The English refusing to accept that Brexit is responsible for the economic crisis is like Americans refusing to accept guns are responsible for gun crime.
I watched part of Question Time last night, unusually. There were several questions from the audience about the economic and trading effects of Brexit. The Conservative and Labour politicians did not want to talk about this, and had no answers. I think now that both the main political parties are responsible for Brexit, which is contributing substantially to our economic decline.
I am now considering becoming a supporter of The Rejoin EU Party. There seems to be little point in voting for either the Conservative or Labour parties at the moment with their current policies because they are ignoring the elephant in the room.
Matt Hancock is joint-second favourite (behind the odds-on Charlene White, it says here) to be next (which I think is also first, but I don't watch the programme) out of the jungle. Hancock is also fourth best to win the whole thing. 4/1 to 7/1 next elimination. 10/1 winner.
I keep hearing twitter is broken, but I don't know what that means.
People can still send Tweets. People can still read them.
Some account features have been disabled.
What is broken?
The first thing he broke was the trust model. Verified accounts used to be verified. People were who they claimed to be. He broke that, with very expensive consequences.
That in turn broke his advertising model. Who would advertise on a site with no trust?
Then he sacked or lost most of the staff.
The failure scenarios from here are the platform stops working because he doesn't have the staff to keep it running, or he runs out of cash.
Musk is aiming to completely reset what he sees as a failing corporate culture in a very short space of time, against a backdrop of a biting global recession and drying up liquidity. It’s a fascinating spectacle. Business Studies lecturers will be loving it in a few years, either as a case study in what is possible (or what is not!).
Incidentally, how many times did Scott link to Twitter posts by 9am today? Feels to me like the drama Musk has injected is sure grabbing hold of eyeballs. Just needs to keep them and monetise them now.
I keep hearing twitter is broken, but I don't know what that means. Its not stopped endless retweets from Scott'n'Paste, and I seem to be reading the people I always followed. In what way is it broken?
Twitter's position at the moment seems to be analogous to the cartoon character who has run off the edge of a cliff, but hasn't started falling yet because they haven't looked down.
And what is equivalent to gravity in that situation? (Genuine question, because I don't really understand the issues).
There's a technical overhead to keep something like twitter running. Servers need to be patched, security certificates updated, bugs fixed, etc.
Sounds like whole teams of the people who do that work have now left. At some point something will break and there might not even be anyone with the right access to fix it.
I keep hearing twitter is broken, but I don't know what that means.
People can still send Tweets. People can still read them.
Some account features have been disabled.
What is broken?
The first thing he broke was the trust model. Verified accounts used to be verified. People were who they claimed to be. He broke that, with very expensive consequences.
That in turn broke his advertising model. Who would advertise on a site with no trust?
Then he sacked or lost most of the staff.
The failure scenarios from here are the platform stops working because he doesn't have the staff to keep it running, or he runs out of cash.
Bingo. Trust is easily lost, and hard to win back (harder than hiring a workforce). If an online japester with a spare $8 can pretend to be you and get a humorous meme going, then this is no longer a serious platform.
Worryingly for Twitter, Musk seems to genuinely believe that advertisers leaving is down to 'activists' pressurising brands (who, how and why remains unanswered).
Regarding Twitter, its been entertaining, but on balance I come down more on the side of Elon. Too many tech companies burn other people's cash and have no prospect of actually making money. I'm not surprised that Twitter employees are mournful if so many of them are paid so much with great working conditions and packages from a business that burns investor cash doing so.
Elon is a 17 year-old boy with grand visions for the future. So he can be ruthless with his vision of colonising Mars, but still likes to party and finds fart noises funny. Much of the Twitter chaos is a result of him not doing detail. Once he finds someone to run a slimmed down Twitter it will be fine.
This 'slimmed down' Twitter is paying a billion a year more in annual debt interest than it did before Musk.
So, it seems the open door liberal economists have won over Sunak. Net immigration >200k/yr for the forseeable future. Mostly low skilled. Once you account for the departure of our young smart emigres, the actual immigration figure will be a fair bit higher.
As we enter the recession - with unemployment predicted to soar - and brits at the bottom of the employment pile have their wages further suppressed, what’s the plan?
Dismiss them as racist, I guess.
Plus ca change.
Why do you think Starmer hasn't signed up to Rejoin?
For Rejoin (either Soft Rejoin (Brexit In Name Only - I dub thee BINO) or Hard Rejoin) to work, there are two major obstacles.
One is that wages have risen substantially in low paid jobs. From talking to business people, the issue is not so much a massive shortage of labour, but that there is a lack of downward pressure on wages in low paid jobs. It used to be that if you advertised a low end job at anything from minimum wage up, someone would take it. Generally economic migrants looking for *something*, *anything* to get on the job ladder.
This isn't migrant blaming or any such shit. Living in central London, you meet, make friends etc with many, many 1st generation migrants. Many, even those in high end jobs *now*, started by cleaning toilets in City offices or similar.
If free movement is resumed, that downward pressure on low end jobs will resume. Unless the labour market is restructured to stop low skilled jobs simply going back to minimum wage.
Which would be a very toxic story for whichever government presides over it.
The other is that Remain is currently selling - "BREXIT is shit. So surrender to the EU and take your deserved punishment" as the narrative.
That is not going to work electorally. What you need to do is sell - "BREXIT is shit. The EU will be a massive improvement for X, Y, Z".
Both are doable - much of Europe has found partial solutions to the labour market issue. If you want Europe, you need to sell Europe as a positive.
Mildly amused at the accusation the Conservatives are looking after their own side with the pension triple lock. I do think it should go, but given that they're also increasing benefits at the same rate, and benefit recipients aren't classically seen as typical Conservative voters, does that mean the blues are virtuous for also funding supporters of their opponents?
Whoever wins the next election is going to have difficulty with the economy. And an increasingly infantile political atmosphere.
Mildly amused at the accusation the Conservatives are looking after their own side with the pension triple lock. I do think it should go, but given that they're also increasing benefits at the same rate, and benefit recipients aren't classically seen as typical Conservative voters, does that mean the blues are virtuous for also funding supporters of their opponents?
