.
Many on PB can't make their minds up whether Twitter is doomed for a Friends Reunited extinction event, now that Musk has bought it, or remains the fount of all knowledge wherein every tweet is a hotline to the minds of presidents and prime ministers.
And speaking of hotlines, Biden's categoric response to the Polish issue suggests strongly that the back channels between the US and Russia (which we learned of officially recently) are in fully functioning mode.
And I think you're not really reading what people are saying, and are just thinking what you want people to be saying.
@Nigelb: "set against our panic about armageddon last night."
I just said I missed it are you calling our Nige a fabricator?
I was referring to your Musk/Twitter comment.
As it happens, I don't think any of your 'analysis' of the Ukrainian situation has been very accurate.
I am very sceptical about the 'living wage'. Two incomes at the living wage (At £10.40 per hour) is a household take home pay of £3000 per month. In most cases this is going to far exceed likely household expenditure. It seems to me that the problems in the UK relate mainly to housing costs which is a problem that is concentrated very heavily in the South. By creating a 'one size fits all' solution you end up driving inflation without tackling the underlying problem.
I don't think that's take home pay, I think that's pre-tax, pre-National Insurance.
40 hours x £10.40 x 4 = £1,650 x 2 = £3,300.
Less 13.25% employees NIC contributions. Less 20% on the £7,230/year above the tax free rate (each). So that's about £241 of income tax per month, and £437 of National Insurance, which brings you down to £2,621/month.
I'm not holding my breath, but I really hope it does.
Do they even care? As far as most of those involved are concerned, the $20bn spent in all of the 48 states was the whole purpose of the project, if the rocket actually takes off then that’s a nice bonus.
If you are interested in a permanent manned presence in space, you should care. Why?
If you want a permanent manned presence in space, then we need commerce and industry up there. To do that, we need to get mass into orbit, and that requires heavy-lift orbiters. And to avoid Shuttle-style pauses in programs, we need at least two or three heavy-lift launchers.
At the moment, America has zero. The world essentially has zero (Falcon Heavy is not a real heavy-lift rocket; it has less than half the lift mass of Apollo V).
SpaceX might get a true heavy-lift vehicle with SH/SS. BO might get there with New Glenn and it successor. Until they do, I am very happy with the US developing a third system.
Once SS/SH and NG+ get going, I am more than happy for the SLS to be put to bed.
Sandpits pov on this is surely borne by world weary waiting on eternal delays, scrubs and the never quite there seeming approach of NASA. I'm always pleasantly surprised when a launch like today's does actually happen.
IMV the SLS's project is simple: it did not have a mission. The US government decided it wanted a heavy-lift rocket, but did not want to fund a mission for it. First there was the nebulous asteroid-redirect mission; then a midway point to the Moon. If they had been given a firm, funded mission (like Artemis), and a date, then the project would have been very different.
Instead, there was no urgency and no real idea of *what* they were building the rocket for. This caused a multitude of problems for the project.
And BTW, there're some cool shots from the ICPS second stage in space.
Long term the missions dont change much. Achieved: Boots on the moon Earth orbit space station
To do Lunar orbit base Lunar base Orbital, boots base for Mars. Gerard K O'Neill stuff in earth orbit.
It's more complex than that, and BO actually have a good inforgraphic on it.
For one thing, we really need a reliable space tug system, and a refuelling infrastructure (in-orbit fuel depot).
But most of all, we need heavy-lift to orbit. We've got that today. Now we just need to somewhat reduce the cost. Perhaps by two orders of magnitude ...
Incidentally, does anything Biden said discount it having been a missile fired from Belarussian territory?
No, I don’t think so. But note the methodical, patient response, set against our panic about armegeddon last night.
Shame that I missed that last night. Were a lot of people quoting things from Twitter.
Many on PB can't make their minds up whether Twitter is doomed for a Friends Reunited extinction event, now that Musk has bought it, or remains the fount of all knowledge wherein every tweet is a hotline to the minds of presidents and prime ministers.
And speaking of hotlines, Biden's categoric response to the Polish issue suggests strongly that the back channels between the US and Russia (which we learned of officially recently) are in fully functioning mode.