Whoever wins the next election is going to have difficulty with the economy. And an increasingly infantile political atmosphere.
Given the invective that is now sent the way of the pensioners, will the next meme be Tory Dole Cheats?
The English refusing to accept that Brexit is responsible for the economic crisis is like Americans refusing to accept guns are responsible for gun crime.
People see huge numbers for gun deaths in the US. Which they are.
Matt Hancock is joint-second favourite (behind the odds-on Charlene White, it says here) to be next (which I think is also first, but I don't watch the programme) out of the jungle. Hancock is also fourth best to win the whole thing. 4/1 to 7/1 next elimination. 10/1 winner.
You'd think people would want to maximise the pain inflicted on Hancock, not get him out to have a good long bath then start about spending his wedge. Er, sorry, I meant, get back to his constituents issues.
1.4 billion from 3.4 billion revenue is astonishing profitability. Yes Facebook was making more in absolute terms but in realtive terms Twitter's 2019 revenue smashed Facebook into the dirt.
Like, here is Twitter's profit over the last decade.
Their 2018 and 2019 profits exceeded their losses over the previous 8 year.
The idea that Twitter is some kind of ailing, failing business is for the birds.
Mildly amused at the accusation the Conservatives are looking after their own side with the pension triple lock. I do think it should go, but given that they're also increasing benefits at the same rate, and benefit recipients aren't classically seen as typical Conservative voters, does that mean the blues are virtuous for also funding supporters of their opponents?
Whoever wins the next election is going to have difficulty with the economy. And an increasingly infantile political atmosphere.
The first had to be done for political reasons and the second had to be done if the first was to be done, for political reasons.
The English refusing to accept that Brexit is responsible for the economic crisis is like Americans refusing to accept guns are responsible for gun crime.
People see huge numbers for gun deaths in the US. Which they are.
But 60% of those gun deaths are suicides.
Gives "You'll have to pry my gun out of my cold dead hand" a whole new meaning.
So, it seems the open door liberal economists have won over Sunak. Net immigration >200k/yr for the forseeable future. Mostly low skilled. Once you account for the departure of our young smart emigres, the actual immigration figure will be a fair bit higher.
As we enter the recession - with unemployment predicted to soar - and brits at the bottom of the employment pile have their wages further suppressed, what’s the plan?
Dismiss them as racist, I guess.
Plus ca change.
Why do you think Starmer hasn't signed up to Rejoin?
For Rejoin (either Soft Rejoin (Brexit In Name Only - I dub thee BINO) or Hard Rejoin) to work, there are two major obstacles.
One is that wages have risen substantially in low paid jobs. From talking to business people, the issue is not so much a massive shortage of labour, but that there is a lack of downward pressure on wages in low paid jobs. It used to be that if you advertised a low end job at anything from minimum wage up, someone would take it. Generally economic migrants looking for *something*, *anything* to get on the job ladder.
This isn't migrant blaming or any such shit. Living in central London, you meet, make friends etc with many, many 1st generation migrants. Many, even those in high end jobs *now*, started by cleaning toilets in City offices or similar.
If free movement is resumed, that downward pressure on low end jobs will resume. Unless the labour market is restructured to stop low skilled jobs simply going back to minimum wage.
Which would be a very toxic story for whichever government presides over it.
The other is that Remain is currently selling - "BREXIT is shit. So surrender to the EU and take your deserved punishment" as the narrative.
That is not going to work electorally. What you need to do is sell - "BREXIT is shit. The EU will be a massive improvement for X, Y, Z".
Both are doable - much of Europe has found partial solutions to the labour market issue. If you want Europe, you need to sell Europe as a positive.
The elephant behind the elephant in the room is that the EU would be very reluctant to deal with any request to rejoin. So I don't see the point in policians offering rejoin now, from all the way out here. First we need to realign.
In practice we are already aligned - our regulations are their regulations are our regulations. So a deal to remove our self-inflicted trade barriers would be much simpler to ask for. Once we have that and people accept reality, then you can have conversations about doing more.
As for migration, I would be reasonably happy if we actually made the "point-based migration system work". We have a shit ton of vacancies we cannot fill. We need migrants to fill them. Are we allowing migrants in to fill these on any scale? No. Another self-inflicted stupidity.
What we need is for a brave politician to start asking direct questions. Do you want a job sweeping floors? Cleaning toilets? Wiping someone else's elderly parent's arse? Working monotonous warehouse jobs? If the answer is No, then Shut The Fuck Up.
I don't know what's more amusing Elon going all "hardcore" demanding that everyone is physically in the office 84 hours a week or else, and then locking everyone out, or the rather quaint notion some people seem to have that large web services can sort of run themselves. There is a continous stream of failures of hardware and services that can cascade to systems melting down if those fires aren't fought by the thousands of SREs who keep things running. Twitter will no more "run itself" that the power grid does, or the phone network, or air traffic control, etc.
Only a couple of days ago I was reading some comments on Twitter, ha ha, about the implausability of cold-booting large web services, in most cases there is no plan and it is impossible to test anyway. There seemed to be a broad consensus that if any of the big-boys ever completely crashed that there were real doubts about the ability to restore things in a timely fashion. i.e. Before all your users have moved elsewhere.
I did get me thinking though that we probably underestimate the risk of a web giant imploding due to some a total collapse of their systems, perhaps due to an external event.
Matt Hancock is joint-second favourite (behind the odds-on Charlene White, it says here) to be next (which I think is also first, but I don't watch the programme) out of the jungle. Hancock is also fourth best to win the whole thing. 4/1 to 7/1 next elimination. 10/1 winner.
You'd think people would want to maximise the pain inflicted on Hancock, not get him out to have a good long bath then start about spending his wedge. Er, sorry, I meant, get back to his constituents issues.
I rather assumed that. Not being a watcher of the programme, I don't know if its possible, but the best outcome is he makes the final (?) but loses. Maximises his time suffering without getting the 'validation' of winning with the public.
Regarding Twitter, its been entertaining, but on balance I come down more on the side of Elon. Too many tech companies burn other people's cash and have no prospect of actually making money. I'm not surprised that Twitter employees are mournful if so many of them are paid so much with great working conditions and packages from a business that burns investor cash doing so.
Elon is a 17 year-old boy with grand visions for the future. So he can be ruthless with his vision of colonising Mars, but still likes to party and finds fart noises funny. Much of the Twitter chaos is a result of him not doing detail. Once he finds someone to run a slimmed down Twitter it will be fine.
This 'slimmed down' Twitter is paying a billion a year more in annual debt interest than it did before Musk.
Is there a chance this brings down Tesla/other Musk companies? I read he put up a lot of his own money into this deal. As I understand it, Tesla is very profitable, but a global recession seems likely to reduce spending on luxury cars.
I have never been filled with such gloom about a budget. Paying more tax for ever worse services. A country that feels like it's falling apart.
I'm young enough, smart enough and employable enough to work overseas and it now feels like an option worth considering.
Was in the co-op the last week and was confronted with a £2.50 price sticker for a carton of six eggs. I felt revulsed - "I'm not paying that much for that!"
My feeling after yesterday's budget was much the same - I'm not paying that much for that.
Wonder how many people with options are looking at their declining pay packets and falling living standards and wondering the same thing.
It feels as if the country has crossed the rubicon - from managed decline into terminal decline. I don't believe rejoining the EU is a panacea, not at all. Free movement encouraged decades of low skilled, minimum wage economics that discouraged UK companies from investment, and if anything, we are where we are today because of that - rejoining is just a sticking plaster that helps the UK lumber on a few more years before reaching the same destination.
Gloom. Despair. The obvious choice in an era where being highly skilled gives you global mobility is to bugger off to somewhere with better prospects.
I think we need to pray that twitter does survive, otherwise Scott n Paste will be forced to spam anti-Brexit TikToks morning, noon & night instead.....
People voted for big picture stuff: Less migrants More control More money for our services Stick it to the man
They had no concept of detail, besides the specific route we took after Brexit had nothing directly to do with the referendum vote. So no, people didn't vote for low growth. Or even to be worse off.
I think we need to pray that twitter does survive, otherwise Scott n Paste will be forced to spam anti-Brexit TikToks morning, noon & night instead.....
Question Time is now an anti-Brexit video channel...
It is interesting to see who is blaming who for the UK's economic crisis.
Tories: Putin
Labour: The Tories The Lib Dems: The Tories The SNP: The English and the The Tories Farage and the Hard Brexiteers: The Pandemic and the The Tories Remainers: Brexit and the Tories
I don't know what's more amusing Elon going all "hardcore" demanding that everyone is physically in the office 84 hours a week or else, and then locking everyone out, or the rather quaint notion some people seem to have that large web services can sort of run themselves. There is a continous stream of failures of hardware and services that can cascade to systems melting down if those fires aren't fought by the thousands of SREs who keep things running. Twitter will no more "run itself" that the power grid does, or the phone network, or air traffic control, etc.
Only a couple of days ago I was reading some comments on Twitter, ha ha, about the implausability of cold-booting large web services, in most cases there is no plan and it is impossible to test anyway. There seemed to be a broad consensus that if any of the big-boys ever completely crashed that there were real doubts about the ability to restore things in a timely fashion. i.e. Before all your users have moved elsewhere.
I did get me thinking though that we probably underestimate the risk of a web giant imploding due to some a total collapse of their systems, perhaps due to an external event.
Web infrastructure is a lot easier to distribute now, than it was only a few years ago, thanks to CDN services and scalable infrastructure. IIRC, Twitter actually has a Cloudflare/AWS infra that’s pretty standard, as opposed to the Facebooks and Googles who run dozen of their own data centres.
That said, there needs to be a core team of people to keep everything running smoothly, and it’s been suggested that these things haven’t been running smoothly at Twitter for some time.
Time for a courageous politician who will be listened to to announce that Brexit is costing the UK £40 billion each year and will continue to do so.
This is £32 billion more than we were paying into the EU for services as advertised on the Red Bus. It is causing the country genuine hardship from which we are unlikely to recover.
Ideally the person announcing their Damascene conversion will be a respected Brexiteer. The likes of Lord Wolfson of Next won't cut it. It needs to be someone who would command all the front pages and would lead the news for days.
It needs to be someone who would open the floodgates,
Boris would be ideal. Even Cummings would be a possibility. Gove is considered a heavyweight intellectual by Tories so he might do. But it has to be done quickly and the narrative could change overnight. A new mood of optimism could sweep the country
Good luck with that one. The problem of course is that Brexit as such is an absolute and binary choice. You are either in or not in the EU. The absoluteness of this is clear from the failure pre-2016 to negotiate even a simulacrum of a derogation from FOM, the one issue which would have turned around the result.
And, as the result 52/48 showed there is no clear consensus behind either of those two choices, nor is there going to be.
EEA/EFTA or another version of remaining in the SM always was the only solution in 2016 and it still is.
It remains the case of course that it is complete social folly to insist that frictionless free trade in goods and services must entail frictionless free trade in people. The UK are complicit of course in agreeing to this folly in the first place.
Which is why it's impossible to try to argue the pros and cons as happened for the last ten years. The country without any reasonable explanation has accepted we've gone from a reasonably well to do nation to one on its uppers.
No explanation (that makes any sense) has been offered and none as been asked for. Like lemmings we've just gone along with whatever this Tory Party has asked of us. They've chosen and discarded our leaders without consultation. These few hundred people have decided what Brexit means without anyone outside their cabal have had any imput.
All we can see is the result which is that they've fucked up catastrophically
It's as though we've been under hypnosis.
And it's now time for someone to say wake up. There's absolutely no point revisiting why dealing with Australia and New Zealand wasn't a better idea than dealing with our wealthier more populous and nearer neighbours. That'll be obvious the moment we wake up and TAKE BACK CONTROL. We just need an insider with the ability and influence to call time.
So, it seems the open door liberal economists have won over Sunak. Net immigration >200k/yr for the forseeable future. Mostly low skilled. Once you account for the departure of our young smart emigres, the actual immigration figure will be a fair bit higher.
As we enter the recession - with unemployment predicted to soar - and brits at the bottom of the employment pile have their wages further suppressed, what’s the plan?
Dismiss them as racist, I guess.
Plus ca change.