And I think you're not really reading what people are saying, and are just thinking what you want people to be saying.
@Nigelb: "set against our panic about armageddon last night."
I just said I missed it are you calling our Nige a fabricator?
I was referring to your Musk/Twitter comment.
As it happens, I don't think any of your 'analysis' of the Ukrainian situation has been very accurate.
As it happens I haven't really made any analysis of the Ukrainian situation beyond telling dolts like you not to bring your immensely knowledgeable military analytics into play based upon a 30-second twitter clip.
https://www.politico.com/news/2022/11/15/trump-presidency-2024-candidate-00067130 ...Before a room full of hundreds of supporters — including Trump world figures like Roger Stone, Kash Patel, Sebastian Gorka, My Pillow CEO Mike Lindell and the outgoing Rep. Madison Cawthorn, Trump portrayed his four years in office in rose colored hews..
Despite Trump doubt beginning to creep into the Republican Party, Fox News still covered it sycophantically. And I note Lindsey Graham is almost back onboard.
I am very sceptical about the 'living wage'. Two incomes at the living wage (At £10.40 per hour) is a household take home pay of £3000 per month. In most cases this is going to far exceed likely household expenditure. It seems to me that the problems in the UK relate mainly to housing costs which is a problem that is concentrated very heavily in the South. By creating a 'one size fits all' solution you end up driving inflation without tackling the underlying problem.
I don't think that's take home pay, I think that's pre-tax, pre-National Insurance.
40 hours x £10.40 x 4 = £1,650 x 2 = £3,300.
Less 13.25% employees NIC contributions. Less 20% on the £7,230/year above the tax free rate (each). So that's about £241 of income tax per month, and £437 of National Insurance, which brings you down to £2,621/month.
Comments
Investigators working to establish causes of explosion and Poland got reassurances on allied support on all fronts.
https://twitter.com/JakubKrupa/status/1592665860610879488
@MPSHomerton
To the two members of the public who tried to obstruct us whilst we were dealing with a group of youths in Retreat place E9 tonight, shouting at us & accusing us of harassing the youths, if you tried to listen to us we may have been able to show you what we found.
https://twitter.com/MPSHomerton/status/1588679150528700416
I upset Tony Benn by repeatedly asking the same question until he was forced to answer it.
Like I said, I don't blame him, at all. But I do see him round a table cracking jokes at the expense of the lumpen Hartlepoolites as he signs us up to God knows what stupidity for a clap on the back from Justin Trudeau.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p4WyGpRCj1Q
Where were you when I got the Senator Laxhalt tattoo?
Meanwhile the Russian defence ministry seems to be saying it wasn't even manufactured in Russia.
Interesting questions that could be answered to some extent by those without an inside track include
1) how far was the location from the landing places of missiles that are known to have been launched by Russian forces today?
2) what sites did those missiles hit?
3) how accurate was the targeting?
That's what a serious newspaper would ask... but there don't seem to be any.
Why did you stop at the pandemic, when was the last year, or couple of years, of decent growth for UK?
To say their current polling woes are the result of this summer’s leadership contest is to confuse correlation with causation.
Edited to remove rudeness. Apologies!
Unless you want to dismiss voters hate split parties as a fact as well?
2019 had a lot of get Brexit done, Boris love, Corbyn fear going on - so poor example for you to use to dismiss blue on blue, split parties costs votes as a strong argument I made.
Not edited to remove any rudeness 😝
NYT (Monday) - How Democrats Held On to Nevada - interview with Jon Ralston of The Nevada independent (excerpts below)
[Candidates]
Ms. Cortez Masto . . ran an almost flawless campaign. And I've seen a lot of them. She was disciplined. She was constantly on-message. She won everywhere she had to. And her media going after Laxalt was some of the best I've ever seen in terms of just really defining him in a way that he did not want to be defined.
And what my friends in the national media missed about this race is that Laxalt was as bad a candidate as Blake Masters or Hershel Walker. It's just that they didn't let him speak too much, so you couldn't really tell. And when he did, he got in trouble, saying Roe v Wade was a "joke."