Why do you think Starmer hasn't signed up to Rejoin?
For Rejoin (either Soft Rejoin (Brexit In Name Only - I dub thee BINO) or Hard Rejoin) to work, there are two major obstacles.
One is that wages have risen substantially in low paid jobs. From talking to business people, the issue is not so much a massive shortage of labour, but that there is a lack of downward pressure on wages in low paid jobs. It used to be that if you advertised a low end job at anything from minimum wage up, someone would take it. Generally economic migrants looking for *something*, *anything* to get on the job ladder.
This isn't migrant blaming or any such shit. Living in central London, you meet, make friends etc with many, many 1st generation migrants. Many, even those in high end jobs *now*, started by cleaning toilets in City offices or similar.
If free movement is resumed, that downward pressure on low end jobs will resume. Unless the labour market is restructured to stop low skilled jobs simply going back to minimum wage.
Which would be a very toxic story for whichever government presides over it.
The other is that Remain is currently selling - "BREXIT is shit. So surrender to the EU and take your deserved punishment" as the narrative.
That is not going to work electorally. What you need to do is sell - "BREXIT is shit. The EU will be a massive improvement for X, Y, Z".
Both are doable - much of Europe has found partial solutions to the labour market issue. If you want Europe, you need to sell Europe as a positive.
The elephant behind the elephant in the room is that the EU would be very reluctant to deal with any request to rejoin. So I don't see the point in policians offering rejoin now, from all the way out here. First we need to realign.
In practice we are already aligned - our regulations are their regulations are our regulations. So a deal to remove our self-inflicted trade barriers would be much simpler to ask for. Once we have that and people accept reality, then you can have conversations about doing more.
As for migration, I would be reasonably happy if we actually made the "point-based migration system work". We have a shit ton of vacancies we cannot fill. We need migrants to fill them. Are we allowing migrants in to fill these on any scale? No. Another self-inflicted stupidity.
What we need is for a brave politician to start asking direct questions. Do you want a job sweeping floors? Cleaning toilets? Wiping someone else's elderly parent's arse? Working monotonous warehouse jobs? If the answer is No, then Shut The Fuck Up.
Your last paragraph is the problem.
The majority of those “Wiping someone else's elderly parent's arse” are U.K. citizens and always have been.
The belief that all low paid jobs used to be done by migrants is a very London centric view and wrong, even there.
You presume that they should be happy to do so for minimum wage. They don’t agree.
The English refusing to accept that Brexit is responsible for the economic crisis is like Americans refusing to accept guns are responsible for gun crime.
People see huge numbers for gun deaths in the US. Which they are.
But 60% of those gun deaths are suicides.
I'm struggling to interpret that comment in the context of the analogy. Are you implying that the purpose of Brexit is to destroy the UK economy?
People voted for big picture stuff: Less migrants More control More money for our services Stick it to the man
They had no concept of detail, besides the specific route we took after Brexit had nothing directly to do with the referendum vote. So no, people didn't vote for low growth. Or even to be worse off.
Even if they did, so what ?
People change their minds - as the opinion polls on Brexit have regularly demonstrated since we left. Why on earth should future policy be bound in perpetuity by a single vote of an electorate which no longer exists in the form it had then ?
It is interesting to see who is blaming who for the UK's economic crisis.
Tories: Putin
Labour: The Tories The Lib Dems: The Tories The SNP: The English and the The Tories Farage and the Hard Brexiteers: The Pandemic and the The Tories Remainers: Brexit and the Tories
Me: Putin; Pandemic: Brexit; Tories. Not an exhaustive list, but it will do for a start.
I have never been filled with such gloom about a budget. Paying more tax for ever worse services. A country that feels like it's falling apart.
I'm young enough, smart enough and employable enough to work overseas and it now feels like an option worth considering.
Was in the co-op the last week and was confronted with a £2.50 price sticker for a carton of six eggs. I felt revulsed - "I'm not paying that much for that!"
My feeling after yesterday's budget was much the same - I'm not paying that much for that.
Wonder how many people with options are looking at their declining pay packets and falling living standards and wondering the same thing.
It feels as if the country has crossed the rubicon - from managed decline into terminal decline. I don't believe rejoining the EU is a panacea, not at all. Free movement encouraged decades of low skilled, minimum wage economics that discouraged UK companies from investment, and if anything, we are where we are today because of that - rejoining is just a sticking plaster that helps the UK lumber on a few more years before reaching the same destination.
Gloom. Despair. The obvious choice in an era where being highly skilled gives you global mobility is to bugger off to somewhere with better prospects.
You can't tax your way to prosperity.
Same here. We are fucked. And no one has any idea what to do
1.4 billion from 3.4 billion revenue is astonishing profitability. Yes Facebook was making more in absolute terms but in realtive terms Twitter's 2019 revenue smashed Facebook into the dirt.
Like, here is Twitter's profit over the last decade.
Their 2018 and 2019 profits exceeded their losses over the previous 8 year.
The idea that Twitter is some kind of ailing, failing business is for the birds.
Have you had a look at the Financial Statements as to how come they made a $1.4bn profit in 2019 and a billion loss in 2020 though?
Since you said that I thought I'd look at the data myself, assuming it was a pandemic-related drying up of advertising revenue in 2020. Not the case.
In 2019 Twitter didn't make £1.4bn in profit from operations, their Net Income from Operations was $366mn, supplemented for some reason in over a billion negative in taxes making a net profit of $1.4bn after tax.
In 2020 Twitter's advertising revenue went up, despite the pandemic but the Net Income from Operations fell from $366mn to $26mn, compounded by over a billion in taxes being liable, meaning net loss of $1.1bn after tax.
I'm not an expert on the US Tax Code but it seems improbable that Twitter could or should be continuing to be paying negative a billion in taxes per annum. If Twitter's old plan was to make a profit by being a negative tax contributor, surely that is for the birds.
The English refusing to accept that Brexit is responsible for the economic crisis is like Americans refusing to accept guns are responsible for gun crime.
People see huge numbers for gun deaths in the US. Which they are.
But 60% of those gun deaths are suicides.
I'm struggling to interpret that comment in the context of the analogy. Are you implying that the purpose of Brexit is to destroy the UK economy?
It is interesting to see who is blaming who for the UK's economic crisis.
Tories: Putin
Labour: The Tories The Lib Dems: The Tories The SNP: The English and the The Tories Farage and the Hard Brexiteers: The Pandemic and the The Tories Remainers: Brexit and the Tories
Me: Putin; Pandemic: Brexit; Tories. Not an exhaustive list, but it will do for a start.
The positioning of Farage to pin this on the pandemic and definitely, definitely, definitely not Brexit looks a little desperate. He knows.
His argument is that Sweden didn't lock down and they are doing better. Conveniently forgetting to mention that there are dozens of countries that locked down harder than us, which are also doing better.
Presumption of innocence and all that, but that is highly unusul to see.
The leader came a creditable second to Lee Anderson in the 2019 GE.
Dyspeptic euromedia obsessive @MattW is a fan, from memory.
Just picked up on this. @NickPalmer may have an interest wrt Ashfield politics around 2010.
@Gardenwalker - If "dyspeptic euromedia obsessive" means "listens to France 24 and Deutsche Welle a couple of times a week for international perspectives, in addition to the BBC WS", then I'm happy to plead guilty - LOL.
Fan of Zadrozny? That's a yes-but, plus a sympathy vote given his appalling treatment by Notts Police previously.
Up until 2014-5 he was a rising star amongst Lib Dems, and came within 250 votes of winning Ashfield ahead of Gloria de Piero in 2010, when Geoff Hoon left Parliament.
Then in 2015 when he was again a threat, and aiui Ashfield Labour were quivering in their crocs, there were historic sex abuse allegations that mysteriously emerged (or re-emerged from ~10 years previously when they had been made against him from a BNP type direction aiui, coming to nothing) a few weeks ahead of the General Election, and he had to stand down as LD candidate.
Notts police kept him dangling on the "under investigation" hook until Autumn 2017 when they collapsed their case at the door of the Court and presented no evidence.
Based on doorstep conversations when they come round, there remains a considerable well of cynicism amongst Ashfield Independents about police handling of the case, and the Labour PCC at the time.
Just picked up on this. @NickPalmer may have an interest.
(1/2)
Now, of course, we have a Conservative PCC and County Council. In 2015 both were Labour, up to 2017 for Notts County Council and 2021 for PCC.
If you add in that it is AIs nearly sweeping the board in Ashfield, and taking all the County Council seats in Ashfield, which beheading of Labour was a factor that gave County to the Tories, plus various Lab -> AI defections over the years, you can see that Lab-AI relationships are *interesting*.
Lab have only 2 Councillors from 35 on Ashfield DC, and one of them is the one who photobombed Ed Milliband with a "Trade Unionists will dance on Thatcher's grave" teeshirt. They are probably still there by personal vote imo.
You can add in further that the current Tory PCC has so many speeding offences that she is on a 6 month driving ban, yet has not stood down. And further that the AI Deputy Leader Coun. Tom Hollis has just been sentenced to 200 hours of unpaid work for various offences including lying to the police to get his neighbour arrested for a crime of coming after him with a carving knife (he literally performed a 'get away, get away' panto on the phone to the police) yet kept his Councillor position, but not Deputy Leader.
So it is all very tasty in Ashfield and Notts. AIs now having a member on Broxtowe Council as well, and Tory moves to make Notts CC unitary, and the head of Notts CC being the Tory MP for Mansfield, adds more.
On the current facts, 6 AI councillors were arrested for interview, and the AI statement is that it was a "politically motivated complaint".
I don't have the information to come to overall conclusions, but there are elections here in April/May 2023, and if I was the Ashfield Independents I would suspect that the complaint was aiming to take Zadrozny out of the game again. Apparently just like last time in spring 2015.
I've heard rumours about Hollis' support for a Planning App to regularise a traveller encampment that has blighted a whole street (that group are massively abusing the system), and how his face collapsed when Planning Committee voted it down in the vid meeting, and about the ease of a couple of Planning Permissions getting through linked to Councillors - but that's nothing out of the ordinary for local politics anywhere and there are two sides to any such. Suspect Hollis at least will lose in April, and I will do what I can to make sure he does.
My take is that given how I have observed certain trans-activists using the police essentially to harass gender-critical activists by vexatious complaints (current lead case is probably Caroline Farrow), and how the police have gone for various journos, I think that current law / policy gives plenty of scope for these complaints to be a political hit-job.
I can also see how the demise of the AIs would really suit both Labs and Tories.
But I have insufficient information to go anywhere near making an allegation. And would not do so unless I had a really clear case. (2/2)
Now, of course, we have a Conservative PCC and County Council. In 2015 both were Labour, up to 2017 for Notts County Council and 2021 for PCC.
If you add in that it is AIs nearly sweeping the board in Ashfield, and taking all the County Council seats in Ashfield, which beheading of Labour was a factor that gave County to the Tories, plus various Lab -> AI defections over the years, you can see that Lab-AI relationships are *interesting*.
Lab have only 2 Councillors from 35 on Ashfield DC, and one of them is the one who photobombed Ed Milliband with a "Trade Unionists will dance on Thatcher's grave" teeshirt. They are probably still there by personal vote imo.
You can add in further that the current Tory PCC has so many speeding offences that she is on a 6 month driving ban, yet has not stood down. And further that the AI Deputy Leader Coun. Tom Hollis has just been sentenced to 200 hours of unpaid work for various offences including lying to the police to get his neighbour arrested for a crime of coming after him with a carving knife (he literally performed a 'get away, get away' panto on the phone to the police) yet kept his Councillor position, but not Deputy Leader.
So it is all very tasty in Ashfield and Notts. AIs now having a member on Broxtowe Council as well, and Tory moves to make Notts CC unitary, and the head of Notts CC being the Tory MP for Mansfield, adds more.
On the current facts, 6 AI councillors were arrested for interview, and the AI statement is that it was a "politically motivated complaint".
I don't have the information to come to overall conclusions, but there are elections here in April/May 2023, and if I was the Ashfield Independents I would suspect that the complaint was aiming to take Zadrozny out of the game again. Apparently just like last time in spring 2015.