[Harry Reid machine]
The Harry Reid machine . . . was still there, even after he passed away. And the woman who is the architect of the machine - Rebecca Lambe, one of the best political operatives in the country - is obsessive. She works 24/7 and she hires these great young people to operate the levers of the machine. They are very data-driven and they model everything, and they find voters and they register them and they turn them out.
This has worked every cycle since 2008, with the exception of 2014 . . . [The] machine is still there. . . .
[Making call that Cortez Masto would win]
. . . I don't just look at what the data shows. I also have to think about all the stuff we just talked about. And I thought there would be ticket splitters, and I thought that Cortez Masto would survive because she had a better campaign, because the machine would put her over the top. . . .
Speaking of Harry Reid, when I predicted he would survive in 2010, no one believed that - and he did win.
Wake up Republicans - with your vote losing Trumpian candidates.
https://twitter.com/InsidersABC/status/1586493084644167681
"James Lambert
@hellofasandwich
·
Kern County Clerk Mary Bedard says it may take "weeks" for them to count their ~70,000 outstanding ballots because they only have one sorting machine.
https://kget.com/news/politics/your-local-elections/with-more-than-70000-ballots-left-to-count-when-can-kern-county-expect-election-results/
CATargetAlt"
"GEOFFREY SKELLEY
NOV. 15, 7:20 PM
We’d hoped to find out the winner in Maine’s 2nd District tonight, as state officials planned to run the ranked-choice voting tabulation to determine whether Democratic Rep. Jared Golden or his challenger, former Republican Rep. Bruce Poliquin, would clear the 50 percent mark after reallocating the second preferences of voters who cast a ballot for independent Tiffany Bond. But issues with memory sticks provided by two municipalities prevented the tabulation, which means state officials now have to retrieve the ballots from those localities and rescan them. As a result, we probably won’t know the final outcome until sometime tomorrow afternoon or evening. Golden has 153,051 first-choice votes (48.5 percent), ahead of Poliquin’s 141,191 (44.7 percent) and Bond’s 21,581 (6.8 percent), so the incumbent is not far away from the 50 percent + 1 mark needed to win."
https://fivethirtyeight.com/live-blog/2022-election-house/
You are right that I “haven’t actually argued how months of blue on blue even after Truss had won [comma removed] has had zero impact at all on the polling” because that’s not the point I was making.
It’s overly reductive to link the current poor polling figures to the leadership election without also taking into account other factors contributing to the Tories’ declining popularity: Partygate, Paterson, Pincher, the replacement of the charismatic Johnson with the awkward Truss, the cost of living, the disastrous mini-budget, governmental fatigue and so on.
I don’t think it makes me a clown to say that pointing at the summer leadership contest then pointing at the current polling figures and declaring that A led to B is too simplistic. It’s much more complex than that.
Meanwhile, as we await further results
Streets of Bakersfield - Dwight Slocum & Buck Owens (who made the song a hit)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mB7oUI32E1Y
Sorry that the candidates and other Mainers (and bettors) have to wait even longer, but sometimes that's the way the cookie crumbles (apologies to Cookie).
In Nevada, Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto is currently winning re-election by margin of +0.89% over Laxalt.
NOW - Biden says "preliminary" information suggests it is "unlikely" missile that killed two in Poland was fired from Russia.
https://twitter.com/disclosetv/status/1592700234295119877
https://news.sky.com/story/donald-trump-announces-he-will-run-to-become-us-president-again-in-2024-12741322
Another guess is that Ukraine and Poland (and indeed other neighbouring countries) will have lots of radars studying the area, and the likelihood is that they will have detected where the missiles came from. As much as studying the missile debris, it'll be a case of studying and corelating all the recorded air defence data. As previous incidents have shown, that can take a day or two to do and get into the hands of governments.
And the fuckers talk about ‘provocation’.
Not that the call required extraordinary prescience.
“We are going to figure out exactly what happened,” he adds.
https://twitter.com/AndrewDesiderio/status/1592698758214471680
President Biden, who just participated in a mangrove tree planting ceremony with other world leaders in Bali, was asked if he has a reaction to Donald Trump's 2024 campaign launch.