I've heard rumours about Hollis' support for a Planning App to regularise a traveller encampment that has blighted a whole street (that group are massively abusing the system), and how his face collapsed when Planning Committee voted it down in the vid meeting, and about the ease of a couple of Planning Permissions getting through linked to Councillors - but that's nothing out of the ordinary for local politics anywhere and there are two sides to any such. Suspect Hollis at least will lose in April, and I will do what I can to make sure he does.
My take is that given how I have observed certain trans-activists using the police essentially to harass gender-critical activists by vexatious complaints (current lead case is probably Caroline Farrow), and how the police have gone for various journos, I think that current law / policy gives plenty of scope for these complaints to be a political hit-job.
I can also see how the demise of the AIs would really suit both Labs and Tories.
But I have insufficient information to go anywhere near making an allegation. And would not do so unless I had a really clear case. (2/2)
Definitely watching it with interest - the police generally couldn't give two shits about allegations, for instance, around councillors being involved in matters where they have a disclosable pecuniary interest, and this actions seems very dramatic indeed.
Now, of course, we have a Conservative PCC and County Council. In 2015 both were Labour, up to 2017 for Notts County Council and 2021 for PCC.
If you add in that it is AIs nearly sweeping the board in Ashfield, and taking all the County Council seats in Ashfield, which beheading of Labour was a factor that gave County to the Tories, plus various Lab -> AI defections over the years, you can see that Lab-AI relationships are *interesting*.
Lab have only 2 Councillors from 35 on Ashfield DC, and one of them is the one who photobombed Ed Milliband with a "Trade Unionists will dance on Thatcher's grave" teeshirt. They are probably still there by personal vote imo.
You can add in further that the current Tory PCC has so many speeding offences that she is on a 6 month driving ban, yet has not stood down. And further that the AI Deputy Leader Coun. Tom Hollis has just been sentenced to 200 hours of unpaid work for various offences including lying to the police to get his neighbour arrested for a crime of coming after him with a carving knife (he literally performed a 'get away, get away' panto on the phone to the police) yet kept his Councillor position, but not Deputy Leader.
So it is all very tasty in Ashfield and Notts. AIs now having a member on Broxtowe Council as well, and Tory moves to make Notts CC unitary, and the head of Notts CC being the Tory MP for Mansfield, adds more.
On the current facts, 6 AI councillors were arrested for interview, and the AI statement is that it was a "politically motivated complaint".
I don't have the information to come to overall conclusions, but there are elections here in April/May 2023, and if I was the Ashfield Independents I would suspect that the complaint was aiming to take Zadrozny out of the game again. Apparently just like last time in spring 2015.
I've heard rumours about Hollis' support for a Planning App to regularise a traveller encampment that has blighted a whole street (that group are massively abusing the system), and how his face collapsed when Planning Committee voted it down in the vid meeting, and about the ease of a couple of Planning Permissions getting through linked to Councillors - but that's nothing out of the ordinary for local politics anywhere and there are two sides to any such. Suspect Hollis at least will lose in April, and I will do what I can to make sure he does.
My take is that given how I have observed certain trans-activists using the police essentially to harass gender-critical activists by vexatious complaints (current lead case is probably Caroline Farrow), and how the police have gone for various journos, I think that current law / policy gives plenty of scope for these complaints to be a political hit-job.
I can also see how the demise of the AIs would really suit both Labs and Tories.
But I have insufficient information to go anywhere near making an allegation. And would not do so unless I had a really clear case. (2/2)
Definitely watching it with interest - the police generally couldn't give two shits about allegations, for instance, around councillors being involved in matters where they have a disclosable pecuniary interest, and this actions seems very dramatic indeed.
I realise I'm on the wrong thread, so I will re-edit for the Sat thread.
Now, of course, we have a Conservative PCC and County Council. In 2015 both were Labour, up to 2017 for Notts County Council and 2021 for PCC.
If you add in that it is AIs nearly sweeping the board in Ashfield, and taking all the County Council seats in Ashfield, which beheading of Labour was a factor that gave County to the Tories, plus various Lab -> AI defections over the years, you can see that Lab-AI relationships are *interesting*.
Lab have only 2 Councillors from 35 on Ashfield DC, and one of them is the one who photobombed Ed Milliband with a "Trade Unionists will dance on Thatcher's grave" teeshirt. They are probably still there by personal vote imo.
You can add in further that the current Tory PCC has so many speeding offences that she is on a 6 month driving ban, yet has not stood down. And further that the AI Deputy Leader Coun. Tom Hollis has just been sentenced to 200 hours of unpaid work for various offences including lying to the police to get his neighbour arrested for a crime of coming after him with a carving knife (he literally performed a 'get away, get away' panto on the phone to the police) yet kept his Councillor position, but not Deputy Leader.
So it is all very tasty in Ashfield and Notts. AIs now having a member on Broxtowe Council as well, and Tory moves to make Notts CC unitary, and the head of Notts CC being the Tory MP for Mansfield, adds more.
On the current facts, 6 AI councillors were arrested for interview, and the AI statement is that it was a "politically motivated complaint".
I don't have the information to come to overall conclusions, but there are elections here in April/May 2023, and if I was the Ashfield Independents I would suspect that the complaint was aiming to take Zadrozny out of the game again. Apparently just like last time in spring 2015.
I've heard rumours about Hollis' support for a Planning App to regularise a traveller encampment that has blighted a whole street (that group are massively abusing the system), and how his face collapsed when Planning Committee voted it down in the vid meeting, and about the ease of a couple of Planning Permissions getting through linked to Councillors - but that's nothing out of the ordinary for local politics anywhere and there are two sides to any such. Suspect Hollis at least will lose in April, and I will do what I can to make sure he does.
My take is that given how I have observed certain trans-activists using the police essentially to harass gender-critical activists by vexatious complaints (current lead case is probably Caroline Farrow), and how the police have gone for various journos, I think that current law / policy gives plenty of scope for these complaints to be a political hit-job.
I can also see how the demise of the AIs would really suit both Labs and Tories.
But I have insufficient information to go anywhere near making an allegation. And would not do so unless I had a really clear case. (2/2)
Definitely watching it with interest - the police generally couldn't give two shits about allegations, for instance, around councillors being involved in matters where they have a disclosable pecuniary interest, and this actions seems very dramatic indeed.
I realise I'm on the wrong thread, so I will re-edit for the Sat thread.
Comments
I am now considering becoming a supporter of The Rejoin EU Party. There seems to be little point in voting for either the Conservative or Labour parties at the moment with their current policies because they are ignoring the elephant in the room.
4/1 to 7/1 next elimination.
10/1 winner.
Some account features have been disabled.
What is broken?
The first thing he broke was the trust model. Verified accounts used to be verified. People were who they claimed to be. He broke that, with very expensive consequences.
That in turn broke his advertising model. Who would advertise on a site with no trust?
Then he sacked or lost most of the staff.
The failure scenarios from here are the platform stops working because he doesn't have the staff to keep it running, or he runs out of cash.
Sounds like whole teams of the people who do that work have now left. At some point something will break and there might not even be anyone with the right access to fix it.
Worryingly for Twitter, Musk seems to genuinely believe that advertisers leaving is down to 'activists' pressurising brands (who, how and why remains unanswered).
For Rejoin (either Soft Rejoin (Brexit In Name Only - I dub thee BINO) or Hard Rejoin) to work, there are two major obstacles.
One is that wages have risen substantially in low paid jobs. From talking to business people, the issue is not so much a massive shortage of labour, but that there is a lack of downward pressure on wages in low paid jobs. It used to be that if you advertised a low end job at anything from minimum wage up, someone would take it. Generally economic migrants looking for *something*, *anything* to get on the job ladder.
This isn't migrant blaming or any such shit. Living in central London, you meet, make friends etc with many, many 1st generation migrants. Many, even those in high end jobs *now*, started by cleaning toilets in City offices or similar.
If free movement is resumed, that downward pressure on low end jobs will resume. Unless the labour market is restructured to stop low skilled jobs simply going back to minimum wage.
Which would be a very toxic story for whichever government presides over it.
The other is that Remain is currently selling - "BREXIT is shit. So surrender to the EU and take your deserved punishment" as the narrative.
That is not going to work electorally. What you need to do is sell - "BREXIT is shit. The EU will be a massive improvement for X, Y, Z".
Both are doable - much of Europe has found partial solutions to the labour market issue. If you want Europe, you need to sell Europe as a positive.
Whoever wins the next election is going to have difficulty with the economy. And an increasingly infantile political atmosphere.
But 60% of those gun deaths are suicides.
Like, here is Twitter's profit over the last decade.
Their 2018 and 2019 profits exceeded their losses over the previous 8 year.
The idea that Twitter is some kind of ailing, failing business is for the birds.
In practice we are already aligned - our regulations are their regulations are our regulations. So a deal to remove our self-inflicted trade barriers would be much simpler to ask for. Once we have that and people accept reality, then you can have conversations about doing more.
As for migration, I would be reasonably happy if we actually made the "point-based migration system work". We have a shit ton of vacancies we cannot fill. We need migrants to fill them. Are we allowing migrants in to fill these on any scale? No. Another self-inflicted stupidity.
What we need is for a brave politician to start asking direct questions. Do you want a job sweeping floors? Cleaning toilets? Wiping someone else's elderly parent's arse? Working monotonous warehouse jobs? If the answer is No, then Shut The Fuck Up.
Only a couple of days ago I was reading some comments on Twitter, ha ha, about the implausability of cold-booting large web services, in most cases there is no plan and it is impossible to test anyway. There seemed to be a broad consensus that if any of the big-boys ever completely crashed that there were real doubts about the ability to restore things in a timely fashion. i.e. Before all your users have moved elsewhere.
I did get me thinking though that we probably underestimate the risk of a web giant imploding due to some a total collapse of their systems, perhaps due to an external event.
He is still a prick whatever.
"I don't think it would be the right way to boost growth because it would be against what people were voting for when they supported Brexit"
Chancellor Jeremy Hunt is asked by @MishalHusain whether joining the EU single market would boost growth
Podcast: https://bbc.in/3gjLNz9 https://twitter.com/BBCr4today/status/1593541251462303745/video/1
Mega deals with Saudi Arabia signal new Middle East boom for Korea
https://m.koreatimes.co.kr/pages/article.asp?newsIdx=340044
How mant unfit players have England picked?
Anyone else think there is value in betting England to NOT get out the group?
I have never been filled with such gloom about a budget. Paying more tax for ever worse services. A country that feels like it's falling apart.
I'm young enough, smart enough and employable enough to work overseas and it now feels like an option worth considering.
Was in the co-op the last week and was confronted with a £2.50 price sticker for a carton of six eggs. I felt revulsed - "I'm not paying that much for that!"
My feeling after yesterday's budget was much the same - I'm not paying that much for that.
Wonder how many people with options are looking at their declining pay packets and falling living standards and wondering the same thing.
It feels as if the country has crossed the rubicon - from managed decline into terminal decline. I don't believe rejoining the EU is a panacea, not at all. Free movement encouraged decades of low skilled, minimum wage economics that discouraged UK companies from investment, and if anything, we are where we are today because of that - rejoining is just a sticking plaster that helps the UK lumber on a few more years before reaching the same destination.
Gloom. Despair. The obvious choice in an era where being highly skilled gives you global mobility is to bugger off to somewhere with better prospects.
You can't tax your way to prosperity.
Less migrants
More control
More money for our services
Stick it to the man
They had no concept of detail, besides the specific route we took after Brexit had nothing directly to do with the referendum vote. So no, people didn't vote for low growth. Or even to be worse off.
Tories: Putin
Labour: The Tories
The Lib Dems: The Tories
The SNP: The English and the The Tories
Farage and the Hard Brexiteers: The Pandemic and the The Tories
Remainers: Brexit and the Tories
The information exists, but must remain secret. Scot Gov has not yet settled on a fiscal policy “that is sound and likely to be effective”.
Vote SNP for unsound & ineffective policies!
https://twitter.com/staylorish/status/1593528972146606081
That said, there needs to be a core team of people to keep everything running smoothly, and it’s been suggested that these things haven’t been running smoothly at Twitter for some time.