“No, not really,” he said.
https://twitter.com/mj_lee/status/1592718539600777216
Donald Trump running for President again? I was the one walking over broken glass at 4 a.m. after the Jan. 6th insurrection with pages carrying the mahogany boxes of electoral ballots. Democracy prevailed that day.
We will not go backwards and descend into his chaos again.
https://twitter.com/amyklobuchar/status/1592722620658909186
https://twitter.com/castlvillageman/status/1592475891405565952?s=46&t=ROu_bKrQPxz4so87vDWaAQ
This seems to be a fairly common claim on social media, perhaps instigated by a Denis MacShane tweet(?)
But is anyone aware of a decent source?
Includes members of both Commons and Lords.
Ireland, Cyprus and Malta seem to be the commonest.
"Totalitarian movements use and abuse democratic freedoms in order to abolish them.”
— Hannah Arendt
https://twitter.com/Samantharhill/status/1592684491419844608
Today, RU has fired nearly 100 missiles at civilian targets. It is still trying to destroy heating and power generation and distribution to make many cities uninhabitable this winter.
A 🧵 based on the insights I got from the extremely smart @VVoytsitska
and other 🇺🇦 experts.
https://twitter.com/mattia_n/status/1592598635371728896
As far as we can tell, these claims are not correct. They seem to originate with an anonymous Twitter account, which has provided no source for them, and has previously said “I make things up to amuse myself”.
It appears that neither the Houses of Parliament nor the Irish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which handles passport applications, routinely collects this data.
https://fullfact.org/online/irish-passports-mps-lords/
How many UK MP's are:
i) not UK citizens,
ii) dual or multiple nationals,
iii)) a breakdown of the countries involved,
iii) dual national MP's and also Government Ministers.
This information is not held by the House of Commons. Members of Parliament are not employees of the House and this information is not routinely collected for business purposes, so we hold no comprehensive list of this nature.
https://www.parliament.uk/site-information/foi/foi-and-eir/commons-foi-disclosures/members-of-the-house-of-commons-and-members-staff/members-citizenship-2018/
https://fullfact.org/online/irish-passports-mps-lords/
Nevertheless, it does seem appropriate to gather this information. Exactly how many MPs and Lords have other citizenships? Ireland fair enough. Bought Maltese and Cypriot? Less so. But Russian, Iranian, Chinese? Er….
Australia doesn’t allow parliamentarians to have any other citizenships. Julia Gillard (originally from Wales) had to renounce UK citizenship when she first ran for an election.
But note the methodical, patient response, set against our panic about armegeddon last night.
https://twitter.com/AP/status/1592747390477688846
Where ever it came from the only reason it was in the air was because of Russian war crimes.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-63628537
These Qataris treat foreign workers like scum.
It’s appalling.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FbX2VuOwJGk
I'm not holding my breath, but I really hope it does.
Also note the huge problem with local ‘agents’ from India, Banglasdesh and Nepal, where the authorities either don’t care or are paid off. There needs to be a large publicity campaign in those countries, to stop people paying gangsters for job opportunities abroad, and a clampdown on the activity.
If you want a permanent manned presence in space, then we need commerce and industry up there. To do that, we need to get mass into orbit, and that requires heavy-lift orbiters. And to avoid Shuttle-style pauses in programs, we need at least two or three heavy-lift launchers.
At the moment, America has zero. The world essentially has zero (Falcon Heavy is not a real heavy-lift rocket; it has less than half the lift mass of Apollo V).
SpaceX might get a true heavy-lift vehicle with SH/SS. BO might get there with New Glenn and it successor. Until they do, I am very happy with the US developing a third system.
Once SS/SH and NG+ get going, I am more than happy for the SLS to be put to bed.
https://twitter.com/M0iraR0se/status/1592526208948129792
Oh, launch on hold due to some technical issue. There’s a two-hour window just started.
Magnificent.
We have a heavy lift rocket! WooHoo!
Hopefully to be joined by another next year...
Summary: inflation high and accelerating.
“The Consumer Prices Index including owner occupiers' housing costs (CPIH) rose by 9.6% in the 12 months to October 2022, up from 8.8% in September 2022.