Tory MP: “He is for basic economic competence and good governance, so your path to electoral success is ‘we didn’t screw it up that much’. It’s not that compelling."
https://twitter.com/estwebber/status/1593544347097747465
No explanation (that makes any sense) has been offered and none as been asked for. Like lemmings we've just gone along with whatever this Tory Party has asked of us. They've chosen and discarded our leaders without consultation. These few hundred people have decided what Brexit means without anyone outside their cabal have had any imput.
All we can see is the result which is that they've fucked up catastrophically
It's as though we've been under hypnosis.
And it's now time for someone to say wake up. There's absolutely no point revisiting why dealing with Australia and New Zealand wasn't a better idea than dealing with our wealthier more populous and nearer neighbours. That'll be obvious the moment we wake up and TAKE BACK CONTROL. We just need an insider with the ability and influence to call time.
The majority of those “Wiping someone else's elderly parent's arse” are U.K. citizens and always have been.
The belief that all low paid jobs used to be done by migrants is a very London centric view and wrong, even there.
You presume that they should be happy to do so for minimum wage. They don’t agree.
People change their minds - as the opinion polls on Brexit have regularly demonstrated since we left. Why on earth should future policy be bound in perpetuity by a single vote of an electorate which no longer exists in the form it had then ?
Just nonsense.
Not an exhaustive list, but it will do for a start.
Since you said that I thought I'd look at the data myself, assuming it was a pandemic-related drying up of advertising revenue in 2020. Not the case.
In 2019 Twitter didn't make £1.4bn in profit from operations, their Net Income from Operations was $366mn, supplemented for some reason in over a billion negative in taxes making a net profit of $1.4bn after tax.
In 2020 Twitter's advertising revenue went up, despite the pandemic but the Net Income from Operations fell from $366mn to $26mn, compounded by over a billion in taxes being liable, meaning net loss of $1.1bn after tax.
I'm not an expert on the US Tax Code but it seems improbable that Twitter could or should be continuing to be paying negative a billion in taxes per annum. If Twitter's old plan was to make a profit by being a negative tax contributor, surely that is for the birds.
https://s22.q4cdn.com/826641620/files/doc_financials/2020/q4/FINAL-Q4'20-TWTR-Selected-Metrics-and-Financials.pdf
His argument is that Sweden didn't lock down and they are doing better. Conveniently forgetting to mention that there are dozens of countries that locked down harder than us, which are also doing better.
@Gardenwalker - If "dyspeptic euromedia obsessive" means "listens to France 24 and Deutsche Welle a couple of times a week for international perspectives, in addition to the BBC WS", then I'm happy to plead guilty - LOL.
Fan of Zadrozny? That's a yes-but, plus a sympathy vote given his appalling treatment by Notts Police previously.
Up until 2014-5 he was a rising star amongst Lib Dems, and came within 250 votes of winning Ashfield ahead of Gloria de Piero in 2010, when Geoff Hoon left Parliament.
Then in 2015 when he was again a threat, and aiui Ashfield Labour were quivering in their crocs, there were historic sex abuse allegations that mysteriously emerged (or re-emerged from ~10 years previously when they had been made against him from a BNP type direction aiui, coming to nothing) a few weeks ahead of the General Election, and he had to stand down as LD candidate.
Notts police kept him dangling on the "under investigation" hook until Autumn 2017 when they collapsed their case at the door of the Court and presented no evidence.
Based on doorstep conversations when they come round, there remains a considerable well of cynicism amongst Ashfield Independents about police handling of the case, and the Labour PCC at the time.
(1/2)
If you add in that it is AIs nearly sweeping the board in Ashfield, and taking all the County Council seats in Ashfield, which beheading of Labour was a factor that gave County to the Tories, plus various Lab -> AI defections over the years, you can see that Lab-AI relationships are *interesting*.
Lab have only 2 Councillors from 35 on Ashfield DC, and one of them is the one who photobombed Ed Milliband with a "Trade Unionists will dance on Thatcher's grave" teeshirt. They are probably still there by personal vote imo.
You can add in further that the current Tory PCC has so many speeding offences that she is on a 6 month driving ban, yet has not stood down. And further that the AI Deputy Leader Coun. Tom Hollis has just been sentenced to 200 hours of unpaid work for various offences including lying to the police to get his neighbour arrested for a crime of coming after him with a carving knife (he literally performed a 'get away, get away' panto on the phone to the police) yet kept his Councillor position, but not Deputy Leader.
So it is all very tasty in Ashfield and Notts. AIs now having a member on Broxtowe Council as well, and Tory moves to make Notts CC unitary, and the head of Notts CC being the Tory MP for Mansfield, adds more.
On the current facts, 6 AI councillors were arrested for interview, and the AI statement is that it was a "politically motivated complaint".
I don't have the information to come to overall conclusions, but there are elections here in April/May 2023, and if I was the Ashfield Independents I would suspect that the complaint was aiming to take Zadrozny out of the game again. Apparently just like last time in spring 2015.
I've heard rumours about Hollis' support for a Planning App to regularise a traveller encampment that has blighted a whole street (that group are massively abusing the system), and how his face collapsed when Planning Committee voted it down in the vid meeting, and about the ease of a couple of Planning Permissions getting through linked to Councillors - but that's nothing out of the ordinary for local politics anywhere and there are two sides to any such. Suspect Hollis at least will lose in April, and I will do what I can to make sure he does.
My take is that given how I have observed certain trans-activists using the police essentially to harass gender-critical activists by vexatious complaints (current lead case is probably Caroline Farrow), and how the police have gone for various journos, I think that current law / policy gives plenty of scope for these complaints to be a political hit-job.
I can also see how the demise of the AIs would really suit both Labs and Tories.
But I have insufficient information to go anywhere near making an allegation. And would not do so unless I had a really clear case.
(2/2)
Wikipedia have a decent bare bones historic timeline:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jason_Zadrozny
Local news reports on the current issue:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-nottinghamshire-63664195
https://www.chad.co.uk/news/politics/ashfield-independents-vigorously-deny-any-wrongdoing-in-the-wake-of-councillor-arrests-3923453
https://www.nottinghampost.com/news/ashfield-district-council-leader-makes-7834761