The largest upward contributions to the annual CPIH inflation rate in October 2022 came from housing and household services (principally from electricity, gas, and other fuels), food and non-alcoholic beverages, and transport (principally motor fuels).
On a monthly basis, CPIH rose by 1.6% in October 2022, compared with a rise of 0.9% in October 2021.
The Consumer Prices Index (CPI) rose by 11.1% in the 12 months to October 2022, up from 10.1% in September 2022.
On a monthly basis, CPI rose by 2.0% in October 2022, compared with a rise of 1.1% in October 2021.
Despite the introduction of the government's Energy Price Guarantee, gas and electricity prices made the largest upward contribution to the change in both the CPIH and CPI annual inflation rates between September and October 2022.
Rising food prices also made a large upward contribution to change with transport (principally motor fuels and second-hand car prices) making the largest, partially offsetting, downward contribution to the change in the rates.”
https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/inflationandpriceindices/bulletins/consumerpriceinflation/october2022
I'm always pleasantly surprised when a launch like today's does actually happen.
But it appears to have fully succeeded, and that's great: the more competition (& options) the better.
Instead, there was no urgency and no real idea of *what* they were building the rocket for. This caused a multitude of problems for the project.
And BTW, there're some cool shots from the ICPS second stage in space.
Many on PB can't make their minds up whether Twitter is doomed to a Friends Reunited extinction event, now that Musk has bought it, or remains the fount of all knowledge wherein every tweet is a hotline to the minds of presidents and prime ministers.
And speaking of hotlines, Biden's categoric response to the Polish issue suggests strongly that the back channels between the US and Russia (which we learned of officially recently) are in fully functioning mode.
I’ve lived in the UAE for 15 years now, and pretty much every year there’s a new labour law aimed at stopping abuse of employees. Workers have to be paid by the locally licenced company that sponsors their visa, directly into a local bank account. It’s illegal to take payments from workers for visas and transport. Domestic staff are only allowed to be employed by licenced agencies and not by individuals. Workers with certain qualifications are allowed to sponsor themselves for residence visas. There’s meaningful fines for industrial accidents that result in serious injury or death.
What they can’t do anything about, is the foreign gangsters terrorising families in other countries.
I have a somewhat pragmatic view on things like accommodation arrangements for workers, even the very worst of which are quite normal in the countries where these workers originate.
The other problem that I foresee is that it will increase 'self employment' at sub minimum wage level, and turns lots of existing skilled work in to minimum wage work, particularly in the public sector where politicians veto pay rises.
I just said I missed it are you calling our Nige a fabricator?
Achieved:
Boots on the moon
Earth orbit space station
To do
Lunar orbit base
Lunar base
Orbital, boots base for Mars.
Gerard K O'Neill stuff in earth orbit.
He is going to run in 2024, no doubt in my mind.
As it happens, I don't think any of your 'analysis' of the Ukrainian situation has been very accurate.
40 hours x £10.40 x 4 = £1,650 x 2 = £3,300.
Less 13.25% employees NIC contributions. Less 20% on the £7,230/year above the tax free rate (each). So that's about £241 of income tax per month, and £437 of National Insurance, which brings you down to £2,621/month.
For one thing, we really need a reliable space tug system, and a refuelling infrastructure (in-orbit fuel depot).
But most of all, we need heavy-lift to orbit. We've got that today. Now we just need to somewhat reduce the cost. Perhaps by two orders of magnitude ...
https://www.politico.com/news/2022/11/15/trump-presidency-2024-candidate-00067130
...Before a room full of hundreds of supporters — including Trump world figures like Roger Stone, Kash Patel, Sebastian Gorka, My Pillow CEO Mike Lindell and the outgoing Rep. Madison Cawthorn, Trump portrayed his four years in office in rose colored hews..
Despite Trump doubt beginning to creep into the Republican Party, Fox News still covered it sycophantically. And I note Lindsey Graham is almost back onboard.
Still a lot of marks for the grift out there.
10.40/ hour for 37.5 hours per week = £1476.37 per month (per person), £1484 from November.
I think your calculations exclude the weekly allowance on employees national insurance contributions (about £240) where you don't pay employee NI